The Story Studio Podcast - Writing, Storytelling, and Marketing Advice for Writers & Business

Lots of fun stuff today, a much of which came at Dave's expense. Poor Dave. We started off by checking the voice mail bag: Cameron asked about re-setting the world in every book of his series The question was that in a series of books that don't intersect or need to be read sequentially, should he "re-set" the setting in each book? Our answer was that this can be avoided by not spending a ton of time describing the setting in the first place and instead letting the characters experience the setting as they go through it. (This was something we discussed with Wool author Hugh Howey.) Alex asked about the nuts and bolts of self-publishing Alex wanted us to talk about the specific how-to stuff of self-pub… like how exactly to get your book into a Kindle format and onto the Kindle store, how to get a cover, etc. etc. etc. He also asked about costs of all of it. So we did the only logical thing: We procrastinated. Dave says he'll get us a guest soon to go through all of that so that we can just sit back and drink coffee/Diet Coke while someone else explains it. So stay tuned. Gareth called in more feedback For the third show in a row, we featured voicemail from Gareth, who this time just had a comment in which he totally copped out of the idea he had for a book, and this after calling in to say that he couldn't think of any ideas. That's bullshit, but Dave did enjoy listening to his voice. Sean appealed to Z2134 readers to come to their defense Sean butted in at this point to do some flagrant self-promotion that I (Johnny) of course shat on him a bit for, but in this case he made an appeal for something that you as our faithful SPP listeners can do that will really help this cheery, rainbow-farting host and his black-cloud companion. Specifically, if you've read Z2134 and liked it, Sean and Dave would love it if you could leave a good review. They're getting a lot of crap for being too similar to The Hunger Games. C'mon, folks… let's tilt those scales back the other way. Setting the tone of your writing We spent the rest of the show talking about how to determine the right "tone" for your writing. So for instance, everything Dave touches writing-wise has the tone of "dark enough to melt your soul," whereas all of the fiction I've published thus far has a very light, humor-meets-serious tone. We were talking about this mostly around the new young adult project that Sean and I are working on, called Unicorn Western. The concept is bizarre and stupid. Cowboys ride unicorns, The smoke that comes out of the guns is pink. There's magic. But at the same time, after Sean gave me this ridiculous outline and I begin to follow it, I couldn't help but write with a more "straight" mood, like a traditional western. And that's what we mean by tone. The story is what it is, but how is it HANDLED? What's the mood? One of our challenges with Unicorn Western is to find that mood, but once we hand it back and forth a few times, we'll have it firmly established for the rest of the series. To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #29 - Finding the Right Tone for your Writing

What a bummer this week for those of you who are so incredibly into staring at the three of us, as Google hates Sean and would not let him use Google Plus to start a Hangout On Air. So there's no YouTube version, and Google has notified him that he's b...

Today we have another celebrity guest - the guy who brands himself as an asshole, which makes him perfect for both SPP in general and for talking about haters in general. But first... Sean dances Gangnam Style to celebrate Z2134 making it into Amazon's Top 100 list 'nuff said: Then, shit got real. Tucker Max Joins Us For Some Reason Possibly because Sean slipped him some roofies at a convention a few weeks ago, Tucker Max, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell and other "Fratire" titles spun from the drunken and debaucherous tales of his twenties, joined us to talk about haters and how to deal with them. Tucker, whose own website proclaims him to be an asshole, started out the conversation by doubling-down on our hater talk by discussing how he started his own meme, gaining "the bad kind of attention" by spreading press about how "Tucker Max advances rape culture" and attempting to rile up just the kinds of groups who would be most against his in-your-face brand of humor. But then we brought it back to a less raucous level and discussed dealing with people who don't like your work, even if you didn't invite those people in. A few of the topics we hit were: • You are not your art, and if you can't make the separation between what you do and who you are, you really shouldn't be an artist. • That said, the best approach to dealing with criticism for sensitive people is to go slowly and to have a firm social support network in place. • Tucker Max the character is a slice of Tucker's life ten years ago, and even at the time that Tucker didn't represent the whole person. You can only show a slice of yourself and what you do, so keep that in mind when facing any praise or barbs. • Remember that most "hating" on your work is about the person doing the hating, not about you or your work. You should take it as such. • … and a whole lot more. This is a crazy, crazy episode, folks… buckle yourself in tightly! To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #27 - Dealing with Haters, with Guest Tucker Max

This episode began with a big love-fest for Sean and Dave's new official Amazon Serial, Z2134. "Z" has been rising through the Amazon ranks all week and was knocking on the door of the top 100 paid list when we were recording, standing at #107. Now, in case you have your head up a large animal's butt and don't know these things, being in the top 100 is a big deal. That's where the serious sales and serious momentum start. (And of course, #107 isn't much worse. If Z were a self-published book, Sean and Dave would really be raking in the dough. They may still be, but they don't know their numbers yet, and Amazon gets a bigger slice.) The part where I praise Sean and Dave for being inspirational (yes, even Dave) Here's why this matters to all of us. The high ranking of Z is pulling up sales of all of their other titles, including Yesterday's Gone Season One, which already ranks and sells very well. So I (Johnny) spent a while drooling over and praising their example yet again: Sean and Dave are just two guys who didn't get any kind of amazing break, who didn't get their book pushed by Oprah, and who didn't have a freak viral spread of their book. They are where they are purely because of their workmanlike ethic, just working their assess off to produce tons of new content. How to write when you can't build momentum We took a voicemail from Scott, intended mainly for me, about getting stuck in trying to finish your book (because I'm the slow one, get it? Ha ha!). Scott has a book that he's been working on forever… he works for a while, gets derailed, then has to remember where he was when he starts again weeks or months later, then gets derailed after catching up but not actually writing anything new. He asked for tips on keeping momentum. We had a few, mainly: 1. Outline as you go. Scott said that he spent a ton of time re-reading his stuff to remember the story, and ended up re-writing it in the process… and as a result, never made any forward progress. Dave suggested noting bullet points as you write in a separate document, so that you'll always have a quick-reference as to your story's plot. 2. When possible, IF possible, write through your times of stress. Not always do-able, but sometimes writing is about pushing through difficulty and, as we keep saying, just doing the work. I said that sometimes, we look for excuses not to write, and writers tend to seize such excuses readily. I strongly suggested reading Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art. Every writer should read it and learn to overcome "The Resistance." 3. Write something else. Dave said that if you can't push on and if you're not dying to write what happens next, there's a chance you're writing the wrong thing. Writing should be exciting and/or compelling to you, and you should want to know what happens next. Sean reads questions from Paul (ideal for Anglophiles) Because we've been on a "UK kick" recently with our callers, Sean read a few questions from Paul Wolfe. Remember Paul? He sent us questions. What an asshole to write instead of call, right? Paul asked about publishing for US audiences from the UK… specifically, should he use US spellings of words in the title? We voted yes in most cases, because we Americans can't see past things like that a lot of times. So unless your story is set in the UK and is very UK centric, it's probably better to call your mystery entitled The Colour of Yoghurt to The Color of Yogurt. Paul also asked about KDP Select and borrowing. When you enroll in KDP Select, Amazon Prime members can borrow one book a month for free, and that would then include yours. We said that we didn't really care about borrowing one way or another. The borrowing simply comes with the ability to run free promos, which is the real reason we want to be in KDP Select. The where I wrote another book last week In an attempt to keep up with the aforementioned crazy production of my co-hosts,

We started this week's show off by reviewing how we, as writers and publishers, have improved in the 25 weeks we've been doing this podcast. We all seemed to feel that we've gotten better, faster, and generally more efficient and effective, but we couldn't say how. Love that specificity. But Sean did have one announcement: Tucker Max is going to be on the show You may know Tucker Max as the asshole who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, among other popular titles that all make him look like an asshole. I asked Sean, who enticed Tucker to come on in a few weeks via a plot that surely involved rohypnol, if Tucker was an asshole in person, and he said, "Oh yeah, he's a total cock." So of course we decided we had to have him on when we talk about dealing with haters. So stay tuned. (NOTE: I hadn't been to Tucker's site before writing this, and now I see that his site begins with the line "My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole." The circle is complete.) Questions! We then answered questions from Kevin about how to publish a book in the UK and make it available everywhere (just publish it in the UK store and check the right boxes), from Gareth about writing tools we like (Scrivener is our baby, but there were a few other tips on this one), and from Tom about why you can't set your price below $0.99 on Amazon now (to our knowledge, it's always been that way). Then we had margaritas. A long discussion on our writing processes A large part of the fodder for this discussion was this post I wrote, called "From Idea to Publication on Kindle in 29 Days," so you might want to read it and/or follow along. (Even DAVE said it was good!) But anyway, we spent the last half of the show talking about how we outline our work, write first drafts, edit our own stuff, send it out to beta readers and/or editors, and generally how we work. A huge part of this discussion was devoted to Sean beating the shit out of me for not using an outside editor, most recently on my new book Fat Vampire. I had the impossible task of defending myself without looking like some sort of an assbag elitist, but I still don't want to use an editor even though I can't defend the decision. I really had no way to win here, so you'll enjoy this section if you like carnage. To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #25 - Writing Processes that Will Make You a Better Writer

Everyone on the podcast had some awesome news to report this week… and the reason you should care is because it was our interaction with each other, in part, that made the good news possible. We're a mastermind group of three writers -- a mastermind group that broadcasts its meetings publicly -- and the information-sharing and accountability we all share is a lot of the reason behind how seriously we take our craft and our writing businesses, and hence the results we get. Sean and Dave sign with Amazon's publishing arm … but don't worry, because they're not selling out self-publishing. Far from it, actually. Because they're Sean and Dave, they're not deciding between self-publishing at all. They're simply adding a project. Amazon called them up and said, "Hey, you want to write a serial for our serials program that we'll own and get behind and push for you and make you popular?" and they were like, "Sure! We'll just add that to the fifty books each week we're already writing!" Oh, but that's not all. They're actually doing TWO serials with Amazon… Z2134, which was previously self-published, and a new serial called Monstrous. You can get Z2134 for pre-sale right now. You can read Sean's official announcement here… and of course we go into all of the legally-disclosable details on the show. Johnny took an idea from conception to a finished book in 29 days On Tuesday, I (Johnny) released my second book, a horror/humor novella called Fat Vampire. And that's awesome, and I hope you go check it out, but the bigger story is that thanks to my "masterminding" with Sean and Dave and my seeing how they work, I was able to get the idea (which came out of a hilarious discussion on Better Off Undead episode #6, write the book, have the cover made, and release the thing all in less than a month. I actually wrote up my entire process in a blog post: From Idea to Publication on Kindle in 29 Days. The Better Off Undead horror (um… really? It's about horror?) podcast is now threatening to kick SPP's ass Oddly, the podcast we mentioned that we were starting way back in SPP episode #15 in order to better connect with people who might like of our type of writing is now as popular as this podcast. We talk about that a bit… the oddly useful experiment that is the Better Off Undead podcast. So yeah. We're glad we did that. We took voicemail questions We were way behind on answering questions that people have submitted via that nice big phone number on our homepage, so we caught up on them a bit. We got through three of them, with three left for next week. Hey, some progress! To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #24 - The Importance of a Writers' Mastermind

Today we were joined by Hugh Howey, author of the runaway self-publishing success Wool. If you haven't read Wool, definitely pick it up and check it out. It's short and it's free. The best way to get the rest of the series if you like it is in the complete omnibus (Wool 1-5). Books in the Wool series, just FYI, sell bazillions of copies monthly (an exact figure), and movie rights to the book were recently optioned by Fox and Ridley Scott. We didn't dick around nearly as much before getting started this week, which must mean that we were eager to talk to Hugh. Or something. Hugh Howey: Yes, he's had a lot of writing success. But nobody in the popular press talks about how he's a hybrid of Sean and Dave Wool is the story of a dystopian society that lives in a buried silo after some sort of worldwide cataclysm, but what we didn't realize was how dystopian Hugh himself is. We were fooled by nice, friendly videos like this one of him opening fan gifts, this one of him surprising a young fan in a bookstore, and this one of him dancing to Soulja Boy while wearing funny slippers and a funny hat. But then he started telling us vintage Dave Wright trademarked thoughts that always ended with people eating other people because that's how life is and generally non-happy endings. Oh, and then we almost kind of remembered to ask him about his self-publishing success. Right. A few key points from our discussion: * Hugh didn't promote Wool because he didn't believe in it as much as his other work and thought it was the most non-commercial, which just goes to show that you never know which of your writing projects might catch fire. * He seems to have at least four projects going right now and moves between them as the urge and/or dominant direction of his fiction dictates, which I found odd. (But I'm currently writing three things all at once, so who's actually doing something odd here?) * Unsurprisingly, one of Hugh's tips is to write a lot. That's a dominant theme here, right? You need a large "Amazon footprint" so that you can be found, and any given project has a chance to hit critical mass. * More of Hugh's advice: Write a lot of different types of work that interest you rather than staying really narrow in focus, beat writer's block by writing something else (because if the book doesn't excite you, it won't excite a reader), and stop dead in the middle of scenes, paragraphs, or sentences when you're done for the day to create an open loop you're dying to close. * One of the greatest things about Kindle and other e-book formats is the ability to experiment and get real-time fan feedback -- something you can't do with a traditional book and with many other hands on a project. … and of course a whole, whole lot more. Oh, and Hugh enjoyed hanging out with us so much and/or secretly hates life enough that he stuck around after this episode and joined us for Better Off Undead episode #9, which we recorded immediately afterward. Check that one out if you'd like an answer to, "Is Hugh actually the vampire version of Dave"? To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #23 - Interview with "Wool" author Hugh Howey

Because he really likes to chase shiny pennies, Sean has been flogging himself for almost two years now about not using YouTube and video in general more to publicize his fiction. Don't worry, I told him during the course of the show that he was being a neurotic douchebag because it's not like he's been eating chips and sitting on the couch… he's been writing ten fucking books a week or something as well as about a zillion other things. But then I realized that despite Sean's neurosis, video really kind of is something we authors should all be doing more of. Brainstorming on how to trick Dave into doing it for us began. Johnny gets fat I started this one off by proudly announcing that thanks to the inspiration and motivation and masterminding that these weekly podcasts give me, I've just completed a new novella called Fat Vampire, about a man who is turned into a vampire while overweight and out of shape, and who consequently clashes with the chic, thin, stylish, washboard-abs-and-salon-hair vampire set. I wrote it in eleven days, and thanked the drive I get out of the podcasts (not to mention the spark of the idea itself) for making it happen -- something I hope the rest of you are feeling from listening to us. Fat Vampire will be available in a few weeks. Meet Paul Wolfe Paul Wolfe, who Sean has known for a while now but has kept from us for some reason, has had some serious video-related success with his website where he teaches people how to play bass guitar. He's got almost 9000 YouTube subscribers to a string of videos about (shockingly) how to play the bass, 2.8 million views, and -- most importantly to us -- has built a 12,000 person mailing list almost entirely from traffic he's gotten from YouTube. The trick with how Paul uses YouTube and his YouTube channel is that he doesn't want to build his YouTube audience. Once someone is on one of his videos, his goal is to immediately get them off of YouTube… and onto his website, where he can build that list, engage with them, and whatnot. Paul gave us a lot of tips for how to maximize what we get out of putting our podcasts on YouTube, the biggest of which was to break our hour-long videos into more consumable, much shorter videos which are laser-focused on a specific topic. Now, we're talking to authors about self-publishing here, but on our Better Off Undead podcast, we talk to our readers… and we put those videos up on YouTube too. So with our Better Off Undead videos as an example, the lessons that follow apply to all authors who are trying to talk to readers via video. (Side note: If you don't have a video podcast like we do, you could still just record videos like this as stand-alones rather than clipping them out of longer videos like we could.) So if we talk about Stephen King's The Stand for five minutes during the course of a show, Paul suggested doing this: 1. Break that five minutes of us talking about The Stand out into a separate five-minute video. 2. Title it "Stephen King's The Stand" or "Why The Stand is awesome" or whatever, because those are the kinds of things people might search for or watch if they found. 3. Write the description such that keywords people might search for about "Stephen King" and "The Stand" appear and will be found in a search. 4. In the video, point people back to our site and/or a full version of the video on our site. 5. Then, let people find the video by searching, come to our site, fall in love with us, join our lists, and so on. We also talked about a bunch of other strategies authors can use to build their audiences with video. If you want the raw scoop on how to do all of this, be sure to visit Paul's marketing blog at OneSpoonAtATime.com. To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #22 - Using Video for Publicity, with Paul Wolfe

We started this one out with an announcement that 1) We really like our own podcasts, 2) I'm eating a banana, and 3) I (Johnny) am writing a new story that is really damn hilarious and awesome but that I'm unwilling to tell you anything else about. Talk about useless. Should you keep writing new stuff while you're editing an earlier project? Despite the fact that we'd already rambled on for fifteen minutes, we spent 15 more minutes rambling on to answer a question Stacy emailed us about whether or not it makes sense to start working on a new writing project while editing something else. Sean said he does but thinks it's not ideal. I said that I don't have any problem with it at all and plan to edit my current project while writing the next one. Dave opened a Diet Coke. And like I said, a long-ass answer followed. Amazon's new Kindle Serials program is awesome-looking, but not for indie authors yet Last week, Amazon announced its new Kindle Serials program, which will allow readers to subscribe to a book once and receive updates over time. This contrasts with the way Sean and Dave are serializing, which requires readers to either buy every single episode or to wait for the full "season" of six episodes and buy that. The disadvantages of Sean and Dave's way are that they have to work-work-work-get paid, whereas the Kindle Serials program would let them get paid up front. It'd also be better for readers, who wouldn't have to buy multiple books and would get updates automatically, the same way podcast subscribers get new podcast updates automatically. We spent a lot of time going back and forth, with questions like these: The Kindle Serials program is currently invite-only. Will it ever roll out to all indie authors, or will serials authors have to be hand-picked by Amazon? Will this hurt Sean and Dave's current model, because people will get used to the new paradigm? Is this a good thing for ALL serials, because it makes serialization more mainstream? Will a mainstream influx of new serials flood the marketplace? and of course What is the "deal" for Kindle Serials authors? They haven't announced it yet. It it like a traditional buying of a book by a publisher? What are authors paid? To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #21 - Serialization in Amazon's New Serials Program

Sean started this episode off by giving a great teaser for a movie. Apparently Sara Silverman is on a couch delivering lines and it's so funny. I mean, shit, I'm sold for sure. Creepy voicemail The first of our voicemail was creepy because Mike totally worked it, hitting such show favorites as Dean Fucking Koontz, goths in trees, and Justin Bieber. He then said that we were awesome and worked in a question toward the end (though it was totally tacked on,) about which platform he should use for a first nonfiction book. We said Amazon. Or iBooks, done through Lulu.com, which would be good for nonfiction. (There was more discussion, but this was the heart of it.) The second voicemail from Cassandra was creepy because she expressed interest in my abs, which then led to a discussion of Dave's abs, which we decided could colorfully be described as "pendulous." She asked about Smashwords. We then discussed Smashwords. See how this works? We had a final question that wasn't via voicemail and hence may or may not have been creepy. It was from Scott, who asked about converting a largely graphic book to Kindle. The short version is that we have no fucking idea, but that we think it's damn near impossible to literally use all those images. Building your tribe and telling others to piss off -- and no, not literally, but we know what the real score is There's a ton to this discussion, but the short version is that you can't try and talk to everyone in your books, your marketing, and in your online platform. You have to be yourself and accept that some people won't like you… because only by allowing some people to not like you will you form strong bonds with the people who DO like you. Food for discussion on this point is Derek Sivers's post Reach Them Like You Would Want To Be Reached, which introduces the oft-cited (by me, anyway) concept of "proudly alienating" people who don't resonate with your message. Note that this is PROUD alienation, meaning that you're not just accepting that some people won't like you. You're PROUD that they don't resonate; you're saying, "Awesome. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." The genesis of this idea recently, though, came from Sean's experience with his Digital Writer site. He found out that the people on that rather large list were not his ideal people. So he wrote a tactful "fuck off if you don't agree with my new direction, and join me if you do" post and email to that list and ended up with a much smaller -- but a much better and more resonant -- list that represented his true tribe. So… don't shoot for a zillion people who "kind of like you." Be real and shoot for a smaller list of people who LOVE you. To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #20 - Building and Trimming Your Tribe

I (Johnny) started this show off with two shocking announcements. Shocking announcements! After our discussion last time with Joanna Penn, I admitted to being intrigued by the promising nature of the erotica genre and to having downloaded and read 50 Shades of Alice in Wonderland during a brief family getaway at the beach last weekend. Sean asked if I decided to write erotica, if I'd talk about it on the show and I dodged the question. Dave offered his visage for potential hot and sweaty cover photos. Or at least sweaty. I further admitted to eating during the taping because I hadn't eaten lunch: sunflower seeds and beef jerky. Dave asked me to talk at more length about my eating habits. An update on our Better Off Undead podcast guerrilla (not gorilla) marketing plan A few episodes ago, we talked about reaching our potential readers via a new zombie podcast called Better Off Undead, and now, after releasing just four episodes, I gave an update on how well that's going. Short version: It's going great, and is actually growing faster than SPP grew at the time. Our episode on fast vs. slow zombies was particularly huge, netting almost 1300 downloads so far, which is a number it takes an average SPP episode a month or so to hit. So yeah, it's going well, and after only a month of recording. Oh, and if you're into horror or the supernatural (or just enjoy three guys who can't stop laughing and making fun of each other while pretending to talk about horror or the supernatural) be sure to subscribe to Better Off Undead. Buying reviews is for scammy douchebags This all began for us when Dave passed around a link to an article about a guy who was selling reviews to self-published authors. The basic gist is that for a fee, the guy would say that your book was awesome -- and he'd say it more times if you paid more, of course. The hammer was that self-publishing success story John Locke used this guy's services… which in our minds kind of invalidates a lot of what John said was his route to success. There's a ton to this, but a few of the bullet points are: There's a fine line between buying reviews and quid pro quo reviews and the kind of natural, organic reviews that result from solid relationships built with fans… but like obscenity, we all know the bullshit stuff when we see it. It's tempting to lose faith in the system of reviews on the internet and on Amazon in particular, but we believe that it's in Amazon's best interests to develop algorithm changes that will weed out bogus stuff… and so they probably will, in time. The worst thing about this is that it's tempting to feel like we're all suckers for NOT cheating, because it's like trying to swim with ankle weights while all of the bullshitters are making big and seemingly easy gains. But don't be tempted; it's ultimately not worth it and not as valuable in the long-term as building a real business and readership based on quality. Fodder for this discussion: Tommy Walker's article on the truth about online manipulation and the follow-up. ALL kinds of "gaming the system" strategies are short-term games that sacrifice long-term success. The stuff we talk about in this episode is no exception. Your best strategy if you're serious about being a real author with a solid, loyal fan base is to be honest and not try to cheat by buying reviews. Questions! Questions! We had a few minutes at the end to catch up on some of the questions people have sent us. (We love questions! Call us to submit yours.) Steve asked about which fonts to use. Unfortunately, we didn't have much to say on the topic. Dave likes Georgia, though. Christy asked if writing fiction was our full-time job, and if so, when we made the switch. I am DEFINITELY not a full-time-income fiction writer, but Sean and Dave are essentially there, though Sean says they leapt before they were truly ready, which was ballsy. Christina asked about picking titles for fiction.

We started this with our traditional banter, touching on topics from 1) me being inspired by the Self Publishing Podcast (how modest!) to 2) Dave moving to a day schedule to 3) Dave's true nature being soft and cuddly. It was worthless but fun, just like how we occasionally are on topic. Voice mail fun involving profanity and how to market your Kindle books We took two some cool voicemails before starting with our guest, Joanna Penn. The first was uncredited, probably because his voice message exposes himself to be a motherfucking douchebag assbag cocksucker, and was about using profanity in our writing. Do we do it deliberately, or do we do it "as it falls out of our dickholes"? (I can't believe people think this podcast is "blokish." Can you? The second question was about marketing we've done that didn't work. I said that nothing has really worked for me and that Podiobooks hasn't done much for me probably because I only have one book. Sean said that guest posting and the Kindle Fire giveaway they did were worthless. Dave took a nap. Live, with Joanna Penn! We then teased for an update on our Better Off Dead podcast while our guest, Joanna Penn (she's got a fiction site and a nonfiction site) downloaded something to make our hookup work. Then she came on and we dropped the Better Off Undead update, thus being annoying assholes. But what else is new? (We'll give that update next time.) Joanna is interesting to us for a lot of reasons, but the one that had us calling her to be on SPP was the fact that after a very successful self-publishing run for two of the three books in her historical/religion-based ARKANE thriller series (Pentecost and Prophecy), selling almost 50,000 books, she announced that she was signing with an agent with the goal of finding a publisher to take over the series, and maybe more of her work as well. We took a lot out of the discussion of why she made the leap and what's behind it, but here are a few of the important takeaways: Today more than ever, authors are empowered. It used to be you had to lick the boots of agents because they were your only way in. That's no longer true, and it puts us in stronger bargaining positions. If you think you might want to be traditionally published one day, using self-publishing as a springboard is maybe the best way. It's a way for you to prove that you can sell BEFORE they take you on. It also gives you a platform, and authors need audiences first if agents or publishers are to pay attention to them. You can and should pay close attention to your contract. Joanna has tips. Rights are negotiable. Joanna is still able to self publish. Her agent may or may not represent her later stuff, at her discretion. Foreign rights matter. Joanna and Sean had a back and forth on this in which Sean thought Joanna was validating his cause in front of the stodgy Dave, but I came to Dave's defense because Sean's argument for translating his stuff and Joanna's are apples and oranges. And a lot more stuff. Oh, we also discussed this incredibly phallic book cover. We're going to make you listen to find out why, though. To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast Episode #18 - Going from Self Publishing to Getting a Literary Agent, with Joanna Penn

We got a lot of email and questions and voicemails last week, but two things happened that I am hereby going to blame for the fact that we didn't address any of that or answer any of the emails until yesterday: 1. Apparently GMail changed its spam algorithm and started sending all stuff sent via our contact form to spam. Awesome! It's sorted now, though. and also, 2. Audacity, the program I use to process the voicemail audio files, was being a bitch. So I couldn't do that in time either. So we'll get to your questions next time. Sorry about that. How to use your mailing list for marketing and keeping in touch with readers We were able to take one question from S.A. about how's the best way to manage your reader email list, and how often to send stuff to them. Sean said you should send them stuff every week. I said that I would never send them stuff every week, but would instead wait until I had something meaningful to say. A brawl ensued. Dave then proposed blogging more often about ourselves, and Sean and I shit all over him. I read an ancient story from my past This weekend, my mom gave me back my Dr. Seuss My Book About Me, which I had filled out when I was six years old. The book contained a story I'd written longhand about an adventure undertaken by a cat named Bob and a dinosaur named Stegy. I decided to take two and a half minutes to read it, while stumbling over the misspellings ("uvcors" = "of course") and lack of punctuation. I'm still not sure if this was a cute look into the development of a storyteller or just stupid. You can decide. Here's a scan of the pages I was reading from. See if YOU can read my jumble: You could probably take some kind of a moral from this. The one I took was "You have to be willing to go through the phase where you're a shitty storyteller before you can hope to become a good one," but feel free to also take from this "Holy fuck was Johnny incoherent!" Rituals that will make you a better or at least more productive writer This section started with me reading Steven Pressfield's ritual from the first chapter of The War of Art and contained a LOT of Sean bagging on Dave for having no schedule and being totally inefficient. I tried to come to Dave's defense, saying that if Dave gets the words out, Sean should back off. Sean said that Dave could still get the words out but work fewer hours. A brawl ensued. My contention about Pressfield, though -- and we all agreed that this was the best way to look at rituals -- is that you shouldn't rely on pixie dust to write good stuff. You should treat it like work. You show up, you sit down, and you do it. Here are few of our hints and tips and habits: • You MUST eliminate distractions, including phones and email. ESPECIALLY email. • In fact, read this now, and then read the follow up, which is where the hammer really falls. Those are two posts I wrote about learning that checking email only twice a day is the best productivity enhancer and time-saver ever. Then, after reading commit to ONLY ANSWERING EMAIL DURING DEDICATED TIMES. This is hard to do, but you will be AMAZED what it does for your ability to write. • I always start at 6am and write for around two hours. My coffee is prominent in here. • Sean suggests working in 90-minute blocks, to keep things fresh. You can add more blocks later in the day if you want more writing time. • We like the idea of stopping dead in the middle of a hot scene instead of finishing it and starting next time with a fresh scene. Doing the latter is like stopping a train completely; it will take you time to get back up to speed. Doing the former is like jumping from a moving train and then running to hop back on later. It's already going, so it's easy to keep going in your next session. • Dave and I like to write to music. It sets a mood and blocks out the outside world. • We all like writing in the wee hours of the morning, but I find I'm frustrated by the need to sleep.

We talk a ton about self-publishing your fiction on this podcast, but we know a lot of you are into publishing nonfiction and/or using platforms like Kindle e-publishing to promote your business. We all want to make money, but the nonfiction route is arguably more direct. That's mostly what we talk about in this episode. But first, we talked about a few other loose ends. I'm loving writing to music I read in what could be called this podcast's bible -- On Writing -- that Stephen King writes while listening to loud music like Metallica and AC/DC. This always seemed strange to me because I need total silence to concentrate. But what he says is that the music is "just another way of closing the door," and you need a closed door in order to write. But, prior to these past two weeks, I've only had two hours a day to write (6-8am), and they're fitful hours at best because although the house is at its quietest then, I'm still constantly interrupted. And if I sleep in, I'm fucked. I can't write that day. That sucks. I figured if I could learn to write to music, I could write whenever I wanted… and so I made myself try. It's amazing. I recommend anyone who is unable to find distraction-free time give it a shot… and if you think you'll be distracted by the lyrics, I thought that too. It took a bit of getting used to, but now the door is fully shut, and I can write whenever. In case you're wondering, I'm currently writing to Eminem's Recovery album and Rob Zombie's Past, Present & Future. I've also tried Rancid, Bad Religion, Green Day, Social Distortion, and a few others. Social Distortion's White Light White Heat White Trash is probably my favorite to write to so far. NOTE: I think a key to making this work is getting a good set of comfortable, "cans" style headphones. This is the pair I use, and they're AMAZING. Check 'em out. Self-publishing for nonfiction and business strategy Then we got on to the main topic. But first… DISCLAIMER: We say toward the end of this episode that the Kindle Marketplace is not some kind of a spam playground, or at least that it shouldn't be. Don't think "make money by publishing on Kindle." Think "promote using e-publishing as one intelligent strategy" or "sell a lot of good, solid books on a topic people care about." There's too much get-rich-quick thinking in this area, and it WILL come back to bite get-rich-quickers in the ass. An intelligent business strategy is a much better investment of your time and energy. With that out of the way, we talk about how to: How to target and organize your nonfiction book When to use which strategies -- breaking your book into nuggets vs. using a single, larger book • How to use a nonfiction book as a call to action for another part of your business • How to use nonfiction as lead generation. This is what I'm doing. I have a book, The Universe Doesn't Give a Flying Fuck About You, that was simply a repurposed post from my blog that I put up on Amazon so it could reach people that my blog couldn't. What surprised me was that it sold very well on Amazon at 99 cents, probably due to its title. So, I recently made it permanently free and it now "sells" around 80-100 copies per day. I'm using this to get new leads for my business. I have a manifesto called How To Be Legendary that is very much in the same style as the "Universe" post/e-book that I'll be releasing shortly, and when this funnel is complete and the manifesto posted, it'll work like this: 1. The "Universe" post sells for free on Amazon, and thousands of people get it each month. 2. There's a call to action at the end of that e-book, telling people about How to Be Legendary 3. People go to my site and get the manifesto. In doing so, they're joining my email list. 4. They'll get a series of emails about the same topic. 5. Those emails end in a pitch for a new "legendary" (and very inexpensive) membership program I'm developing.

This week's topic was ostensibly "dealing with and responding to criticism of your work," but as usual we screwed around and covered a bunch of random other topics first. Our new podcast as a way of connecting with readers Remember all the times Dave has said that you should go to where your readers are, and get in there with them, talking about the stuff you write about and that they're interested in? So if you're into sci-fi, find sci-fi readers in forums. Start a sci-fi blog. Go to where they are and become a voice in that niche, so that when they want more of that stuff they love, your books can provide it. In that spirit, we're proud to announce our new zombie, vampire, and generally monster-and-horrorific podcast, Better Off Undead. Now, if you know (and love!) my novel, The Bialy Pimps, you may be wondering how a horror podcast is remotely in-line for me. The answer is that I'm currently working on a zombie trilogy, so it'll be in-line with my for-sale items soon enough. Sean and Dave are working on a new zombie trilogy, and their current titles are all supernatural horror. This stuff -- the world of supernatural movies, books, and comics, as well as series like The Walking Dead and True Blood -- is stuff we love to watch and read, and stuff we love to talk and write about. So it was a no-brainer. In our first episode, which is available now, we kick off with something fun, thus proving that we're not all about gore and being scary -- a review of the epically terrible film Birdemic: Shock and Terror. You must -- MUST! -- watch the video below of some of the best action from Birdemic: So if you'd like to watch us review that motherfucker, head on over and subscribe to Better Off Undead. And of course, we'll report on how it impacts our book sales and general self-pub efforts here as time goes on. Johnny's Podiobook release update In our episode about creating audiobooks with Podiobooks.com's Evo Terra, we mentioned that the free, totally free, and also free version of my novel, The Bialy Pimps, is now available. I gave an update as to how that's helping me promote. Three things stand out: 1. There were around 3000 downloads of episodes of my podiobook in the first 6 days, but 2. I have zero idea if this is helping me, and 3. We all suspect that this strategy works best if you have multiple books, which I don't yet. But one has to be your first podiobook, and I have mine online. That's not something Sean and Dave can say. Suck it, Sean and Dave! This really is a grassroots, DIY world for artists We took a brief diversion to talk about Patton Oswalt's keynote address at Montreal's Just For Laughs 2012, where he talks about how comedy (and, by extension, any art form, like writing) has fundamentally changed. You no longer take one big shot and then rocket to stardom. This is a day in which our success is all up to us. That's both the good news and the bad news. We also touched on Amanda Hocking, who just signed with a traditional publisher. Dave mentioned offline that she keeps roughly the same schedule as he does, thus proving once more that he's very much like a semi-goth girl. Criticism: When to use it and when to ignore it Our main topic takes up over half of the podcast, but takes up a very small portion of these show notes. Maybe it's because I'm tired of typing. Sean and Dave talked about the feedback and reader criticism that caused them to change (add to) the ending of Season 3 of Yesterday's Gone, and said that this was an example of "good" criticism, because it helped them improve. We also talked about criticism that sucks and that we don't like to read… and that you can often safely ignore and not take personally. The person giving you a negative review or leaving a negative comment probably didn't mean it as a personal attack. It was probably just a case of your stuff not being right for them. And it's part of the game of being an artist, unfortunately.