The writer’s journey is a quest that transcends the mere act of stringing words together. It is a profound exploration of the self. When navigating the landscapes of our minds, personality tools such as the Enneagram can offer illuminating guidance into our unique inner terrains. Knowledge about Enneagram types for writers can help us decipher what personal strengths and weaknesses shape our narratives and define how we approach our craft.

Systems of personality theory, such as the Enneagram and MBTI, are models that categorize common personality patterns. They offer tools to help individuals better understand themselves, their motivations, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Although the “pop” versions found in Internet quizzes can be fun (if often misleading), the true value is found in using these systems to go deep with your own personal inquiries. As writers, some of those inquiries inevitably investigate our relationships with creativity.

The Enneagram offers a nuanced exploration of not just behavior but specifically the core motivations, fears, and desires that drive individuals. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of its nine distinct types to reflect the complexity and fluidity of human nature. Where the Enneagram stands apart from other personality systems is in its acknowledgement of the potential for individuals to move between healthy and unhealthy expressions of personality and in its provision of a growth path for each type. This holistic approach sets the Enneagram apart, making it a powerful tool for self-awareness and personal development.

As I’ve written about before, I have found personality theories in general  and especially the Enneagram to be transformative. Discovering and studying my best-fit type—the Three—offered me one of the most mind-blowing epiphanies in my journey of self-growth. The more I have studied the Enneagram, the more insights it has provided about how to lean into my strengths and address my weaknesses.

A while back, I wrote a two-part series mapping the inherent possibilities for character arcs—both Positive Change and Negative Change—for each Enneagram type. This was based on the Lie/Truth specific to each type. Shortly after publishing those posts, I received an email from subscriber Caine Dorr asking how this information could be applied to the challenges of the writing life:

What advice can you give to writers who personally suffer from one or more of the core lies of their personal Enneagram, getting in the way of their writing?

Today, let’s explore the mysteries of each Enneagram type, as we delve into this profound intersection of self-discovery and storytelling prowess. Please note that, necessarily, this post and the one to follow next week offer the briefest of overviews of each type and inevitably present a limited perspective of strengths and weaknesses. Please use the post as a jumping-off point for further reflection and study.

Also, I will just say that it feels a bit cocky to have written what turned out to be a glowing recommendation of the Three toward the end of this article. However, as someone who started out feeling nothing less than horrified to realize she was a Three, I mark it as a sign of growth to now be able to recognize that Threes are awesome! This is not to say less of the other types, and I hope I have done them equal justice, but obviously writing about the Three is an inside-out job for me in a way that the others are not. I don’t claim to have realized all of the Three’s potential (or overcome all of its weaknesses), but I am proud to unabashedly advocate for its beauty.

Also please note that the examples included of authors for each type were mostly drawn from this post and this site and are suggestions only, since in most instances we can only guess at people’s types.

If you aren’t familiar with the Enneagram or aren’t yet sure what type best identifies you, check out the following resources (which include Amazon affiliate links):

• Post: 5 Ways to Use the Enneagram to Write Better Characters
• Post: 9 Positive Character Arcs in the Enneagram
• Post: 9 Negative Character Arcs in the Enneagram
• Book: The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
• Book: Personality Types by Don Richard Riso and Rich Hudson
• Book: The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut
• Book: The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Rich Hudson
• Podcast: Enneagram 2.0 with Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes
• Podcast: The Enneagram Journey with Susanne Stabile
• Post: The Passions and The Virtues of the Enneagram

Type One as a Writer: The Reformer

The One’s Vice: Anger

The One’s Virtue: Serenity

Core Lie the One Believes: “It’s not okay to make mistakes.”

Core Truth About the One: “You are good.”

Also referred to as the Perfectionist, Ones are characterized by a strong inner drive to improve themselves and the world around them. They are principled, responsible, and hold high standards for themselves and others. They have a keen sense of right and wrong, striving for perfection in their actions and endeavors. Driven by a desire to make a positive impact, Ones can be advocates for justice and moral integrity.

However, their pursuit of perfection can lead to self-criticism and a tendency to be overly critical of others. The inner critic, a prominent aspect of Type One, pushes them to constantly seek improvement but can also contribute to feelings of frustration and guilt. Understanding and navigating these dynamics is essential for personal growth and balance for Type One individuals.

Overcoming the One’s Weaknesses as a Writer

If perfectionism is a common downfall for many writers, it is nowhere more potent than in the One’s experience. For Ones, the inner critic can be especially barbaric. It is never satisfied, always nitpicking at the smallest of punctuation doubts, and translating practical opportunities for improvement into proof of general unworthiness. When unaddressed, this can lead Ones to give up in despair. Ironically, although Ones take criticism from others harder than just about anyone, they are also capable of turning the brutal criticism of their own inner critic outward onto fellow writers whom they believe must also live up these impossible standards.

One of the greatest challenges for this type as a writer is to learn to cultivate a healthy relationship with the inner critic. This can be especially deep work for Ones, who have internalized authoritarian voices that equate their self-worth with their ability to do things “right.” Simply becoming aware of the inner critic’s voice as a voice that is not inherently one’s own can be a tremendous step toward reclaiming a realistic relationship with the necessity of making mistakes and creating growth in one’s own writing.

Enhancing the One’s Strengths as a Writer

Ones possess a tremendous awareness of details. They understand how the pieces of a whole come together to make it work. Their competence at anything they set their minds to is arguably unmatched. Especially when freed from the burden of the unhealthy inner critic, Ones have the capacity to harness their talent and create a mind-blowing level of effectiveness.

More than that, the beautiful Truth at the heart of the One’s doubts about their worthiness is their tremendous potential for goodness. Their drive to improve the world can inspire them to create stories that redress society’s wrongs and encourage audiences to strive toward peace and cooperation.

Examples of Ones as Writers: C.S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, Tina Fey.

Type Two as a Writer: The Helper

The Two’s Vice: Pride

The Two’s Virtue: Humility

Core Lie the Two Believes: “It’s not okay to have your own needs.”

Core Truth About the Two : “You are wanted.”

Also referred to as the Caretaker, individuals of this type are characterized by their innate desire to meet the needs of others and build meaningful connections. Twos are empathetic and generous. They thrive on creating a sense of warmth and support in their relationships. They often put the well-being of others before their own, seeking validation and love through acts of service and care.

While their giving nature is a strength, Twos may struggle with setting boundaries and acknowledging their own needs. The fear of being unwanted or unloved can drive them to overextend themselves, leading to potential burnout. Understanding the balance between supporting others and caring for themselves is crucial for personal growth and fulfillment in Type Two individuals.

Overcoming the Two’s Weaknesses as a Writer

Some Twos may struggle to maintain a dedicated writing practice because “putting their writing first” feels too much like “putting themselves first.” As Twos work through their challenges with equating their self-worth with their service to others, they may find that disciplining themselves to focus on a dedicated writing habit can offer a tremendous leverage point for growth. They can also flip the script and practice recognizing how the act of writing can, in itself, be of service to others.

Twos may also tend to over-identify themselves with their writing, making it difficult to separate constructive criticism or rejection of their stories from personal criticism or rejection of themselves. Pride can be a reflexive defense for Twos, in which they swing from a humility arising from poor self-esteem into an arrogance that rejects the authority or wisdom of anyone who doesn’t appreciate them.

Enhancing the Two’s Strengths as a Writer

Thanks to their natural empathy, Twos have the capacity to write powerfully authentic characters with complex motivations and arcs. They are often highly emotionally intelligent and are able to translate this into an understanding of the subtle emotions that drive characters and create realistic story development. They may feel more comfortable writing from the heart rather than from the head, which can make plot-heavy or planning-forward approaches more challenging. They may instead thrive when turning their characters loose on the page and “watching to see what they will do.”

Twos are often the heart and soul of writing communities. Not only do they naturally seek to build community—whether of fellow writers or of their own community of readers—they foster it out of true love and devotion. They take great pride in putting people first, and their talent for empathy can again serve them well in understanding how to connect with and market to their audiences.

Examples of Twos as Writers: Lewis Carroll

Type Three as a Writer: The Achiever

The Three’s Vice: Self-deceit

The Three’s Virtue: Hope

Core Lie the Three Believes: “It’s not okay to have your own feelings and identity.”

Core Truth About the Three: “You are loved for yourself.”

Also referred to as the Performer, individuals of this type are characterized by their ambition, drive for success, and desire to achieve their goals. Threes are highly adaptable, charismatic, and skilled at presenting themselves in a positive light. They often set high standards for themselves, seeking external validation and recognition for their accomplishments. Threes are efficient, focused, and goal-oriented, using their natural talents to excel in various areas of life.

However, their relentless pursuit of success can cause them to neglect their authentic selves and emotions. The fear of failure and the need for approval can drive Threes to prioritize image over genuine fulfillment. Balancing ambition with self-awareness and authenticity is crucial for Type Three individuals on their journey of personal development.

Overcoming the Three’s Weaknesses as a Writer

Threes are extremely aware of what any given segment of society holds as its ideal, and they are driven to achieve that ideal. Although this awareness and drive can provide extraordinary opportunities for advancing both their talent and their careers, it can come at the high cost of separating them from their deep authenticity. They can easily lose touch (or realize they were never in touch) with their own personal vision for their writing. As they embark on a madcap dash to the top of their field, they can lose sight of the unique story they were meant to tell in this life.

Although Threes (like Twos and Fours) are a heart-based type, they generally feel safer leading from their heads. Their overvaluing of the mental can come at the expense of the emotional, to the detriment of both their art and their careers. Unlike Twos, it can initially be difficult for Threes to access the empathy necessary to write deeply authentic characters. They are more comfortable with the cause-and-effect of plotting. They can also struggle with burnout as they distance themselves further and further from the spark of inspiration that attracted them to writing in the first place, viewing writing more and more as a job rather than a creative act.

Enhancing the Three’s Strengths as a Writer

Threes’ value for competence and efficiency gives them the opportunity to be incredibly productive, both in the writing itself and in any related business endeavors. They understand what is required for success and can translate this into a keen awareness of what creates a successful story. They are exceptional at translating their mental vision into practical results. Charismatic and (seemingly) fearless, they relish challenges and are rarely discouraged by criticism, even when it stings.

When healthy Threes get in touch with their hearts, they are able to dedicate themselves to writing only what aligns with their own genuine vision. They have the capacity to write deeply truthful and inspiring works that touch on the deepest chords of humanity’s frailties and strengths. This allows them to access their core virtue of hope in writing authentic characters who plumb the depths of the human experience.

Examples of Threes as Writers: Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald (although neither were particularly healthy Threes)

Type Four as a Writer: The Individualist

The Four’s Vice: Envy

The Four’s Virtue: Equanimity

Core Lie the Four Believes: “It’s not okay to be too functional or too happy.”

Core Truth About the Four: “You are seen for who you are.”

Also referred to as the Romantic, Fours are characterized by a deep sense of uniqueness and a desire to express their authentic identity. Fours are keenly attuned to their emotions and are inclined to navigate the world through the lens of their subjective personal experiences. Driven by a longing for significance, they are naturally drawn to creativity and self-expression—in part as a way to distinguish themselves from others. Fours enjoy introspection and may grapple with feelings of melancholy. This emotional depth fuels their artistic pursuits. Their creativity shines in the form of unique perspectives, artistic endeavors, and genuine authenticity.

Overcoming the Four’s Weaknesses as a Writer

Because Fours create out of the deep well of their own subjective perspectives, which they may tend to over-romanticize, they can struggle with following “the rules” or accessing the necessary objectivity to hone their stories into effective finished products. Perhaps more than any other type, they can struggle with fears of diluting their personal vision for their work. “The rules” of fiction can feel like an intrusive constriction to their unbounded creativity—which, in turn, can feel like a betrayal of the Four’s very self since this subjective creativity is so inherent to their experience.

Fours may also struggle with insecurity and pessimism—about themselves and about the industry. They can struggle to trust that systems will support them and their unique vision. The Four’s core “vice” is that of envy, born of a general feeling of personal lack, which can cause them to endlessly indulge in unfavorable comparisons between themselves and others whom they view as more successful. A huge leverage point for a Four’s growth can be found in learning to genuinely celebrate fellow writers’ successes and to change the perspective that there isn’t “enough” success in the writing world to be shared by everyone. Instead, Fours may learn to recognize feelings of insecurity when faced with another writer’s success and to exchange it for gratitude toward this other writer for inspiring them and showing them what is possible.

Enhancing the Four’s Strengths as a Writer

Another of the suggested names for the Four is that of Artist. This recognizes their inherent passion for beauty and their intrinsically creative nature. Because they draw so much of their perspective of life from their own subjective experiences, they have the ability to create wildly original stories and effortlessly authentic characters. More than any other type, Fours are not afraid to look at the dark side. Not only are they capable of fearlessly revealing the shadows of humanity, their ability to see beauty in almost anything lets them shine a light into that darkness and transform it.

Fours are often effortlessly skilled at evoking holistic themes from their stories. Not only does their intense emotionality allow them to create dimensional and realistic characters, it also extends to the creation of thematic plots and settings that naturally arise from the internal struggles of those characters. Just as Fours themselves tend to project their inner experiences onto the outer world, they are able to translate the core themes of their characters’ arcs into plots that function as nuanced metaphors for those inner journeys.

Examples of Fours as Writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Anne Rice, William Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams, and J.D. Salinger.

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In this two-part series, we’ve so far journeyed through the dynamic landscape of Types One, Two, Three, and Four, unraveling the distinct qualities that shape how writers of the different types approach storytelling. Next week’s installment will shed light on Types Five, Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine, providing a comprehensive understanding of the diverse traits that influence writers in their creative endeavors. Stay tuned for the next installment as we continue our exploration and offer guidance on harnessing the unique attributes each Enneagram type brings to the writing process!

Stay Tuned: Next week, we will explore Types Five, Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine of the Enneagram.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Do you identify with any of these Enneagram types for writers? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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The post Enneagram Types for Writers: Types 1-4 appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

How can you use automation and tools to help you streamline your creative and business processes so you can get back to the writing? Chelle Honiker gives some mindset and practical tips.

In the intro, IBPA guide to publishing models; We need to talk about independence [Self Publishing Advice article; my podcast episode with Orna Ross]; The Financial Times signs a partnership deal with OpenAI [FT]; The Big Leap — Gay Hendricks; AI Tools on Brave New Bookshelf; Spear of Destiny; Stone Hunters by Rod Penn;

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Chelle Honiker is the co-founder and publisher of Indie Author Magazine, Indie Author Training, Indie Author Tools, and Direct2Readers.com. She’s also an author, speaker, podcaster, and program manager at the Author Nation Conference.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Finding a community with other indie authors
• Blocks that might stop authors from using technology effectively
• How to figure out which tools work best for your creative process and author business
• Moving into new and reinvented processes as technology changes
• Using Zapier to automate your author business
• When to use a tool vs. when to outsource a task
• What to expect in the upcoming Author Nation Conference

You can find Chelle at ChelleHoniker.com, IndieAuthorMagazine.com, IndieAuthorTraining.com, and AuthorNation.live.

Transcript of Interview with Chelle Honiker

Joanna: Chelle Honiker is the co-founder and publisher of Indie Author Magazine, Indie Author Training, Indie Author Tools, and Direct2Readers.com. She’s also an author, speaker, podcaster, and program manager at the Author Nation Conference. So welcome to the show, Chelle.

Chelle: Thanks, Joanna. It’s good to be here.

Joanna: So first up—

Tell us a bit more about your background and how you decided to build businesses to help indie authors.

Chelle: Sure. Actually, you’re a little bit at fault for this, so I’ll explain that. My background is that I started in the travel industry. I was a technology and training professional for many, many years. I had my own consultancy for a very long time.

In 2016/2017, I was in Austin, Texas, and I went to a bunch of meetings for NaNoWriMo. I met just the most vibrant authors there, and we got connected. Then I went to the Smarter Artist Summit, and I met those guys. At that conference, I met Craig Martelle, who then went on to start 20Booksto50k conferences.

I went to the 20Booksto50k conference in Edinburgh in 2019. At that conference, I met my business partner, Alice Briggs, who coincidentally also lives in Texas, but nine hours away because it’s a ginormous state. We had to go all the way to Scotland to meet. When we came back as accountability partners, we had a group of friends that we’d met at that conference. Then I went to the SPF Conference where you spoke. I actually went to London to hear you speak, so that’s where you thread in here.

Then we all know what happened in 2020, the whole world shut down in the middle of that conference. So I was in Ireland for four months, sort of “stranded.” I say “stranded” in air quotes because I wasn’t really stranded, but I had decided to stay over there because my airline went bankrupt, and it was just going to be really difficult to get back. My townhouse was up for a lease again, and it was just a whole mess.

So I stayed in Ireland, and I sort of put up a bat signal for friends to write with. We had 24 of us that started to Zoom together twice a day. We were sharing tips and tricks, and things that we were doing, and courses we were taking, and podcasts we were listening to, and sharing our lives on top of that.

So we would hear about what was going on in Germany, and Albania, and Malta, and just all over the world. All of us were from everywhere around the world. From that, we started a website called Indie Author Tools, which was really just sort of a crowdsource place for us to stick everything.

Then when I came back to the States, Alice and I separately had been thinking about starting a magazine or something that would provide more context for all of the stuff that we were learning, and a way for us to dive in a little bit deeper. So with those original 24 people, we started the magazine three years ago. We’re three, we turned three!

Joanna: That SPF Conference, as you say, that almost didn’t happen. James, kind of as a joke, wore a hazmat suit on stage. Then lockdown happened very soon after. So, I mean, that’s kind of crazy. As you were talking now, I was wondering—

Do you identify as an introvert or are you an extrovert?

Chelle: So I’m an ambivert, actually. I’m like right smack in the middle of it. It just depends, so I’m an equal part of both. It’s funny though because I lean more towards introvert, like I’m technically an INTJ. Robert Downey Jr. and I are both INTJ. I can get excited about being around people, but then I have to retreat.

Joanna: You’re quite a connector, obviously, because you create things that are bigger than you. I really admire that. This is something I struggle with. I always had the feedback at school and in my jobs, like, “does not play well with others,” or “needs to be a better team member.” I’m just not very good at that. So I really appreciate what you’re doing. I mean, you’re creating much bigger things than just an individual person.

Chelle: Well, I love that you recognize that, but I also have to say I have an amazing group of friends and team members. So it’s me that sort of says things, but there’s a lot of crazy ideas that come from a lot of different places.

I’m just a number one activator, so I synthesize and distill the crazy ideas that everybody has into something else. So I’m very aware that I’m surrounded by genius all day, every day. I get up and play with my best friends every day as a job, like that’s the greatest thing ever.

Joanna: I love that, and we all need that.

The author community would literally have no conferences without people like you.

Chelle: It’s so funny because this is such a generous industry, and there are so many people that sort of step up and say, hey, I’m going to do this. It’s probably one of the most interesting—just from looking at it from the business perspective, from the outside looking in, it is still a small industry, so to speak. Everybody sort of knows everybody, but it’s so generous, and people are so supportive.

There’s not a lot of cutthroat competition for business like there is in other industries. I think the coolest thing that I see is that we’re not in competition to sell a product with one another. Authors aren’t competing with one another to sell books, in the strictest sense.

We all have our end product as a happy, satisfied reader. They don’t buy one book, they buy multiple books.

So it’s very different than other industries, and it’s so unique. I think it’s why we stick around and have such success in the industry, in terms of satisfaction, in terms of wanting to keep doing things. We’re not getting beaten up continuously by a zero-sum game or market forces that force us to be mean or cutthroat. It’s just a very different industry, and I love it. I absolutely love it.

Joanna: Well, that’s fantastic. I agree with you. I feel like we definitely do not compete in terms of books and readers, but we do compete on things like ad spend, and pay per click, and all of that kind of thing, but that’s quite different.

So I do want to talk to you particularly about technology and tools. You mentioned Indie Author Tools. I do see that a lot of authors get enthusiastic around notebooks, and pens, and some writing software, but mostly a lot of authors struggle with using technology and tools to improve their process.

They often will kind of shy away from spending even very little money for a tool that will help them. So I wondered—

What are the biggest blocks you see to authors using technology effectively?

Chelle: I think there’s two that I see. The first is overwhelm because we’re responsible for doing all the things, #allthethings.

We’re responsible for writing the book, and then also making sure it’s edited, and making sure that it’s got a great blurb, and got a great cover, and got things that are on brand, and then we have to be responsible for marketing. So I think just in the sense of that’s—

The opportunity of an indie author is to be in control of your career, but it’s also the overwhelm that comes with it.

Especially as creatives, I hear a lot of people say, “I just want to write the book.” I mean, you just can’t. This is an industry that requires that you be an entrepreneur and requires that you take charge of your career.

So if you reframe it as an opportunity, it gets a little less overwhelming, but the first is overwhelm, and the second is time. I think that’s probably the biggest factor is people don’t feel like they’ve got time to adopt it, or there’s too much that they have to think about. It’s just where do you start?

Those are the two biggest obstacles, but I think that if you reframe it as an opportunity to learn something new, and you reframe it as an opportunity to market yourself, and get excited about your books, and get excited about sharing your books.

If you think of marketing and technology as tools to do that, rather than the next thing you ‘have to do,’ then I think that makes a big difference in terms of mindset.

Joanna: I was thinking about this as you were talking, the choice is also really difficult.

So just even take editing, for example, the two biggest ones would be Grammarly and ProWritingAid. Even just the choice between one or the other tool, and there are loads more out there, can be difficult for people.

There’s also budget involved. So if people are assessing a number of tools for pretty much the same thing—

What would you say is the best process for figuring out what tools work for that person?

Chelle: So I think those are choices that you have to make personally, you have to get comfortable with them personally. I’ve used both Grammarly and ProWritingAid, but I had to spend a little bit of time and understand my own process.

Then I had to make a decision which one was best and which one wasn’t as overwhelming or fit in with my process. The good thing is both of them have free trials. So I’m big on free. I’m a freemium girl. I love free. So I’m always looking for things that I can try free and see if it fits, and then figure out how it fits in with my process instead of trying to rewire my process.

That’s another thing, you know, as a technologist, I try all the things and I want to do all of the things. The thing that I came back to is there are some things that aren’t really, technologically speaking, helpful.

So I write down my calendar each day. I have a digital calendar, I have digital reminders, but I use tactile to write down my schedule and my things for the day on a piece of paper. That seems so strange, but it’s making sure the technology fits in with the way that you do things, rather than saying, “Oh, I’m going to have to go to a digital calendar,” or “I’m going to have to use this digital tool,” or “I’m going to have to use this thing.”

So when you evaluate it, think about your objective and think about your style and the way that you work. Make sure that you’re choosing things, they can be small things or big things, to help you do the thing that you want to do better.

Don’t try and fit yourself into some box that won’t ultimately fit because then you’ll be frustrated.

The other thing that I think is also helpful is asking people that are similar to you. Find a community that you can ask questions that can help you evaluate those things.

Not in the broadest terms, like “other authors,” that’s a very big bucket. If you ask other romance writers or other hockey romance writers about certain tools, right, one tool might be better than another tool for your specific genre or your specific need.

That’s where community is hugely helpful in this industry. We have such a solo mindset sometimes when writing, so I think we all need to find our people that we can trust, and ask questions, and ask stupid questions. I love that. I love stupid questions. People think there are stupid questions. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. None, none whatsoever.

Joanna: Totally true. It is interesting because I feel like it is also about asking authors who have similar process. For example, I’m a discovery writer, and I tried so many times to use tools like Plottr and some of these other ones that really try to help you with plotting and structuring, but that’s not my creative process.

Every time I try one of these tools, I’m like, this is just too constraining for my chaotic brain. Then I go back to, well, pretty much just being chaotic and dumping stuff into Scrivener and figuring it out later, using notebooks and things like that.

So that is, as you said, find people who are similar to you in that way. Then you do have to feel whether or not it’s good or not. I think there is almost something to —

Just try it and see, and if you hate it, like just ditch it.

Chelle: Yes, and don’t feel any shame about ditching it either. There’s a lot of people that can be prescriptive about how to do things, and I’ve come away feeling like, oh my gosh, I don’t get up at six o’clock in the morning and write for two hours, I’m a failure. If I want to be successful, I have to do this.

No, you have to find what’s best for you, and technology is just one part of that. So I used to try to write five days a week, I can’t write five days a week, it’s just too exhausting. So I have two days a week where I just go full bore for six hours and just write in sprints and spurts. Then I edit in sprints and spurts.

I think that when people say develop your writing muscle, they don’t realize that you can have muscles that you engage on different days of the week. It doesn’t have to be an everyday thing. I see too many people feel like they’re a failure or they’re frustrated. You know, kick that to the curb. Do what makes you happy and find your bliss. Do what works for you.

Joanna: Yes, I totally agree with that. So I also did want to ask around process because, of course, there are specific tools. I’ve been doing this a long time now, since 2008, and I feel like I have got stuck in my processes for an amount of time.

So you mentioned calendar there. For ages, since I’m in the UK, I would email backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards with people, trying to find a time where we could actually meet. Then in the end, I got Calendly, which is fantastic. So if people are doing regular meetings across time zones, Calendly is just so useful.

Another one that’s interesting right now is social media. I started on Twitter in 2009, and I really got into a rut of what that was for me. Then, of course, when Elon Musk took over and it all blew up, I just kind of threw in the towel and was like, oh, I just can’t do it anymore.

I was struggling to reinvent myself, and I feel like a lot of authors are also feeling that way in social media worlds, but also in other ways.

How do we break out of processes when we’re stuck in a rut?

Like how can we move out of that into a new reinvented process?

Chelle: So my best advice around that is to take a look at the things that are causing you pain. Take a look at the things that are causing you to not have enough hours in the day for the thing that you want. Then sort of gap problem solve, look at the specific problems.

So, for example, I was getting really overwhelmed by my email, and my email box was just completely out of control. My process was that I would get in there in the morning, and then I would triage my email, and then I would save everything that I was going to deal with.

Then I would go on about my day thinking that I was going to get to that thing at two o’clock in the afternoon. Well, I never got to that thing at two o’clock in the afternoon. So eventually, my email box had like 670 emails, and that’s a problem because all of them required action.

So that was my pain point. That was the thing that was causing me frustration. So what I did was I have someone else triage my email for me. Then they put it into a series of buckets: these are the things that need action, these are the things that just are FYI, and these are the things that you need to do.

I was very fortunate that I had somebody to do that, but that’s also one of the tools that you can use AI for. I know —

There’s a lot of controversy around AI, but some of the AI tools are genuinely just there to help you get back to the thing that you love to do, which I think is writing for most of us.

So my best advice, again, is look for the thing that’s causing you problems, and then make some changes around those things. You can do it shortly, and you can do it small.

You don’t have to rewire your whole office. That’s what Alice calls it when I go on these big rants with technology and rebuild everything, and say, “Okay, well now we’re moving everything to Notion.” You know, that’s not always the best thing.

So start small and look at the things that are causing you to keep away from the thing that you love to do. Start with just that thing in mind.

Joanna: It’s funny you mentioned Notion because I’ve been hearing a lot about it. They incorporate AI in everything, and I was like, I’ve got to try Notion. Anyway, I literally went on there, and within five minutes, I was like this is not for me.

Chelle: I did too. Here’s the funny thing, I was an Evernote girl forever. I was an Evernote evangelist, and I loved Evernote. I had no less than 4000 notes in there. Then they changed, and I was really upset about the change. I was really upset about the way that they removed devices.

They moved all their support outside of the States, which was frustrating for me because I had people in Austin that I would just ping and say, “Hey, what’s this?” and they got laid off. I was really upset.

So I said, alright, I’ll go to Notion. I was with you, five minutes in I was like, I hate this thing, I absolutely hate this thing. Then my daughter, my millennial daughter, came over and said you’re doing this wrong. So sometimes you just need a sherpa to come alongside you and say, “If you do this, this, and this, you’ll love it.” And I did, I did that, that, and that, and I went, “Oh, I love this now.”

Sometimes leaving it to our own devices to evaluate something isn’t always the greatest. Sometimes you kind of need somebody to come alongside you and show you just the thing that you need to know.

You don’t need to know the whole big Notion app, you just need to know how can I put a task in and check it off? How can I put in a note from a web clip? How can I just do the small things?

I think we just get so overwhelmed sometimes that we don’t realize that we don’t have to use everything. I don’t use the generative AI in Notion at all. I don’t like it.

Joanna: Yes, different things for different things. It’s interesting, you said they changed about Evernote. I think this is another point, like I said, Twitter which became X, it changed. What’s so interesting is I’ve come back to X now, and I’m literally treating it like a completely new platform, even though I’m the same @thecreativepenn.

I’m like, okay, this is a new platform. I don’t have to think of it like it used to be, I need to think of it as a completely new thing. That has really helped my mindset Whereas I feel like when things change, for example, in the US as we record this, with TikTok there may be a ban, but probably it will just change hands and belong to another company, but it will change.

Chelle: It will change.

Joanna: We have to be flexible. You and I have been around long enough, things change, tools change, sites change, publishers change.

We can’t be fixed in our processes or our technology because things move on.

Chelle: It’s true, and those are the frustrating things. Market conditions being what they are, TikTok is going to change hands, but TikTok’s already been through a change.

When they introduced TikTok Shop, a lot of things changed. The “for you” page changed, and people couldn’t get the visibility and the traction that they once had. Now, with the music changing, there’s so many changes.

The beauty of being an indie is that we can pivot.

We can pivot. We don’t have to take it to a committee and a board, and they make decisions, and then we study market strategies for 12 months, and then we come out with a plan. We can pivot that day.

Joanna: Actually, that’s one of my tips is often these tools will offer you a cheaper rate if you pay for the whole year, but I never do that unless it’s something like my hosting or something like that. For any of these tools, I just get it month by month because so often I end up cancelling and not even using things for a whole year. I don’t know about you.

Chelle: I do that a lot, actually. I had a calendaring app that I used that I did love, I did like it, but it didn’t fit in with our company strategy. So it was me out here and then the rest of the team over there, and there was just too much friction for it to work. So I had paid for a whole year, and I lost like $200. I was really upset about that. I agree with you. I don’t do that anymore. I just pay month to month.

Joanna: So I was told about an amazing presentation you did at the Future of Publishing Conference on Zapier, and I wanted to talk about that in particular. So for anyone who doesn’t know—

What is Zapier? Why is it so useful?

Chelle: So I liken Zapier to the one ring to rule them all. It is a connector of apps. So if you have two apps that don’t natively talk to each other, for example, WordPress and Facebook. They’re two separate companies. They’re two separate things. There’s not a direct integration between the two.

Zapier can bridge that gap. It can connect and talk to those two apps. So you can post a blog on your WordPress site, and it can automatically post a social post on Facebook.

So there’s other ways to do that, but Zapier has very special powers. It connects something like 5000 different apps together. So the most obscure apps can be connected together. There’s other companies that have ways to do that. There’s Make and IFTTT, there’s all kinds of them, but Zapier, in my world, it’s the one ring to rule them all.

Joanna: So what are some examples? You mentioned 5000 possibilities, but—

What are some of the best use cases that you’ve seen for authors using Zapier?

Chelle: Well, one of the things that I say is I don’t build on rented land. That philosophy comes from years and years and years of having mistakes made and seeing things happen. So one of my philosophical things is that I don’t use the email subscription forms from the email service providers. So I like what they do, I like Mailerlite, I like MailChimp, I like all of them to do the job, but I don’t let them collect email addresses on my behalf.

What I do is I start with a form on my website, and then I use Zapier to take that email address and then send it over to an email validation service to make sure that that’s a valid email before it goes on to my email service providers list.

That prevents spam bots and all the junk from cluttering up my email list. For most email service providers, you pay for the number of people that are on your list. So if you use Zapier to collect the email, validate it with a service provider first, and then if it’s a good address, put it on your list, you’re not paying for junk.

Then you can also use Zapier to put that email address into a backup spreadsheet with the IP address that it subscribed from, so that if some catastrophic failure happens with your email service provider, you have a backup copy of your email list. So those are just some small ways to get started with it, to build those Zaps so that you have some protection built in.

I did a poll one time at Indie Author Magazine and said, “Hey, how many people have backed up your email lists lately?” It was like 3% of people. We just trust that the email service providers are keeping our email list safe, but they’re subject to market conditions too. What if they go out of business? What if Elon Musk buys MailChimp tomorrow? Who knows what will happen? No one knows.

Joanna: That is true. Well —

That’s a good reminder to everyone to back up their email list.

I tend to do mine every couple of months, but I’m going to go do it after this. What about social media?

I feel like this is something where social media has really splintered, and a lot of people are posting the same thing on multiple platforms and changing some things and others. So do you recommend using Zapier for any of that kind of thing?

Chelle: So I have a Zap set up that when I have something in social media that I want, we use articles obviously from the magazine, we have a Zap that will read a spreadsheet row in Google Sheets with the bulk of the article. Then we send a prompt to OpenAI, to ChatGPT, and we ask it to create a social post using our voice, using our Avatar Indie Annie, and we say, “Can you please write an appropriate social media post?”

We do a different one for Instagram, a different one for Facebook, a different one for X, a different one for LinkedIn, and a different one for TikTok. Since all of those audiences are different, we’re going to speak to them in different ways, and we have different calls to action for them.

For example, when we have ChatGPT write the one for Instagram, we don’t have a link in there because the link is in the first comment. So we write it for the different audiences, and then Zapier can write all of those and bring it back into a spreadsheet for us.

Then our human editor that does social media can actually review them. Then at the end of the row is a box that she can check. Then that will actually send them to the different social media platforms. We can connect Zapier with our different social media platforms.

So that’s two different Zaps that do things. The first is to generatively create them, and then the second is to actually send them, with that human intervention in the middle there to be sure that it’s saying what we want it to say.

We can also have it create images with DALL-E. Zapier connects with DALL-E, and it can create the images and then put those into Dropbox so that our social media person has those.

We could finish that loop and have Zapier actually post to the social media platforms for us, but we use a scheduler because we’ve got a couple of moving parts in different places from Indie Author Magazine and Indie Author Training. So we have a person in the mix to be sure that that’s right. Zapier does the heavy lifting, connecting DALL-E, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Dropbox, and WordPress.

Joanna: Just a question around scheduling—

What scheduler do you use?

Chelle: So we have two that we use. We use them for different purposes because we use one for Indie Author Training, and we use one for Indie Author Magazine. We use PromoRepublic for the magazine, and we use VistaCreate for the IndieAuthorTraining.com. The reason why is we loved PromoRepublic, it was connected, but it didn’t have TikTok capabilities. It does now, but it didn’t have TikTok capabilities.

Then AppSumo, which is my favorite deal. I’m addicted AppSumo. It’s really just the most amazing little place to buy lifetime deals on things. We got a lifetime deal on VistaCreate before it was bought by the larger Vista platform. So we will use that because it did have TikTok built in, and now PromoRepublic does have TikTok built in.

Joanna: I mean, I use Buffer. I’ve used Buffer for years, and they are also adding new platforms in.

What’s interesting there is you talked about a human in the loop. I think this is what’s really important is we’re not saying you are just turning everything into AI and robots. I mean, that may come in a couple of years. I mean, who knows?

I mean, we still want to make sure that what’s going out there is in our voice, and you never know what could happen otherwise. So this brings up a question around tool. Do we find a tool or do we outsource to a human? So you mentioned email earlier. I went through a couple of years of outsourcing that same triage process, and now I’ve taken it back onto myself again.

What would be your decision process around outsourcing to a human or looking for an automated tool that will do that?

Chelle: So my philosophy right now is that I use tools to get us as far as we can to give people a head start. Then we always bring in people to finish that process because I want to second set of eyes. Especially as a magazine, we have journalistic standards that we have to meet.

The one thing that we are never going to do is outsource our writing to AI. So all of our articles, we have 68 writers that write for the magazine now, we publish every month, and that’s not going to change.

So we still have 68 writers that are writing for the magazine, and we have an editor in chief that goes through every single article. She uses tools for that. She’ll use Grammarly ProWritingAid to edit some of those things to the Chicago Manual style.

It’s still her that’s in there and making sure that things are fact checked and making sure that that’s all right.

I’m a big adopter of AI, but I do feel like the one thing that AI can’t replicate is the humanity of it. It can’t replicate human interaction.

That’s my litmus test for everything. So if there’s some spark of humanity, if we need to make a connection with a reader or make a connection with someone, I at least want to have some humanity involved in that so that there’s not some nameless faceless bot that’s answering a question or making someone feel a certain way.

I think that’s the creative part of being in this industry, and that’s the thing that AI really can’t replicate is the connection, the human-to-human connection.

Joanna: Let’s talk about that more then because many authors don’t want to use it for writing or they don’t want to use it maybe just for the generation of the words. Although I keep telling people, look, you are not a word generator. Like as an author, we’re not word generators.

We are authors, we make meaning, we make connection, we come up with ideas. So even if people are generating words with AI, I don’t feel like that is an issue. You know, there’ll be editing it and all that kind of thing.

There is more to us than word generation.

Chelle: I mean, it’s so true. I feel like now we misnamed Indie Author Magazine, it should be Storytellers, because there’s so many ways to tell stories. There’s so many ways to do that. We are authors, but we’re also in the broader sense, storytellers.

We connect people, and we’re selling them an experience. So, I mean, AI can do a lot of that, but it can’t replicate that. So if you don’t want AI to write for you or do those things for you, you can brainstorm with it.

You can have it suggest keywords, you can have it suggest a blurb, you can suggest marketing hooks, you can think outside the box with some weird stuff. I’ve asked it some really strange things, and it’s come back with some really strange things. I’m like, oh, that’s the direction I never thought I would take with it.

So you can use it to brainstorm with. You can set it up to do your social media and the junk that you don’t love to do. You can use it to create some social imagery if you’d like. You can use it to inspire.

One of the things that I do—so I am not allowed to create graphics for the magazine. This is a sad thing about me. I’m the least creative graphical person on the planet. Like I’m stick figure girl. I’m a binary, I-like-it-or-I-don’t-like-it girl when it comes to graphics.

I happen to be partnered with one of the most creative fine artists in the planet, in my opinion, and a lot of others. So we can’t talk to each other sometimes. I’ll say, “I don’t like it.” Then she’ll say, “What don’t you like about it?” Then I’ll say, “I don’t know, I just don’t like it.”

So she’ll have to sort of tease out of me what I don’t like about it. So what we’ve done is we have a Pinterest board, and I can go and I can type in my stupid little grunt work into ChatGPT and spit out a DALL-E image to put on the Pinterest board.

Then Alice will go, “Oh, yes, you need more negative whitespace.” I’m like, “I don’t know, sure. What’s that mean? I don’t get it.”

So you can use AI as a translator to your creative people. You can set it up so that if you’ve got an idea in your head of what your protagonist looks like, you can type that in and spit out an image to then give to your cover artist to inspire them to create something for you. So it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing.

You can use AI in a way that helps you broaden your ideas or communicate your ideas in a better way and an easier way.

Joanna: I totally agree with that. As a collaborative tool, it’s amazing. I mean, because you can now upload pictures, you can draw a stick figure picture or whatever you want, upload it, and then say, “Can you make this into a better picture?” or whatever, and then give that to your cover designer.

I go back and forwards with my cover designer. Sometimes I’m like, “Here’s 15 different images I made. Use them in some way to do something for this book title.” Like you say, you’re able to communicate your thoughts and your emotions a lot more through imagery.

Well, what about the future then? Obviously, again, you and I have are already using AI tools as part of our process, and we’re already using quite a lot of technology.

Over the next few years, how do you think things are going to change?

How much more are indie authors going to use tools? How about things like direct sales as well?

Chelle: Oh, yes. Direct sales, I think, is the future of publishing. I think as some of these tools become more sophisticated and it becomes almost impossible to hear the difference between AI-generated audio and AI-generated videos, we are going to have to decide how we’re going to adapt to those things.

I don’t think narrators are ever going to go away. I think great narrators will stick around, but I think generative AI does pose some threat to the mass market. So as authors, we’re going to have to navigate that, on where our ethics lie, where business decisions lie, and how we’re going to respond to that.

I also think that, again, narrators can pivot a little bit and maybe become more editors for some of the translations, because AI can do translations, or add some humanity back into it. There’s going to have to be ways that we navigate this carefully and with a lot of grace. I don’t have a lot of answers around how that’s going to change, but I do know that it is going to change.

One of the things that we’re doing at the magazine is we’re asking people, what do you think, and where do you think it’s going to change? We’re asking people that are in positions of decision making, what do you think, how do you think that’s going to change, and how are people going to respond to these things?

I saw this in the travel industry, right, because in the travel industry before the internet, before the World Wide Web was a thing, you called a travel agent and you booked an airline ticket. That was the only way you could. There was no direct line to the airlines, you called a travel agent to do it.

When the internet came about, the travel agent was there to back you up and to fix things that you made mistakes with. Now it’s more sophisticated, and now you very rarely see travel agents.

They’re not there for transactional things anymore, but what they are there for is I will gladly plunk down $300 and have somebody plan my Eurail vacation. I will gladly pay somebody to take that off of me.

AI is not sophisticated enough to do that. It might be in the future, but it’s not right now. I also love the thought of collaborating and dreaming with someone about my trip and my travel and my vacation.

So my futurist hat sort of says, I think it’s going to be a little bit like that.

We will have some very artisanal items that we do, and there’s artisanal narrators, and there’s artisanal graphics designers, and then the mass stuff is AI-generated.

The market is going to decide. There’s a lot of people that just absolutely hate seeing AI imagery. There’s a lot of people that are just pushing back.

It’s like with anything, there’s a lot of fear around it. I think that people are going to figure out that it’s not going away. I mean, it’s just not. It’s not going away.

We did an AI issue, an issue dedicated to AI last year at the magazine. I told Alice at the end of it, when we were putting it together, I said, “Listen, this could be such a hot topic that we’re going have to fake our deaths and go work at Waffle House.” Like this is going to be something that could drive us out of business.

We felt very strongly to get the information out there, and that’s the stance we took was that we were just going to present the information. What people did with it is completely up to them as a business decision.

We had eight people cancel their subscriptions in protest. They were very, very upset with us for even mentioning AI. Then we had 300 people subscribe, 300 people that were new subscribers.

It’s a very vocal minority that are frustrated and angry. Most people are just curious and trying to figure out how to make it work.

It changes so rapidly, and there’s so much happening. Like even just this week, three things happened that are really, really big that we’re still synthesizing and trying to figure out, what does that mean? How does that work? What does that do?

Joanna: It is a fascinating time. I’m so glad you did that issue. I mean, you’re probably going to have to do them quite regularly, I guess.

Chelle: Yes. Well, that’s actually why we started IndieAuthorTraining.com is to have a more rapid response to that, because we publish one issue a month, right? We can only have so much information in each issue.

Things change so rapidly we wanted to have education, and webinars, and community so that we can have discussions around those in a very safe, positive, proactive way.

We moderate those conversations pretty regularly so that they don’t go off track. We’ve adopted kindergarten rules: no biting, no hitting, and no calling names. So if you want to come and have a conversation about it, just come.

We’re all trying to figure it out, and there’s no one answer for any of it. There’s no one answer for any of it. We have to respond as an industry. So how do we do it ethically and morally and with the best business decisions in mind for longevity? Those are questions that we don’t have answered. No one has the answers to those. We’re all trying to figure it out.

Joanna: It’s good to remember, I mean —

We are independent authors, and we make independent decisions.

So the decisions I make can be completely different to another indie author, as we have across many of the things that have happened over the years. As you say, having those rules is quite good. Let’s all just respect each other’s decisions.

Chelle: Yes, and —

If you are fearful about it, I would encourage people to learn more.

People tend to think, “Oh, I know that AI trained on stolen material.” Well, no. That’s not the way that it’s trained. That’s not the way that it works. That’s not the way that it learns.

Go beyond the sound bites and really do some digging in and talk to people that know what they’re talking about. Don’t live in an echo chamber when you’re making decisions or finding out things. Get opposing opinions.

One of the things that we did in the AI issue was we had competing conversations about things. We wanted people that were anti-AI to say why they were, and they had great points. They had really, really good, thoughtful questions that we should all be asking.

Like, where does the money come from? Where does the money go? Where are my books being indexed? How are my books being indexed? What can I do to protect myself if I don’t want this, if I don’t want to be part of this? Those are all good questions. There’s no bad question around AI. We should be asking those questions and staying curious.

Joanna: For sure, and you have lots of free webinars and other courses at Indie Author Training, which is brilliant. I did want to ask you just before we finish, you’re also the program manager at Author Nation. I have my ticket, I’m planning to be there.

Tell us a bit more about what authors can expect and why they might want to come [to Author Nation]?

Chelle: So 20Books has finished, and Joe Solari bought the contracts for the conference space. So we’re reimagining what a conference can be. So we’re taking some of the things that we’ve learned over the years, I’ve been involved with 20Books from the beginning and loved it. I love the spirit of generosity, and I love the fact that people felt welcome and comforted.

Introverts had spaces where they could take a breath and not feel overwhelmed and find people to help them. So we’ve kept all the best parts, in my opinion, of 20Books because all of the team has been involved with that, but this is a completely reimagined show.

So we start the first day, Monday, with a vendor expo where you can come and meet all the different people that help you sell more books and help you tell better stories. So you can meet Lulu, and you can meet Indie Author Magazine, and you can meet Bookfunnel, and ProWritingAid, and all the different vendors there.

Then we also have some education sessions, some hands-on sessions, which is a little bit different. We’ve never really had hands on sessions before. So we have a tech cafe where people can come and sit down and learn Facebook ads and sit down and learn how to use some of the tools. I think that’s brilliant. Plus, you can listen to Damon Courtney talk about Bookfunnel in his most engaging way and see things on the screen. It’s just so different when you’re in the same room with someone and you can connect and meet with people in the same room.

Then we have three days of education, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are jam packed with education and sessions. We have designed them around tracks. So we have craft and marketing and advertising, which are different. We have a health and wellness area, which is a little bit different.

We’re going to be talking about mindset, how to stay healthy, how to have a sustainable career. There’s lots of talks around that so that you have a more well-rounded and better and healthier space to write in and a longer career.

We talk about business and strategy. We talked about transmedia, which is all the different ways that storytellers can get their works out there.

So we’ll talk about AI, we’ll talk about audiobooks, we’ll talk about video. We’ll talk about, I don’t know, launching stuff into the moon. Who knows what’s coming next? Between now and November, there could be ten thousand new things.

Then Thursday night, we kick off our reader-centric focus. So we have Kevin Smith, who is an indie artist himself. He’s written a book, but he’s also a filmmaker. He’s coming really to capture readers there. Then we kick off on Friday with RAVE, our book event where we’ve got all of the authors and readers that are coming to connect. We’ll have panels for authors, we’ll have giveaways.

I mean, it’s so fun. I’m more excited about the education part than I am RAVE. RAVE, to me, is just like the big, “Oh, this is fun. Now I get to hang out with my friends.” Then we can stay through the weekend in Las Vegas and enjoy all that Vegas has to offer.

Joanna: I attended last year at the last 20Booksto50k conference, and as an introvert it is pretty hardcore, but I think it’s so important for us to push ourselves out of our comfort zone.

Yes, you might just have to go back to your room and lie on the floor for a bit like I did sometimes to kind of de-people, but it’s so valuable. You started off at the beginning talking about how much of your career and your business is based on meeting people at conferences.

Chelle:  100%.

Joanna: Where can people find you and everything you do, but also Author Nation, online?

Chelle: Absolutely. So IndieAuthorMagazine.com is our main site with the magazine we publish every single month. It’s a plethora of information that’s well edited. We also have two apps on the App Store. We have an iOS app in the Apple Store and a Google Play app.

Then Indie Author Training is just kicking off. That’s reimagined from our Author Tech Summit which we did, and we just said we can’t do it quarterly, we have to do it all the time. So IndieAuthorTraining.com is where we have webinars, and product tools, and conversations, and groups where people can chat about tech.

Then Author Nation is AuthorNation.live. It’s November 11th through the 15th at the Horseshoe in Las Vegas. So please come, it’s going to be an amazing conference. I’m very excited about this conference, not just because I am seeing all of the talks take shape, but it’s just going to be a little bit different in terms of setup.

So there’s going to be lounge chairs where you can sit instead of just tables. There’s going be more conversation pits, more quiet spaces. We’ve taken all the best and improved on it. It’s going to be so great.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Chelle. That was great.

Chelle: Thank you so much, Joanna.

The post Using Tools To Automate Your Author Business with Chelle Honiker first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you build a creative, sustainable career as a ‘mid-list’ indie author? How can you design a business that works for you and your books over the long term? T. Thorn Coyle explains more in this episode.

In the intro, BookVault bespoke printing options; Harper Collins partners with Eleven Labs for AI-narrated non-English audiobooks [Publishing Perspectives]; AI Publishing Formula Podcast; Brave New Bookshelf Podcast; “I’m not worried about AI, because I got my mojo working.” Stephen King;

Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

T. Thorn Coyle is the author of paranormal mystery, urban fantasy, alt history, epic fantasy, as well as nonfiction around magical practice. Their latest book is The Midlist Indie Author Mindset.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• What does it mean to be a mid-list author?
• How being weird can help you connect as more human
• Finding your sense of weird and letting it shine in your work
• Making marketing about connection and finding what works for you
• Marketing for Kickstarter in a short-term promotional window
• Tips for managing multiple Kickstarters per year
• Keeping readers engaged with your newsletter and social media
• Creating a tagline that portrays the message of your author business

You can find Thorn at ThornCoyle.com, and the Kickstarter for The Midlist Indie Author Mindset here.

Transcript of Interview with Thorn Coyle

Joanna: T. Thorn Coyle is the author of paranormal mystery, urban fantasy, alt history, epic fantasy, as well as nonfiction around magical practice. Their latest book is The Midlist Indie Author Mindset. So welcome back to the show, Thorn.

Thorn: Thanks so much. It’s great to be back.

Joanna: Yes, I know. I had a look, and it’s been six years since you were last on the show.

Thorn: That’s a long time, especially in the indie publishing world.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, we’re old school, which probably means we met like a decade ago!

Thorn: Yes, probably.

Joanna: Which is so funny. So let’s assume people haven’t listened to our episode from six years ago, and also, things have moved on.

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Thorn: Well, I was one of those people, you know, I’ve written since I was a tiny child, probably age five or six. I wrote poetry, I did journalism as a teenager, wrote for tattoo magazines in the 80s and 90s, and really wanted to write fiction.

I would practice writing fiction, and then I finally just gave up. I was the classic, I would labor over a short story for a year, and I would stall out three quarters into a novel.

I loved writing nonfiction also. That was easier for me, less of a challenge. So I got my first nonfiction major traditional publishing contract 20 years ago. I sold a book to Penguin, and I gave up fiction and focused on nonfiction, and traveling the world, and teaching for two decades.

Then fiction came back. Some characters showed up in my head one day, and I started writing fiction, and I started studying craft. Then I started seriously indie publishing, I decided I didn’t want to go trad. My three first nonfiction books were all traditional published.

I didn’t want to go traditional for fiction because I saw the struggles my friends were having with traditional publishing and my own struggles with traditional publishing. I started seriously indie publishing in 2017, and here we are today. I’ve got a big catalog now, and I just keep going.

Joanna: So what is a big catalog to you?

Thorn: I have probably, including short story collections, probably 30 books, which for me is a big catalog. I know for other people, that’s a tiny catalog. It might even be more than 30 books now. I fail to keep track.

Joanna: I mean, it’s also funny because you sounded slightly apologetic about 30 books, and I do this too. It’s like, this is ridiculous because there are authors who write two books in their whole life!

Thorn: I know people like that. I certainly know a lot of traditional authors who only wrote a couple books. That’s great, it’s just a hard way to make a living.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. So let’s get into the book, so The Midlist Indie Author Mindset. I feel like this word “midlist” probably means more in the traditional publishing world. So why don’t we start with that.

What is the ‘mid-list,’ and why use that concept? What does it mean?

Thorn: The reason I latched on to the concept of midlist—and you’re right, it does come from traditional publishing. So I’ll give a little background.

In traditional publishing, especially in like the 70s, 80s, and 90s, midlist authors were the bread-and-butter authors. They were middle class. They weren’t best sellers, but they put out books people enjoyed year after year after year. They were the backbone of a lot of publishing for a long time.

So the bestsellers financed the non-sellers, the poor sellers, but the midlist just kept going, writing books people enjoyed. That slowly faded away as traditional publishing changed. It became harder and harder to make a living as kind of a middle class, midlist author.

The other thing about midlist authors is they had a big catalog because they just kept publishing year after year, usually genre fiction of some sort or another. They built up a catalog that people enjoyed, that in traditional publishing is called a backlist. We still use that terminology, but it’s not really accurate for indie publishing.

In traditional publishing, frontlist is a brand-new book that they push for three months, that’s what that means. Backlist is everything else. So we can just call it our catalog because as indie authors, we can relaunch. We can do whatever we want with all those books. They’re not going to go away.

So I wanted to bring forth this concept of midlist into the indie world because so many people say, well, if I’m not making multiple six figures or seven figures, I’m a failure.

I believe it’s possible for a lot of people to find ways to make a decent middle class living as writers.

It’s a lot more attainable and sustainable than some of the tactics and techniques people use to grow to be multi-six, like high six-figure or seven-figure authors. It can feel discouraging, I think, to a lot of people when we see these success stories and think, well, I may as well win the lottery or get struck by lightning. That’s how unattainable it feels.

I realized in my own life, I had to curtail some of my ambitions because of life circumstances. I realized what I really wanted was a slow, sustainable build and a long, sustainable career. If I can do it, I think a lot of people can do it.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. The problem is the midlist is it’s not a very sexy goal! It’s not very catchy like, you know, six figure, seven figure.

As you say, it’s more like the slow build, sustainable living, sustainable lifestyle, and things that actually give us a good life. Sometimes I feel like you have to be careful what you wish for. In the book, you talk a bit about your jet set lifestyle, you know, you used to travel a lot teaching. So what happened to that?

When did the romance disappear from that ‘jet set’ lifestyle?

Thorn: So it was around 12 years ago that I really stopped wanting to travel all the time. I was traveling all over the world constantly, like, sometimes twice a month I was on an airplane.

It was wonderful. I met amazing people, I saw amazing places, and I was getting paid to do it. Unbeknownst to me, my undiagnosed chronic illness was getting worse, so that was starting to happen.

Also, I was just burning out. I was burning out on having to be this public figure, even though it was in a small sphere. I was burning out on the travel. I’ll never forget, one time I came back from a trip, I crawled into bed, and said, “I’m done,” and I still had six months to a year’s worth of trips booked.

So I just had to get through that time and then recalibrate and figure out what to do. That’s when I did my major pivot. It also coincided when those characters showed up, and I started studying fiction again.

So yes, I burned out really badly, which I know a lot of people do and need to make career change. So I realized I still had those ambitions, and I took some of my ambitions into the indie writing sphere early on before I realized that was not going to be sustainable.

There were things people were doing that were all about the fast build. They were all about the spikes, you know, the huge income right away. I was trying to do that and failing, and I had to reassess and say, okay, what can I actually do? So I slowly figured it out for myself.

Joanna: Yes, and what do we want to do as well. It’s interesting that the characters came back at the point at which you said you’re kind of done with that life. So you opened up space in your mind for that.

I talked about this years ago when I made a decision to opt out of my career. I still had five more years of that IT consulting career, but I opted out of the career ladder. So I did what I needed to do to make the money and to do a good job for my boss, but I knew I was leaving.

That opened up the potential for what then came next. I feel like a lot of people don’t realize that you almost need to make the space, like for you, for the characters to come back.

Thorn: Yes, and in the book, I talk about having a possibility mindset. That’s what you’re talking about.

Making space for what is possible, is really important.

It gets easy to just get on a hamster wheel and never just take a full breath and ponder, as you’ve said, what do I want? Not only what’s right for me and what’s sustainable or possible, but what does my heart want? What does my soul want? You know, what’s interesting to me?

So I always try to invoke curiosity. I’ve invoked curiosity around writing fiction, but over the years, I’ve learned also to invoke curiosity about running a business.

That was my huge mindset shift.

When I decided to get curious about business instead of treating it like a loathsome, horrible task, it changed everything for me.

Joanna: Well, let’s talk about that for a minute because I do remember having a conversation with you. I think we might even have talked about this on our last discussion on the show.

You’re a strong activist, you have very strong principles, and money and capitalism were just things that you kind of hated. So you were pushing away money. Tell us how you got over that and how you reconciled this?

Thorn: I still don’t like shareholder capitalism and the effects it has on the world, I can say that. For me, what I want to do is connect with people. That’s always been my task as a creative. That’s also my love as a business person.

So I need to run a sustainable business, and take interest in it, and figure out ways to engage with it in ways that are going to help me connect with people. That’s all my business is.

I run a publishing company that’s about connection.

So reframing that for myself, that it’s not about who gets the most toys, it’s about here’s the world we live in, and what are my options for connecting with people and trying to make the world a more enjoyable, less horror-ridden place.

The other thing is, I’m always a proponent of culture change. One of the best ways to bring about culture change is capturing people’s imaginations. So if I want to capture someone’s imagination through my stories, I have to figure out a way to reach them with those stories, so I have to figure out how to run a business. So I think that’s what helped me get curious.

Joanna: Yes, and I mean, to reach more readers, it’s better to have a bigger engine in your business. I also remember you saying to me, “If I make a ton of money, I can always give it all away to causes that I care about.”

So that I think it’s a really good reframe for people. It’s to accept that if you make more money as an author, it’s because you’re selling more books, and you’re reaching more people.

Thorn: Exactly, and people are excited about my books. People are excited about your books. People need fiction right now, and nonfiction too.

The world needs wonder. The world needs hope. If we can supply even a little bit of that for people, how awesome is that?

Joanna: Yes, and escapism as well. As we record this, I just binge watched the 3 Body Problem on Netflix, and I hadn’t read the book. As soon as the series finished, I was like, right, I’m buying the book.

I learned today that The Three-Body Problem trilogy and Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s book, which they use in the series and is in his book, went to number one on Amazon because everyone’s buying these books. I just thought that was brilliant, because again, it’s such a resonant story at this time in history.

Like you say, these stories have power, and they connect minds. It’s so powerful. I feel like sometimes we almost degrade writing fiction, like, oh, we should write something “more important” in inverted commas.

Thorn: That’s also the great divide between high literary fiction and what we call genre fiction. We think, oh, my cozy paranormal mysteries are not important. Well, actually, my cozy paranormal mysteries are my best sellers because people need that escapism.

People need some comfort, you know. So why isn’t comfort important? Why isn’t enjoyment important?

I recently talked with author Meg Elison, and she really talks a lot about the importance of pleasure in life. I agree with her, we need pleasure. We need joy. Everything can’t just be hard all the time because we won’t make it through.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. For me, going to bed with a book is still a big pleasure. Sometimes I’m just so tired, and I go to bed in the afternoon, and I’ll read fiction. Other times I’ll read nonfiction. I read your book on the plane coming back from 20 Books Seville. It’s a great book.

I do want to come back to one point in the book. You say, “My readers love my work because I’m weird.” I talk about doubling down on being human, but I think it is easier said than done, especially in this world where there’s a lot of advice around chasing tropes, or writing to market, or any of this.

How can authors find their own particular kind of weird and have the confidence to let it out into their work?

Thorn: Well, first of all, what comes most naturally to you? That’s the main thing.

We often make the mistake that what comes most naturally to us, and what we really love and feels easier for us, isn’t important. We think it’s too ordinary, but what’s ordinary for us, is extraordinary for something else. It feels ordinary to us because it’s just part of us.

When we allow that voice to come forward, people respond to it because they’re like, “Oh, that’s an authentic voice. You’re not putting something on. You’re actually connecting with me, and I’m connecting with these characters.”

So I’ll give you an example. I had been writing my alt history and kind of more serious urban fantasy, and I was in the middle of writing my epic action-adventure trilogy, and I needed a break. I had got a concussion and a brain injury.

I started writing my cozy paranormal mysteries, which are just bonkers. I did a Kickstarter for them, and I was very nervous because I thought, wow, this is really different and people aren’t going to like it.

People came out of the woodwork to back that Kickstarter. My first reader for the cozy mysteries said, “Well, you know, cozy readers tend to be more traditional. They’re not going to be into the fact that you have bisexual characters and transgender characters and all this stuff.” I thought, you know what — 

I’m just going to market this as cozy mysteries for freaks and geeks, because I like cozy mysteries, and I’m weird.

Clearly, now I realize, oh, other people who are weird also want the comfort of cozy mysteries. They’re not all traditional readers, you know.

So I was told very clearly, cozy readers are traditional. I said, I don’t care, these are the books I want to write. Lo and behold, they found readers. It might take a little more time, which is why I talk about the slow build in the book. It might take more time, but you’re going to find your readers.

Joanna: I do want to comment on this, because you’re a super strong person, and you’re very clear on your freaks and geeks side and your visual brand.

Let’s just speak to the people who might not be that strong in their knowledge of what their weird is. So what about people who don’t have that strong sense of “what is my weird?” How do we find that? How do we tap into that?

Thorn: Again, you mentioned earlier, making space. If we make space for ourselves and listen to our heart and what’s most interesting to us, rather than listening to the clamoring voices trying to tell us what we should be doing, that’s the first way through.

It’s just to pause, go for a walk, meditate, ponder for a while, and think, what am I actually drawn to? Not what the marketers are telling me I should be drawn to. That’s how to find ourselves and find our path forward, I think.

It just starts with listening and making space to listen.

Joanna: Yes, and it is really hard. I mean, the world is super noisy. You could just spend your time endlessly scrolling whichever social media it is, or doom reading the news, or whatever, and then your brain is full of all those things that it thinks that it should be interested in. So where do you find it? I mean, maybe it is in the books you read when nobody’s watching?

Thorn: Yes, yes. I think that’s brilliant. What are your so-called guilty pleasures? Then put all that in your writing.

Joanna: I mean, it’s interesting, because I mentioned the 3 Body Problem again. So I say I don’t read sci-fi, because I’m like, I’m not into aliens. Then watching the 3 Body Problem, I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before, it’s not about the aliens. It’s about the humans.

Thorn: It always is.

Joanna: It always is. The thing is, I really like reading horror. People are like, oh, why do you like horror? And I’m like, well, it’s not about the monsters, it’s about the humans. It’s all just exactly the same, isn’t it?

Thorn: We’re all just trying to make sense of the world in our own way. It doesn’t matter what genre it comes through. I think the joy of writing is we get to figure out the world. We either get to try to figure out the world we live in already, or we try to figure out what world we want to live in.

Joanna: Yes, and write that into whatever alt-world you’re doing. It is interesting. Well, let’s come to the marketing because you said in the book—

“I figured out how I market, not how other people market.”

That has a similar sense of finding your own path. So just talk about some of the things you tried but failed on, and what does work for you?

Thorn: Well, I’ll go back to that word “connection.” Figuring out that for me marketing is about connection was helpful.

Actually, you helped me with this years ago. We were at some conference, and you said, “Oh, Thorn is great at content marketing.” I went, “I am?” I had no clue because I was just doing what I was doing. It was natural to me. Then I went, oh, okay, that’s content marketing. I post what’s interesting, it’s still related to my world, and that’s how I market.

The things that didn’t work for me were early on. First of all, I didn’t have a big enough catalog to do advertising for, but everyone said you have to do advertising. So I was taking the Amazon ads and Facebook ads classes, and they didn’t work for me. Turns out all that advice at the time was really only useful for people in Kindle Unlimited, but they weren’t telling me that.

The other thing that never worked for me were like, Facebook group takeovers, newsletter swaps, because I don’t write the kind of urban fantasy these other people are writing. So doing a newsletter swap isn’t going to really work because I don’t know if your readers are going to really like my books.

Now, I eventually figured out that certain kinds of advertising works for that. Like if I did a free first in series and did the paid newsletters, I wasn’t trying to target other people’s readers, I was just targeting people who said, oh, we want urban fantasy, or we want cozy mystery.

I don’t have to bring my entire catalog to these people. I’m bringing them one series. Then if they find the rest of my catalog, that’s great.

The other thing that didn’t work for me was that spike marketing. Trying to do promo stacking and get the big spikes and hitlist and all that, it was never going to work for me. That was all feeding the beast. Even for the writers that was working for, I don’t think it was a long-term strategy.

So I had to figure out my long-term strategy, which was, how do I connect with my readers? Well, I do that through my newsletter. I do that through how I use social media. I do that now through things like Kickstarter.

So, over the last eight years, I’ve built up enough goodwill with my readers that they are so happy to share my stuff now. It also means when I do any paid advertising, I’m strategic about it, and it works. I’m not just throwing spaghetti at a wall.

Joanna: Interesting. You said the spike marketing hasn’t worked for you, but Kickstarter is a short-term promotional window. So how are you doing that?

What kind of marketing are you doing within the three weeks this Kickstarter will run?

Thorn: That is a great point. So spike marketing for wide retailers didn’t work for me. Spike marketing for direct sales does work for me. So I’ve built up all this goodwill through how I use my newsletter and how I connect on social media, so whenever I go to run a Kickstarter, people are like, “We are sharing your Kickstarter everywhere. We’re so excited that you’re doing this. We’re backing you up just because we like your work.”

So I do market those, but I do it in the regular ways I do everything else. I use my social media platforms and send out notices in my newsletter. I don’t do anything special for my Kickstarter. It all is organic for me.

Joanna: It just has a time limit. So you’re basically just sending out some newsletters, and obviously, you’ve been doing some podcast interviews like this one.

Are you running any paid ads for your Kickstarter?

Have you found them useful?

Thorn: I spend like $20 on each campaign.

Joanna: That doesn’t count!

Thorn: So I don’t I don’t do paid marketing. Some people do. I don’t, and my Kickstarter campaigns all do really well.

Joanna: So how many Kickstarter campaigns have you done now?

Thorn: This one will be my ninth.

Joanna: Okay. So what’s the kind of tempo? Because obviously we’re talking here about the life that people want to live and designing your business around that.

What’s the tempo of your Kickstarters in a year? How do you manage the different releases?

Thorn: I do three a year, and three years seems to work for me. I thought I was going to do four this year, and it was way too much. Partially because I ran a big-for-me Kickstarter campaign last year that brought in like twenty-five grand. Since I’m doing it all myself, it was big.

I had trouble with my printer, so it took a lot longer to fulfill than I wanted. So I’m like, okay, I need to take the fourth Kickstarter off my plate this year because everything just got backed up business-wise.

Three a year works for me because this is my full-time job. For people I know who it’s their part-time job, they run one a year. It’s a great way to make money for covers, pay for editors, and build a new audience.

This is the other thing I love about Kickstarter. About half of my backers come directly from Kickstarter, which is awesome. Then about half come from my world.

Joanna: Yes, from your audience. So when I do Spear of Destiny, it will be my first fiction Kickstarter. I’ve done two nonfiction. well memoir and then the writing nonfiction. I’m doing it under the same name.

This will be my first thriller, and I feel like I’m going to have to have really low expectations because I’ve spent the last 12 years training my fiction readers to buy eBooks on Amazon, basically. Do you feel like if you start with fiction, particularly where that’s where a lot of our readers come from—

Does it take a while to retrain your readers to want other things?

Thorn: No, my readers love Kickstarter. I mean, some of them are confused by it, especially some of my older readers, and I have to do a minor amount of hand holding. But, no.

If I do a regular book launch on wide retailers, maybe a couple people will share it, maybe some people will buy it if I don’t do actual advertising. My Kickstarters, people know it’s time limited. It’s an event, and they’re excited to participate, so it spreads.

My readers do my marketing for me. Then the Kickstarter algorithm kicks in, and it does my marketing for me. It’s actually much easier for me than launching something into the void on Amazon or Apple.

Joanna: I’m quite excited to see how it goes.

I do want to ask you, because you’ve mentioned your chronic illness, brain injury, and you talk about health issues in your book. When we do a Kickstarter, you’ve got the Kickstarter timing. What happens if then something happens in your health that you just can’t do it? Or like you said, things get backed up?

How are you managing your health issues with the ups and downs of being an author?

Thorn: Well, it might seem strange to talk about health issues in a business book, but it felt important to me because everyone has something going on in their life. That is why I love this question.

I pad a lot of time into my fulfillment. I make this mistake all the time where I set out my year’s goals when I’m feeling good, and then when I’m not feeling good, I have to deal with those goals, and I have to reassess them and pivot and rewrite my production schedule. I do it all the time.

Joanna: Yes, me too.

Thorn: With Kickstarter, I’ve learned to build in extra time for fulfillment. So if you think it’s going to take two months to fulfill, tell people you’ll fulfill in three to four months. If you think you’re going to fulfill in four months, tell people you’re going to fulfill in six months.

Just add in space, give yourself grace, and then if you fulfill early, that’s awesome.

With the campaign I just finished fulfilling, I just told people, “Hey, here’s what’s happening with the printer. I’m having these issues. We’re working on it.”

I just kept in communication, and people were very kind and happy just to be communicated with. So I was about a month behind in fulfillment, which is not the end of the world.

Joanna: Yes, these are books at the end of the day.

Thorn: Yes, seriously. So just communicate with people. First, build in extra space and time, build in a buffer. Then communicate clearly. People are very happy to be supportive. Most people want to be kind.

Joanna: Yes, I agree. So just coming back to your newsletter because you talked there about communication, and earlier you talked about it as the fundamental aspect of your marketing.

What do you do in your newsletter? What do you send out to people?

Because I feel like this is something that many authors struggle with.

Thorn: So, I used to barely use my newsletter. Coming out of traditional publishing, I never used a newsletter. I think that’s changed now.

I send out a weekly missive about what I’m thinking about. I post a photo I take on one of my walks and just whatever thoughts I have. Then at the end of this 300-word missive, I do a line break and a small ad of, you know, “Here’s my latest podcast I’m on,” or “Here’s this book that is on sale or has just launched,” or “Here’s my Kickstarter.”

So people come back week after week, and they know what they’re going to get from me is just some thoughts from Thorn. Enough people like that, that some people actually pay me for it even though it’s a free newsletter.

Joanna: That’s on Substack?

Thorn: I was on Substack for three years. I just recently switched to Beehiiv.

Joanna: Because of the Nazis?!

Thorn: Yes, because of the Nazis. I mean, it’s unfortunate that Substack decided to make those choices. I think Substack is still a better platform, but Beehiiv is getting there rapidly. So I have great hope.

So that’s another thing I changed. I used to try to be on ConvertKit and do all the automated sequences that everyone said were best practices for newsletters. Those work for a lot of people—oh, segment your email list, do these sequences.

That marketing never worked for me, ever. So it made putting out my newsletter a chore. I said, I’m going to stop paying for this, I’m going to go to this free service, and I’m going to strip it down and say, here’s what I’m doing. Every week, I’m going to send out thoughts with a tiny ad.

That was a huge shift for me. I started that just over three years ago, and people responded. People love the newsletter, people share the newsletter on social media, people reply, people send me long, thoughtful comments. So, again, it was figuring out how marketing worked for me.

Joanna: That’s interesting, because I do have two newsletter lists. Actually, when you were talking there, I realized that’s what I do on this show. My introduction includes the things I’m thinking about.

Many people are still listening to your interview, but some people did just come for the introduction. So that’s actually exactly what you just said. You’re doing it in writing, I’m doing it with talking.

Thorn: Yes, and I just let it be simple. It’s like, okay, here’s 300 words. I can write that in 15-20 minutes. Here’s a photo. It works for me, and it works for my readers.

Joanna: It’s just being human. It’s a connection, like you said. I think this is the point we talked about earlier, everyone’s quite smart these days around seeing through when things are a gimmick or they’re not real. I still think that being human and the human connection is important.

So, let’s come to social media. Again, I think we used to exchange things on Twitter when it was Twitter. A lot of people have moved on from some platforms.

I know you’re a super ethical person, so what are you doing with social media now?

Thorn: Well, first of all, we just all have to figure it out. We live in this world, and I am not judging people who are on various platforms.

Losing Twitter was a great loss. Twitter was actually my favorite platform. I’ve tried to get off of Facebook ever since I’ve been on it, but people won’t leave Facebook. Maybe they will eventually, but that has not been my experience.

Joanna: When we all die. When the old people die.

Thorn: Yes, when all the old people die. So, very simply, I only use my public Facebook page. I don’t use my private page, except to track a few author groups. I do one post, same post, Facebook and Instagram, every morning. Usually it’s a photo and a thought.

I’m on Mastodon, which strangely enough, Mastodon has no algorithm. It is my best place to get marketing traction because people know I’m showing up, making posts, even if it’s just one simple post a day.

Then when I post something marketing-related, it gets shared. I get more shares on Mastodon than anywhere else, even though it has no algorithm. Then I’m on Bluesky, which frankly, is useless to me.

Joanna: I did try and get on Threads, and it went toxic so fast.

Thorn: Threads is horrific. The comments. I’m like, oh, my gosh, the comments on Threads are awful.

Joanna: It’s like all the toxicity from Twitter ended up on Threads.

Thorn: Yes, it did. It did.

My social media strategy is very simple. I do one simple post a day. Then I try to remember to occasionally do a marketing post.

Then when I’m running a Kickstarter, though, I do a more marketing-related post pretty much every day during my Kickstarter.

Since I’m not doing that constantly, people seem supportive of it. They’re not always getting bombarded by “buy my book” from me. So they’re really happy to support when I’m running a Kickstarter. They’re really happy to do things like share my newsletter when I post my newsletter on social media, things like that.

Joanna: Again, you bring in the things you care about, and sometimes that is about protests, or art, or tattoos, or gender issues. I mean, you do just share quite all over the place, I think.

Thorn: I do. I try to be uplifting as much as possible. If I’m posting about something difficult, I always try to have a call to action that people can actually do. I’m not just on there complaining.

My rule for public discourse is I try to be signal and not noise. There’s too much noise out there. So what is my signal that I’m trying to put out to reach people?

Yes, my presence can feel all over the map, and I have felt that about myself. Like, you know, buy my books, but I’m also talking about magic, but here’s a flower that I saw on my walk, then here is this social justice thing that’s happening. But truly, that’s all me, and that is all in my books, too.

Joanna: That’s the point I was trying to make. I didn’t mean you were all over the place. I meant— You talk about all the things that go into your books.

Like you are political, and your books are political. So if people don’t want to do politics then, you know, they’re not your person, but people who love your politics will love your books. So I think that’s what I was trying to get at. You are very, I hate the word authentic, but you are pretty authentic.

Thorn: I can’t not be, which is why I just had to figure it out for myself. What’s interesting to me is at this point in the indie author world, I’m hearing this from a lot more people.

A lot of people right now are reassessing how they’ve been marketing, and what they’ve been writing, and what they want their careers to look like.

I think as a whole in the indie author world, we’re taking a step back right now and saying, how do we want to move forward? For me, it always just had to be, be myself.

When I first started publishing fiction, everyone said you need to do it under a pen name because you’re going to pollute your Amazon also-boughts. I’m like, I don’t care. I have spent decades building up goodwill with people with my name. I’m just going to write fiction under this name.

Well, lo and behold, Amazon also-boughts quickly went away. The Amazon algorithm changes every six months to a year.

Joanna: I think it changes every week.

Thorn: Probably. So people have figured out, oh, we can’t just chase the algorithm anymore. It doesn’t work long term.

So, I came up with a tagline for my author business, and it’s, “Magic is real, and justice is worth fighting for.” So people know that’s what they’re going to get from me, no matter what I’m writing or talking about. A sense of magic and a sense of justice.

Joanna: A lot of people want a tagline. I have tried, and I think I’ve even asked you about this before as well. I still don’t have a tagline. So I mean—

Did it take you a long time to get to that tagline, or has it always been very clear for you?

Thorn: It took me a little while, but it didn’t take me that long. I just, again, paused and assessed and said, what do I think my through line is? What are the strongest threads in my work? What are the strongest threads I want to put out in the world? That’s where it came from.

So, for you, I think you’re really interested in human emotion. I think you’re obviously interested in the shadow. You’re interested in what makes us tick.

I think that also includes your author stuff. Your author books, over time, I think have grown to include more and more of your interest in human psychology and philosophy.

Joanna: Maybe that’s part of it. You know, we’re talking as two people who’ve been doing this a while now, and I feel like that’s another thing.

Also around your book and talking about the slow growth, look, some of this stuff takes time. None of this appears overnight. I get people sometimes that are trying to figure all this out, and they haven’t even finished their first book yet.

Thorn: Yes. Yes.

Joanna: So patience, I guess.

Thorn: Patience, and patience is hard. Every new writer wants to be an overnight success. The thing I’ll tell you is I’ve seen people who have been overnight successes and that puts a lot of pressure on the work.

I think it makes it harder to build a long-term career for most people. You know, you start thinking, what if my next book isn’t as good? What if people don’t like it? Instead of just giving yourself the freedom.

Frankly, no one knowing who you are is a huge boon to your creativity because you can do whatever you want and find your voice over time and slowly build an audience over time.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch says we build our career one reader at a time. I think doubling down on that is helpful. I don’t have to reach 100,000 people or even 1000 people. I want to reach one person. That’s where it starts.

Joanna: Absolutely. Now there are loads of great tips and things in the book. It’s really meaty. It’s got lots in it.

Tell people about the Kickstarter, where they can find it, and when it’s running.

Thorn: So the Kickstarter launches April 16, and it will run through the first part of May. I will have some checklists for midlist mindset changes. I will have some coaching options for people who really want to say, “Hey, how do I shift my mindset around this stuff? I’m struggling with this area of my writer business.”

So it’s not going to be coaching around like specifics on marketing, it’s all going to be mindset coaching. Then of course, I’ll have the eBooks and print books and maybe some other surprises.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where else can people find you online?

Thorn: ThornCoyle.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Thorn. That was great.

Thorn: Thanks again for having me back on the show.

The post The Midlist Indie Author With T. Thorn Coyle first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What can authors learn from the adoption of AI into the music industry? What are some of the ways musicians are making money in the fractured creator economy? Tristra Newyear Yeager gives her thoughts in this interview.

In the intro, Draft2Digital announced a retail distribution agreement with Fable [D2D]; Kobo launches a new color e-reader [Rakuten Kobo]; Ultimate guide to subscription models [Self-Publishing Advice]; Independence and interdependence [Self-Publishing Advice]; Becca Syme on getting unstuck [Ink in Your Veins].

Plus, Amazon’s new AI board member, Andrew Ng [TechCrunch]; AI for Everyone free course; SEO is Dead [Marketing Against the Grain]; My episode on Generative AI Search for Book Discoverability; Yes, Colossal is real, and Spear of Destiny.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Tristra Newyear Yeager is the Chief Strategy Officer for Rock Paper Scissors, which provides PR for music innovators. She’s also the author of historical fantasy and scientific romance, and the co-host of the Music Tectonics Podcast, which goes beneath the surface of music and technology.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• The current state of AI for musicians — is Suno the ChatGPT for musicians? [Rolling Stone]
• AI’s effect on the stock music industry
• How authors and musicians can cut through the sea of content, whether human or AI-generated
• Using AI for discoverability (more in my episode on generative AI search for books here)
• The fragmenting of the creative economy [MusicX; Bandzoogle]
• Do fame and awards matter less as metrics get harder to track?
• Recommendations for selling author merchandise

You can find Tristra at NewyearMedia.com

Transcript of Interview with Tristra Newyear Yeager

Joanna: Tristra Newyear Yeager is the Chief Strategy Officer for Rock Paper Scissors, which provides PR for music innovators. She’s also the author of historical fantasy and scientific romance, and the co-host of the Music Tectonics Podcast, which goes beneath the surface of music and technology. Welcome back to the show, Tristra.

Tristra: Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me back, Joanna.

Joanna: I’m excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on the show three years ago. It seems so long ago. It was in March 2021.

We actually started talking back then about the potential impact of AI in the music industry. So we’re going to start there again today. We’re going to start with AI, and things have obviously moved on.

You specialize in the music industry. Even in the last week, as we record this, I saw Rolling Stone wrote about suno.ai, the ChatGPT for music.

Let’s start with the current state of AI for musicians in terms of the opportunities.

Let’s do the positive ways at first.

Tristra: Yes, let’s start on the positive. So Suno was a really interesting development, in that it was the first general generative-AI, something akin to ChatGPT or Claude, that could make really, really good, convincing tracks.

So no offense to all the other large models out there that can generate music from scratch. Usually, they were really short little sections of just like 45 seconds, and they tended to go off the rails pretty quickly. Suno was a little bit different and sounds a little bit better.

Now, if we’re going to talk about generative AI for music, it’s a little bit different, I would argue, than text because there’s a lot of different layers to music production and music creation.

So for a long time, we’ve had AI that could generate melodies using the MIDI format. So that’s not really like a full-fledged sound or melody you’d hear, but just like the signals that a synthesizer uses to generate a melody. We could generate lyrics, that’s been around for a while.

Then one of the most commonly used aspects of AI is in mixing and mastering. So mastering is the final set of tasks we do to make a recorded piece of music sound polished and good. So to get the all the levels right, just add a little bit of extra spark and sort of finalizing of that track.

So AI mastering has been around for quite some time and has really taken off. People will use it almost at every stage of recording, in some instances, depending on what kind of music they’re making.

So in a lot of ways, the stuff that gets the news headlines really recently, isn’t the stuff that’s really for musicians, I would argue. It’s more for people who don’t consider themselves musicians, or who struggle to make music, because they just don’t have the technical background or the musical training.

That’s what’s really interesting, from our perspective in the music business, is —

Maybe we’re looking at a future where we have a lot more people creating music.

Maybe numbering in the billions instead of the low millions. People who are making stuff for their own purposes, and it may not be the traditional commercial pipeline of recorded music of the past. It may not even be static recorded music.

So in terms of the existing AI models and what they can produce, most of us agree that the biggest threat, if we’re going to talk about threats. So that’s a positive side is the creative.

Let’s talk about the threats for just a second because they are intertwined.

There is some concern about how are we going to manage this sea of content that, you know, we thought things were intense before, what’s going to happen now if everyone starts wanting to upload their music to Spotify, or even to a SoundCloud, or other platform? How are we going to ever find stuff that’s good?

Then there’s also this question of a very specific niche in the music business that most of us hear all the time but we may not think about, and that is sync or production music. So that is the music you hear behind an image. AI really could completely upend that world.

If an advertiser, or video creator, or an author making a trailer for their book, decides they know exactly what kind of music they want, and they can type in something cool into something like Suno and get a little clip that’s licensed and they know they’re not going to get any copyright strikes or other legal complications from that, that really changes the game.

If it’s way, way cheaper than even what exists now, like there are very inexpensive online libraries that have pretty decent music and a lot of different kinds of music, but it won’t be as custom and it won’t be as expensive, most likely, even at the sort of lower end of the that market. So that is an interesting place. Some people are very concerned about that and some people are really excited.

Joanna: Wow. Lots to come back on.

Tristra: Just an onslaught of AI news!

Joanna: I know, but I think this is good because there’s a few things you bring out. So first of all, let’s go straight for the stock music piece because we’ve seen the same thing.

Like I use, as someone who has obviously this podcast, I do an image that goes with this podcast that goes on to the YouTube audio and onto the blog. I use images in my newsletter, for example. I use images on social media for ads.

I used to pay for a stock photo service. In the last six months with Midjourney and with ChatGPT Plus — the paid version of both of those have commercial licenses — I stopped all my subscriptions to stock photos.

So what you’re talking about there with stock music that might go behind—oh, so I did license a piece of music from AudioJungle for a book trailer. So what we’re basically saying is it may be that with something like Suno or with some other tools that will arrive, or like other tools with video that are looking at generating audio with the video, that we wouldn’t necessarily use something like AudioJungle.

One of the things you said there was that that is a revenue stream for some musicians. So does that kind of sum up that issue?

Tristra: Exactly, and so you’ll start to see more and more integrations with platforms like Canva, where you’ll have just, “Do you want to generate some music? Okay, what kind of music do you want?”

And just as we become a little bit more savvy about how to prompt image generation, I think more and more people will get a little bit more in tune with how to prompt to get the kind of sounds that they like.

It is kind of exciting as a music nerd. I want more people to enjoy the pleasures of music nerd-dom!

— and that could really bring everybody a little bit closer to like, why does sound affect me, what sounds affect me, what are the names that we give to different sounds or genres or moods? That’s kind of an exciting moment for me, personally.

Joanna: Possibility. Yes, it’s interesting.

I had a look at Suno. I don’t know if I’m a complete weirdo, but I have very, very sensitive hearing. I spend most of my time listening to rain noise. Very occasionally, I’ll listen to some music, mostly from the 90s, like if I’m working out or something, but I don’t listen to music much at all. So I am totally hopeless.

So I went to Suno AI, and it’s like, “Type some words about what type of music you want.” And I’m looking at it going, I literally don’t know.

So I still think there’s this big gap between someone like you who could prompt an AI in a very clear way knowing what they want, and someone like me who has absolutely no clue.

I do think that is a gap between those who know the language to create music and those who don’t (just like with writing).

In fact, there was some research that shows that these models bring up the bottom level. So people who are terrible can become average, but these models right now, as we record this in March 2024, cannot be the best at any of these things.

Tristra: That’s exactly right, and you’re always going to hit the middle of the road with these models. That’s just how tokenization and probability work, I think within the current way we create these things.

So there’s always going to be a lot of room for extraordinary thoughts for really crazy upending of what we expect, and a lot of how our brain processes sound has to do with expectation. That’s where the emotion kind of comes in.

So if we’re talking about folks who don’t create music, or really don’t consider themselves musical, or don’t engage with music very much, there’s a big window to bring some people who might never think musically, so to speak, into the world of making music and playing with sound.

That can come through things like stem separation and making it really easy for people to mess around with sound, way easier than it is now.

Young folks, like if we’re looking at how people use sound on TikTok, or at cloud-based digital audio workstations like BandLab that are super accessible, kids are making weird sounds all the time and messing around with music. They are pulling things apart, putting things together, chopping things up, speeding them up, and that’s really, really super cool.

I think we’re going to see rising tide of people making music, just the way we saw people playing around with things like filters and lighting when Instagram went mainstream.

So there’s another side too, on the very top level of people making music.

AI can really function in a lot of complex ways that are really subtle.

So everyone’s heard about voice cloning and things like fake Drake, or the Weeknd singing a song, or all these sort of very gimmicky, goofy things.

The way those models actually work is fascinating. It’s more accurate to call them timbre transfer. So timbre is like these sort of frequency qualities. The weird little sonic moments that define what makes a sound sound like itself.

So if I hit a cardboard box, or if I hit a piece of wood, or if I hit a drum, those might all have the same duration, they might even have some similar frequencies, but they all have a different timbre. So it’s like that quality to sound.

So the model basically lets you take the timbrel patterns of another person’s voice and transfer it to something else. You could transfer it to an instrument, you could transfer it to all sorts of crazy other sounds as well. It doesn’t just have to be another voice.

So the way you clone a voice is by making sure you have the same intonation. So if I used an Eminem voice model, and I didn’t have Eminem’s really distinctive intonation, it wouldn’t really sound like him.

So there’s kind of an interesting layer that’s almost like a filter you put on a photo. Or like a font, like if you read a text in one font versus another, there’s like this subtle little thing that changes in how you interpret and perceive that text.

So anyway, these timbre transfers are the kind of tools that people with more musical training or more musical inclination might be able to use to really change how things sound. It’s much the way people have used effects, like reverb or flange, or how they’ve used synthesizers to create new and radically different sounds.

It’s a lot of exciting stuff that is maybe a little bit more technical, a little bit deeper in the musical weeds, but is really, really cool. I think it will filter into mainstream audio creation as well.

Joanna: I love that attitude. I think this is the right attitude, which is —

This enables new kinds of creativity that we’ve never seen before and we’d never been able to do before.

I feel it’s the same with the language models for writing. The way people who don’t use these models assume that we’re using it is “output a thriller.” You know, click one button, output an award-winning thriller. Okay, that just doesn’t work.

Like you said about the musicians there, I feel like as someone who uses, at the moment, mainly Claude 3—again, we’re recording this towards the end of March 2024, these models change all the time—but I’m using Claude 3.

I’m going backwards and forwards, I’m iterating with it, I’m playing with it, I’m putting my words in and changing them and getting something else out.

It’s backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, in terms of leveling up my writing.

It is, in fact, slower to co-create for me with these AI tools because I’m trying to be better and use them to make my work better.

It feels like that’s what you were saying with those more advanced AI-assisted musicians.

Tristra: Absolutely, and if we think about it as a conversation, it starts to get really interesting.

The thing that everyone often overlooks with AI, like we’re so wowed at the moment by, “wow, AI can really sound like a customer service representative, like this is amazing.”

What’s really exciting to me is how bizarre the output can be from some of these models. So in my own writing, I wanted to play around with what it would sound like if an advanced artificial intelligence was having basically a freakout. It’s like a really fun freakout.

So what I did was I fed a bunch of 19th century spiritualist texts, available on Google Books, I just fed a bunch of this stuff into an earlier model. The early models are still super weird and you can make them output really odd things, and it spit out this totally insane rant.

That’s perfect. That’s what I wanted. I edited it, I switched it around, there was work that I did as a writer after that. The fun thing was like I would never have been able to get this weird and unhinged on my own.

So that’s maybe an extreme example, and I’m sure there are much more gentle and civilized examples than the one I just gave, but the weirdness and the emergent qualities are really where we, as artists, can thrive and explore. We have a whole bunch of uncharted territory to wander around in, and that’s exciting.

Joanna: Yes, it is exciting. Let’s come back to what you talked about, which was the potential challenge—exactly the same thing happening with authors—which is this sea of content.

You know, you thought it was bad before, it is going to get exponentially, let’s say “worse” in inverted commas, in that there is a sea of crap.

I have two opinions on the sea of crap.

One is that sometimes, crap is fine.

Like, I’ll have McDonald’s burger now and then, as much as I want a really lovely meal at a nice restaurant. I definitely do not read Pulitzer Prize winning books every night, and I just watched the Road House movie with Jake Gyllenhaal. I mean, it is a fun junk food movie.

So the sea of crap, one is a lot of people don’t mind that at all. Like we mentioned stock music, you don’t need something amazing for your little book trailer.

The other one is that there’s obviously just so much out there and it’s hard to find the good stuff.

So what are your thoughts on this? Again, I mean, coming back to AI and using AI tools, I know you read my search article, or thinking about other marketing possibilities—

How do musicians and authors cut through this sea of content?

Tristra: I think it is going to be a real balance between the human and some of these cool tools that we can use to unlock things and see patterns that we wouldn’t see otherwise.

In some ways, music and books are locked into this genre system right at the moment, like that’s the language that we use to talk about things.

A lot of things that are not in the sort of sea of crap, or more templated, or just fun entertainment stuff, it’s kind of hard to put them easily into one bucket. At least I can say that for music.

With really good music, artists really struggle to say, “Oh, I’m just making funk. That’s all I make,” or “I’m just straight up like old school hip hop, that’s all I do,” because it’s usually not all someone does. So in that regard, using AI can help us find other similarities to other works.

So with music, it’s a little bit weird when it comes to search because you can search using a bunch of different properties for an audio file. So you can look at the waveform and try to find other waveforms, so sound similarity search.

You can look at metadata, which is a whole huge can of worms.

If you ever want to make someone from the music industry cry, just talk about metadata.

Joanna: Same in the book industry!

Tristra: Exactly, but we don’t want to make anyone cry here today. So some metadata, when metadata is good and it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, it can really help people find music.

Then there’s things like user behavior. So the way a lot of recommendation algorithms are supposed to work is that you look at a user who is similar to you in some way, shape, or form, and maybe in their listening habits, for example. Then you look at what that listener is listening to that you aren’t listening to.

Then the algo magically match makes and says, “Hey, your buddy who listens to like 80% of the same stuff as you really digs this, and you haven’t checked this out yet. So you should check it out.” I think I’ve gotten a little bit far afield here.

All of these different AI channels could converge to help us market better, if only because we’re trying to find audiences in new ways.

Not just like, okay, this is a romance or a cozy mystery, and I’m going to find all the cozy mystery writers, I’m going to do what all the cozy mysteries do.

It’s like, well, maybe there’s like a whole world about super intelligent cats, and there’s like a super intelligent cat super fandom out there that you could discover if you had the right AI pilot.

In some ways, we might just leave genre behind.

That’s starting to happen in music. I haven’t seen as much reporting on this from books, but I’d love to hear your perspective, Joanna.

In music, young listeners basically listen to everything. They just listen across the board. So like 40 years ago, people were pretty siloed. They were like, I do rock, or I’m into hip hop, or I listen to classical music, and that’s it.

Now it’s like, young listeners, their Spotify or whatever is just filled with all sorts of different kinds of music, and in all sorts of languages, too. A lot of the music that is reaching young people now is not in English. So it could be K-pop, it could be J-pop from Japan, that’s starting to percolate.

Of course, there’s Latin music. Folks like Bad Bunny have really made a huge change. Now India is starting to come up on a lot of young people’s radars as well. It’s just fascinating. So anyway, all this to say this is not very helpful advice.

Joanna: Well, no, I think the point was that we’re looking at AI tools for discoverability. So, for example, I have found a lot of stuff with ChatGPT. The example I give in one of my posts was looking for novels about stone carving.

When I used the traditional Amazon search, it came up with a whole load of nonfiction books on stone carving, and most of it was advertising and all this kind of thing.

Then using ChatGPT, it actually gave me a whole load of really interesting options. Then you can also, with the generative search models, you can then ask more nuanced questions. Like okay, well, I want this to be historical, for example, or I want this to be set in Europe as opposed to America.

There are ways you can make it more granular. So I suppose the same would be true about music, that you could say, well, these are the artists that I like, these are the songs I like, give me suggestions that are similar to this.

I mean, I guess what people are scared about, and this is already happening in the author industry, is ‘generate to market.’

In fact, I kind of saw this happening on ChatGPT the other day.

So I asked it for a whole load of books on creative business and money for authors because I’m going to update my Business for Authors book. It came up with this whole list of books, and I was like, oh, wow, I haven’t heard of some of these, these are amazing.

About four of them existed, and six of them did not exist.

Tristra: Incredible. I love that.

Joanna: It was incredible because that hadn’t happened before. When I did that article before Christmas, that didn’t happen, like those books were real.

The crazy thing was, and I said to Jonathan, my husband, like, “Look at this. Look at these amazing book titles.” And he said, “Well, maybe you should write one of those.”

Tristra: There you go. I mean, if you did that well, that could be incredible. I think music, because it’s a lighter lift in some respects, musicians don’t get mad at me.

Joanna: As in it doesn’t take so long?

Tristra: It doesn’t take so long to create. Well, obviously you could work for years on a single song and polish it and refine it and revise it and everything. If you’re working in like a song format, you’re looking at like 3 to maybe 10 minutes of audio, and that can take a while to make.

Then with a book, if you’re shooting for a 50,000- to 100,000-word piece of fiction that hangs together reasonably well, I would argue it might take a little bit longer. That’s from someone who’s both recorded music and written music and books.

You know, again, the creativity and the heart and the soul is equally demanding, but it doesn’t take as long.

Music doesn’t take as long to make, and it doesn’t take long as long to enjoy.

So anyway, the book side makes me a little like, wow, you’d have to put some effort in, but it would be worth it. For the music side, you could really go nuts.

Joanna: I would kind of like to just feed in one of my books. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I feed in a one of my books into Claude, and I say, “Act like Ramin Djawadi.” The guy who did the Game of Thrones soundtrack.

Tristra: There you go.

Joanna: I’d be like, “Okay, do this for my book. Give me a prompt that I can put into Suno,” and then see how it is.

I mean, we’re laughing because you and I are quite positive about this. There are people listening who were like, oh, dear. So let’s move into the business model with this stuff.

Tristra: Can I just say one more quick thing on the fantastic fun side. This is something I think a lot of authors experience, not everyone, but we’re kind of like minor synaesthete. Like we see what’s happening before we write it, or sometimes we hear it, some people may smell it, I don’t know.

This is giving us a chance in certain ways to unlock those sides of our imaginations.

We may not share that publicly, but if you had a soundtrack to Spear of Destiny, that might actually spark new creative directions for you that you hadn’t unlocked before.

I think the multimedia side of things is really intriguing as all these different art forms converge.

It’s something that is a little strange, but could end up being quite exciting from an imagination standpoint.

Joanna: Oh, yes. Well, I did this to Claude.

I uploaded a short story and said, “Can you plot out a book trailer,” and then I made the images in ChatGPT and DALL-E, and then got the music for it. So it was a kind of collaboration in that way.

Given that there are tools coming out, the kind of text-to-video models with music, probably by the end of 2024, you could feed in a book and say, “Create a 30-second trailer with music.”

Tristra: Exactly. Or, “What song would this person be singing?”

Joanna: Exactly. I mean, that’s the fun side.

Coming back to the business, because I think, to me, there are some really interesting things. So you mentioned a bit about the voice synth thing. I think it was Grimes, who said, “Take my voice, create records, and give me half the money,” or whatever.

So I think licensing voices is going to be one model.

You wrote an article on the MUSIC x Substack and said the creative economy is fragmenting.

[Read Tristra’s article here.]

I’ve used this term splintering. Maybe you could talk a bit about that. Like musicians are not just making money on Spotify streams. That is not the business model anymore, right?

Tristra:

There’s no single business model. It’s very similar to what’s happened in the author world. There’s been a whole DIY music movement.

There’s been some really key players that have knocked down the doors where a lot of the back-office stuff that was happening.

It was very difficult for an individual to hook into things like certain kinds of royalty administration, that kind of thing. So those doors have come down.

Now, a person with the right mindset can pretty much manage an entire music career on their own, using available tools that aren’t outrageously expensive.

So with that in mind, people are trying all sorts of different stuff. So there are folks that have built a whole career around live streaming.

Now there are folks that have built their whole career around various streaming platforms, and making music to playlists or to market. So there’s a huge interest in Lo-fi and other sorts of study or focus-oriented sounds, and there are artists who satisfy that market.

So there’s all these different directions you can go in, and really different ways to make money.

Some people only play live.

What the digital music world gave us was this insight into usage, but what’s happening right now is that moment when most things could be seen online in some way, shape, or form, is fading.

So we have people who are selling LPs direct. We have people who have a subscription model that they use. We have musicians who are doing all sorts of really unusual things. It’s hard to get a good handle on what all the business activity is.

So for example, there’s some debate about how many indie record stores are actually giving their sales information to the folks that manage things like charts or sales. I know there’s something similar happening with books.

Just no one knows how much people are selling, even in a store, which is like a well-established retail outlet that’s been around for decades. Like they just don’t report their sales data.

So we’re seeing all sorts of different very niche models, as well as, of course, superstars and all sorts of stuff. It runs the gamut.

Joanna: Yes. Two things to follow up on that. So one, this invisible sales thing. I’m thinking a lot about this because —

My own revenue is now mostly invisible. Most of the money I make is invisible to any charts.

It comes from Shopify, it comes from Kickstarter, it comes from Patreon. Like you said, these are subscription, these are one-off, they don’t report. I mean, Brandon Sanderson in the book world, $42 million Kickstarter, and that doesn’t hit a list.

Tristra: At that point, like who cares, right?

Joanna: I mean, I guess so. I mean, there are authors who are Amazon-only sellers who never hit any list. The person who hits the top of the New York Times list is some traditionally published author who’s sold a fraction of what some of the biggest indies are selling in other ways.

Like you said, at this point, who cares? I do wonder about this—

Are we kind of in a post-fame world?

Where there’s like Taylor Swift and Beyonce, or whatever, and then there’s everybody else. Like, do we care? Do we just get on with it?

Tristra: Yes, and is there going to be sort of an interesting market bifurcation or fragmentation, where there’ll be people that are into stars and that are into celebrities. Then there’s people who are just like, I like just to collect stuff that kind of suits me, and I don’t care who made it as long as I like it.

I mean, in some ways that was what was obtained before the digital content revolution. I hate the word content, but I’m going to use it. You know, people would have their local record store and their local bookstore.

Then maybe there’d be like a weird, I don’t know if every listener had this in their world, but when I was growing up, there was sort of these oddball little shops that would have mimeographed or photocopied zines.

Joanna: Yes, zines. I was going to say there were the zines.

Tristra: Exactly, and none of that really registered. So in some ways, we don’t know how new this is. This could have been going on for hundreds of years, you know, thinking of broadsides and all the ephemera that was popular in the 19th century, for example.

The fact of the matter is, maybe we are in a post-fame thing, or maybe we’ve always been, and in some ways, we’ve gotten a little bit turned around in thinking that the loudest voices were the ones who were actually calling the shots. I don’t know. It’s an interesting moment.

So there’s always a lot of talk about this musical middle class that’s a little bit mythical because, again, the history isn’t there. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe necessarily that the musical middle class right now is smaller than it was 40 years ago. It’s just a different group of people.

It’s not session players, like the kind of folks you might have heard backing up Steely Dan who are like these exquisite artists that just played sessions. It’s not people who are selling CDs hand over fist. It’s a very different group of people.

How big was that group 50 years ago? I mean, there’s not a lot of great research on that. So I have this feeling it’s not necessarily smaller, it’s just certain people have lost ground. It is, of course, sad because they were making some good music. It’s an interesting question.

Joanna: Yes, it is. I get what you mean, and it’s kind of similar. I mean, you get to a point where you think, well —

I really just like making stuff. I need to make enough money that I can pay my bills, and I can keep creating stuff.

Once you get to that certain amount of revenue, which is the midlist in the indie author space, for example, do you really care about the other stuff? I mean, I don’t really.

I mean, I have some particular goals, but they’re not around fame. They are to have some recognition with my peers. I recently won an award for my memoir, and I was really happy with that. That’s not going to sell any more books, but I feel happy to be recognized by peers in a certain way.

So I can imagine in the music industry, too, there’s people who are doing their merch, and doing their vinyl press, and selling at an indie record store, or whatever, doing their Kickstarter, doing their Patreon, or whatever it is for music. It’s like, that’s a happy creative life.

Maybe that’s just the positive thing about this new world is that—

We’re moving away from obsession with streaming and top of the charts, and into a sort of more happy, creative life.

Tristra: It’s less about broadcast or imitating old traditional media broadcast models. It’s more about this kind of, I think you put it as an artisan approach.

I pulled up some statistics before we started talking. There’s a website builder called Bandzoogle, which I don’t know if there’s an exact equivalent in the book world. Basically, it’s a bunch of templates and tools and cool things that some indie artist-minded folks have created for musicians.

They just announced that Bandzoogle helped musicians earn $16.4 million in 2023. Most of that came from direct merch sales or direct ticket sales. That’s pretty interesting.

So subscriptions aren’t a huge thing for musicians because for a lot of musicians, that’s not really a model that’s going to work for the way they make stuff. So I thought that was pretty notable.

Bandzoogle doesn’t charge a commission. So that’s money that’s going straight into creative people’s pockets. I thought that was pretty cool.

Joanna: So, I just pulled that up. So Bandzoogle, they build websites, make website management and have tour dates. So it’s websites and selling direct and merch and things through their site. That looks fantastic.

Just on merch, then. This is something that musicians have always done, and have done very, very well selling merch at live events and this stuff. At author events, people will more likely where band t-shirts than they’ll wear author t-shirts. It’s just not the thing to do.

Tristra: I’m just trying to imagine like, you know, my Melville t-shirt.

Joanna: I mean it really is a cultural thing for bands to do this. It’d be great if authors did this too. Do you have some sites that you would recommend?

If authors do want to do merch, what are some of the best sites you know of that they might have a look at?

Tristra: I have been thinking about this myself for merch. One thing that I have been thinking a lot about is t-shirts and sizes and how hard it is to do. I guess you can do print on demand, but the margin seems a little bit so-so.

If you’re a band, you’ll probably print a small run or a big run of different sizes and styles and things. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that, like what are some alternatives to t-shirts?

There’s been some crazy variety of things that people have done in music. I would say if you want to look for some inspiration, look at places like Bandcamp. So if you have a favorite genre or artist, see if they’re on Bandcamp and see what they’re selling. Sometimes music artists will sell really neat things that are pretty simple.

So you probably don’t want to go to the trouble of putting out a vinyl LP. There’s ways you can make cassettes nowadays. They have all sorts of fun stickers. I’ve seen bandanas. There are things like drink koozies, if that’s your thing.

I don’t know, if I was setting one of my books, like maybe a thriller in the Florida Keys, like a koozie sounds like a good piece of merch.

Joanna: It’s like a beer sleeve for your craft beer?

Tristra: Exactly, exactly. So your seltzer water.

Joanna: Your hard seltzer!

Tristra: Exactly, there you go. For authors, it may indeed have to be a hard seltzer. I’m being silly.

There’s enamel pins. There’s all sorts of really fun little things that you can look at. I’m all for getting inspiration from other people, and for thinking about like what is an object that’s easy to mail that’s not too fragile, that is relatively small, and that’s something that someone would buy in enjoy.

Something where the design can really shine. Like an enamel pin or a sticker would be a great example. Those are things that are pretty easy to manufacture.

I mean, I have to say my favorite thing, Joanna, and I’m going to give a little shout out, I love Sticker Mule here in the US. If you sign up with them, they will send out these deals, these like random deals. They have the best marketing emails that are just like, “50 stickers. $10 today.” I’m like, I love you.

Joanna: It’s funny, I do actually make my own stickers for my own journals. I have thought about doing stickers.

So let’s talk about selling direct, because as you mentioned, the biggest thing is that I refuse to, as part of my business plan, I am not having stuff in my house, and I am not going to the post office.

So everything I do with my Shopify stores, it has to be print on demand, and it has to be shipped. I don’t want it anywhere near me, it needs to go from the vendor.

You’re also doing selling direct, aren’t you? You’re also doing live events, I saw on your website, like things like book shops and creative spaces and all of this. To me, it just seems like a lot of work.

Tell us about your ecosystem around selling direct?

Tristra: Absolutely. You know, you’ve got a lot of plates spinning, Joanna. So there’s some reasons why you might want to draw those really firm boundaries. I love that, and I think it’s really important to know that about yourself as a creative person.

Like if I do all this stuff, is it going to completely destroy me as a writer?

Meaning I’m not going to have any energy or interest in sitting down and being like, okay, so what is happening with these radioactive mice that are putting together an orchestra?

If you can’t go and play with your imaginary friends, you can’t pursue that particular thing. So in my case, I’m a baby author, and I’m not going to hide that. So what I mean by that is that most of the people I’m going to be selling to are people I know, or people who know people I know, et cetera.

Most of the stuff I’ve been writing lately has had a very strong regional or local flavor to it.

So it’s based in Indiana, it’s based on the history of Indiana, it is a crazy, weird story based on the history of Indiana. So it’s got a very specific audience.

I kind of wanted to have enough physical copies around to be generous with them. That is what my life allows. That’s not what everyone’s life allows. So for me, it made sense to print up a bunch of books and just have them there.

Again, I have the space for it, and I have the means to advance myself that. So that’s not the right decision for everyone. It’s a certain kind of privilege.

At the same token, I’ve been able to be really generous with my books, meaning like if I want to give it to someone, I can. That means a lot to me. It’s less of a business decision and more of just a human decision for me.

However, I do really enjoy local events. I don’t always call myself an introvert, I do find it difficult to associate with people for long periods of time.

I find it really helpful for me to focus on ideas, instead of my persona as an author, or my own work even.

So I often want to go and talk to people about the ideas or phenomena that inspired my book. So it could be artificial intelligence. It could be human utopias. It could be the history of frontier settlements in places like the US.

So I’ll tailor what I want to talk about to each locale, judging by who their likely audience is. So for me, that’s worked really well because it keeps the focus off of me, which is very uncomfortable for me. I’m a Midwesterner, we just don’t do that.

It also allows me to bring people into this world that was why I started doing this in the first place, and really share it from a different perspective.

So instead of the story and the little universe I generate for them in the book, we get to talk about the actual facts, historical sources, actions and events, and people who inspired some of my writing. So that’s really fun for me.

I would advise people to set themselves up for success. So try to know yourself.

Start in your home turf, start in a friendly location where you feel comfortable.

Maybe even consider inviting someone along and setting it up as a fireside chat, instead of just a you-show, which can feel really uncomfortable at first.

Also try to build the support around it that you need. So maybe schedule some time alone afterwards, or schedule some time with friends, or make sure that you have a little bit of promotional and marketing machinery in place.

It can be really simple. It could just be on socials, it could be reaching out to local media, but don’t leave yourself high and dry and just expect the store to do all the work.

Then for me, maybe I’m an indie author because I like to control things, and I like to know things are getting done. I don’t want to be angry with someone because something didn’t get done, unless it’s me, and then I can be angry at myself.

So if you’re going into an event, if you’ve decided to try this, I would say set yourself up for maximum success and know thyself. Try to make it sound as appealing as possible, and if there’s no way it sounds appealing, don’t do it.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. I flirt with this idea a lot, and I do some speaking, but this is just not for me.

I do think, like as we talked about, if you’re being more analogue with your products, then sometimes if you have the weird stuff, if you want to do the vinyl, or the cassette tapes, or the different types of books, it may be that this is something that really works for you.

Especially as you are, if you’re embedded in the community, if it’s about the local area, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there.

Perhaps, as you said, this business model that’s emerged in the digital space, people have thought more about the global digital side than they have around the local physical side. So interesting times ahead, I guess.

Tristra: Absolutely, and just one more little thought about that is you can think about the global digital side, and I think a lot of people are finding success there, or it makes sense to them.

For me, I had to think in concentric circles. I had to think about, where’s my home base, and how do I expand out from there gradually and organically?

It’s really frustrating because I want things to move faster than they do, but that’s a growth opportunity too, is to learn to be a little more patient.

Joanna: Indeed.

Where can people find you and everything you do online?

Tristra: Well, if you want to find out more about my music, tech nerdery, and musings, you can check out the Music Tectonics Podcast, and that’s tectonics like the geological phenomenon.

You can also hit me up on LinkedIn. I know that’s really dorky to say that, but that’s where I do a lot of musings and post a lot of articles and stuff like that.

If you want to find out about my fiction, I’m at NewyearMedia.com. I’ve got a podcast coming out in June about an American intense feminist from the 1820s. You can find out about my novels.

You can also hit me up on Instagram, Facebook, you know, all those silly places where I mostly post things about barns. You know, trees, dark foreboding roads, that kind of fun stuff. So it’s more of an art project.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Tristra. That was great.

Tristra: Thank you, Joanna. It’s great to be here.

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