The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How do you juggle multiple book projects, a university teaching role, Kickstarter campaigns, and rock albums—all without burning out? What does it take to build a writing career that spans decades, through industry upheavals and personal setbacks? Kevin J. Anderson shares hard-won lessons from his 40+ year career writing over 190 books.

In the intro, Draft2Digital partners with Bookshop.org for ebooks; Spotify announces PageMatch and print partnership with Bookshop.org; Eleven Audiobooks; Indie author non-fiction books Kickstarter; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn

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

Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor and rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show.

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

Managing multiple projects at different stages to maximise productivity without burning out

Building financial buffers and multiple income streams for a sustainable long-term career

Adapting when life disrupts your creative process, from illness to injury

Lessons learned from transitioning between traditional publishing, indie, and Kickstarter

Why realistic expectations and continuously reinventing yourself are essential for longevity

The hands-on publishing master's program at Western Colorado University

You can find Kevin at WordFire.com and buy his books direct at WordFireShop.com.

Transcript of Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

Jo: Kevin J. Anderson is the multi award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages.

He's also the Director of Publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor, a rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show.

Welcome back to the show, Kevin.

Kevin: Well, thanks, Joanna. I always love being on the show.

Jo: And we're probably on like 200 books and like 50 million copies in print. I mean, how hard is it to keep up with all that?

Kevin: Well, it was one of those where we actually did have to do a list because my wife was like, we really should know the exact number. And I said, well, who can keep track because that one went out of print and that's an omnibus. So does it count as something else?

Well, she counted them. But that was a while ago and I didn't keep track, so…

Jo: Right.

Kevin: I'm busy and I like to write. That's how I've had a long-term career. It's because I don't hate what I'm doing. I've got the best job in the world. I love it.

Jo: So that is where I wanted to start. You've been on the show multiple times. People can go back and have a listen to some of the other things we've talked about. I did want to talk to you today about managing multiple priorities.

You are a director of publishing at Western Colorado University. I am currently doing a full-time master's degree as well as writing a novel, doing this podcast, my Patreon, all the admin of running a business, and I feel like I'm busy.

Then I look at what you do and I'm like, this is crazy. People listening are also busy. We're all busy, right. But I feel like it can't just be writing and one job—you do so much.

So how do you manage your time, juggle priorities, your calendar, and all that?

Kevin: I do it brilliantly. Is that the answer you want? I do it brilliantly.

It is all different things. If I were just working on one project at a time, like, okay, I'm going to start a new novel today and I've got nothing else on my plate. Well, that would take me however long to do the research and the plot.

I'm a full-on plotter outliner, so it would take me all the while to do—say it's a medieval fantasy set during the Crusades. Well, then I'd have to spend months reading about the Crusades and researching them and maybe doing some travel.

Then get to the point where I know the characters enough that I can outline the book and then I start writing the book, and then I start editing the book, which is a part that I hate. I love doing the writing, I hate doing the editing. Then you edit a whole bunch.

To me, there are parts of that that are like going to the dentist—I don't like it—and other parts of it are fun.

So by having numerous different projects at different stages, all of which require different skill sets or different levels of intensity—

I can be constantly switching from one thing to another and basically be working at a hundred percent capacity on everything all the time.

And I love doing this. So I'll be maybe writing a presentation, which is what I was doing before we got on this call this morning, because I'm giving a new keynote presentation at Superstars, which is in a couple of weeks.

That's another thing that was on our list—I helped run Superstars. I founded that 15 years ago and it's been going on. So I'll be giving that talk.

Then we just started classes for my publishing grad students last week. So I'm running those classes, which meant I had to write all of the classes before they started, and I did that.

I've got a Kickstarter that will launch in about a month. I'm getting the cover art for that new book and I've got to write up the Kickstarter campaign. And I have to write the book. I like to have the book at least drafted before I run a Kickstarter for it. So I'm working on that.

A Kickstarter pre-launch page should be up a month before the Kickstarter launches, and the Kickstarter has to launch in early March, so that means early February I have to get the pre-launch page up. So there's all these dominoes. One thing has to go before the next thing can go.

During the semester break between fall semester—we had about a month off—I had a book for Blackstone Publishing and Weird Tales Presents that I had to write, and I had plotted it and I thought if I don't get this written during the break, I'm going to get distracted and I won't finish it.

So I just buckled down and I wrote the 80,000-word book during the month of break. This is like Little House on the Prairie with dinosaurs. It's an Amish community that wants to go to simpler times. So they go back to the Pleistocene era where they're setting up farms and the brontosaurus gets into the cornfield all the time.

Jo: That sounds like a lot of fun.

Kevin: That's fun. So with the grad students that I have every week, we do all kinds of lectures.

Just to reassure people, I am not at all an academic. I could not stand my English classes where you had to write papers analysing this and that. My grad program is all hands-on, pragmatic. You actually learn how to be a publisher when you go through it.

You learn how to design covers, you learn how to lay things out, you learn how to edit, you learn how to do fonts.

One of the things that I do among the lectures every week or every other week, I just give them something that I call the real world updates. Like, okay, this is the stuff that I, Kevin, am working on in my real world career because the academic career isn't like the real world.

So I just go listing about, oh, I designed these covers this week, and I wrote the draft of this dinosaur homestead book, and then I did two comic scripts, and then I had to edit two comic scripts.

We just released my third rock album that's based on my fantasy trilogy. And I have to write a keynote speech for Superstars. And I was on Joanna Penn's podcast. And here's what I'm doing.

Sometimes it's a little scary because I read it and I go, holy crap, I did a lot of stuff this week.

Jo: So I manage everything on Google Calendar. Do you have systems for managing all this? Because you also have external publishers, you have actual dates when things actually have to happen. Do you manage that yourself or does Rebecca, your wife and business partner, do that?

How do you manage your calendar?

Kevin: Well, Rebecca does most of the business stuff, like right now we have to do a bunch of taxes stuff because it's the new year and things. She does that and I do the social interaction and the creating and the writing and stuff.

My assistant Marie Whittaker, she's a big project management person and she's got all these apps on how to do project managing and all these sorts of things. She tried to teach me how to use these apps, but it takes so much time and organisation to fill the damn things out.

So it's all in my head. I just sort of know what I have to do. I just put it together and work on it and just sort of know this thing happens next and this thing happens next.

I guess one of the ways is when I was in college, I put myself through the university by being a waiter and a bartender.

As a waiter and a bartender, you have to juggle a million different things at once. This guy wants a beer and that lady wants a martini, and that person needs to pay, and this person's dinner is up on the hot shelf so you've got to deliver it before it gets cold.

It's like I learned how to do millions of things and keep them all organised, and that's the way it worked. And I've kept that as a skill all the way through and it has done me good, I think.

Jo: I think that there is a difference between people's brains, right? So I'm pretty chaotic in terms of my creative process. I'm not a plotter like you. I'm pretty chaotic, basically. But I come across—

Kevin: I've met you. Yes.

Jo: I know. But I'm also extremely organised and I plan everything. That's part of, I think, being an introvert and part of dealing with the anxiety of the world is having a plan or a schedule.

So I think the first thing to say to people listening is they don't have to be like you, and they don't have to be like me. It's kind of a personal thing. I guess one thing that goes beyond both of us is, earlier you said you basically work at a hundred percent capacity.

So let's say there's somebody listening and they're like, well, I'm at a hundred percent capacity too, and it might be kids, it might be a day job, as well as writing and all that. And then something happens, right? You mentioned the real world. I seem to remember that you broke your leg or something.

Kevin: Yes.

Jo: And the world comes crashing down through all your plans, whether they're written or in your head.

So how do you deal with a buffer of something happening, or you're sick, or Rebecca's sick, or the cat needs to go to the vet?

Real life—how do you deal with that?

Kevin: Well, that really does cause problems. We had, in fact, just recently—so I'm always working at, well, let's be realistic, like 95% of Kevin capacity.

Well, my wife, who does some of the stuff here around the house and she does the business things, she just went through 15 days of the worst crippling migraine string that she's had in 30 years.

So she was curled up in a foetal position on the bed for 15 days and she couldn't do any of her normal things. I mean, even unloading the dishwasher and stuff like that.

So if I'm at 95% capacity and suddenly I have to pick up an extra 50%, that causes real problems. So I drink lots of coffee, and I get less sleep, and you try to bring in some help.

I mean, we have Rebecca's assistant and the assistant has a 20-year-old daughter who came in to help us do some of the dishes and laundry and housework stuff.

You mentioned before, it was a year ago. I always go out hiking and mountain climbing and that's where I write. I dictate. I have a digital recorder that I go off of, and that's how I'm so productive.

I go out, I walk in the forest and I come home with 5,000 words done in a couple of hours, and I always do that. That's how I write.

Well, I was out on a mountain and I fell off the mountain and I broke my ankle and had to limp a mile back to my car. So that sort of put a damper on me hiking.

I had a book that I had to write and I couldn't go walking while I was dictating it. It has been a very long time since I had to sit at a keyboard and create chapters that way.

Jo: Mm-hmm.

Kevin: And my brain doesn't really work like that. It works in an audio—I speak this stuff instead.

So I ended up training myself because I had a big boot on my foot. I would sit on the back porch and I would look out at the mountains here in Colorado and I would put my foot up on another chair and I'd sit in the lawn chair and I'd kind of close my eyes and I would dictate my chapters that way.

It was not as effective, but it was plan B. So that's how I got it done.

I did want to mention something. When I'm telling the students this every week—this is what I did and here's the million different things—one of the students just yesterday made a comment that she summarised what I'm doing and it kind of crystallised things for me.

She said that to get so much done requires, and I'm quoting now, “a balance of planning, sprinting, and being flexible, while also making incremental forward progress to keep everything moving together.”

So there's short-term projects like fires and emergencies that have to be done. You've got to keep moving forward on the novel, which is a long-term project, but that short story is due in a week. So I've got to spend some time doing that one.

Like I said, this Kickstarter's coming up, so I have to put in the order for the cover art, because the cover art needs to be done so I can put it on the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter.

It is a balance of the long-term projects and the short-term projects. And I'm a workaholic, I guess, and you are too.

Jo: Yes.

Kevin: You totally are. Yes.

Jo: I get that you're a workaholic, but as you said before, you enjoy it too. So you enjoy doing all these things. It's just sometimes life just gets in the way, as you said.

One of the other things that I think is interesting—so sometimes physical stuff gets in the way, but in your many decades now of the successful author business, there's also the business side.

You've had massive success with some of your books, and I'm sure that some of them have just kind of shrivelled into nothing. There have been good years and bad years.

So how do we, as people who want a long-term career, think about making sure we have a buffer in the business for bad years and then making the most of good years?

Kevin: Well, that's one thing—to realise that if you're having a great year, you might not always have a great year. That's kind of like the rockstar mentality—I've got a big hit now, so I'm always going to have a big hit. So I buy mansions and jets, and then of course the next album flops.

So when you do have a good year, you plan for the long term. You set money aside. You build up plan B and you do other things.

I have long been a big advocate for making sure that you have multiple income streams. You don't just write romantic epic fantasies and that's all you do. That might be what makes your money now, but the reading taste could change next year. They might want something entirely different.

So while one thing is really riding high, make sure that you're planting a bunch of other stuff, because that might be the thing that goes really, really well the next year.

I made my big stuff back in the early nineties—that was when I started writing for Star Wars and X-Files, and that's when I had my New York Times bestselling run. I had 11 New York Times bestsellers in one year, and I was selling like millions of copies.

Now, to be honest, when you have a Star Wars bestseller, George Lucas keeps almost all of that. You don't keep that much of it. But little bits add up when you're selling millions of copies. So it opened a lot of doors for me.

So I kept writing my own books and I built up my own fans who liked the Star Wars books and they read some of my other things. If you were a bestselling trad author, you could keep writing the same kind of book and they would keep throwing big advances at you. It was great.

And then that whole world changed and they stopped paying those big advances, and paperback, mass market paperback books just kind of went away.

A lot of people probably remember that there was a time for almost every movie that came out, every big movie that came out, you could go into the store and buy a paperback book of it—whether it was an Avengers movie or a Star Trek movie or whatever, there was a paperback book.

I did a bunch of those and that was really good work. They would pay me like $15,000 to take the script and turn it into a book, and it was done in three weeks. They don't do that anymore.

I remember I was on a panel at some point, like, what would you tell your younger self? What advice would you give your younger self?

I remember when I was in the nineties, I was turning down all kinds of stuff because I had too many book projects and I was never going to quit writing. I was a bestselling author, so I had it made.

Well, never, ever assume you have it made because the world changes under you. They might not like what you're doing or publishing goes in a completely different direction.

So I always try to keep my radar up and look at new things coming up.

I still write some novels for trad publishers. This dinosaur homestead one is for Blackstone and Weird Tales. They're a trad publisher. I still publish all kinds of stuff as an indie for WordFire Press. I'm reissuing a bunch of my trad books that I got the rights back and now they're getting brand new life as I run Kickstarters.

One of my favourite series is “Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.” It's like the Addams Family meets The Naked Gun. It's very funny. It's a private detective who solves crimes with monsters and mummies and werewolves and things.

I sold the first one to a trad publisher, and actually, they bought three. I said, okay, these are fast, they're fun, they're like 65,000 words. You laugh all the way through it, and you want the next one right away. So let's get these out like every six months, which is like lightning speed for trad publishing.

They just didn't think that was a good idea. They brought them out a year and a half apart. It was impossible to build up momentum that way.

They wanted to drop the series after the third book, and I just begged them—please give it one more chance. So they bought one more book for half as much money and they brought it out again a year and a half later.

And also, it was a trad paperback at $15. And the ebook was—Joanna, can you guess what their ebook was priced at?

Jo: $15.

Kevin: $15. And they said, gee, your ebook sales are disappointing. I said, well, no, duh. I mean, I am jumping around—I'm going like, but you should have brought these out six months apart. You should have had the ebook, like the first one at $4.

Jo: But you're still working with traditional publishers, Kevin?

Kevin: I'm still working with them on some, and I'm a hybrid. There are some projects that I feel are better served as trad books, like the big Dune books and stuff. I want those all over the place and they can cash in on the movie momentum and stuff.

But I got the rights back to the Dan Shamble stuff. The fans kept wanting me to do more, and so I published a couple of story collections and they did fine. But I was making way more money writing Dune books and things.

Then they wanted a new novel. So I went, oh, okay. I did a new novel, which I just published at WordFire. But again, it did okay, but it wasn't great. I thought, well, I better just focus on writing these big ticket things. But I really liked writing Dan Shamble.

Somebody suggested, well, if the fans want it so much, why don't you run a Kickstarter?

I had never run a Kickstarter before, and I kind of had this wrong attitude. I thought Kickstarters were for, “I'm a starving author, please give me money.” And that's not it at all. It's like, hey, if you're a fan, why don't you join the VIP club and you get the books faster than anybody else?

So I ran a Kickstarter for my first Dan Shamble book, and it made three times what the trad publisher was paying me. And I went, oh, I kind of like this model. So I have since done like four other Dan Shamble novels through Kickstarters, made way more money that way.

And we just sold—we can't give any details yet—but we have just sold it. It will be a TV show. There's a European studio that is developing it as a TV show, and I'm writing the pilot and I will be the executive producer.

Jo: Fantastic.

Kevin: So I kept that zombie detective alive because I loved it so much.

Jo: And it's going to be all over the place years later, I guess.

Just in terms of—given I've been in this now, I guess 2008 really was when I got into indie—and over the time I've been doing this, I've seen people rise and then disappear. A lot of people have disappeared. There are reasons, burnout or maybe they were just done.

Kevin: Yes.

Jo: But in terms of the people that you've seen, the characteristics, I guess, of people who don't make it versus people who do make it for years. And we are not saying that everyone should be a writer for decades at all. Some people do just have maybe one or two books.

What do you think are the characteristics of those people who do make it long-term?

Kevin: Well, I think it's realistic expectations.

Like, again, this was trad, but my first book I sold for $4,000, and I thought, well, that's just $4,000, but we're going to sell book club rights, and we're goingn to sell foreign rights, and it's going to be optioned for movies. And the $4,000 will be like, that's just the start.

I was planning out all this extra money coming from it, and it didn't even earn its $4,000 advance back and nothing else happened with it.

Well, it has since, because I've since reissued it myself, pushed it and I made more money that way. But it's a slow burn.

You build your career. You start building your fan base and then your next one will sell maybe better than the first one did. Then you keep writing it, and then you make connections, and then you get more readers and you learn how to expand your stuff better. You've got to prepare for the long haul.

I would suggest that if you publish your very first book on KU, don't quit your day job the next day. Not everybody can or should be a full-time writer.

We here in America need to have something that pays our health insurance. That is one of the big reasons why I am running this graduate program at Western Colorado University—because as a university professor, I get wonderful healthcare.

I'm teaching something that I love, and I'm frankly doing a very good job at it because our graduates—something like 60% of them are now working as writers or publishers or working in the publishing world.

So that's another thing. I guess what I do when I'm working on it is I kind of always say yes to the stuff that's coming in. If an opportunity comes—hey, would you like a graphic novel on this?—and I go, yes, I'd love to do that. Could you write a short story for this anthology? Sure, I'd love to do that.

I always say yes, and I get overloaded sometimes. But I learned my lesson. It was quite a few years ago where I was really busy.

I had all kinds of book deadlines and I was turning down books that they were offering me. Again, this was trad—book contracts that had big advances on them. And anthology editors were asking me.

I was really busy and everybody was nagging me—Kevin, you work too hard. And my wife Rebecca was saying, Kevin, you work too hard.

So I thought, I had it made. I had all these bestsellers, everything was going on. So I thought, alright, I've got a lot of books under contract. I'll just take a sabbatical. I'll say no for a year. I'll just catch up. I'll finish all these things that I've got. I'll just take a breather and finish things.

So for that year, anybody who asked me—hey, do you want to do this book project?—well, I'd love to, but I'm just saying no. And would you do this short story for an anthology? Well, I'd love to, but not right now. Thanks. And I just kind of put them off.

So I had a year where I could catch up and catch my breath and finish the stuff.

And after that, I went, okay, I am back in the game again. Let's start taking these book offers. And nothing. Just crickets. And I went, well, okay. Well, you were always asking before—where are all these book deals that you kept offering me? Oh, we gave them to somebody else.

Jo: This is really difficult though, because on the one hand—well, first of all, it's difficult because I wanted to take a bit of a break. So I'm doing this full-time master's and you are also teaching people in a master's program, right.

So I have had to say no to a lot of things in order to do this course. And I imagine the people on your course would have to do the same thing. There's a lot of rewards, but they're different rewards and it kind of represents almost a midlife pivot for many of us.

So how do we balance that then—the stepping away with what might lead us into something new? I mean, obviously this is a big deal. I presume most of the people on your course, they're older like me. People have to give stuff up to do this kind of thing.

So how do we manage saying yes and saying no?

Kevin: Well, I hate to say this, but you just have to drink more coffee and work harder for that time. Yes, you can say no to some things. My thing was I kind of shut the door and I just said, I'm just going to take a break and I'm going to relax.

I could have pushed my capacity and taken some things so that I wasn't completely off the game board.

One of the things I talk about is to avoid burnout. If you want a long-term career, and if you're working at 120% of your capacity, then you're going to burn out.

I actually want to mention something. Johnny B. Truant just has a new book out called The Artisan Author. I think you've had him on the show, have you?

Jo: Yes, absolutely.

Kevin: He says a whole bunch of the stuff in there that I've been saying for a long time. He's analysing these rapid release authors that are a book every three weeks. And they're writing every three weeks, every four weeks, and that's their business model.

I'm just like, you can't do that for any length of time. I mean, I'm a prolific writer. I can't write that fast. That's a recipe for burnout, I think.

I love everything that I'm doing, and even with this graduate program that I'm teaching, I love teaching it. I mean, I'm talking about subjects that I love, because I love publishing. I love writing. I love cover design. I love marketing. I love setting up your newsletters.

I mean, this isn't like taking an engineering course for me. This is something that I really, really love doing. And quite honestly, it comes across with the students. They're all fired up too because they see how much I love doing it and they love doing it.

One of the projects that they do—we get a grant from Draft2Digital every year for $5,000 so that we do an anthology, an original anthology that we pay professional rates for. So they put out their call for submissions.

This year it was Into the Deep Dark Woods. And we commissioned a couple stories for it, but otherwise it was open to submissions. And because we're paying professional rates, they get a lot of submissions. I have 12 students in the program right now. They got 998 stories in that they had to read.

Jo: Wow.

Kevin: They were broken up into teams so they could go through it, but that's just overwhelming. They had to read, whatever that turns out to be, 50 stories a week that come in.

Then they write the rejections, and then they argue over which ones they're going to accept, and then they send the contracts, and then they edit them. And they really love it.

I guess that's the most important thing about a career—you've got to have an attitude that you love what you're doing.

If you don't love this, please find a more stable career, because this is not something you would recommend for the faint of heart.

Jo: Yes, indeed. I guess one of the other considerations, even if we love it, the industry can shift. Obviously you mentioned the nineties there—things were very different in the nineties in many, many ways. Especially, let's say, pre-internet times, and when trad pub was really the only way forward.

But you mentioned the rapid release, the sort of book every month. Let's say we are now entering a time where AI is bringing positives and negatives in the same way that the internet brought positives and negatives. We're not going to talk about using it, but what is definitely happening is a change.

Industry-wise—for example, people can do a book a day if they want to generate books. That is now possible. There are translations, you know. Our KDP dashboard in America, you have a button now to translate everything into Spanish if you want. You can do another button that makes it an audiobook.

So we are definitely entering a time of challenge, but if you look back over your career, there have been many times of challenge.

So is this time different? Or do you face the same challenges every time things shift?

Kevin: It's always different. I've always had to take a breath and step back and then reinvent myself and come back as something else.

One of the things with a long-term career is you can't have a long-term career being the hot new thing. You can start out that way—like, this is the brand new author and he gets a big boost as the best first novel or something like that—but that doesn't work for 20 years.

I mean, you've got to do something else. If you're the sexy young actress, well, you don't have a 50-year career as the sexy young actress.

One of the ones I'm loving right now is Linda Hamilton, who was the sexy young actress in Terminator, and then a little more mature in the TV show Beauty and the Beast, where she was this huge star.

Then she's just come back now. I think she's in her mid-fifties. She's in Stranger Things and she was in Resident Alien and she's now this tough military lady who's getting parts all over the place. She's reinvented herself.

So I like to say that for my career, I've crashed and burned and resurrected myself. You might as well call me the Doctor because I've just come back in so many different ways.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but—

If you want to stay around, no matter how old of a dog you are, you've got to learn new tricks.

And you've got to keep learning, and you've got to keep trying new things.

I started doing indie publishing probably around the time you did—2009, something like that. I was in one of these great positions where I was a trad author and I had a dozen books that I wrote that were all out of print.

I got the rights back to them because back then they let books go out of print and they gave the rights back without a fight. So I suddenly found myself with like 12 titles that I could just put up. I went, oh, okay, let's try this.

I was kind of blown away that that first novel that they paid me $4,000 for that never even earned it back—well, I just put it up on Kindle and within one year I made more than $4,000. I went, I like this, I've got to figure this out.

That's how I launched WordFire Press. Then I learned how to do everything. I mean, back in those days, you could do a pretty clunky job and people would still buy it. Then I learned how to do it better.

Jo: That time is gone.

Kevin: Yes. I learned how to do it better, and then I learned how to market it. Then I learned how to do print on demand books. Then I learned how to do box sets and different kinds of marketing.

I dove headfirst into my newsletter to build my fan base because I had all the Star Wars stuff and X-Files stuff and later it was the Dune stuff. I had this huge fan base, but I wanted that fan base to read the Kevin Anderson books, the Dan Shamble books and everything.

The only way to get that is if you give them a personal touch to say, hey buddy, if you liked that one, try this one. And the way to do that is you have to have access to them.

So I started doing social media stuff before most people were doing social media stuff. I killed it on MySpace. I can tell you that.

I had a newsletter that we literally printed on paper and we stuck mailing labels on. It went out to 1,200 people that we put in the mailbox.

Jo: Now you're doing that again with Kickstarter, I guess. But I guess for people listening, what are you learning now?

How are you reinventing yourself now in this new phase we are entering?

Kevin: Well, I guess the new thing that I'm doing now is expanding my Kickstarters into more.

So last year, the biggest Kickstarter that I've ever had, I ran last year. It was this epic fantasy trilogy that I had trad published and I got the rights back.

They had only published it in trade paperback. So, yes, I reissued the books in nice new hardcovers, but I also upped the game to do these fancy bespoke editions with leather embossed covers and end papers and tipped in ribbons and slip cases and all kinds of stuff and building that.

I did three rock albums as companions to it, and just building that kind of fan base that will support that.

Then I started a Patreon last year, which isn't as big as yours. I wish my Patreon would get bigger, but I'm pushing it and I'm still working on that.

So it's trying new things. Because if I had really devoted myself and continued to keep my MySpace page up to date, I would be wasting my time. You have to figure out new things.

Part of me is disappointed because I really liked in the nineties where they just kept throwing book contracts at me with big advances. And I wrote the book and sent it in and they did all the work. But that went away and I didn't want to go away. So I had to learn how to do it different.

After a good extended career, one of the things you do is you pay it forward. I mentor a lot of writers and that evolved into me creating this master's program in publishing.

I can gush about it because to my knowledge, it is the only master's degree that really focuses on indie publishing and new model publishing instead of just teaching you how to get a job as an assistant editor in Manhattan for one of the Big Five publishers.

Jo: It's certainly a lot more practical than my master's in death.

Kevin: Well, that's an acquired taste, I think.

When they hired me to do this—and as I said earlier, I'm not an academic—and I said if I'm going to teach this, it's a one year program. They get done with it in one year. It's all online except for one week in person in the summer.

They're going to learn how to do things. They're not going to get esoteric, analysing this poem for something. When they graduate from this program, they walk out with this anthology that they edited, that their name is on.

The other project that they do is they reissue a really fancy, fine edition of some classic work, whether it's H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or something. They choose a book that they want to bring back and they do it all from start to finish.

They come out of it—rather than just theoretical learning—they know how to do things.

Surprise, I've been around in the business a long time, so I know everybody who works in the business. So the heads of publishing houses and the head of Draft2Digital or Audible—and we've got Blackstone Audio coming on in a couple weeks. We've got the head of Kickstarter coming on as guest speakers.

I have all kinds of guest speakers. Joanna, I think you're coming on—

Jo: I'm coming on as well, I think.

Kevin: You're coming on as a guest speaker. It's just like they really get plugged in. I'm in my seventh cohort now and I just love doing it. The students love it and we've got a pretty high success rate.

So there's your plug. We are open for applications now.

It starts in July. And my own website is WordFire.com, and there's a section on there on the graduate program if anybody wants to take a look at it.

Again, not everybody needs to have a master's degree to be an indie publisher, but there is something to be said for having all of this stuff put into an organised fashion so that you learn how to do all the things.

It also gives you a resource and a support system so that they come out of it knowing a whole lot of people.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kevin. That was great.

Kevin: Thanks. It's a great show.

The post Managing Multiple Projects And The Art of the Long-Term Author Career with Kevin J. Anderson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can indie authors raise their game through academic-style rigour? How might AI tools fit into a thoughtful research process without replacing the joy of discovery? Melissa Addey explores the intersection of scholarly discipline, creative writing, and the practical realities of building an author career.

In the intro, mystery and thriller tropes [Wish I'd Known Then]; The differences between trad and indie in 2026 [Productive Indie Fiction Writer]; Five phases of an author business [Becca Syme]; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn;

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

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

Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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

Making the leap from a corporate career to full-time writing with a young family

Why Melissa pursued a PhD in creative writing and how it fuelled her author business

What indie authors can learn from academic rigour when researching historical fiction

The problems with academic publishing—pricing, accessibility, and creative restrictions

Organising research notes, avoiding accidental plagiarism, and knowing when to stop researching

Using AI tools effectively as part of the research process without losing your unique voice

You can find Melissa at MelissaAddey.com.

Transcript of the interview with Melissa Addey

JOANNA: Melissa Addey is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Leverhulme Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library, and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Welcome back to the show, Melissa.

MELISSA: Hello. Thank you for having me.

JOANNA: It's great to have you back. You were on almost a decade ago, in December 2016, talking about merchandising for authors. That is really a long time ago.

So tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.

MELISSA: I had a regular job in business and I was writing on the side. I did a couple of writing courses, and then I started trying to get published, and that took seven years of jumping through hoops. There didn't seem to be much progress.

At some point, I very nearly had a small publisher, but we clashed over the cover because there was a really quite hideous suggestion that was not going to work. I think by that point I was really tired of jumping through hoops, really trying to play the game traditional publishing-wise.

I just went, you know what? I've had enough now. I've done everything that was asked of me and it's still not working. I'll just go my own way.

I think at the time that would've been 2015-ish. Suddenly, self-publishing was around more. I could see people and hear people talking about it, and I thought, okay, let's read everything there is to know about this.

I had a little baby at the time and I would literally print off stuff during the day to read—probably loads of your stuff—and read it at two o'clock in the morning breastfeeding babies. Then I'd go, okay, I think I understand that bit now, I'll understand the next bit, and so on.

So I got into self-publishing and I really, really enjoyed it. I've been doing it ever since. I'm now up to 20 books in the last 10 or 11 years. As you say, I did the creative writing PhD along the way, working with ALLi and doing workshops for others—mixing and matching lots of different things. I really enjoy it.

JOANNA: You mentioned you had a job before in business.

Are you full-time in all these roles that you're doing now, or do you still have that job?

MELISSA: No, I'm full-time now. I only do writing-related things. I left that in 2015, so I took a jump. I was on maternity leave and I started applying for jobs to go back to, and I suddenly felt like, oh, I really don't want to. I want to do the writing.

I thought, I've got about one year's worth of savings. I could try and do the jump. I remember saying to my husband, “Do you think it would be possible if I tried to do the jump? Would that be okay?”

There was this very long pause while he thought about it. But the longer the pause went on, the more I was thinking, ooh, he didn't say no, that is out of the question, financially we can't do that. I thought, ooh, it's going to work. So I did the jump.

JOANNA: That's great. I did something similar and took a massive pay cut and downsized and everything back in the day. Having a supportive partner is so important.

The other thing I did—and I wonder if you did too—I said to Jonathan, my husband, if within a year this is not going in a positive direction, then I'll get another job.

How long did you think you would leave it before you just gave up? And how did that go?

Because that beginning is so difficult, especially with a new baby.

MELISSA: I thought, well, I'm at home anyway, so I do have more time than if I was in a full-time job. The baby sleeps sometimes—if you're lucky—so there are little gaps where you could really get into it.

I had a year of savings/maternity pay going on, so I thought I've got a year. And the funny thing that happened was within a few months, I went back to my husband and I was like, I don't understand.

I said, all these doors are opening—they weren't massive, but they were doors opening. I said, but I've wanted to be a writer for a long time and none of these doors have opened before.

He said, “Well, it's because you really committed. It's because you jumped. And when you jump, sometimes the universe is on board and goes, yes, all right then, and opens some doors for you.”

It really felt like that. Even little things—like Mslexia (a writing magazine) gave me a little slot to do an online writer-in-residence thing. Just little doors opened that felt like you were getting a nod, like, yes, come on then, try.

Then the PhD was part of that. I applied to do that and it came with a studentship, which meant I had three years of funding coming in. That was one of the biggest creative gifts that's ever been given to me—three years of knowing you've got enough money coming in that you can just try and make it work.

By the time that finished, the royalties had taken over from the studentship. That was such a gift.

JOANNA: A couple of things there. I've got to ask about that funding. You're saying it was a gift, but that money didn't just magically appear.

You worked really hard to get that funding, I presume.

MELISSA: I did, yes. You do have to do the work for it, just to be clear.

My sister had done a PhD in an entirely different subject. She said, “You should do a PhD in creative writing.” I said, “That'd be ridiculous. Nobody is going to fund that. Who's going to fund that?” She said, “Oh, they might. Try.”

So I tried, and the deadline was something stupid like two weeks away. I tried and I got shortlisted, but I didn't get it. I thought, ah, but I got shortlisted with only two weeks to try. I'll try again next year then.

So then I tried again the next year and that's when I got it. It does take work. You have to put in quite a lot of effort to make your case. But it's a very joyful thing if you get one.

JOANNA: So let's go to the bigger question: why do a PhD in creative writing?

Let's be clear to everyone—you don't need even a bachelor's degree to be a successful author. Stephen King is a great example of someone who isn't particularly educated in terms of degrees. He talks about writing his first book while working at a laundry. You can be very successful with no formal education.

So why did you want to do a PhD? What drew you to academic research?

MELISSA: Absolutely. I would briefly say, I often meet people who feel they must do a qualification before they're allowed to write. I say, do it if you'd like to, but you don't have to. You could just practise the writing. I fully agree with that.

It was a combination of things. I do actually like studying. I do actually enjoy the research—that's why I do historical research. I like that kind of work. So that's one element.

Another element was the funding. I thought, if I get that funding, I've got three years to build up a back catalogue of books, to build up the writing. It will give me more time. So that was a very practical financial issue.

Also, children. My children were very little. I had a three-year-old and a baby, and everybody went, “Are you insane? Doing a PhD with a three-year-old and a baby?” But the thing about three-year-olds and babies is they're quite intellectually boring.

Emotionally, very engaging—on a number of levels, good, bad, whatever—but they're not very intellectually stimulating. You're at home all day with two small children who think that hide and seek is the highlight of intellectual difficulty because they've hidden behind the curtains and they're shuffling and giggling.

I felt I needed something else. I needed something for me that would be interesting.

I've always enjoyed passing on knowledge. I've always enjoyed teaching people, workshops, in whatever field I was in. I thought, if I want to do that for writing at some point, it will sound more important if I've done a PhD.

Not that you need that to explain how to do writing to someone if you do a lot of writing. But there were all these different elements that came together.

JOANNA: So to summarise: you enjoy the research, it's an intellectual challenge, you've got the funding, and there is something around authority. In terms of a PhD—and just for listeners, I'm doing a master's at the moment in death, religion, and culture.

MELISSA: Your topic sounds fascinating.

JOANNA: It is interesting because, same as you, I enjoy research. Both of us love research as part of our fiction process and our nonfiction.

I'm also enjoying the intellectual challenge, and I've also considered this idea of authority in an age of AI when it is increasingly easy to generate books—let's just say it, it's easy to generate books.

So I was like, well, how do I look at this in a more authoritative way? I wanted to talk to you because even just a few months back into it—and I haven't done an academic qualification for like two decades—it struck me that the academic rigour is so different.

What lessons can indie authors learn from this kind of academic rigour?

What do you think of in terms of the rigour and what can we learn?

MELISSA: I think there are a number of things. First of all, really making sure that you are going to the quality sources for things—the original sources, the high-quality versions of things.

Not secondhand, but going back to those primary sources. Not “somebody said that somebody said something.” Well, let's go back to the original. Have a look at that, because you get a lot from that.

I think you immerse yourself more deeply. Someone can tell you, “This is how they spoke in the 1800s.” If you go and read something that was written in the 1800s, you get a better sense of that than just reading a dictionary of slang that's been collated for you by somebody else. So I think that immerses you more deeply.

Really sticking with that till you've found interesting things that spark creativity in you. I've seen people say, “I used to do all the historical research. Nowadays I just fact-check. I write what I want to write and I fact-check.”

I think, well, that's okay, but you won't find the weird little things. I tend to call it “the footnotes of history.” You won't find the weird little things that really make something come alive, that really make a time and a place come alive.

I've got a scene in one of my Regency romances—which actually I think are less full of historical emphasis than some of my other work—where a man gives a woman a gift. It's supposed to be a romantic gift and maybe slightly sensual.

He could have given her a fan and I could have fact-checked and gone, “Are there fans? Yes, there are fans. Do they have pretty romantic poems on them? Yes, they do. Okay, that'll do.”

Actually, if you go round and do more research than that, you discover they had things like ribbons that held up your stockings, on which they wrote quite smutty things in embroidery. That's a much more sexy and interesting gift to give in that scene. But you don't find that unless you go doing a bit of research.

If I just fact-check, I'm not going to find that because it would never have occurred to me to fact-check it in the first place.

JOANNA: I totally agree with you. One of the wonderful things about research—and I also like going to places—is you might be somewhere and see something that gives you an idea you never, ever would have found in a book or any other way.

I used to call it “the serendipity of the stacks” in the physical library.

You go looking for a particular book and then you're in that part of the shelf and you find several other books that you never would have looked for. I think it's encouraging people, as you're saying, but I also think you have to love it.

MELISSA: Yes. I think some people find it a bit of a grind, or they're frightened by it and they think, “Have I done enough?”

JOANNA: Mm-hmm.

MELISSA: I get asked that a lot when I talk about writing historical fiction. People go, “But when do I stop? How do I know it's enough? How do I know there wasn't another book that would have been the book? Everyone will go, ‘Oh, how did you not read such-and-such?'”

I always say there are two ways of finding out when you can stop. One is when you get to the bibliographies, you look through and you go, “Yep, read that, read that, read that. Nah, I know that one's not really what I wanted.” You're familiar with those bibliographies in a way that at the beginning you're not.

At the beginning, every single bibliography, you haven't read any of it. So that's quite a good way of knowing when to stop.

The other way is: can you write ordinary, everyday life? I don't start writing a book till I can write everyday life in that historical era without notes. I will obviously have notes if I'm doing a wedding or a funeral or a really specific battle or something.

Everyday life, I need to be able to just write that out of my own head. You need to be confident enough to do that.

JOANNA: One of the other problems I've heard from academics—people who've really come out of academia and want to write something more pop, even if it's pop nonfiction or fiction—they're also really struggling. It is a different game, isn't it?

For people who might be immersed in academia, how can they release themselves into doing something like self-publishing?

Because there's still a lot of stigma within academia.

MELISSA: You're going to get me on the academic publishing rant now. I think academic publishing is horrendous. Academics are very badly treated. I know quite a lot of academics and they have to do all the work. Nobody's helping them with indexing or anything like that.

The publisher will say things like, “Well, could you just cut 10,000 words out of that?” Just because of size. Out of somebody's argument that they're making over a whole work. No consideration for that.

The royalties are basically zilch. I've seen people's royalty statements come in, and the way they price the books is insane. They'll price a book at 70 pounds. I actually want that book for my research and I'm hesitating because I can't be buying all of them at that price. That's ridiculous.

I've got people who are friends or family who bring out a book, and I'm like, well, I would gladly buy your book and read it. It's priced crazy. It's priced only for institutions.

I think actually, if academia was written a little more clearly and open to the lay person—which if you are good at your work, you should be able to do—and priced a bit more in line with other books, that would maybe open up people to reading more academia.

You wouldn't have to make it “pop” as you say. I quite like pop nonfiction. But I don't think there would have to be such a gulf between those two. I think you could make academic work more readable generally.

I read someone's thesis recently and they'd made a point at the beginning of saying—I can't remember who it was—that so-and-so academic's point of view was that it should be readable and they should be writing accordingly.

I thought, wow, I really admired her for doing that. Next time I'm doing something like that, I should be putting that at the front as well. But the fact that she had to explain that at the beginning…

It wasn't like words of one syllable throughout the whole thing. I thought it was a very quality piece of writing, but it was perfectly readable to someone who didn't know about the topic.

JOANNA: I might have to get that name from you because I've got an essay on the Philosophy of Death. And as you can imagine, there's a heck of a lot of big words.

MELISSA: I know. I've done a PhD, but I still used to tense up a little bit thinking they're going to pounce on me. They're going to say that I didn't talk academic enough, I didn't sound fancy enough. That's not what it should be about, really.

In a way, you are locking people out of knowledge, and given that most academics are paid for by public funds, that knowledge really ought to be a little more publicly accessible.

JOANNA: I agree on the book price. I'm also buying books for my course that aren't in the library. Some of them might be 70 pounds for the ebook, let alone the print book. What that means is that I end up looking for secondhand books, when of course the money doesn't go to the author or the publisher.

The other thing that happens is it encourages piracy. There are people who openly talk about using pirate sites for academic works because it's just too expensive. If I'm buying 20 books for my home library, I can't be spending that kind of money. Why is it so bad?

Why is it not being reinvented, especially as we have done with indie authors for the wider genres? Has this at all moved into academia?

MELISSA: I think within academia there's a fear because there's the peer reviews and it must be proven to be absolutely correct and agreed upon by everybody. I get that. You don't want some complete rubbish in there.

I do think there's space to come up with a different system where you could say, “So-and-so is professor of whatever at such-and-such a university. I imagine what they have to say might be interesting and well-researched.” You could have some sort of kite mark. You could have something that then allows for self-publishing to take over a bit.

I do just think their system is really, really poor. They get really reined in on what they're allowed to write about.

Alison Baverstock, who is a professor now at Kingston University and does stuff about publishing and master's programmes, started writing about self-publishing because she thought it was really interesting. This was way back.

JOANNA: I remember. I did one of those surveys.

MELISSA: She got told in no uncertain terms, “Do not write about this. You will ruin your career.” She stuck with it. She was right to stick with it. But she was told by senior academics, “Do not write about self-publishing. You're just embarrassing yourself. It's just vanity press.”

They weren't even being allowed to write about really quite interesting phenomena that were happening. Just from a historical point of view, that was a really interesting rise of self-publishing, and she was being told not to write about it.

JOANNA: It's funny, that delay as well. I'm looking to maybe do my thesis on how AI is impacting death and the death industry. And yet it's such a fast-moving thing.

MELISSA: Yes.

JOANNA: Sometimes it can take a year, two years or more to get a paper through the process.

MELISSA: Oh, yes. It moves really, really fast. Like you say, by the time it comes out, people are going, “Huh? That's really old.” And you'll be going, “No, it's literally two years.” But yes, very, very slow.

JOANNA: Let's come back to how we can help other people who might not want to be doing academic-level stuff.

One of the things I've found is organising notes, sources, references. How do you manage that? Any tips for people?

They might not need to do footnotes for their historical novel, but they might want to organise their research. What are your thoughts?

MELISSA: I used to do great big enormous box files and print vast quantities of stuff. Each box file would be labelled according to servant life, or food, or seasons, or whatever.

I've tried various different things. I'm moving more and more now towards a combination of books on the shelf, which I do like, and papers and other materials that are stored on my computer.

They'll be classified according to different parts of daily life, essentially. Because when you write historical fiction, you have to basically build the whole world again for that era. You have to have everything that happens in daily life, everything that happens on special events, all of those things.

So I'll have it organised by those sorts of topics. I'll read it and go through it until I'm comfortable with daily life. Then special things—I'll have special notes on that that can talk me through how you run a funeral or a wedding or whatever, because that's quite complicated to just remember in your head.

MELISSA: I always do historical notes at the end. They really matter to me. When I read historical fiction, I really like to read that from the author.

I'll say, “Right, these things are true”—especially things that I think people will go, “She made that up. That is not true.” I'll go, “No, no, these are true.” These other things I've fudged a little, or I've moved the timeline a bit to make the story work better.

I try to be fairly clear about what I did to make it into a story, but also what is accurate, because I want people to get excited about that timeline.

Occasionally if there's been a book that was really important, I'll mention it in there because I don't want to have a proper bibliography, but I do want to highlight certain books. If you got excited by this novel, you could go off and read that book and it would take you into the nonfiction side of it.

JOANNA: I'm similar with my author's notes. I've just done the author's note for Bones of the Deep, which has some merfolk in it, and I've got a book on Merpeople. It's awesome. It's just a brilliant book. I'm like, this has to go in.

You could question whether that is really nonfiction or something else. But I think that's really important.

Just to be more practical: when you're actually writing, what tools do you use?

I use Scrivener and I keep all my research there. I'm using EndNote for academic stuff.

MELISSA: I've always just stuck to Word. I did get Scrivener and played with it for a while, but I felt like I've already got a way of doing it, so I'll just carry on with that. So I mostly just do Word.

I have a lot of notes, so I'll have notepads that have got my notes on specific things, and they'll have page numbers that go back to specific books in case I need to go and double-check that again.

You mentioned citations, and that's fascinating to me. Do you know the story about Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner? It won the Pulitzer. It's a novel, but he used 10% of that novel—and it's a fairly slim novel—10% of it is actually letters written by somebody else, written by a woman before his time.

He includes those and works with them in the story. He mentioned her very briefly, like, “Oh, and thanks to the relatives of so-and-so.” Very brief. He got accused of plagiarism for using that much of it by another part of her family who hadn't agreed to it.

I've always thought it's because he didn't give enough credence to her. He didn't give her enough importance. If he'd said, “This was the woman who wrote this stuff. It's fascinating. I loved it. I wanted to creatively respond and engage with it”—I think that wouldn't have happened at all.

That's why I think it's quite important when there are really big, important elements that you're using to acknowledge those.

JOANNA: That's part of the academic rigour too—

You can barely have a few of your own thoughts without referring to somebody else's work and crediting them.

What's so interesting to me in the research process is, okay, I think this, but in order to say it, I'm going to have to go find someone else who thought this first and wrote a paper on it.

MELISSA: I think you would love a PhD. When you've done a master's, go and do a PhD as well. Because it was the first time in academia that I genuinely felt I was allowed my own thoughts and to invent stuff of my own.

I could go, “Oh no, I've invented this theory and it's this.” I didn't have to constantly go, “As somebody else said, as somebody else said.” I was like, no, no. This is me. I said this thing.

I wasn't allowed to in my master's, and I found it annoying. I remember thinking, but I'm trying to have original thoughts here. I'm trying to bring something new to it.

In a PhD, you're allowed to do that because you're supposed to be contributing to knowledge. You're supposed to be bringing a new thing into the world. That was a glorious thing to finally be allowed to do.

JOANNA: I must say I couldn't help myself with that. I've definitely put my own opinion. But a part of why I mention it is the academic rigour—it's actually quite good practice to see who else has had these thoughts before.

Speed is one of the biggest issues in the indie author community. Some of the stuff you were talking about—finding original sources, going to primary sources, the top-quality stuff, finding the weird little things—all of that takes more time than, for example, just running a deep research report on Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT.

You can do both. You can use that as a starting point, which I definitely do. But then the point is to go back and read the original stuff. On this timeframe—

Why do you think research is worth doing? It's important for academic reasons, but personal growth as well.

MELISSA: Yes, I think there's a joy to be had in the research. When I go and stand in a location, by that point I'm not measuring things and taking photos—I've done all of that online. I'm literally standing there feeling what it is to be there.

What does it smell like? What does it feel like? Does it feel very enclosed or very open? Is it a peaceful place or a horrible place?

That sensory research becomes very important. All of the book research before that should lead you into the sensory research, which is then also a joy to do. There's great pleasure in it.

As you say, it slows things down. What I tend to say to people if they want to speed things up again is: write in a series. Because once you've done all of that research and you just write one book and then walk away, that's a lot. That really slows you down.

If you then go, “Okay, well now I'm going to write four books, five books, six books, still in that place and time”—obviously each book will need a little more research, but it won't need that level of starting-from-scratch research. That can help in terms of speeding it back up again.

Recently I wrote some Regency romances to see what that was like. I'd done all my basic research, and then I thought, right, now I want to write a historical novel which could have been Victorian or could have been Regency. It had an openness to it.

I thought, well, I've just done all the research for Regency, so I'll stick with that era. Why go and do a whole other piece of research when I've only written three books in it so far? I'll just take that era and work with that.

So there are places to make up the time again a bit. But I do think there's a joy in it as well.

JOANNA: I just want to come back to the plagiarism thing. I discovered that you can plagiarise yourself in academia, which is quite interesting.

For example, my books How to Write a Novel and How to Write Nonfiction—they're aimed at different audiences. They have lots of chapters that are different, but there's a chapter on dictation. I thought, why would I need to write the same chapter again? I'm just going to put the same chapter in. It's the same process.

Then I only recently learned that you can plagiarise yourself. I did not credit myself for that original chapter.

MELISSA: How dare you not credit yourself!

JOANNA: But can you talk a bit about that? Where are the lines here? I'm never going to credit myself. I think that's frankly ridiculous.

MELISSA: No, that's silly. I mean, it depends what you're doing. In your case, that completely makes sense. It would be really peculiar of you to sit down and write a whole new chapter desperately trying not to copy what you'd said in a chapter about exactly the same topic. That doesn't make any sense.

JOANNA: I guess more in the wider sense. Earlier you mentioned you keep notes and you put page numbers by them. I think the point is with research, a lot of people worry about accidental plagiarism. You write a load of notes on a book and then it just goes into your brain. Perhaps you didn't quote people properly.

It's definitely more of an issue in nonfiction. You have to keep really careful notes. Sometimes I'm copying out a quote and I'll just naturally maybe rewrite that quote because the way they've put it didn't make sense, or I use a contraction or something. It's just the care in note-taking and then citing people.

MELISSA: Yes. When I talk to people about nonfiction, I always say, you're basically joining a conversation. I mean, you are in fiction as well, but not as obviously.

I say, well, why don't you read the conversation first? Find out what the conversation is in your area at the moment, and then what is it that you're bringing that's different?

The most likely reason for you to end up writing something similar to someone else is that you haven't understood what the conversation was, and you need to be bringing your own thing to it.

Then even if you're talking about the same topic, you might talk about it in a different way, and that takes you away from plagiarism because you're bringing your own view to it and your own direction to it.

JOANNA: It's an interesting one. I think it's just the care. Taking more care is what I would like people to do.

So let's talk about AI because AI tools can be incredible. I do deep research reports with Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT as a sort of “give me an overview and tell me some good places to start.”

The university I'm with has a very hard line, which is: AI can be used as part of a research process, but not for writing.

What are your thoughts on AI usage and tools? How can people balance that?

MELISSA: Well, I'm very much a newbie compared to you. I follow you—the only person that describes how to use it with any sense at all, step by step.

I'm very new to it, but I'm going to go back to the olden days. Sometimes I say to people, when I'm talking about how I do historical research, I start with Wikipedia. They look horrified.

I'm like, no. That's where you have to get the overview from. I want an overview of how you dress in ancient Rome. I need a quick snapshot of that. Then I can go off and figure out the details of that more accurately and with more detail.

I think AI is probably extremely good for that—getting the big picture of something and going, okay, this is what the field's looking like at the moment. These are the areas I'm going to need to burrow down into.

It's doing that work for you quickly so that you're then in a position to pick up from that point. It gets you off to a quicker start and perhaps points you in the direction of the right people to start with.

I'm trying to write a PhD proposal at the moment because I'm an idiot and want to do a second one. With that, I really did think, actually, AI should write this. Because the original concept is mine. I know nothing about it—why would I know anything about it? I haven't started researching it.

This is where AI should go, “Well, in this field, there are these people. They've done these things.” Then you could quickly check that nobody's covered your thing. It would actually speed up all of that bit, which I think would be perfectly reasonable because you don't know anything about it yet. You're not an expert.

You have the original idea, and then after that, then you should go off and do your own research and the in-depth quality of it.

I think for a lot of things that waste authors' time—if you're applying for a grant or a writer-in-residence or things like that—it's a lot of time wasting filling in long, boring forms. “Could you make an artist statement and a something and a blah?”

You're like, yes, yes, I could spend all day at my desk doing that. There's a moment where you start thinking, could you not just allow the AI to do this or much of it?

JOANNA: Yes. Or at least, in that case, I'd say one of the very useful things is doing deep searches. As you were mentioning earlier about getting the funding—if I was to consider a PhD, which the thought has crossed my mind—I would use AI tools to do searches for potential sources of funding and that kind of research.

In fact, I found this course at Winchester because I asked ChatGPT. It knows a lot about me because I chat with it all the time. I was talking about hitting 50 and these are the things I'm really interested in and what courses might interest me. Then it found it for me. That was quite amazing in itself.

I'd encourage people to consider using it for part of the research process.

But then all the papers it cites or whatever—then you have to go download those, go read them, do that work yourself.

MELISSA: Yes, because that's when you bring your viewpoint to something. You and I could read the exact same paper and choose very different parts of it to write about and think about, because we're coming at it from different points of view and different journeys that we're trying to explore.

That's where you need the individual to come in. It wouldn't be good enough to just have a generic overview from AI that we both try and slot into our work, because we would want something different from it.

JOANNA: I kind of laugh when people say, “Oh, I can tell when it's AI.” I'm like, you might be able to tell when it's AI writing if nobody has taken that personal spin, but that's not the way we use it. If you're using it that way, that's not how those of us who are independent thinkers are using it.

We're strong enough in our thoughts that we're using it as a tool. You're a confident person—intellectually and creatively confident—but I feel like some people maybe don't have that.

Some people are not strong enough to resist what an AI might suggest. Any thoughts on that?

MELISSA: Yes. When I first tried using AI with very little guidance from anyone, it just felt easy but very wooden and not very related to me. Then I've done webinars with you, and that was really useful—to watch somebody actually live doing the batting back and forth.

That became a lot more interesting because I really like bouncing ideas and messing around with things and brainstorming, essentially, but with somebody else involved that's batting stuff back to you.

“What does that look like?” “No, I didn't mean that at all.” “How about what does this look like?” “Oh no, no, not like that.” “Oh yes, a bit like that, but a bit more like whatever.”

I remember doing that and talking to someone about it, going, “Oh, that's really quite an interesting use of it.” And they said, “Why don't you use a person?”

I said, “Well, because who am I going to call at 8:30 in the morning on a Thursday and go, ‘Look, I want to spend two hours batting back and forth ideas, but I don't want you to talk about your stuff at all. Just my stuff. And you have to only think about my stuff for two hours. And you have to be very well versed in my stuff as well. Could you just do that?'” Who's going to do that for you?

JOANNA: I totally agree with you. Before Christmas, I was doing a paper. It was an art history thing. We had to pick a piece of art or writing and talk about Christian ideas of hell and how it emerged. I was writing this essay and going back and forth with Claude at the time.

My husband came in and saw the fresco I was writing about. He said, “No one's going to talk to you about this. Nobody.”

MELISSA: Yes, exactly.

JOANNA: Nobody cares.

MELISSA: Exactly. Nobody cares as much as you. And they're not prepared to do that at 8:30 on a Thursday morning. They've got other stuff to do.

JOANNA: It's great to hear because I feel like we're now at the point where these tools are genuinely super useful for independent work. I hope that more people might try that.

JOANNA: Okay, we're almost out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online? Also, tell us a bit about the types of books you have.

MELISSA: I mostly write historical fiction. As I say, I've wandered my way through history—I'm a travelling minstrel. I've done ancient Rome, medieval Morocco, 18th century China, and I'm into Regency England now. So that's a bit closer to home for once.

I'm at MelissaAddey.com and you can go and have a bit of a browse and download a free novel if you want. Try me out.

JOANNA: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Melissa.

MELISSA: That was great. Thank you. It was fun.

The post Research Like An Academic, Write Like an Indie With Melissa Addey first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Could live selling be the next big opportunity for indie authors? Adam Beswick shares how organic marketing, live streaming, and direct sales are transforming his author career—and how other writers can do the same.

In the intro, book marketing principles [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Interview with
Tobi Lutke, the CEO and co-founder of Shopify [David Senra]; The Writer's Mind Survey; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn; Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Lab.

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 writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

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

Adam Beswick is a bestselling fantasy author and an expert in TikTok marketing for authors, as well as a former NHS mental health nurse. Adam went full-time as an indie author in 2023 and now runs AP Beswick Publications.

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

How Adam scaled from garden office to warehouse, with his wife leaving her engineering career to join the business

Why organic marketing (free video content) beats paid ads for testing what resonates with readers

The power of live selling: earning £3,500 in one Christmas live stream through TikTok shop

Mystery book bags: a gamified approach to selling that keeps customers coming back

Building an email list of actual buyers through direct sales versus relying on platform algorithms

Why human connection matters more than ever in the age of AI-generated content

You can find Adam at APBeswickPublications.com and on TikTok as @a.p_beswick_publications.

Transcript of interview with Adam Beswick

Jo: Adam Beswick is a bestselling fantasy author and an expert in TikTok marketing for authors, as well as a former NHS mental health nurse. Adam went full-time as an indie author in 2023 and now runs AP Beswick Publications. Welcome back to the show, Adam.

Adam: Hi there, and thank you for having me back.

Jo: Oh, I'm super excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on the show in May 2024, so just under two years, and you had gone full-time as an author the year before that. So just tell us—

What's changed for you in the last couple of years? What does your author business look like now?

Adam: That is terrifying to hear that it was that long ago, because it genuinely feels like it was a couple of months ago. Things have certainly been turbocharged since we last spoke.

Last time we spoke I had a big focus on going into direct sales, and I think if I recall correctly, we were just about to release a book by Alexis Brooke, which was the first book in a series that we had worked with another author on, which was the first time we were doing that.

Since then, we now have six authors on our books, with a range of full agreements or print-only deals. With that focus of direct selling, we have expanded our TikTok shop.

In 2024, I stepped back from TikTok shop just because of constraints around my own time. We took TikTok shop seriously again in 2025 and scaled up to a six-figure revenue stream throughout 2025, effectively starting from scratch.

That means we have had to go from having an office pod in the garden, to my wife now has left her career as a structural engineer to join the business because there was too much for me to manage.

We went from this small office space, to now we have the biggest office space in our office block because we organise our own print runs and do all our distribution worldwide from what we call “AP HQ.”

Jo: And you don't print books, but you have a warehouse.

Adam: Yes, we have a warehouse. We work with different printers to order books in. We print quite large scale—well, large scale to me—volumes of books. Then we have them ordered to here, and then we will sign them all and distribute everything from here.

Jo: Sarah, your wife, being a structural engineer—it seems like she would be a real help in organising a business of warehousing and all of that.

Has that been great [working with your wife]?

Because I worked with my husband for a while and we decided to stop doing that.

Adam: Well, we're still married, so I'm taking that as a win! And funnily enough, we don't actually fall out so much at work. When we do, it's more about me being quite chaotic with how I work, but also I can at times be quite inflexible about how I want things to be done.

But what Sarah's fantastic at is the organisation, the analytics. She runs all the logistical side of things. When we moved into the bigger office space, she insisted on us having different offices. She's literally shoved me on the other side of the building.

So I'm out the way—I can just come in and write, come and do my bit to sign the books, and then she can just get on with organising the orders and getting those packed and sent out to readers.

She manages all the tracking, the customs—all the stuff that would really bog me down. I wouldn't say she necessarily enjoys it when she's getting some cranky emails from people whose books might have gone missing or have been held up at customs, but she's really good at that side.

She's really helped bring systems in place to make sure the fulfilment side is as smooth as possible.

Jo: I think this is so important, and I want everyone to hear you on this. Because at heart, you are the creative, you are a writer, and sure you are building this business, but I feel like one of the biggest mistakes that creative-first authors make is not getting somebody else to help them.

It doesn't have to be a spouse, right? It can also be another professional person. Sacha Black's got various people working for her.

I think you just can't do it alone, right?

Adam: Absolutely not. I would have drowned long before now. When Sarah joined the team, I was at a position where I'd said to her, “Look, I need to look at bringing someone in because I'm drowning.”

It was only then she took a look at where her career was, and she'd done everything she wanted to do. She was a senior engineer. She'd completed all the big projects. I mean, this is a woman who's designed football stands across the UK and some of the biggest barn conversions and school conversions and things like that.

She'd done everything professionally that she'd wanted to and was perhaps losing that passion that she once had.

So she said she was interested, and we said, “Look, why don't you come and spend a bit of time working with me within the business, see whether it works for you, see if we can find an area that works for you—not you working for the business, the business working for you—that we maintain that work-life balance.”

And then if it didn't work, we were in a position where we could set her up to start working for herself as an engineer again, but under her own terms.

Then we just went from strength to strength. We made it through the first year. I think we made it through the first year without any arguments, and she's now been full-time in the business for two years.

Jo: I think that's great. Really good to hear that. Because when I met you, probably in Seville I think it was, I was like, “You are going to hit some difficulty,” because I could see that if you were going to scale as fast as you were aiming to—

There are problems of scale, right? There's a reason why lots of us don't want a bloomin' warehouse.

Adam: Yes, absolutely. I think it's twofold. I am an author at heart—that's my passion—but I'm also a businessman and a creative from a marketing point of view. I always see writing as the passion. The business side and the creating of content—that's the work. So I never see writing as work.

When I was a nurse, I was the nurse that was always put on the wards where no one else wanted to work because that's where I thrived. I thrive in the chaos.

Put me with people who had really challenging behaviour or were really unwell and needed that really intense support, displayed quite often problematic behaviours, and I would thrive in those environments because I'd always like to prove that you can get the best out of anyone.

I very much work in that manner now. The more chaotic, the more pressure-charged the situation is, the better I thrive in that. If I was just sat writing a book and that was it, I'd probably get less done because I'd get bored and I wouldn't feel like I was challenging myself.

As you said, the flip side of that is that risk of burnout is very, very real, and I have come very, very close. But as a former mental health nurse, I am very good at spotting my own signs of when I'm not taking good care of myself. And if I don't, Sarah sure as hell does.

Jo: I think that's great. Really good to hear. Okay, so you talked there about creating the content as work, and—

You have driven your success, I would say, almost entirely with TikTok. Would that be right?

Adam: Well, no, I'd come back and touch on that just to say it isn't just TikTok. I would say definitely organic marketing, but not just TikTok.

I'm always quick to pivot if something isn't working or if there's a dip in sales. I'm always looking at how we can—not necessarily keep growing—but it's about sustaining what you've built so that we can carry on doing this.

If the business stops earning money, I can't keep doing what I love doing, and me and my wife can't keep supporting our family with a stable income, which is what we have now.

I would say TikTok is what started it all, but I did the same as having all my books on Amazon, which is why I switched to doing wide and direct sales: I didn't want all my eggs in one basket.

I was always exploring what platforms I can use to best utilise organic marketing, to the point where my author TikTok channel is probably my third lowest avenue for directing traffic to my store at the moment.

I have a separate channel for my TikTok shop, which generates great traffic, but that's a separate thing because I treat my TikTok shop as a separate audience. That only goes out to a UK audience, whereas my main TikTok channel goes out to a worldwide audience.

Jo: Okay. So we are going to get into TikTok, and I do want to talk about that, but you said TikTok Shop UK and—

Then you mentioned organic marketing. What do you mean by that?

Adam: When I say organic marketing, I mean marketing your books in a way that is not a detriment to your bank balance.

To break that down further: you can be paying for, say for example, you set up a Facebook ad and you are paying five pounds a day just for a testing phase for an ad that potentially isn't going to work.

You potentially have to run 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ads at five pounds a day to find one ad that works, that will make your book profitable. There's a lot of testing, a lot of money that goes into that.

With organic marketing, it's using video marketing or slideshows or carousels on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook—wherever you want to put it—to find the content that does resonate with your readers, that generates sales, and it doesn't cost you anything.

I can create a video on TikTok, put it out there, and it reaches three, four hundred people. That hasn't cost me any money at all. Those three, four hundred people have seen my content. That's not TikTok's job for that to generate sales. That's my job to convert those views into sales.

If it doesn't, I just need to look at the content and say, “Well, that hasn't hit my audience, or if it has, it hasn't resonated. What do I need to do with my content to make it resonate and then transition into sales?”

Once you find something that works, it's just a case of rinse and repeat. Keep tweaking it, keep changing or using variants of that content that's working to generate sales.

If you manage to do that consistently, you've already got content that you know works. So when you've built up consistent sales and you are perhaps earning a few thousand pounds a month—it could be five figures a month—you've then got a pool of money that you've generated.

You can use that then to invest into paid ads, using the content you've already created organically and tested organically for what your audience is going to interact with.

Jo: Okay. I think because I'm old school from the old days, we would've called that content marketing. But I feel like the difference of what you are doing and what TikTok—I think the type of behaviour TikTok has driven is the actual sales, the conversion into sales.

So for example, this interview, right? My podcast is content marketing. It puts our words out in the world and some people find us, and some people buy stuff from us. So it's content marketing, but it's not the way you are analysing content that actually drives sales.

Based on that content, there's no way of tracking any sales that come from this interview. We are just never going to know.

I think that's the big difference between what you are doing with content versus what I and many other, I guess, older creators have done, which is—

We put stuff out there for free, hope that some people might find us, and some of those people might buy.

It's quite different.

Adam: I would still argue that it is organic marketing, because you've got a podcast that people don't have to pay to listen to, that they get enjoyment from, and the byproduct of that is you generate some income passively through that.

If you think of your podcast as one product and your video content is the same—these social media platforms—you don't just post your podcast on one platform.

You will utilise as many platforms as you can, unless you have a brand agreement where a platform is paying you to solely use their platform because you or yourself are the driver for the audience there.

I would say a podcast is a form of organic marketing. I could start a podcast about video marketing. I could start a podcast about reading. The idea being you build up an audience and then when you drop in those releases, that audience then goes and buys that product.

For example, if you've got a self-help book coming out, if you drop that into your podcast, chances are you're going to get a lot more sales from your audience that are here to listen to you as the inspirational storyteller that you are from a business point of view than what you would if you announced that you had a new crime novel coming out or a horror story you've written.

Your audience within here is generally an author audience who are looking to refine their craft—whether that be the writing or the selling of the books or living the dream of being a full-time author. I think it's more a terminology thing.

Jo: Well, let's talk about why I wanted to talk to you. A friend of ours told me that you are doing really well with live sales. This was just before Christmas, I think. And I was like, “Live sales? What does that even mean?”

Then I saw that Kim Kardashian was doing live sales on TikTok and did this “Kim's Must Have” thing, and Snoop Dogg was there, and it was this massive event where they were selling.

I was like, “Oh, it's like TV sales—the TV sales channel where you show things and then people buy immediately.”

And I was like, “Wait, is Adam like the Kim Kardashian of the indie author?”

So tell us about this live sale thing.

Adam: Well, I've not got that far to say that I have the Kim Kardashian status! What it is, is that I'm passionate about learning, but also sharing what's working for me so that other authors can succeed—without what I'm sharing being stuck behind a paywall.

It is a big gripe of mine that you get all these courses and all these things you can do and everything has to be behind a paywall. If I've got the time, I'll just share.

Hence why we were in Vegas doing the presentations for Indie Author Nation, which I think had you been in my talk, Jo, you would've heard me talking about the live selling.

Jo: Oh, I missed it. I'll have to get the replay.

Adam: I only covered a short section of it, but what I actually said within that talk is, for me, live selling is going to be the next big thing. If you are not live selling your books at the moment, and you are not paying attention to it, start paying attention to it.

I started paying attention about six months ago, and I have seen constant growth to a point where I've had to post less content because doing one live stream a week was making more money than me posting content and burning myself out every single day for the TikTok shop.

I did a live stream at the beginning of Christmas, for example. A bit of prep work went into it. We had a whole Christmas set, and within that one live stream we generated three and a half thousand pounds of organic book sales.

Jo: Wow.

Adam: Obviously that isn't something that happened overnight. That took me doing a regular Friday stream from September all the way through to December to build up to that moment.

In fact, I think that was Black Friday, sorry, where we did that. But what I looked at was, “Right, I haven't got the bandwidth because of all the plates I was spinning to go live five days a week. However, I can commit to a Friday morning.”

I can commit to a Friday morning because that is the day when Sarah isn't in the office, and it's my day to pack the orders. So I've already got the orders to pack, so I thought I'll go live whilst I'm packing the orders and just hang out and chat.

I slowly started to find that on average I was earning between three to four hundred pounds doing that, packing orders that I already had to pack. I've just found a way to monetise it and engage with a new audience whilst doing that.

The thing that's key is it is a new audience. You have people who like to consume their content through short-form content or long-form content. Then you have people who like to consume content with human interaction on a live, and it's a completely different ballgame.

What TikTok is enabling us to do—on other platforms I am looking at other platforms for live selling—you can engage with an audience, but because on TikTok you can upload your products, people can buy the products direct whilst you are live on that platform.

For that, you will pay a small fee to TikTok, which is absolutely worth it. That's part of the reason we've been able to scale to having a six-figure business within TikTok shop itself as one revenue stream.

Jo: Okay. So a few things. You mentioned there the integration with TikTok shop. As I've said many times, I'm not on TikTok—I am on Instagram—and on Instagram you can incorporate your Meta catalogue to Shopify.

Do you think the same principle applies to Instagram or YouTube as well?

I think YouTube has an integration with Shopify. Do you think the same thing would work that way?

Adam: I think it's possible. Yes, absolutely. As long as people can click and buy that product from whatever content they are watching—but usually what it will have to do is redirect them to your store, and you've still got all the conversion metrics that have to kick in.

They have to be happy with the shipping, they have to be happy with the product description and stuff like that. With TikTok shop, it's very much a one-stop shop. People click on the product, they can still be watching the video, click to buy something, and not leave the stream.

Jo: So the stream's on, and then let's say you are packing one of your books—

Does that product link just pop up and then people can buy that book as you are packing it?

Adam: So we've got lots and lots of products on our store now. I always have a product link that has all our products listed, and I always keep all of the bundles towards the top because they generate more income than a single book sale.

What will happen is I can showcase a book, I'll tap the screen to show what product it is that I'm packing, and then I'll just talk about it. If people want it, they just click that product link and they can buy it straight away.

What people get a lot of enjoyment from—which I never expected in a million years—is watching people pack their order there and then. As an author, we're not just selling a generic product. We're selling a book that we have written, that we have put our heart and soul into. People love that.

It's a way of letting them into a bit of you, giving them a bit of information, talking to them, showing them how human you are.

If you're on that live stream being an absolute arse and not very nice, people aren't going to buy your books. But if you're being welcoming, you're chatting, you're talking to everyone, you're interacting, you're showcasing books they probably will.

What we do is if someone orders on the live stream, we throw some extra stuff in, so they don't just get the books, they'll get some art prints included, they'll get some bookmarks thrown in, and we've got merch that we'll throw in as a little thank you.

Now it's all stuff that is low cost to us, because actually we're acquiring a customer in that moment. I've got people who come onto every single Friday live stream that I do now.

They have bought every single product in our catalogue and they are harassing me for when the next release is out because they want more, before they even know what that is. They want it because it's being produced by us—because of our brand.

With the lives, what I found is the branding has become really important. We're at a stage where we're being asked—because I'm quite well known for wearing beanie hats on live streams or video content—people are like, “When are you going to release some beanie hats?”

Now and again, Sarah will drop some AP branded merch. It'll be beer coasters with the AP logo on, or a tote bag with the AP logo on. It's not stuff that we sell at this stage—we give them away.

The more money people spend, the more stuff we put in. And people are like, “No, no, you need to add these to the store because we want to buy them.”

The brand itself is growing, not just the book sales. It's becoming better known. We've got Pacificon in April, and there's so many people on that live stream that have bought tickets to meet us in person at this conference in April, which is amazing. There's so much going on.

With TikTok shop, it only works in the country where you are based, so it only goes out to a UK audience, which is why I keep it separate from my main channel. That means we're tapping into a completely new audience, because up until last year, I'd always targeted America—that's where my biggest readership was.

Jo: Wow. There's so much to this. Okay. First of all, most people are not going to have their own warehouse. Most people are not going to be packing live.

So for authors who are selling on, let's just say Amazon, can live sales still work for them?

Could they still go live at a regular time every week and talk about a book and see if that drives sales, even if it's at Amazon?

Adam: Yes, absolutely. I would test that because ultimately you're creating a brand, you're putting yourself out there, and you're consistently showing up.

You can have people that have never heard of you just stumble across your live and think, “What are they doing there?” They're a bit curious, so they might ask some questions, they might not. They might see some other interactions. There's a million and one things you can do on that live to generate conversation.

I've done it where I've had 150 books to sign, so I've just lined up the books, stood in front of the camera, switched the camera on while I'm signing the books, and just chatted away to people without any product links.

People will come back and be like, “Oh, I've just been to your store and bought through your series,” and stuff like that. So absolutely that can work. The key is putting in the work and setting it up.

I started out by getting five copies of one book, signing them, and selling them on TikTok shop. I sold them in a day, and then that built up to effectively what we have now. That got my eyes open for direct selling.

When I was working with BookVault and they were integrated with my store, orders came to me, but then they went to BookVault—they printed and distributed.

Then we got to a point scaling-wise where we thought, “If we want to take this to the next level, we need to take on distribution ourselves,” because the profit lines are better, the margins are bigger.

That's why we started doing it ourselves, but only once we'd had a proven track record of sales spanning 18 months to two years and had the confidence.

It was actually with myself and Sacha that we set up at the same time and egged each other on. I think I was just a tiny bit ahead of her with setting up a warehouse. And then as you've seen, Sacha's gone from strength to strength.

It doesn't come without its trigger warnings in the sense of it isn't an easy thing to do. I think you have to have a certain skill set for live selling. You have to have a certain mindset for the physicality that comes with it.

When we've had a delivery of two and a half thousand books and we've got to bring them up to the first floor where the office is—I don't have a massive team of people. It's myself and Sarah, and every now and again we get my dad in to help us because he's retired now. We'll give him a bottle of wine as a thank you.

Jo: You need to give him some more wine, I think!

Adam: Yes! But you've gotta be able to roll your sleeves up and do the work.

I think if you've got the work ethic and that drive to succeed, then absolutely anyone can do it. There's nothing special about my books in that sense.

I've got a group called Novel Gains where I've actually started a monthly challenge yesterday, and we've got nearly two and a half thousand people in the group now.

The group has never been more active because it's really energised and charged. People have seen the success stories, and people are going on lives who never thought it would work for them.

Lee Mountford put a post up yesterday on the first day of this challenge just to say, “Look, a year ago I was where you were when Adam did the last challenge. I thought I can't do organic marketing, I can't get myself on camera.”

Organic marketing and live selling is now equating to 50% of his income.

Jo: And he doesn't have a warehouse.

Adam: Well, he scaled up to it now, so he's got two lockups because he scaled up.

He started off small, then he thought, “Right, I'm going to go for it.” He ordered a print run of a few of his books—I think 300 copies of three books. Bundled them up, sold them out within a few months.

Then he's just scaled from there because he's seen by creating the content, by doing the lives, that it's just creating a revenue stream that he wasn't tapping into.

Last January when we did the challenge, he was really engaged throughout the process. He was really analytical with the results he was getting. But he didn't stop after 30 days when that challenge finished. He went away behind the scenes for the next 11 months and has continued to grow. He is absolutely thriving now.

Him and his wife—a husband and wife team—his wife is also an author, and they've now added her spicy books to their TikTok shop. They're just selling straight away because he's built up the audience. He's built up that connection.

Jo: I think that's great. And I love hearing this because I built my business on what I've called content marketing—you're calling it organic marketing. So I think it's really good to know that it's still possible; it's just a different kind.

Now I just wanna get some specifics. One—

Where can people find your Novel Gains stuff?

Adam: So Novel Gains is an online community on Facebook. As I said, there's no website, there's no fancy website, there's no paid course or anything. It is just people holding themselves accountable and listening to my ramblings every now and again when I try and share pills of wisdom to try and motivate and inspire.

I also ask other successful authors to drop their story about organic marketing on there, to again get people fired up and show what can be achieved.

Jo: Okay. That's on Facebook.

So then let's talk about the setup. I think a lot of the time I get concerned about video because I think everything has to be on my phone.

How are you setting this up technically so you can get filmed and also see comments and all of this kind of stuff?

Adam: Just with my phone.

Jo: It is just on your phone?

Adam: Yes. I don't use any fancy camera tricks or anything. I literally just settle my phone and hit record when I'm doing it.

Jo: But you set it up on a tripod or something?

Adam: Yes. So I'll have a tripod. I don't do any fancy lighting or anything like that because I want the content to seem as real as possible.

I'll set up the camera at an angle that shows whatever task I'm doing. For example, if I'm packing orders, I can see the screen so I can see the comments as they're coming up. It's close enough to me to interact.

At Christmas, we did have a bit of a setup—it did look like a QVC channel, I'm not going to lie! I was at the back. There was a table in front of me with products on. We had mystery book bags. We had a Christmas tree. We had a big banner behind me.

The camera was on the other side of the room, but I just had my laptop next to me that was logged into TikTok, so I was watching the live stream so I could see any comments coming up.

Jo: Yes, that's the thing. So you can have a different screen with the comments. Because that's what I'm concerned about—it might just be the eyesight thing, but I'm like, I just can't literally do everything on the phone.

Adam: TikTok has a studio—TikTok Studio—that you can download, and you can get all your data and analytics in there for your live streams.

At the moment, I'll just tap the screen to add a new product or pin a new product. You can do all that from your computer on this studio where you can say, “Right, I'm showcasing this product now,” click on it and it'll come up onto the live stream. You just have to link the two together.

Jo: I'm really thinking about this. Partly this is great because my other concern with TikTok and all these video channels is how much can be done by AI now. TikTok has its own AI generation stuff.

A lot of it's amazing. I'm not saying it's bad quality, I'm saying it's amazing quality, but—

What AI can't do is the live stuff.

You just can't—I mean, I imagine you can fake it, but you can't fake it.

Adam: Well, you'd be surprised. I've seen live streams where it's like an avatar on the screen and there is someone talking and then the avatar moving in live as that person's talking.

Jo: Right?

Adam: I've seen that where it's animals, I've seen it where it's like a 3D person. There's a really popular stream at the minute that is just a cartoon cat on the stream. Whenever you send a gift, it starts singing whoever sent it—it gets a name—and that's a system that someone has somehow set up.

I have no idea how they've set it up, but they're literally not doing it. That can run 24 hours a day. There's always hundreds and hundreds of people on it sending gifts to hear this cat sing with an AI voice their name.

Yes, AI will work and it will work for different things. But I think with us and with our books, people want that human connection more than ever because of AI. Use that to your advantage.

Jo: Okay. So the other thing I like about this idea is you are doing these live sales and then you are looking at the amount you've sold. But are you making changes to it? Or are you only tweaking the content on your prerecorded stuff?

Your live is so natural. How are you going to change it up, I guess?

Adam: I am always testing what is working, what's not working. For example, I'm a big nerd at heart and I collect Pokémon cards. Now that I'm older, I can afford some of the more rare stuff, and me and my daughter have a lot of enjoyment collecting Pokémon cards together.

We follow channels, we watch stuff on YouTube, and I was looking at what streamers do with Pokémon cards and how they sell like mystery products on an app or whatnot.

I was like, “How can I apply this to books?” And I came up with the idea of doing mystery book bags. People pay 20 pounds, they get some goodies—some carefully curated goodies, as we say, that “Mrs. B” has put together.

On stream, I never give the audience Sarah's name. It's always “Mrs. B.” So Mrs. B has built up her own brand within the stream—they go feral when she comes on camera to say hi!

Then there's some goodies in there. That could be some tote socks, a tote bag, cup holders, page holders, metal pins, things like that. Then inside that, I'll pull out a thing that will say what book they're getting from our product catalogue.

What I make clear is that could be anything from our product catalogue. So that could be a single book, it could be six books, it could be a three-book bundle. There's all sorts that people can get. It could be a deluxe special edition.

People love that, and they tend to buy it because there's so much choice and they might be struggling with, “Right, I don't know what to get.” So they think, “You know what? I'll buy one of them mystery book bags.”

I only do them when I'm live. I've done streams where the camera's on me. I've done top-down streams where you can only see my hands and these mystery book bags. Every time someone orders one, I'm just opening it live and showcasing what product they get from the stream.

People love it to the point where every stream I do, they're like, “When are you doing the next mystery book bags? When are you doing the next ones?”

Jo: So if we were on live now and I click to buy, you see the order with my name and you just write “Jo” on it, and then you put it in a pile?

Adam: So you print labels there and then, which I'll do. Exactly. If I'm live packing them—I'm not going to lie—when I'm set up properly, I don't have time to pack them because the orders are coming in that thick and fast.

All I do is have a Post-it note next to me, and I'll write down their username, then I'll stick that onto their order. I'll collect everything, showcase what they're getting, the extra goodies that they're getting with their order, and then I'll stick the Post-it on and put that to one side.

To put that into context as something that works through testing different things: we started off doing 60 book bags—30 of them were spicy book bags, 30 were general fantasy which had my books and a couple of our authors that haven't got spice in their books—and the aim was to sell them within a month.

We sold them within one stream. 60 book bags at 20 pounds a pop. What that also generated is people then buying other products while we're doing it. It also meant that I'd do it all on a Friday, and we'd come in on a Monday and start the week with 40, 50, 60 orders to pack regardless of what's coming from the Shopify store.

The level of orders is honestly obscene, but we've continuously learned how best to manage this. We learned that actually, if you showcase the orders, stick a Post-it on, when we print the shipping labels, it takes us five minutes to just put all the shipping labels with everyone's orders.

Then we can just fire through packing everything up because everything's already bundled together. It literally just needs putting in a box.

Jo: Okay. So there's so much we could talk about, but hopefully people will look into this more. So I went to go watch a video—I thought, “Oh, well, I'll just go watch Adam do this. I'm sure there's a recording”—and then I couldn't find one. So tell me about that.

Does [the live recording] just disappear or what?

Adam: Yes, it does. It's live for a reason. You can download it afterwards if you want, and then you've got content to repurpose.

In fact, you're giving me an idea. I've done a live today—I could download that clip that's an hour and 20 minutes long. Some of it, I'm just rambling, but some of it's got some content that I could absolutely use because I'm engaging with people.

I've showcased books throughout it because I've been packing orders. I had an hour window before this podcast and I had a handful of orders to pack. So I just jumped on a live and I made like 250 pounds while doing a job that I would already be having to do.

I could download that video, put it in OpusClip, and that will then generate short-form content for me of the meaningful interaction through that, based on the parameters that I give it. So that's absolutely something you could do. In fact, I'm probably going to do it now that you've given me the idea.

Jo: Because even if it was on another channel, like you could put that one on YouTube.

Adam: Yes. Wherever you want. It doesn't have a watermark on it.

Jo: And what did you say? OpusClip?

Adam: OpusClip, yes. If you do long-form content of any kind, you can put that in and then it'll pull out meaningful content. Loads of like 20, 30 short-form content video clips that you can use. It's a brilliant piece of software if you use it the right way.

Jo: Okay. Well I want you to repurpose that because I want to watch you in action, but I'm not going to turn up for your live—although now I'm like, “Oh, I really must.”

So does that also mean—you said it's UK only because the TikTok shop is linked to the UK—

So people in America can't even see it?

Adam: So sometimes they do pop in, but again, that's why I have a separate channel for my main author account.

When I go live on that, anyone from around the world can come in. But if I've got shoppable links in, chances are the algorithm is just going to put that out to a UK audience because that's where TikTok will then make money.

If I want to hit my US audience, I'll jump on Instagram because that's where I've got my biggest following. So I'll jump on Instagram and go live over there at a time that I know will be appropriate for Americans.

Jo: Okay. We could talk forever, but I do have just a question about TikTok itself. All of these platforms seem to follow a way of things where at the beginning it's much easier to get reach. It is truly organic. It's really amazing.

Then they start putting on various brakes—like Facebook added groups, and then you couldn't reach people in your groups. And then you had to pay to play.

Then in the US of course, we've got a sale that has been signed. Who knows what will happen there.

What are your thoughts on how TikTok has changed? What might go on this year, and how are you preparing?

Adam: So, I think as a businessman and an author who wants to reach readers, I use the platforms for what I can get out of them without having to spend a stupid amount of money. If those platforms stop working for me, I'll stop using them and find one that does.

With organic reach on TikTok, I think you'll always have a level of that. Is it harder now? Yes. Does that mean it's not achievable? Absolutely not.

If your content isn't reaching people, or you're not getting the engagement that you want, or you find fulfilling, you need to look at yourself and the content you are putting out. You are in control of that.

There's elements of this takeover in America—again, I've got zero control over that, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I'll focus on areas that are making a difference.

As I said, TikTok isn't the biggest earner for my business. My author channel's been absolutely dead for a good six months or so. But that means I get stagnant with the content I'm creating. So the challenge I'm doing at the minute, I'm taking part to create fresh content every day to recharge myself.

I've got Instagram and Facebook that generate high volumes of traffic every single day. And usually if they stop, TikTok starts to work.

Any algorithm changes—things will change when it changes hands in America—but primarily it still wants to make money. It's a business.

If anything, it might make it harder for us to reach America because it will want to focus on reaching an American audience for the people that are buying TikTok shop. But they want it because they want the TikTok shop because of the amount of money that it is generating.

It's gone from a small amount of people making money to large volumes of businesses across the entire USA—like over here now—that are reaching an audience that previously you had to have deep pockets to reach, to get your business set up.

Now you've got all these businesses popping up that are starting from scratch because they're reaching people. They've got a product that's marketable, that people want to enjoy. They want to be part of that growth.

I think that will still happen. It might just be a few of the parameters change, like Facebook does all the time.

Jo: Things will always change. That is key.

We should also say by selling direct, you've built presumably a very big email list of buyers as well.

Adam: Yes. I've actually got a trophy that Shopify sent me because we hit 10,000 sales—10,000 customers. I think we're nearing 16,000 sales on there now.

We've got all that customer data. We don't get that on TikTok. We haven't got the customer data.

Jo: Ah, that's interesting. Okay.

How do you not though? Oh, because—did they ship it?

Adam: So if you link it with your Shopify and you do all your shipping direct, the customer data has to come to your Shopify, otherwise you can't ship.

When TikTok ship it for you—so I print the shipping labels, but they organise the couriers—all the customer data's blotted out. It's like redacted, so you don't see it.

Jo: Ah, see that is in itself a cheeky move.

Adam: Yes. But if it's linked to your Shopify, you get all that data and your Shopify is your store. So your Shopify will keep that data. They kept affecting how I extracted the shipping labels and stuff like that, and just kept making life really difficult. So I've just switched it back.

I think Sarah has found an app that works really well for correlating the two.

Jo: Yes, but this is a really big deal. We carp on about it all the time, but—

If you sell direct and you do get the customer data, you are building an email list of actual buyers as opposed to freebie seekers.

Which a lot of people have.

Adam: Absolutely, and that's the same for you. If you send poor products out or your customer has a poor experience, they're not going to come back and order from you again.

If your customer has a really good experience and opens the products and sees all this extra care that's gone in and all the books are signed, then they've not had to pay extra.

There was a Kickstarter—I'm not going to name which author it was—but it was an author whose book I was quite excited to back. They had these special editions they'd done, but you had to buy a special edition for an extra 30 quid if you wanted it signed.

I was like, “Absolutely not.” If these people are putting their hands in their pockets for these deluxe special editions, and if you're a big name author, it's certainly not them that have anything to do with it. They just have other companies do it all for them.

Whereas with us, you are creating everything. Our way of saying thank you to everyone is by signing the book.

Jo: I love that you're still so enthusiastic about it and that it seems to be going really well. So we're almost out of time, but just quickly—

Tell people a bit more about the books that they can find in your stores and where people can find them.

Adam: Yes. So we publish predominantly fantasy, and we have moved into the spicy fantasy world. We have a few series there.

You can check out APBeswickPublications.com where you will see our full product catalogue and all of my books.

On TikTok shop, we are under a.p_beswick_publications. That's the best place to see where I go live—short-form content. I'll post spicy books on there, but on lives, I showcase everything.

I also have fantasy.books.uk, where that's where you'll see the videos or product links for the non-spicy fantasy books.

Jo: And what time do you go live in the UK?

Adam: So I go live 8:00 AM every Friday morning.

Jo: Wow. Okay. I might even have to check that out. This has been so great, Adam. Thanks so much for your time.

Adam: Well, thank you for having me.
The post Selling Books Live On Social Media With Adam Beswick first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What if the most transformative thing you can do for your writing craft and author business is to face what you fear? How can you can find gold in your Shadow in the year ahead? In this episode, I share chapters from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words.

In the intro, curated book boxes from Bridgerton's Julia Quinn; Google's agentic shopping, and powering Apple's Siri; ChatGPT Ads; and Claude CoWork.

Balancing Certainty and Uncertainty [MoonShots with Tony Robbins]; and three trends for authors with me and Orna Ross [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; plus, Bones of the Deep, Business for Authors, and Indie Author Lab.

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

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

What is the Shadow?

The ‘creative wound' and the Shadow in writing

The Shadow in traditional publishing

The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author

The Shadow in work

The Shadow in money

You can find Writing the Shadow in all formats on all stores, as well as special edition, workbook and bundles at www.TheCreativePenn.com/shadowbook

Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words

The following chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn.

Introduction. What is the Shadow?

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

We all have a Shadow side and it is the work of a lifetime to recognise what lies within and spin that base material into gold.

Think of it as a seedling in a little pot that you’re given when you’re young. It’s a bit misshapen and weird, not something you would display in your living room, so you place it in a dark corner of the basement.

You don’t look at it for years. You almost forget about it.

Then one day you notice tendrils of something wild poking up through the floorboards. They’re ugly and don’t fit with your Scandi-minimalist interior design. You chop the tendrils away and pour weedkiller on what’s left, trying to hide the fact that they were ever there.

But the creeping stems keep coming.

At some point, you know you have to go down there and face the wild thing your seedling has become.

When you eventually pluck up enough courage to go down into the basement, you discover that the plant has wound its roots deep into the foundations of your home. Its vines weave in and out of the cracks in the walls, and it has beautiful flowers and strange fruit.

It holds your world together.

Perhaps you don’t need to destroy the wild tendrils. Perhaps you can let them wind up into the light and allow their rich beauty to weave through your home. It will change the look you have so carefully cultivated, but maybe that’s just what the place needs.

The Shadow in psychology

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of analytical psychology. He described the Shadow as an unconscious aspect of the human personality, those parts of us that don’t match up to what is expected of us by family and society, or to our own ideals.

The Shadow is not necessarily evil or illegal or immoral, although of course it can be. It’s also not necessarily caused by trauma, abuse, or any other severely damaging event, although again, it can be.

It depends on the individual.

What is in your Shadow is based on your life and your experiences, as well as your culture and society, so it will be different for everyone.

Psychologist Connie Zweig, in The Inner Work of Age, explains,

“The Shadow is that part of us that lies beneath or behind the light of awareness. It contains our rejected, unacceptable traits and feelings. It contains our hidden gifts and talents that have remained unexpressed or unlived. As Jung put it, the essence of the Shadow is pure gold.”

To further illustrate the concept, Robert Bly, in A Little Book on the Human Shadow,uses the following metaphor:

“When we are young, we carry behind us an invisible bag, into which we stuff any feelings, thoughts, or behaviours that bring disapproval or loss of love—anger, tears, neediness, laziness. By the time we go to school, our bags are already a mile long.

In high school, our peer groups pressure us to stuff the bags with even more—individuality, sexuality, spontaneity, different opinions. We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding which parts of ourselves to put into the bag and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.”

As authors, we can use what’s in the ‘bag’ to enrich our writing — but only if we can access it. My intention with this book is to help you venture into your Shadow and bring some of what’s hidden into the light and into your words.

I’ll reveal aspects of my Shadow in these pages but ultimately, this book is about you. Your Shadow is unique. There may be elements we share, but much will be different.

Each chapter has questions for you to consider that may help you explore at least the edges of your Shadow, but it’s not easy. As Jung said,

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

But take heart, Creative. You don’t need courage when things are easy. You need it when you know what you face will be difficult, but you do it anyway.

We are authors. We know how to do hard things.

We turn ideas into books. We manifest thoughts into ink on paper.

We change lives with our writing. First, our own, then other people’s. It’s worth the effort to delve into Shadow, so I hope you will join me on the journey.

The creative wound and the Shadow in writing

“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.” —Susan Cain, Bittersweet 

The more we long for something, the more extreme our desire, the more likely it is to have a Shadow side. For those of us who love books, the author life may well be a long-held dream and thus, it is filled with Shadow.

Books have long been objects of desire, power, and authority. They hold a mythic status in our lives. We escaped into stories as children; we studied books at school and college; we read them now for escape and entertainment, education and inspiration. We collect beautiful books to put on our shelves. We go to them for solace and answers to the deepest questions of life.

Writers are similarly held in high esteem. They shape culture, win literary prizes, give important speeches, and are quoted in the mainstream media. Their books are on the shelves in libraries and bookstores. Writers are revered, held up as rare, talented creatures made separate from us by their brilliance and insight.

For bibliophile children, books were everything and to write one was a cherished dream. To become an author? Well, that would mean we might be someone special, someone worthy.

Perhaps when you were young, you thought the dream of being a writer was possible — then you told someone about it.

That’s probably when you heard the first criticism of such a ridiculous idea, the first laughter, the first dismissal. So you abandoned the dream, pushed the idea of being a writer into the Shadow, and got on with your life.

Or if it wasn’t then, it came later, when you actually put pen to paper and someone — a parent, teacher, partner, or friend, perhaps even a literary agent or publisher, someone whose opinion you valued — told you it was worthless.

Here are some things you might have heard:

Writing is a hobby. Get a real job.

You’re not good enough. You don’t have any writing talent.

You don’t have enough education. You don’t know what you’re doing.

Your writing is derivative / unoriginal / boring / useless / doesn’t make sense.

The genre you write in is dead / worthless / unacceptable / morally wrong / frivolous / useless. 

Who do you think you are? No one would want to read what you write.

You can’t even use proper grammar, so how could you write a whole book?

You’re wasting your time. You’ll never make it as a writer.

You shouldn’t write those things (or even think about those things). Why don’t you write something nice?

Insert other derogatory comment here!

Mark Pierce describes the effect of this experience in his book The Creative Wound, which “occurs when an event, or someone’s actions or words, pierce you, causing a kind of rift in your soul. A comment—even offhand and unintentional—is enough to cause one.”

He goes on to say that such words can inflict “damage to the core of who we are as creators. It is an attack on our artistic identity, resulting in us believing that whatever we make is somehow tainted or invalid, because shame has convinced us there is something intrinsically tainted or invalid about ourselves.”

As adults, we might brush off such wounds, belittling them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We might even find ourselves saying the same words to other people. After all, it’s easier to criticise than to create.

But if you picture your younger self, bright eyed as you lose yourself in your favourite book, perhaps you might catch a glimpse of what you longed for before your dreams were dashed on the rocks of other people’s reality.

As Mark Pierce goes on to say,

“A Creative Wound has the power to delay our pursuits—sometimes for years—and it can even derail our lives completely… Anything that makes us feel ashamed of ourselves or our work can render us incapable of the self-expression we yearn for.”

This is certainly what happened to me, and it took decades to unwind.

Your creative wounds will differ to mine but perhaps my experience will help you explore your own. To be clear, your Shadow may not reside in elements of horror as mine do, but hopefully you can use my example to consider where your creative wounds might lie.

“You shouldn’t write things like that.”

It happened at secondary school around 1986 or 1987, so I would have been around eleven or twelve years old. English was one of my favourite subjects and the room we had our lessons in looked out onto a vibrant garden. I loved going to that class because it was all about books, and they were always my favourite things.

One day, we were asked to write a story. I can’t remember the specifics of what the teacher asked us to write, but I fictionalised a recurring nightmare.

I stood in a dark room.

On one side, my mum and my brother, Rod, were tied up next to a cauldron of boiling oil, ready to be thrown in. On the other side, my dad and my little sister, Lucy, were threatened with decapitation by men with machetes.

I had to choose who would die.

I always woke up, my heart pounding, before I had to choose.

Looking back now, it clearly represented an internal conflict about having to pick sides between the two halves of my family. Not an unexpected issue from a child of divorce.

Perhaps these days, I might have been sent to the school counsellor, but it was the eighties and I don’t think we even had such a thing. Even so, the meaning of the story isn’t the point. It was the reaction to it that left scars.

“You shouldn’t write things like that,” my teacher said, and I still remember her look of disappointment, even disgust.

Certainly judgment.

She said my writing was too dark. It wasn’t a proper story. It wasn’t appropriate for the class.

As if horrible things never happened in stories — or in life.

As if literature could not include dark tales.

As if the only acceptable writing was the kind she approved of. We were taught The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that year, which says a lot about the type of writing considered appropriate.

Or perhaps the issue stemmed from the school motto, “So hateth she derknesse,” from Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women: “For fear of night, so she hates the darkness.”

I had won a scholarship to a private girls’ school, and their mission was to turn us all into proper young ladies. Horror was never on the curriculum.

Perhaps if my teacher had encouraged me to write my darkness back then, my nightmares would have dissolved on the page.

Perhaps if we had studied Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or H.P. Lovecraft stories, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I could have embraced the darker side of literature earlier in my life.

My need to push darker thoughts into my Shadow was compounded by my (wonderful) mum’s best intentions. We were brought up on the principles of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and she tried to shield me and my brother from anything harmful or horrible. We weren’t allowed to watch TV much, and even the British school drama Grange Hill was deemed inappropriate.

So much of what I’ve achieved is because my mum instilled in me a “can do” attitude that anything is possible. I’m so grateful to her for that. (I love you, Mum!)

But all that happy positivity, my desire to please her, to be a good girl, to make my teachers proud, and to be acceptable to society, meant that I pushed my darker thoughts into Shadow.

They were inappropriate. They were taboo. They must be repressed, kept secret, and I must be outwardly happy and positive at all times.

You cannot hold back the darkness

“The night is dark and full of terrors.” —George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

It turned out that horror was on the curriculum, much of it in the form of educational films we watched during lessons.

In English Literature, we watched Romeo drink poison and Juliet stab herself in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.

In Religious Studies, we watched Jesus beaten, tortured, and crucified in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and learned of the variety of gruesome ways that Christian saints were martyred.

In Classical Civilisation, we watched gladiators slaughter each other in Spartacus.

In Sex Education at the peak of the AIDS crisis in the mid-’80s, we were told of the many ways we could get infected and die.

In History, we studied the Holocaust with images of skeletal bodies thrown into mass graves, medical experiments on humans, and grainy videos of marching soldiers giving the Nazi salute.

One of my first overseas school field trips was to the World War I battlegrounds of Flanders Fields in Belgium, where we studied the inhuman conditions of the trenches, walked through mass graves, and read war poetry by candlelight. As John McCrae wrote:

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie, 
In Flanders fields.

Did the teachers not realise how deeply a sensitive teenager might feel the darkness of that place? Or have I always been unusual in that places of blood echo deep inside me?

And the horrors kept coming.

We lived in Bristol, England back then and I learned at school how the city had been part of the slave trade, its wealth built on the backs of people stolen from their homes, sold, and worked to death in the colonies. I had been at school for a year in Malawi, Africa and imagined the Black people I knew drowning, being beaten, and dying on those ships.

In my teenage years, the news was filled with ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and massacres during the Balkan wars, and images of bodies hacked apart during the Rwandan genocide. Evil committed by humans against other humans was not a historical aberration.

I’m lucky and I certainly acknowledge my privilege. Nothing terrible or horrifying has happened to me — but bad things certainly happen to others.

I wasn’t bullied or abused. I wasn’t raped or beaten or tortured.

But you don’t have to go through things to be afraid of them, and for your imagination to conjure the possibility of them.

My mum doesn’t read my fiction now as it gives her nightmares (Sorry, Mum!). I know she worries that somehow she’s responsible for my darkness, but I’ve had a safe and (mostly) happy life, for which I’m truly grateful.

But the world is not an entirely safe and happy place, and for a sensitive child with a vivid imagination, the world is dark and scary.

It can be brutal and violent, and bad things happen, even to good people.

No parent can shield their child from the reality of the world. They can only help them do their best to live in it, develop resilience, and find ways to deal with whatever comes.

Story has always been a way that humans have used to learn how to live and deal with difficult times. The best authors, the ones that readers adore and can’t get enough of, write their darkness into story to channel their experience, and help others who fear the same.

In an interview on writing the Shadow on The Creative Penn Podcast, Michaelbrent Collings shared how he incorporated a personally devastating experience into his writing: 

“My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, Apparition. It’s not terrifying because it’s the greatest book of all time, but just the concept that there’s this thing out there… like a demon, and it consumes the blood and fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of the parents… I wrote that in large measure as a way of working through what I was experiencing.”

I’ve learned much from Michaelbrent. I’ve read many of his (excellent) books and he’s been on my podcast multiple times talking about his depression and mental health issues, as well as difficulties in his author career. Writing darkness is not in Michaelbrent’s Shadow and only he can say what lies there for him. But from his example, and from that of other authors, I too learned how to write my Shadow into my books.

Twenty-three years after that English lesson, in November 2009, I did NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and wrote five thousand words of what eventually became Stone of Fire, my first novel.

In the initial chapter, I burned a nun alive on the ghats of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges River. I had watched the bodies burn by night on pyres from a boat bobbing in the current a few years before, and the image was still crystal clear in my mind. The only way to deal with how it made me feel about death was to write about it — and since then, I’ve never stopped writing.

Returning to the nightmare from my school days, I’ve never had to choose between the two halves of my family, but the threat of losing them remains a theme in my fiction. In my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra will do anything to save her sister and her niece. Their safety drives her to continue to fight against evil.

Our deepest fears emerge in our writing, and that’s the safest place for them. I wish I’d been taught how to turn my nightmares into words back at school, but at least now I’ve learned to write my Shadow onto the page. I wish the same for you.

The Shadow in traditional publishing

If becoming an author is your dream, then publishing a book is deeply entwined with that. But as Mark Pierce says in The Creative Wound,

“We feel pain the most where it matters the most… Desire highlights whatever we consider to be truly significant.”

There is a lot of desire around publishing for those of us who love books!

It can give you:

Validation that your writing is good enough

Status and credibility

Acceptance by an industry held in esteem 

The potential of financial reward and critical acclaim

Support from a team of professionals who know how to make fantastic books

A sense of belonging to an elite community

Pride in achieving a long-held goal, resulting in a confidence boost and self-esteem

Although not guaranteed, traditional publishing can give you all these things and more, but as with everything, there is a potential Shadow side.

Denying it risks the potential of being disillusioned, disappointed, and even damaged. But remember, forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Preparation can help you avoid potential issues and help you feel less alone if you encounter them.

The myth of success… and the reality of experience

There is a pervasive myth of success in the traditional publishing industry, perpetuated by media reporting on brand name and breakout authors, those few outliers whose experience is almost impossible to replicate.

Because of such examples, many new traditionally published authors think that their first book will hit the top of the bestseller charts or win an award, as well as make them a million dollars — or at least a big chunk of cash. They will be able to leave their job, write in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean, and swan around the world attending conferences, while writing more bestselling books. It will be a charmed life.

But that is not the reality.

Perhaps it never was.

Even so, the life of a traditionally published author represents a mythic career with the truth hidden behind a veil of obscurity.

In April 2023, The Bookseller in the UK reported that

“more than half of authors (54%) responding to a survey on their experiences of publishing their debut book have said the process negatively affected their mental health. Though views were mixed, just 22%… described a positive experience overall… Among the majority who said they had a negative experience of debut publication, anxiety, stress, depression and ‘lowered’ self-esteem were cited, with lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher among the factors that contributed.”

Many authors who have negative experiences around publishing will push them into the Shadow with denial or self-blame, preferring to keep the dream alive. They won’t talk about things in public as this may negatively affect their careers, but private discussions are often held in the corners of writing conferences or social media groups online.

Some of the issues are as follows:

Repeated rejection by agents and publishers may lead to the author thinking they are not good enough as a writer, which can lead to feeling unworthy as a person. If an author gets a deal, the amount of advance and the name and status of the publisher compared to others create a hierarchy that impacts self-esteem.

A deal for a book may be much lower than an author might have been expecting, with low or no advance, and the resulting experience with the publisher beneath expectations.

The launch process may be disappointing, and the book may appear without fanfare, with few sales and no bestseller chart position.

In The Bookseller report, one author described her launch day as

“a total wasteland… You have expectations about what publication day will be like, but in reality, nothing really happens.”

The book may receive negative reviews by critics or readers or more publicly on social media, which can make an author feel attacked.

The book might not sell as well as expected, and the author may feel like it’s their fault. Commercial success can sometimes feel tied to self-worth and an author can’t help but compare their sales to others, with resulting embarrassment or shame.

The communication from the publisher may be less than expected. One author in The Bookseller report said,

“I was shocked by the lack of clarity and shared information and the cynicism that underlies the superficial charm of this industry.”

There is often more of a focus on debut authors in publishing houses, so those who have been writing and publishing in the midlist for years can feel ignored and undervalued.

In The Bookseller report, 48 percent of authors reported “their publisher supported them for less than a year,” with one saying,

“I got no support and felt like a commodity, like the team had moved on completely to the next book.”

If an author is not successful enough, the next deal may be lower than the last, less effort is made with marketing, and they may be let go.

In The Bookseller report, “six authors—debut and otherwise—cited being dropped by their publisher, some with no explanation.”

Even if everything goes well and an author is considered successful by others, they may experience imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud when speaking at conferences or doing book signings.

And the list goes on …

All these things can lead to feelings of shame, inadequacy, and embarrassment; loss of status in the eyes of peers; and a sense of failure if a publishing career is not successful enough.

The author feels like it’s their fault, like they weren’t good enough — although, of course, the reality is that the conditions were not right at the time. A failure of a book is not a failure of the person, but it can certainly feel like it!

When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power

Despite all the potential negatives of traditional publishing, if you know what could happen, you can mitigate them. You can prepare yourself for various scenarios and protect yourself from potential fall-out.

It’s clear from The Bookseller report that too many authors have unrealistic expectations of the industry.

But publishers are businesses, not charities.

It’s not their job to make you feel good as an author. It’s their job to sell books and pay you. The best thing they can do is to continue to be a viable business so they can keep putting books on the shelves and keep paying authors, staff, and company shareholders.

When you license your creative work to a publisher, you’re giving up control of your intellectual property in exchange for money and status.

Bring your fears and issues out of the Shadow, acknowledge them, and deal with them early, so they do not get pushed down and re-emerge later in blame and bitterness.

Educate yourself on the business of publishing. Be clear on what you want to achieve with any deal. Empower yourself as an author, take responsibility for your career, and you will have a much better experience.

The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author

Self-publishing, or being an independent (indie) author, can be a fantastic, pro-active choice for getting your book into the world. Holding your first book in your hand and saying “I made this” is pretty exciting, and even after more than forty books, I still get excited about seeing ideas in my head turn into a physical product in the world.

Self-publishing can give an author:

Creative control over what to write, editorial and cover design choices, when and how often to publish, and how to market

Empowerment over your author career and the ability to make choices that impact success without asking for permission

Ownership and control of intellectual property assets, resulting in increased opportunity around licensing and new markets

Independence and the potential for recurring income for the long term

Autonomy and flexibility around timelines, publishing options, and the ability to easily pivot into new genres and business models

Validation based on positive reader reviews and money earned

Personal growth and learning through the acquisition of new skills, resulting in a boost in confidence and self-esteem

A sense of belonging to an active and vibrant community of indie authors around the world

Being an indie author can give you all this and more, but once again, there is a Shadow side and preparation can help you navigate potential issues.

The myth of success… and the reality of experience

As with traditional publishing, the indie author world has perpetuated a myth of success in the example of the breakout indie author like E.L. James with Fifty Shades of Grey, Hugh Howey with Wool, or Andy Weir with The Martian.

The emphasis on financial success is also fuelled online by authors who share screenshots showing six-figure months or seven-figure years, without sharing marketing costs and other outgoings, or the amount of time spent on the business.

Yes, these can inspire some, but it can also make others feel inadequate and potentially lead to bad choices about how to publish and market based on comparison.

The indie author world is full of just as much ego and a desire for status and money as traditional publishing.

This is not a surprise!

Most authors, regardless of publishing choices, are a mix of massive ego and chronic self-doubt. We are human, so the same issues will re-occur. A different publishing method doesn’t cure all ills.

Some of the issues are as follows:

You learn everything you need to know about writing and editing, only to find that you need to learn a whole new set of skills in order to self-publish and market your book. This can take a lot of time and effort you did not expect, and things change all the time so you have to keep learning.

Being in control of every aspect of the publishing process, from writing to cover design to marketing, can be overwhelming, leading to indecision, perfectionism, stress, and even burnout as you try to do all the things.

You try to find people to help, but building your team is a challenge, and working with others has its own difficulties.

People say negative things about self-publishing that may arouse feelings of embarrassment or shame. These might be little niggles, but they needle you, nonetheless. You wonder whether you made the right choice.

You struggle with self-doubt and if you go to an event with traditional published authors, you compare yourself to them and feel like an imposter.

Are you good enough to be an author if a traditional publisher hasn’t chosen you?

Is it just vanity to self-publish?

Are your books unworthy?

Even though you worked with a professional editor, you still get one-star reviews and you hate criticism from readers. You wonder whether you’re wasting your time.

You might be ripped off by an author services company who promise the world, only to leave you with a pile of printed books in your garage and no way to sell them.

When you finally publish your book, it languishes at the bottom of the charts while other authors hit the top of the list over and over, raking in the cash while you are left out of pocket.

You don’t admit to over-spending on marketing as it makes you ashamed.

You resist book marketing and make critical comments about writers who embrace it. You believe that quality rises to the top and if a book is good enough, people will buy it anyway. This can lead to disappointment and disillusionment when you launch your book and it doesn’t sell many copies because nobody knows about it.

You try to do what everyone advises, but you still can’t make decent money as an author.

You’re jealous of other authors’ success and put it down to them ‘selling out’ or writing things you can’t or ‘using AI’ or ‘using a ghostwriter’ or having a specific business model you consider impossible to replicate.

And the list goes on…

When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power

Being in control of your books and your author career is a double-edged sword.

Traditionally published authors can criticise their publishers or agents or the marketing team or the bookstores or the media, but indie authors have to take responsibility for it all.

Sure, we can blame ‘the algorithms’ or social media platforms, or criticise other authors for having more experience or more money to invest in marketing, or attribute their success to writing in a more popular genre — but we also know there are always people who do well regardless of the challenges.

Once more, we’re back to acknowledging and integrating the Shadow side of our choices. We are flawed humans. There will always be good times and bad, and difficulties to offset the high points. This too shall pass, as the old saying goes.

I know that being an indie author has plenty of Shadow. I’ve been doing this since 2008 and despite the hard times, I’m still here.

I’m still writing. I’m still publishing.

This life is not for everyone, but it’s my choice. You must make yours.

The Shadow in work

You work hard. You make a living.

Nothing wrong with that attitude, right?

It’s what we’re taught from an early age and, like so much of life, it’s not a problem until it goes to extremes.

Not achieving what you want to? Work harder. Can’t get ahead? Work harder. Not making a good enough living? Work harder.

People who don’t work hard are lazy. They don’t deserve handouts or benefits. People who don’t work hard aren’t useful, so they are not valued members of our culture and community.

But what about the old or the sick, the mentally ill, or those with disabilities? What about children?

What about the unemployed? The under-employed?

What about those who are — or will be — displaced by technology, those called “the useless class” by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus?

What if we become one of these in the future?

Who am I if I cannot work?

The Shadow side of my attitude to work became clear when I caught COVID in the summer of 2021.

I was the sickest I’d ever been. I spent two weeks in bed unable to even think properly, and six weeks after that, I was barely able to work more than an hour a day before lying in the dark and waiting for my energy to return. I was limited in what I could do for another six months after that. At times, I wondered if I would ever get better.

Jonathan kept urging me to be patient and rest.

But I don’t know how to rest. I know how to work and how to sleep.

I can do ‘active rest,’ which usually involves walking a long way or traveling somewhere interesting, but those require a stronger mind and body than I had during those months.

It struck me that even if I recovered from the virus, I had glimpsed my future self.

One day, I will be weak in body and mind.

If I’m lucky, that will be many years away and hopefully for a short time before I die — but it will happen.

I am an animal. I will die. My body and mind will pass on and I will be no more.

Before then I will be weak.

Before then, I will be useless.

Before then, I will be a burden.

I will not be able to work… But who am I if I cannot work? What is the point of me?

I can’t answer these questions right now, because although I recognise them as part of my Shadow, I’ve not progressed far enough to have dealt with them entirely.

My months of COVID gave me some much-needed empathy for those who cannot work, even if they want to. We need to reframe what work is as a society, and value humans for different things, especially as technology changes what work even means. That starts with each of us.

“Illness, affliction of body and soul, can be life-altering. It has the potential to reveal the most fundamental conflict of the human condition: the tension between our infinite, glorious dreams and desires and our limited, vulnerable, decaying physicality.” —Connie Zweig, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul

The Shadow in money

In the Greek myth, King Midas was a wealthy ruler who loved gold above all else. His palace was adorned with golden sculptures and furniture, and he took immense pleasure in his riches. Yet, despite his vast wealth, he yearned for more.

After doing a favour for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, Midas was granted a single wish. Intoxicated by greed, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold — and it was so.

At first, it was a lot of fun.

Midas turned everything else in his palace to gold, even the trees and stones of his estate. After a morning of turning things to gold, he fancied a spot of lunch.

But when he tried to eat, the food and drink turned to gold in his mouth. He became thirsty and hungry — and increasingly desperate.

As he sat in despair on his golden throne, his beloved young daughter ran to comfort him. For a moment, he forgot his wish — and as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek, she turned into a golden statue, frozen in precious metal.

King Midas cried out to the gods to forgive him, to reverse the wish.

He renounced his greed and gave away all his wealth, and his daughter was returned to life.

The moral of the story: Wealth and greed are bad.

In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is described as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.” He’s wealthy but does not share, considering Christmas spending to be frivolous and giving to charity to be worthless. He’s saved by a confrontation with his lonely future and becomes a generous man and benefactor of the poor.

Wealth is good if you share it with others.

The gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: 14-30, tells the parable of the bags of gold, in which a rich man goes on a journey and entrusts his servants with varying amounts of gold. On his return, the servants who multiplied the gold through their efforts and investments are rewarded, while the one who merely returned the gold with no interest is punished:

“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Making money is good, making more money is even better. If you can’t make any money, you don’t deserve to have any.

Within the same gospel, in Matthew 19:24, Jesus encounters a wealthy man and tells him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, which the man is unable to do. Jesus says,

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Wealth is bad. Give it all away and you’ll go to heaven.

With all these contradictory messages, no wonder we’re so conflicted about money!

How do you think and feel about money?

While money is mostly tied to our work, it’s far more than just a transactional object for most people. It’s loaded with complex symbolism and judgment handed down by family, religion, and culture.

You are likely to find elements of Shadow by examining your attitudes around money.

Consider which of the following statements resonate with you or write your own.

Money stresses me out. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it.

Some people hoard money, so there is inequality. Rich people are bad and we should take away their wealth and give it to the poor. 

I can never make enough money to pay the bills, or to give my family what I want to provide.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. 

It’s wasteful to spend money as you might need it later, so I’m frugal and don’t spend money unless absolutely necessary.

It is better and more ethical to be poor than to be rich.

I want more money. I read books and watch TV shows about rich people because I want to live like that. Sometimes I spend too much on things for a glimpse of what that might be like. 

I buy lottery tickets and dream of winning all that money. 

I’m jealous of people who have money. I want more of it and I resent those who have it.

I’m no good with money. I don’t like to look at my bank statement or credit card statement. I live off my overdraft and I’m in debt. I will never earn enough to get out of debt and start saving, so I don’t think too much about it.

I don’t know enough about money. Talking about it makes me feel stupid, so I just ignore it. People like me aren’t educated about money. 

I need to make more money. If I can make lots of money, then people will look up to me. If I make lots of money, I will be secure, nothing can touch me, I will be safe. 

I never want to be poor. I would be ashamed to be poor. I will never go on benefits. My net worth is my self worth.

Money is good. We have the best standard of living in history because of the increase in wealth over time. Even the richest kings of the past didn’t have what many middle-class people have today in terms of access to food, water, technology, healthcare, education, and more.

The richest people give the most money to the poor through taxation and charity, as well as through building companies that employ people and invent new things. The very richest give away much of their fortunes. They provide far more benefit to the world than the poor. 

I love money. Money loves me. Money comes easily and quickly to me. I attract money in multiple streams of income. It flows to me in so many ways. I spend money. I invest money. I give money. I’m happy and grateful for all that I receive.

The Shadow around money for authors in particular

Many writers and other creatives have issues around money and wealth. How often have you heard the following, and which do you agree with?

You can’t make money with your writing. You’ll be a poor author in a garret, a starving artist. 

You can’t write ‘good quality’ books and make money.

If you make money writing, you’re a hack, you’re selling out. You are less worthy than someone who writes only for the Muse. Your books are commercial, not artistic.

If you spend money on marketing, then your books are clearly not good enough to sell on their own.

My agent / publisher / accountant / partner deals with the money side. I like to focus on the creative side of things.

My money story

Note: This is not financial or investment advice. Please talk to a professional about your situation.

I’ve had money issues over the years — haven’t we all! But I have been through a (long) process to bring money out of my Shadow and into the light. There will always be more to discover, but hopefully my money story will help you, or at least give you an opportunity to reflect.

Like most people, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My parents started out as teachers, but later my mum — who I lived with, along with my brother — became a change management consultant, moving to the USA and earning a lot more. I’m grateful that she moved into business because her example changed the way I saw money and provided some valuable lessons.

(1) You can change your circumstances by learning more and then applying that to leverage opportunity into a new job or career

Mum taught English at a school in Bristol when we moved back from Malawi, Africa, in the mid ’80s but I remember how stressful it was for her, and how little money she made. She wanted a better future for us all, so she took a year out to do a master’s degree in management.

In the same way, when I wanted to change careers and leave consulting to become an author, I spent time and money learning about the writing craft and the business of publishing. I still invest a considerable chunk on continuous learning, as this industry changes all the time.

(2) You might have to downsize in order to leap forward

The year my mum did her degree, we lived in the attic of another family’s house; we ate a lot of one-pot casserole and our treat was having a Yorkie bar on the walk back from the museum.

We wore hand-me-down clothes, and I remember one day at school when another girl said I was wearing her dress. I denied it, of course, but there in back of the dress was her name tag. I still remember her name and I can still feel that flush of shame and embarrassment. I was determined to never feel like that again. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was also learning the power of downsizing.

Mum got her degree and then a new job in management in Bristol. She bought a house, and we settled for a few years. I had lots of different jobs as a teenager. My favourite was working in the delicatessen because we got a free lunch made from delicious produce. After I finished A-levels, I went to the University of Oxford, and my mum and brother moved to the USA for further opportunities.

I’ve downsized multiple times over the years, taking a step back in order to take a step forward. The biggest was in 2010 when I decided to leave consulting. Jonathan and I sold our three-bedroom house and investments in Brisbane, Australia, and rented a one-bedroom flat in London, so we could be debt-free and live on less while I built up a new career. It was a decade before we bought another house.

(3) Comparison can be deadly: there will always be people with more money than you

Oxford was an education in many ways and relevant to this chapter is how much I didn’t know about things people with money took for granted.

I learned about formal hall and wine pairings, and how to make a perfect gin and tonic. I ate smoked salmon for the first time. I learned how to fit in with people who had a lot more money than I did, and I definitely wanted to have money of my own to play with.

(4) Income is not wealth

You can earn lots but have nothing to show for it after years of working. I learned this in my first few years of IT consulting after university. I earned a great salary and then went contracting, earning even more money at a daily rate.

I had a wonderful time. I traveled, ate and drank and generally made merry, but I always had to go back to the day job when the money ran out. I couldn’t work out how I could ever stop this cycle.

Then I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a book I still recommend, especially if you’re from a family that values academic over financial education. I learned how to escape the rat race by building and/or accumulating assets that pay even when you’re not working. It was a revelation!

The ‘poor dad’ in the book is a university professor. He knows so much about so many things, but he ends up poor as he did not educate himself about money. The ‘rich dad’ has little formal education, but he knows about money and wealth because he learned about it, as we can do at any stage in our lives.

(5) Not all investments suit every person, so find the right one for you

Once I discovered the world of investing, I read all the books and did courses and in-person events. I joined communities and I up-skilled big time.

Of course, I made mistakes and learned lots along the way.

I tried property investing and renovated a couple of houses for rental (with more practical partners and skilled contractors). But while I could see that property investing might work for some people, I did not care enough about the details to make it work for me, and it was certainly not passive income.

I tried other things.

My first husband was a boat skipper and scuba diving instructor, so we started a charter. With the variable costs of fuel, the vagaries of New Zealand weather — and our divorce — it didn’t last long!

From all these experiments, I learned I wanted to run a business, but it needed to be online and not based on a physical location, physical premises, or other people.

That was 2006, around the time that blogging started taking off and it became possible to make a living online. I could see the potential and a year later, the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle launched, which became the basis of my business as an author.

(6) Boring, automatic saving and investing works best

Between 2007 and 2011, I contracted in Australia, where they have compulsory superannuation contributions, meaning you have to save and invest a percentage of your salary or self-employed income.

I’d never done that before, because I didn’t understand it. I’d ploughed all my excess income into property or the business instead. But in Australia I didn’t notice the money going out because it was automatic. I chose a particular fund and it auto-invested every month. The pot grew pretty fast since I didn’t touch it, and years later, it’s still growing.

I discovered the power of compound interest and time in the market, both of which are super boring. This type of investing is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a slow process of automatically putting money into boring investments and doing that month in, month out, year in, year out, automatically for decades while you get on with your life.

I still do this. I earn money as an author entrepreneur and I put a percentage of that into boring investments automatically every month. I also have a small amount which is for fun and higher risk investments, but mostly I’m a conservative, risk-averse investor planning ahead for the future.

This is not financial advice, so I’m not giving any specifics. I have a list of recommended money books at www.TheCreativePenn.com/moneybooks if you want to learn more.

Learning from the Shadow

When I look back, my Shadow side around money eventually drove me to learn more and resulted in a better outcome (so far!).

I was ashamed of being poor when I had to wear hand-me-down clothes at school. That drove a fear of not having any money, which partially explains my workaholism. I was embarrassed at Oxford because I didn’t know how to behave in certain settings, and I wanted to be like the rich people I saw there.

I spent too much money in my early years as a consultant because I wanted to experience a “rich” life and didn’t understand saving and investing would lead to better things in the future.

I invested too much in the wrong things because I didn’t know myself well enough and I was trying to get rich quick so I could leave my job and ‘be happy.’

But eventually, I discovered that I could grow my net worth with boring, long-term investments while doing a job I loved as an author entrepreneur.

My only regret is that I didn’t discover this earlier and put a percentage of my income into investments as soon as I started work. It took several decades to get started, but at least I did (eventually) start.

My money story isn’t over yet, and I keep learning new things, but hopefully my experience will help you reflect on your own and avoid the issue if it’s still in Shadow.

These chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn

 
The post Writing The Shadow: The Creative Wound, Publishing, And Money, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you build iconic characters that your readers want to keep coming back to? How can you be the kind of creator that readers trust, even without social media? With Claire Taylor

In the intro, Dan Brown talks writing and publishing [Tetragrammaton];
Design Rules That Make or Break a Book [Self-Publishing Advice];
Amazon’s DRM change [Kindlepreneur]; Show me the money [Rachael Herron]; AI bible translation [Wycliffe, Pope Leo tweet]. Plus, Business for Authors 24 Jan webinar, and Bones of the Deep.

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

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

Claire Taylor is a humour and mystery author, the owner of FFS Media, and a certified Enneagram coach. She teaches authors to write stronger stories and build sustainable careers at LiberatedWriter.com, and her book is Write Iconic Characters: Unlocking the Core Motivations that Fuel Unforgettable Stories.

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

Why Claire left social media and how she still markets her books and services

What the Enneagram is and how core fears and desires shape character motivation

Using Enneagram types (including Wednesday Addams as an example) to write iconic characters

Creating rich conflict and relationships by pairing different Enneagram types on the page

Coping with rapid change, AI, and fear in the author community in 2026

Building a trustworthy, human author brand through honesty, transparency, and vulnerability

You can find Claire at LiberatedWriter.com, FFS.media, or on Substack as The Liberated Writer.

Transcript of the interview with Claire Taylor

Joanna: Claire Taylor is a humour and mystery author, the owner of FFS Media, and a certified Enneagram coach. She teaches authors to write stronger stories and build sustainable careers at LiberatedWriter.com, and her book is Write Iconic Characters: Unlocking the Core Motivations that Fuel Unforgettable Stories.

So, welcome back to the show, Claire.

Claire: Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here.

Joanna: It's great to have you back on the show. It was March 2024 when you were last on, so almost two years now as this goes out. Give us a bit of an update.

How has your writing craft and your author business changed in that time?

Claire: One of the things I've been focusing on with my own fiction craft is deconstructing the rules of how a story “should” be. That's been a sort of hobby focus of mine.

All the story structure books aren't law, right? That's why there are so many of them. They're all suggestions, frameworks. They're all trying to quantify humans’ innate ability to understand a story.

So I'm trying to remember more that I already know what a story is, deep down. My job as an author is to keep the reader's attention from start to finish and leave them feeling the way I hope they’ll feel at the end. That’s been my focus on the craft side.

On the author business side, I've made some big shifts. I left social media earlier this year, and I've been looking more towards one-on-one coaching and networking.

I did a craft-based Kickstarter, and I’d been focusing a lot on “career, career, career”—very business-minded—and now I'm creating more content again, especially around using the Enneagram for writing craft.

So there’s been a lot of transition since 2024 for me.

Joanna: I think it's so important—and obviously we're going to get into your book in more detail—but I do think it's important for people to hear about our pivots and transitions.

I haven't spoken to you for a while, but I actually started a master's degree a few months back. I'm doing a full-time master's alongside everything else I do. So I've kind of put down book writing for the moment, and I'm doing essay writing and academic writing instead. It's quite different, as you can imagine.

It sounds like what you’re doing is different too.

One thing I know will have perked up people’s ears is: “I left social media.” Tell us a bit more about that.

Claire: This was a move that I could feel coming for a while. I didn’t like what social media did to my attention. Even when I wasn’t on it, there was almost a hangover from having been on it.

My attention didn’t feel as sharp and focused as it used to be, back before social media became what it is now.

So I started asking myself some questions:

What is lost if I leave?

What is gained if I leave?

And what is social media actually doing for me today?

Because sometimes we hold on to what it used to do for us, and we keep trying to squeeze more and more of that out of it. But it has changed so much.

There are almost no places with sufficient organic reach anymore. It’s all pay-to-play, and the cost of pay-to-play keeps going up.

I looked at the numbers for my business. My Kickstarter was a great place to analyse that because they track so many traffic sources so clearly. I could see exactly how much I was getting from social media when I advertised and promoted my projects there.

Then I asked: can I let that go in order to get my attention back and make my life feel more settled? And I decided: yes, I can. That’s worth more to me.

Joanna: There are some things money can’t buy. Sometimes it really isn’t about the money.

I like your question: what is lost and what is gained?

You also said it’s all pay-to-play and there’s no organic reach. I do think there is some organic reach for some people who don’t pay, but those people are very good at playing the game of whatever the platform wants.

So, TikTok for example—you might not have to pay money yet, but you do have to play their game. You have to pay with your time instead of money.

I agree with you. I don’t think there’s anywhere you can literally just post something and know it will reliably reach the people who follow you.

Claire: Right. Exactly. TikTok currently, if you really play the game, will sometimes “pick” you, right? But that “pick me” energy is not really my jam.

And we can see the trend—this “organic” thing doesn’t last. It's organic for now. You can play the game for now, but TikTok would be crazy not to change things so they make more money. So eventually everything becomes pay-to-play.

TikTok is fun, but for me it’s addictive. I took it off my phone years ago because I would do the infinite scroll. There’s so much candy there.

Then I’d wake up the next morning and notice my mood just wasn’t where I wanted it to be. My energy was low. I really saw a correlation between how much I scrolled and how flat I felt afterwards.

So I realised: I’m not the person to pay-to-play or to play the game here. I’m not even convinced that the pay-to-play on certain social media networks is being tracked in a reliable, accountable way anymore. Who is holding them accountable for those numbers?

You can sort of see correlation in your sales, but still, I just became more and more sceptical. In the end, it just wasn’t for me.

My life is so much better on a daily basis without it. That’s definitely a decision I have not regretted for a second.

Joanna: I’m sorry to keep on about this, but I think this is great because this is going out in January 2026, and there will be lots of people examining their relationship with social media. It’s one of those things we all examine every year, pretty much.

The other thing I’d add is that you are a very self-aware person. You spend a lot of time thinking about these things and noticing your own behaviour and energy. Stopping and thinking is such an important part of it.

But let’s tackle the big question: one of the reasons people don’t want to come off social media is that they’re afraid they don’t know how else to market.

How are you marketing if you’re not using social media?

Claire: I didn’t leave social media overnight. Over time, I’ve been adjusting and transitioning, preparing my business and myself mentally and emotionally for probably about a year.

I still market to my email list. That has always been important to my business.

I’ve also started a Substack that fits how my brain works. Substack is interesting. Some people might consider it a form of social media—it has that new reading feed—but it feels much more like blogging to me. It’s blogging where you can be discovered, which is lovely. I’ve been doing more long-form content there.

You get access to all the emails of your subscribers, which is crucial to me. I don’t want to build on something I can’t take with me.

So I’ve been doing more long-form content, and that seems to keep my core audience with me. I’ve got plenty of people subscribed; people continue to come back, work with me, and tell their friends.

Word of mouth has always been the way my business markets best, because it’s hard to describe the benefits of what I do in a quick, catchy way. It needs context. So I’m leaning even more on that.

Then I’m also shifting my fiction book selling more local.

Joanna: In person?

Claire: Yes. In person and local. Networking and just telling more people that I’m an author. Connecting more deeply with my existing email lists and communities and selling that way.

Joanna: I think at the end of the day it does come back to the email list.

I think this is one of the benefits of selling direct to people through Shopify or Payhip or whatever, or locally, because you can build your email list. Every person you bring into your own ecosystem, you get their data and you can stay in touch.

Whereas all the things we did for years to get people to go to Amazon, we didn’t get their emails and details. It’s so interesting where we are right now in the author business.

Okay, we’ll come back to some of these things, but let’s get into the book and what you do. Obviously what underpins the book is the Enneagram.

Just remind us what the Enneagram is, why you incorporate it into so much of your work, and why you find it resonates so much.

Claire: The Enneagram is a framework that describes patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions that tend to arise from nine different core motivations. Those core motivations are made up of a fear–desire pair.

So, for instance, there’s the fear of lacking worth and the desire to be worthy. That pair is the Type Three core motivation. If you’re a Type Three, sometimes called “The Achiever,” that’s your fundamental driver.

What we fear and desire above all the other fears and desires determines where our attention goes. And attention is something authors benefit greatly from understanding.

We have to keep people’s attention, so we want to understand our own attention and how to cultivate it. The things our attention goes to build our understanding of ourselves and the world.

Being intentional about that, and paying attention to what your characters pay attention to—and what your readers are paying attention to—is hugely beneficial. It can give you a real leg up. That’s why I focus on the Enneagram. I find it very useful at that core level.

You can build a lot of other things on top of it with your characters: their backstory, personal histories, little quirks—all of that can be built off the Enneagram foundation.

Why I like the Enneagram more than other frameworks like MBTI or the Big Five is that it not only shows us how our fears are confining us—that’s really what it’s charting—but it also shows us a path towards liberation from those fears.

That’s where the Enneagram really shines: the growth path, the freedom from the confines of our own personality. It offers that to anyone who wants to study and discover it.

A lot of the authors I work with say things like, “I’m just so sick of my own stuff.” And I get it. We all get sick of running into the same patterns over and over again. We can get sick of our personality!

The Enneagram is a really good tool for figuring out what’s going on and how to try something new, because often we can’t even see that there are other options. We have this particular lens we’re looking through. That’s why I like to play with it, and why I find it so useful.

Joanna: That’s really interesting. It sounds like you have a lot of mature authors—and when I say “mature,” I mean authors with a lot of books under their belt, not necessarily age.

There are different problems at different stages of the author career, and the problem you just described—“I’m getting sick of my stuff”—sounds like a mature author issue.

What are some of the other issues you see in the community that are quite common amongst indie authors?

Claire: One that comes up a lot, especially early on, is: “Am I doing this right?”

That’s a big question. People say, “I don’t know if I’m doing this right. I’m going to mess it up. This person told me this was the way to do things, but I don’t think I can do it this way. Am I doomed?” That’s the fear.

A lot of what I help people with is seeing that there isn’t a single “right” way to do this. There’s a way that’s going to feel more aligned to you, and there are millions of ways to approach an author career because we’re all constructing it as we go.

You were there in the early days. We were all just making this up as we went along.

Joanna: Exactly. There was a time when ebooks were PDFs, there wasn’t even a Kindle, and there was no iPhone. We were literally just making it up.

Claire: Right. Exactly. That spirit of “we’re all making it up” is important.

Some of us have come up with frameworks that work for us, and then we tell other people about them—“Here’s a process; try this process”—but that doesn’t mean it’s the process.

Understanding what motivates you—those core motivations—helps you see where you’re going to bump into advice that’s not right for you, and how to start making decisions that fit your attention, your life, your desires in this author role.

Early on we do a lot of that work. Then there are the authors who started a while ago and have a bunch of books.

They hit a point where they say, “I’ve changed so much since I started writing. I need to figure out how to adjust my career.”

Joanna: Tell us more about that, because I think that’s you and me. How do we deal with that?

Claire: Well, crying helps.

Joanna: That is true! There’s always a bit of crying involved in reinvention. From my perspective, my brand has always been built around me. People are still here—I know some people listening who have been with the podcast since I started it in 2009—and I’ve always been me.

Even though I’ve done loads of different things and changed along the way, at heart I’m still me. I’m really glad I built a personal brand around who I am, rather than around one genre or a single topic.

How about you? How do you see it?

Claire: I’m the same.

I just can’t stick with something that doesn’t feel right for me anymore. I’ll start to rebel against it.

There’s also that “good girl” part of me that wants to do things the way they’re supposed to be done and keep everybody happy. I have to keep an eye on her, because she’ll default to “this is the way it should be done,” and then I end up constricted.

As we advance through our careers, positioning around what motivates us and what we love, and allowing ourselves to understand that it’s okay to change—even though it’s painful—is crucial.

It’s actually destructive not to change over time. We end up forfeiting so many things that make life worth living if we don’t allow ourselves to grow and change. We end up in this tiny box.

People sometimes say the Enneagram is very restrictive. “It’s only nine types, you’re putting me in a box.”

It’s like: no. These are the boxes we’ve put ourselves in. Then we use the Enneagram to figure out how to get out of the box.

As we start to see the box we’ve put ourselves in with our personality—“that’s me, that’s not me”—we realise how much movement we actually have, how many options we have, while still being ourselves.

Joanna: So many options. This kind of brings us into your book, because part of the personal brand thing is being real and having different facets.

Your book is Write Iconic Characters, and presumably these are characters that people want to read more about. It uses the Enneagram to construct these better characters.

So first up—

What’s your definition of an iconic character, as opposed to any old character? And how can we use the Enneagram to construct one?

Claire: An iconic character, in my imagination, is one that really sticks with us after we've finished the story. They become a reference point.

We’ll say, “This person is kind of like that character,” or “This situation feels like that character would handle it this way.”

It could be our friends, our enemies, someone we meet on the bus—whoever it is might remind us of this character. So they really get lodged in our psyche.

An iconic character feels true to some fundamental part of the human condition, even if they’re not strictly human. So, all the alien romance people listening, don’t worry—you’re still in!

These characters take on a life of their own. With an iconic character, we may hear them talking to us after the book is done, because we’ve tapped into that essential part of them.

They can become almost archetypal—something we go back to over and over again in our minds, both as writers and as readers.

Joanna: How can we use the Enneagram to construct an iconic character?

I’m asking this as a discovery writer who struggles to construct anything beforehand. It’s more that I write stuff and then something emerges. But I have definitely not had a hit series with an iconic character, so I’m willing to give your approach a try.

Claire: It works with whatever your process is. If you’re a discovery writer, start with that spark of a character in your head.

If there’s a character who’s just a glimmer—maybe you know a few things about them—just keep writing. At some point you’ll probably recognise, “Okay, it’s time to go deeper in understanding this character and create a cohesive thread to pull all of this together.”

That’s where the Enneagram becomes useful. You can put on your armchair psychologist hat and ask: which of the nine core fears seems like it might be driving the parts of their personality that are emerging?

Thankfully, we intuitively recognise the nine types. When we start gathering bits for a new character, we tend to pull from essentially the same constellation of personality, even if we don’t realise it.

For instance, you might say, “This character is bold and adventurous,” and that’s all you know. You’re probably not going to also add, “and they’re incredibly shy,” because “bold and adventurous” plus “incredibly shy” doesn’t really fit our intuitive understanding of people. We know that instinctively.

So, you’ve got “bold and adventurous.” You write that to a certain point, and then you get to a place where you think, “I don’t really know them deeply.” That’s when you can go back to the nine core fears and start ruling some out quite quickly.

In the book, I have descriptions for each of them. You can read the character descriptions, read about the motivations, and start to say, “It’s definitely not these five types. I can rule those out.”

If they’re bold and adventurous, maybe the core fear is being trapped in deprivation and pain, or being harmed and controlled. Those correspond to Type Seven (“The Enthusiast”) and Type Eight (“The Challenger”), respectively.

So you might say, “Okay, maybe they’re a Seven or an Eight.” From there, if you can pin down a type, you can read more about it and get ideas. You can understand the next big decision point.

If they’re a Type Seven, what’s going to motivate them? They’ll do whatever keeps them from being trapped in pain and deprivation, and they’ll be seeking satisfaction or new experiences in some way, because that’s the core desire that goes with that fear.

So now, you’re asking: “How do I get them to get on the spaceship and leave Earth?” Well, you could offer them some adventure, because they’re bold and adventurous.

I have a character who’s a Seven, and she gets on a spaceship and takes off because her boyfriend just proposed—and the idea of being trapped in marriage feels like: “Nope. Whatever is on this spaceship, I’m out of here.” You can play with that once you identify a type.

You can go as deep with that type as you want, or you can just work with the core fear and the basic desire. There’s no “better or worse”—it’s whatever you feel comfortable with and whatever you need for the story.

Joanna: In the book, you go into all the Enneagram types in detail, but you also have a specific example: Wednesday Addams. She’s one of my favourites. People listening have either seen the current series or they have something in mind from the old-school Addams Family.

Can you talk about [Wednesday Addams] as an example?

Claire: Doing those deep dives was some of the most fun research for this book.

I told my husband, John, “Don’t bother me. I need to sit and binge-watch Wednesday again—with my notebook this time.”

Online, people were guessing: “Oh, she’s maybe this type, maybe that type.” As soon as I started watching properly with the Enneagram in mind, I thought: “Oh, this is a Type Eight, this is the Challenger.”

One of the first things we hear from her is that she considers emotions to be weakness. Immediately, you can cross out a bunch of types from that.

When we’re looking at weak/strong language—that lens of “strength” versus “weakness”—we tend to look towards Eights, because they often sort the world in those terms. They’re concerned about being harmed or controlled, so they feel they need to be strong and powerful. That gave me a strong hint in that direction.

If we look at the inciting incident—which is a great place to identify what really triggers a character, because it has to be powerful enough to launch the story—Wednesday finds her little brother Pugsley stuffed in a locker.

She says, “Who did this?” because she believes she’s the only one who gets to bully him. That’s a very stereotypical Type Eight thing.

The unhealthy Eight can dip into being a bit of a bully because they’re focused on power and power dynamics. But the Eight also says, “These are my people. I protect them. If you’re one of my people, you’re under my protection.” So there’s that protection/control paradox.

Then she goes and—spoiler—throws a bag of piranhas into the pool to attack the boys who hurt him. That’s like: okay, this is probably an Eight.

Then she has control wrested from her when she’s sent to the new school. That’s a big trigger for an Eight: to not have autonomy, to not have control. She acts out pretty much immediately, tries to push people away, and establishes dominance.

One of the first things she does is challenge the popular girl to a fencing match. That’s very Eight behaviour: “I’m going to go in, figure out where I sit in this power structure, and try to get into a position of power straight away.”

That’s how the story starts, and in the book I go into a lot more analysis.

At one point she’s attacked by this mysterious thing and is narrowly saved from a monster. Her reaction afterwards is: “I would have rather saved myself.” That’s another strong Eight moment. The Eight does not like to be saved by anyone else. It’s: “No, I wanted to be strong enough to do that.”

Her story arc is also very Eight-flavoured: she starts off walled-off, “I can do it myself,” which can sometimes look like the self-sufficiency of the Five, but for her it’s about always being in a power position and in control of herself.

She has to learn to rely more on other people if she wants to protect the people she cares about. Protecting the innocent and protecting “her people” is a big priority for the Eight.

Joanna: Let’s say we’ve identified our main character and protagonist.

One of the important things in any book, especially in a series, is conflict—both internal and external.

Can we use the Enneagram to work out what would be the best other character, or characters, to give us more conflict?

Claire: The character dynamics are complex, and all types are going to have both commonalities and conflict between them. That works really well for fiction. But depending on how much conflict you need, there are certain type pairings that are especially good for it.

If you have a protagonist who’s an Eight, they’re going to generate conflict everywhere because it doesn’t really bother them. They’re okay wading into conflict.

If you ask an Eight, “Do you like conflict?” they’ll often say, “Well, sometimes it’s not great,” but to everyone else it looks like they come in like a wrecking ball.

The Eight tends to go for what they want. They don’t see the point in waiting. They think, “I want it, I’m going to go and get it.” That makes them feel strong and powerful.

So it’s easy to create external and internal conflict with an Eight and other types. But the nature of the conflict is going to be different depending on who you pair them with.

Let’s say you have this Eight and you pair them with a Type One, “The Reformer,” whose core fear is being bad or corrupt, and who wants to be good and have integrity.

The Reformer wants morality. They can get a little preachy; they can become a bit of a zealot when they’re more unhealthy.

A One and an Eight will have a very particular kind of conflict because the One says, “Let’s do what’s right,” and the Eight says, “Let’s do what gets me what I want and puts me in the power position.”

They may absolutely get along if they’re taking on injustice. Ones and Eights will team up if they both see the same thing as unjust. They’ll both take it on together.

But then they may reach a point in the story where the choice is between doing the thing that is “right”—maybe self-sacrificing or moral—versus doing the thing that will exact retribution or secure a power-up. That’s where the conflict between a One and an Eight shows up.

You can grab any two types and they’ll have unique conflict. I’m actually working on a project on Kickstarter that’s all about character dynamics and relationships—Write Iconic Relationships is the next project—and I go deeper into this there.

Joanna: I was wondering about that, because I did a day-thing recently with colour palettes and interior design—which is not usually my thing—so I was really challenging myself.

We did this colour wheel, and they were talking about how the opposite colour on the wheel is the one that goes with it in an interesting way. I thought—

Maybe there’s something in the Enneagram where it’s like a wheel, and the type opposite is the one that clashes or fits in a certain way. Is that a thing?

Claire: There is a lot of that kind of contrast.

The Enneagram is usually depicted in a circle, one through nine, and there are strong contrasts between types that are right next to each other, as well as interesting lines that connect them.

For example, we’ve been talking about the Eight, and right next to Eight is Nine, “The Peacemaker.” Eights and Nines can look like opposites in certain ways. The Nine is conflict-avoidant, and the Eight tends to think you get what you want by pushing into conflict if necessary.

Then you’ve got Four, “The Individualist,” which is very emotional, artistic, heart-centred, and Five, “The Investigator,” which you’re familiar with—very head-centred and analytical, thinking-based. The Four and the Five can clash a bit: the head and the heart.

So, yes, there are interesting contrasts right next to each other on the wheel. Each type also has its own conflict style. We’re going into the weeds a bit here, but it’s fascinating to play with.

There’s one conflict style—the avoidant conflict style, sometimes called the “positive outlook” group—and it’s actually hard to get those types into an enemies-to-lovers romance because they don’t really want to be enemies. That’s Types Two, Seven, and Nine.

So depending on the trope you’re writing, some type pairings are more frictional than others. There are all these different dynamics you can explore, and I can’t wait to dig into them more for everyone in the relationships book.

Joanna: The Enneagram is just one of many tools people can use to figure out themselves as well as their characters. Maybe that’s something people want to look at this year.

You’ve got this book, you’ve got other resources that go into it, and there’s also a lot of information out there if people want to explore it more deeply.

Let’s pull back out to the bigger picture, because as this goes out in January 2026, I think there is a real fear of change in the community right now. Is that something you’ve seen?

What are your thoughts for authors on how they can navigate the year ahead?

Claire: Yes, there has been a lot of fear.

The rate of change of things online has felt very rapid. The rate of change in the broader world—politically, socially—has also felt scary to a lot of people.

It can be really helpful to look at your own personal life and anchor yourself in what hasn’t changed and what feels universal. From there you can start to say, “Okay, I can do this. I’m safe enough to be creative. I can find creative ways to work within this new environment.”

You can choose to engage with AI. You can choose to opt out. It’s totally your choice, and there is no inherent virtue in either one. I think that’s important to say.

Sometimes people who are anti-AI—not just uninterested but actively antagonistic—go after people who like it. And sometimes people who like AI can be antagonistic towards people who don’t want to use it. But actually, you get to choose what you’re comfortable with.

One of the things I see emerging for authors in 2026, regardless of what tools you’re using or how you feel about them, is this question of trustworthiness. I think there’s a big need for that.

With the increased number of images and videos that are AI-generated—which a lot of people who’ve been on the internet for a while can still recognise as AI and say, “Yeah, that’s AI”—but that may not be obvious for long. Right now some of us can tell, but a lot of people can’t, and that’s only going to get murkier.

There’s a rising mistrust of our own senses online lately. We’re starting to wonder, “Can I believe what I’m seeing and hearing?” And I think that sense of mistrust will increase.

As an author in that environment, it’s really worth focusing on: how do I build trust with my readers? That doesn’t mean you never use AI. It might simply mean you disclose, to whatever extent feels right for you, how you use it.

There are things like authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, humility, integrity, transparency, reliability—all of those are ingredients in this recipe of trustworthiness that we need to look at for ourselves.

If there’s one piece of hard inner work authors can do for 2026, I think it’s asking: “Where have I not been trustworthy to my readers?”

Then taking that hard, sometimes painful look at what comes up, and asking how you can adjust. What do you need to change? What new practices do you need to create that will increase trustworthiness?

I really think that’s the thing that’s starting to erode online. If you can work on it now, you can hold onto your readers through whatever comes next.

Joanna: What’s one concrete thing people could do in that direction [to increase trustworthiness]?

Claire: I would say disclosing if you use AI is a really good start—or at least disclosing how you use it specifically. I know that can lead to drama when you do it because people have strong opinions, but trustworthiness comes at the cost of courage and honesty.

Transparency is another ingredient we could all use more of. If transparency around AI is a hard “absolutely not” for you—if you’re thinking, “Nope, Claire, you can get lost with that”—then authenticity is another route.

Let your messy self be visible, because people still want some human in the mix. Being authentically messy and vulnerable with your audience helps. If you can’t be reliable and put the book out on time, at least share what’s going on in your life.

Staying connected in that way builds trust. Readers will think, “Okay, I see why you didn’t hit that deadline.” But if you’re always promising books—“It’s going to be out on this day,” and then, “Oh, I had to push it back,” and that happens again and again—that does erode the trustworthiness of your brand.

So, looking at those things and asking, “How am I cultivating trust, and how am I breaking it?” is hard work.

There are definitely ways I look at my own business and think, “That’s not a very trustworthy thing I’m doing.” Then I need to sit down, get real with myself, and see how I can improve that.

Joanna: Always improving is good.

Coming back to the personal brand piece, and to being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there: you and I have both got used to that over years of doing it and practising.

There are people listening who have never put their photo online, or their voice online, or done a video. They might not use their photo on the back of their book or on their website. They might use an avatar. They might use a pen name. They might be afraid of having anything about themselves online.

That’s where I think there is a concern, because as much as I love a lot of the AI stuff, I don’t love the idea of everything being hidden behind anonymous pen names and faceless brands. As you said, being vulnerable in some way and being recognisably human really matters.

I’d say: double down on being human. I think that’s really important.

Do you have any words of courage for people who feel, “I just can’t. I don’t want to put myself out there”?

Claire: There are definitely legitimate reasons some people wouldn’t want to be visible. There are safety reasons, cultural reasons, family reasons—all sorts of factors.

There are also a lot of authors who simply haven’t practised the muscle of vulnerability. You build that muscle a little bit at a time.

It does open you up to criticism, and some people are just not at a phase of life where they can cope with that. That’s okay.

If fear is the main reason—if you’re hiding because you’re scared of being judged—I do encourage you to step out, gently. This may be my personal soapbox, but I don’t think life is meant to be spent hiding. Things may happen. Not everyone will like you. That’s part of being alive.

When you invite in hiding, it doesn’t just stay in one corner. That constricted feeling tends to spread into other areas of your life.

A lot of the time, people I work with don’t want to disclose their pen names because they’re worried their parents won’t approve, and then we have to unpack that. You don’t have to do what your parents want you to do. You’re an adult now, right?

If the issue is, “They’ll cut me out of the will,” we can talk about that too. That’s a deeper, more practical conversation. But if it’s just that they won’t approve, you have more freedom than you think.

You also don’t have to plaster your picture everywhere. Even if you’re not comfortable showing your face, you can still communicate who you are and what matters to you in other ways—through your stories, through your email list, through how you talk to readers.

Let your authentic self be expressed in some way. It’s scary, but the reward is freedom.

Joanna: Absolutely. Lots to explore in 2026.

Tell people where they can find you and your books and everything you do online.

Claire: LiberatedWriter.com is where all of my stuff lives, except my fiction, which I don’t think people here are necessarily as interested in. If you do want to find my fiction, FFS Media is where that lives.

Then I’m on Substack as well. I write long pieces there. If you want to subscribe, it’s The Liberated Writer on Substack.

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

Claire: Thanks so much for having me.
The post Leaving Social Media, Writing Iconic Characters, and Building Trust With Claire Taylor first appeared on The Creative Penn.