← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Building A Long Term Author Business, Dictation, Kickstarter, and Short Story Collections With Kevin J Anderson
01:03:53
How can you build a long-term author career with multiple streams of income? How can you use technology for the grunt work and not the fun part of writing? Kevin J Anderson gives his tips. In the intro, has TikTok gone dark?
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- [00:01]
Joanna Penn
Welcome to the Creative Penn Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 791 of the podcast and it is Saturday 18th January 2025. As I record this in today's show, I talk to Kevin J. Anderson about building a long term author business, how his dictation process has changed with AI tools, why Kickstarter is an important part of his multiple streams of income and short story collections. So that's coming up in the interview section in writing and publishing things. Well, as I record this, it's still unclear whether TikTok will go dark tomorrow, but you will know by the time this goes out whether that happened. Outgoing President Biden in the US has passed the responsibility over to incoming President Trump who will probably do some kind of deal and, and keep it alive in some form. But I wanted to comment more on whether this happens or not. It is important to feel the feeling of the potential loss of a platform. And for some of you, this might be the first time you have felt this loss of control. And it is so important to remember how it feels when someone else, a person or an organization or a company threatens your access to an audience and therefore impacts your book sales and your income. Because if you are an author for the long term, this will happen to you at some point. And Kevin and I discussed part of this in the interview section. In his many decades in the author business, the things that happened, you know, went well for a while, then disappeared. But also in general this might happen to you. So if you haven't heard my backstory before, back in 2008 I was laid off as part of the global financial crisis along with hundreds of other people in my department at the same time and obviously many thousands, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And I realized at that point as basically we, we all got called into this room. We were, we were handed a piece of paper from a huge stack of paper. Like everyone just got handed a piece of paper. And because we were contractors, we were basically just like bye bye. And I realized then, I still remember it very quite viscerally on the way home going, what just happened? I had no choice. They just took away my income. And I realized then I couldn't rely on one stream of income someone else owned, and I would never rely on one company again. And I had to look after myself. And this applies as authors, this applies to Amazon, TikTok, Meta, or if you're, you know, any of the platforms we use, basically, or if you're traditionally published, then one publisher, one agent, if all your income or the greatest part of your income is with one company, and then they change the rules, they change the algorithm, or they let you go, or they shut down or they get sold, you need to think about what happens when that happens, and it will happen at some point. So what other streams of income can you build up? What other ways of reaching your audience can you build up? And make sure you at least grow and maintain your email list along the way, and of course back up your email list. Whatever email list service you use, you should be able to download your email, back that up and obviously keep that safe, because that is data protection. But you need to essentially make sure you can sell books in some form. If Tick Tok does go away in the usa, this also happened in India and what happened there is that short form video creators generally went to Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts. So the upshot being there will always be some way to reach readers and change is the only constant. As we know. Whatever happens, feel the feelings and make sure you learn from this so that you don't have to feel the feelings again. In other news, bookvault is expanding printing to Australia. They say as we expand our global print network to better meet your publishing needs. We're thrilled to announce the launch of local printing in Australia, giving people lower shipping costs, faster turnaround times and reduced carbon emissions with less shipping. This month we'll begin printing orders destined for Australia locally. To ensure a smooth transition, we will migrate orders selectively in order to load balance and then over time integrate the Australian printing option into the Book Vault portal, similar to the way the US is done. So I'm excited about this because obviously I lived in Australia and New Zealand. I do have quite an audience there and so I am hoping to be able to print locally by the time I do my next Kickstarter, which I'll talk more about in a minute. In other things, the Self Publishing Advice blog has an article on GPSR, the EU's new general product safety regulation. Essentially, if you sell print books directly to readers in Europe, you need to know about this. The article tells you what you need to do and whether you need to be concerned. It's essentially about traceability and safety standards and the sledgehammer that affects small businesses far more than big ones. Of course, the article says many print on demand services such as bookvault have already taken measures to comply. They've appointed an EU responsible person so you don't have to. But if you are printing and then shipping yourself to customers in the EU, just have an look at the article on self publishingadvice.org over into publishing an AI created by humans AI launches this week. I mentioned this last year. It is now open to authors who want to license their intellectual property assets for data training and other AI training. I absolutely want to do this. As I have said from the beginning. I took a look at this last year and I have loaded up all my books. It is a non exclusive license so I can do lots of these deals which is what I hope to do. Of course there's probably pennies in it or even nothing in it right now, but this is how I see it. Between 2005 and 2010 there was talk of digital. What is digital? I mean now digital is huge, but back then it was like, well book sales are print sales. Digital is nothing. So here, just sign this here author, sign this addendum to your contract which hands over digital rights to a publisher. And then of course this became a very big deal with ebooks and audiobooks and all kinds of digital assets worth a lot more. So as I've said many times, I'm not threatened by my use of work in data training. In fact I want to have my work in these models. I want AI models and services and tools to know who I am as Joanna Penn and J.F. penn. And because I understand the technology behind it, I'm not worried about it. Of course I would like to be paid for it. Hence I want to do data licensing. So please read the contract if you are interested. You can download the contract, put it into Google NotebookLM and then you can actually have a chat. You can ask it to explain every single contract term. And this is actually a good thing to do with any contract and you must understand the terms. Of course. I should add that they are the official Artificial Intelligence licensing partner of the United States 14,000 Member Authors Guild as reported by Publishing Perspectives. So it's certainly not just me involved. The big name authors involved include Walter Isaacson who wrote the Steve Jobs and Elon Musk biography biographies, as well as Douglas Preston who is a huge thriller author. Douglas Preston said in the press release, created by humans understands authors in a way no other tech company does. That's quite a big claim. They have established a system that ensures that creators retain control of their work and are fairly compensated in this new world of AI. So you can check them out at createdbyhumans AI. Obviously this is only just launched. This is very very early days. You do need to prove any pen names and co written work. The other party must also approve the license. But it is a pretty simple setup and they have a very responsive help team at the moment. I've been going back and forth with them also. Publishers Weekly reports on a new audio only imprint called Simon Maverick, a new audio first imprint featuring content from self published authors. In a statement, Simon and Schuster described Simon Maverick as the first ever audio imprint launched by a Big 5 publisher dedicated to shining a light on work from talented, diverse and emerging independent authors. They expect Simon Maverick to capitalise on robust audio sales and enthusiastic audiences for self publishing creators and I thought this quote was really funny. They said when I say independent authors it's more self published authors. They tend to refer to themselves as independent authors or indie authors and are building brands and engaging with readers directly outside of the traditional publishing sphere. I thought that was hilarious because we've been referring to ourselves as indie authors since at least 2008, which is when I certainly started using the phrase and I didn't invent it, so probably years before that. But I thought that was quite funny. It's like they refer to themselves as indie authors. Simon and Schuster President Publisher and CEO Jonathan Karp said, I think that self published authors are a fertile opportunity for Simon and Schuster in the same way that mass market publishing used to be. Mass market publishing has given way I think link to independent publishing and we want to be a part of that. So that quote that is from the CEO of Simon and Schuster Mass market publishing has given way to independent publishing. I think that's pretty big recognition from a big five publishing CEO. But yes, so be aware of deals with Simon Maverick if you want to do audio deals. This may be the way forward and from what I have heard they are picking up authors who are doing very well and noticing them on things like TikTok. So yes, keep an eye out for that. I don't know anything about their contracts by the way, but I thought that was interesting in personal news and still related to writing and publishing. I have been all over the Internet this week so I did a live webinar with Reedsy on seven steps for how to write non fiction that's up on YouTube and on their website now. If you want to watch the replay. I go through clarifying your why, understanding your target audience, defining your book idea, finding comparison titles, structuring and organizing your material, writing and editing, publishing, marketing and business, as well as answering a Q and A. It was a pretty packed hour of content and it was a good fun live. I also shared some prompts for using ChatGPT to help you not with the writing, but with everything that goes around the writing. I also did a live session with Draft 2 Digital's self publishing insiders, now available on YouTube on publishing predictions for 2025 alongside Jim Mazevedo, Mark Kocher and Dale Roberts. We talked about AI obviously, as well as TikTok, the splintering of indie author business models, the maturity of the indie movement after 17 years, and much more. That's on the Draft Digital YouTube channel now and will be on the audio podcast feed soon. Also, Orna Ross and I did our salon, I guess we call it our discussion on the Self Publishing with Ally podcast. I discuss the challenges of remaining patient as I continue to wait to hear about my submissions for Blood Vintage, which went out, let me remind you, in September 2024. And so what are we now? Four, five months? I guess. Five months in, we talk about the pros and cons of indie versus Trad and Orna talks about the challenges of family and caregiving and how our plans have to change when more urgent things and more important things, let's face it, arise. We also talk about how we have both said many times that oh, it's time to give up nonfiction, but we can't help ourselves and why we both need both in our creative lives. So that is at the Self Publishing with Ally podcast. In terms of writing, I am still deep into writing the first draft of my desert book which is now called Death Valley A Thriller and have a cover now. Now I've decided on the title. It will be my next Kickstarter coming in mid I have done a pre launch page which is up now and.
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Kevin J. Anderson
I guess just a little word on.
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Joanna Penn
Kickstarter, here it is. Once you've done a few campaigns and you've kind of proven yourself, then the approval of that pre launch page process goes a lot faster. And since I know what I'm doing now I was like right, I'm going to get up the pre launch page. You can sign up there, you can see the COVID you can read the blurb jfpenn.com Death Valley and I'll have a limited number of consulting slots available and they sell out pretty much immediately. So you can be one of the first to know when it launches@jfpen.com Death Valley also, I would really love to have a chat with someone who is an expert on Death Valley and that area. So if that is you or you can recommend someone, please email joannathecreativepenn.com so as part of my foray into film and TV rights, licensing and adaptations as JF Pen so in my JF Penn Persona I am going to the Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival and I have some meetings about various projects but it is way outside my comfort zone. I feel pretty. I think scared is a good word. I'm just going to be honest with you. When I don't know enough about things, I want to know all everything, how everything works. I want to understand how to meet people in this area. I know I need to push myself in networking, but yeah, the Berlin Film Festival, it's one of the big ones. Know people go to Berlin, they go to Cannes obviously other ones in America, but here in Europe it is a big one. So I wanted to say if you are in film and TV and have some tips for Berlin or if you're going and can meet up this February, please also email me joannathecreativepen.com so thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. There were lots of them which I really enjoyed. So here's just a few Jennifer said, I loved the recent interview with Joe Solari. It was very insightful and encouraging, especially as I've been feeling a bit prickly lately about all the end of year reports on social media from zillion dollar indies. I felt reassured that the indie community is indeed my people in spite of less than robust sales. Oh Jennifer. And I wanted to read that because yes, on social media you will often see people's screenshots of like their KDP dashboard or like oh I did all this on Shopify or whatever and that can make some people feel inadequate. Don't worry, we all feel that. I feel that.
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Kevin J. Anderson
So.
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Joanna Penn
But yes, indie. The indie community is for you, whoever you are, if you want to take control of your author creativity and your author business. I mean you could have sold absolutely zero and you can still be in the indie community. Rob Said, I just listened to your show with Joe Solari at my annual writing retreat in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which I think must be South Carolina, while watching a pod of dolphins and a gorgeous picture of a blue beach which looked lovely. And Phil sent a picture of the historic Silver Terrace Cemetery in Virginia City, Nevada. Love Nevada. And Rachel said. I just caught up on the last four episodes of the podcast on a late evening drive down to Pennsylvania. I've included a picture from my stopover, a lovely hotel called Eden Resorts in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And I love that because Rachel was obviously driving, didn't take a picture, and then took a picture at her stopover. I love that you can send me pictures of hotel rooms too, she said. Thank you for all your insight reporting in interviews and I learned so much from listening to the 2024 recap and 2025 goals. Your goals made me feel like there is so much possible for me as a writer and it's totally okay to be where I am in my journey right now. Yes, and again, that's great. It's totally okay to be where you are. And it's so funny. I think as I was saying about Berlin, I feel perhaps like Rachel and maybe people just starting out out in the industry. I know so little about the whole film and TV world. I don't understand the rules of the interactions. I don't understand the business model really, even though I've been researching it. It's hard to work out how people make money in these businesses. So it's like, okay, I need to approach this with the same curiosity and I guess the same humility as someone coming into the author business. There's stuff to learn, but you can learn it by meeting people, by going to things, by listening to things. So yeah, very interesting times. And we are all at different points on the journey for sure. Oh finally Paul sent a picture from Curacao and as we cruise the Caribbean with some colorful awnings on the town by the sea where he is listening to the show. Which is awesome. So please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or message me on X at the Creative Pen or email me send me pictures of where you're listening. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation so this episode is sponsored by Draft2Digital, which I use for my ebook distribution to services like Nook, Apple and Library Services and their handy payment splitting service. They also do print Are you in need of an easy and efficient print on demand service backed by a world class customer support team? Look no further than D2D print from Draft 2 Digital. D2D print is ideal for authors who've already published ebooks but haven't yet experimented with print. With D2D print you can convert an ebook to a print on demand file. With just a few clicks, you can turn an ebook cover image into a full wraparound print cover in seconds. You can choose from dozens of beautiful interior layouts for that professional look and choose from a variety of industry standard trim sizes and formatting options. You can use D2D's free ISBNs, and distribute your Print on Demand files worldwide. You can order Author copies within 32 countries and order print proofs from a variety of shipping options without proof stamped on your book. Like other services we could name use free change tokens every 90 days to make updates to your published print books. All of this and more with no setup or recurring fees, Print on Demand is a game changer for indie authors because while brick and mortar bookstores can't physically stock every book, they can check for the pod print on demand availability of a book when a customer requests it. If you only publish digital books, you could be missing a huge opportunity to reach more readers. Let's fix that with D2D print. Just go to draft2digital.com to find out more. That's draft2digital.com to find out more. So this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreativepenn thanks to the 14 new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on writing, craft and author business, as well as tutorials and demos on AI tools and my patron only Q and A solo episodes and live office hours. This week I shared an early demo of the new developmental editing report from prowritingaid, which was fascinating and everyone is very keen to get hold of it. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. You get access to everything, all the backlist content and Q&As. And we have live office hours coming up at the end of January. If you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePenn Right, let's get into the interview.
- [21:31]
Kevin J. Anderson
Kevin J. Anderson is the multi award winning, internationally best selling 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 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. So welcome back to the show, Kevin.
- [22:02]
It's been too long, Joanna. We should do this more often, so.
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Oh yes. Well, you've got so much going on and we've gone into your background before, so we're going to jump straight in.
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Joanna Penn
And this being in the author business.
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Kevin J. Anderson
A long time is incredible. Tell us. You just told me about a big milestone.
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It was the the new year. So I was just kind of doing my year roundup and everything and I realized that my very first professional publication was in January 1985. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. So that means 40 years I've been a professional author.
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Joanna Penn
Wow.
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Kevin J. Anderson
So I look back and it was 1995 was when I quit my day job and I have been a full time earning all my living by writing stuff for 30 years, which I don't know if I live frugally. No, you've met my wife. I don't live frugally. I've just been at it for a long time. And my gosh, it's not like doing the same thing every day, like working on a factory assembly line. For 30 years this has required just keeping a lookout and being adaptive and reinventing myself over and over and over again because the publishing world does not stay the same. And if you just keep doing the same thing, you'll be left by the wayside.
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Well, let's just focus on that then. You mentioned being adaptive and reinventing yourself. But this, I mean, this really takes a different kind of mindset, I think. And even, you know, I haven't been in it as long as you, but I've seen many authors disappear from the industry perhaps because they couldn't adapt. So how do you keep that sort of ever learning process even when you're already so successful?
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Well, here's the thing. I am not interested in just one thing or one type of writing. I've always got like five or six completely unrelated things going at a time. And what happens is something will be really hot one year and then nobody wants it the next year. But I've got five other things going. So then we hope something else gets really hot. If you are only writing steampunk vampire romances, great. They might be super hot this year, but 10 years from now, maybe people don't want to read steampunk vampire romances. I'm just making that up just as an example, for instance, let me go back. My big claim to fame I had, my first giant career boost was about 1992. So my first novel was published in 1988. And yes, listeners, I know it sounds, I'm really old, but I'm in good shape. So 1988, my first novel was published. I published like I think six or seven novels. This is trad days. There was no option for Indy. And then I got a phone call from Lucasfilm saying, kevin, would you write Star wars books for us? And so suddenly, instead of just being this author who wrote some books that maybe got some reviews and you got advances in those days, and I maybe earned $4,000 on a book for working on it for six, eight months. But then suddenly I was writing Star wars books and I was a New York Times best selling author and I was selling millions of copies and that was huge for me. So I did all these Star wars books and through Star Wars I did Star wars comics. And then I learned how to write comics and that was a huge comics boom. So I was writing monthly comic books and doing all kinds of successful things like that. And because of Star wars, they asked me to write X Files. And I wrote all these movie tie in books that I wrote, the movie, the novels for like these science fiction movies that came out. And I was like pulling up the drawbridge because people kept throwing books at me as fast as I could write them. And then around maybe 10 or 11 years later, all of that media tie in work just dried up. People might remember every time a movie came out, you could walk into the grocery store or the airport and there would be a paperback novel of that movie. I mean, that was steady work. I could pick up the phone saying, I've got a month free, give me a movie novelization. And those things paid like $15,000 or so, and it took three or four weeks worth of work, but they just stopped doing that. It wasn't that I gave up on it or I stopped being good at it or anything, it's just that entire part of the career drop up. And then I'm not sure exactly the years, but like 2005 or 2006, the entire comic book industry imploded. And my comic that used to sell maybe 500,000 copies an issue suddenly sold 50,000 copies an issue just because people stopped buying comics. That's not anything that's in my control. There's a whole lot of reasons why authors screw up their own careers. I mean, we can talk about that for a while, but there are so many things that are out of your control that you have to have a plan B and a plan C and as many plans as you have. I had all these things going, but I kept spinning other plates up. I would write mysteries and horror because then the science fiction dried up or I would write young adults with my wife and when young adults suddenly became hot. And I just kept trying all of the above. And you've noticed, in fact I've given you a cup of my coffee which is like five times stronger than what you ever drank. I am fairly energetic and I like to work all the time and I keep going. And you can't put all your eggs in one basket because this industry is. It's a roller coaster and it just changes all the time. Now there's a couple of other things. Well, first we mentioned I'm the director of the master's degree program in publishing at Western Colorado University. And I started that about seven years ago. In fact, I had to go back to university myself and get an MFA after I had already published 150 books and had 57 bestsellers. But I had to get a degree because you can't teach creative writing unless you have a degree. So I got a master's degree and now, in fact we're taking applications for our seventh cohort now. So seven years I've had this group of students and I teach them grad level publishing, both traditional and indie. And I put them through the paces. They do their own books, they edit an anthology, they read the slush pile. I mean, it's all hands on stuff. But the reason I'm mentioning all that, other than telling everybody check out the program. But that is a completely different plan Z. I mean that's a teaching at the university and teaching publishing. Actually it pays a monthly salary, which isn't bad. I get health benefits here in the uk so you don't know how desperate that is over here in the US that you need to have health insurance. So all of that is a completely different track. That, okay, I'll spend a lot of time teaching graduate students just trying different things. It's all writing adjacent. It's not like I'm working as an automobile mechanic in my daytime. Everything is related to writing or publishing, but there's different aspects of it because it's almost like playing whack a mole. One thing will pop up and be really successful, but then that will go away and then something else will pop up. You need to make sure you have a lot of moles to pop up in the Whack a mole game.
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Yeah. That's fantastic. I mean, it is amazing. And yes, I still remember your coffee. I felt fantastic. I haven't been able to replicate that ever since. So I'm gonna have to see you in Vegas for more coffee.
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But I have one more thing I want to throw into that because I was at 20 books in author Nation, and I was talking to lots of fabulously successful indie authors, and they're fabulously successful this year, but they weren't last year. And the attitude that some people get is if they have a really, really good year, it's always going to be that way, and it isn't. So if you have a really, really good year year, don't go out and buy a private jet, like, sock your money away, build a nest egg, make your pay off your house or whatever you can do. Build financial stability rather than. People might remember MC Hammer, the guy who had some really big hits and then didn't have hits and spent all of his money. You don't want to be like that, because if you're super successful right now, doesn't mean you will always be super successful.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I always talk about investing and how I don't expect writing to pay my pension. I'm building a pension to pay my pension.
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Joanna Penn
And writing can be extra.
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Kevin J. Anderson
But I do want to get into your writing process because, as you mentioned, you're energetic, you're in good shape, and you hike a lot, and you dictate as you walk. And you've been on the show before talking about dictation. Now, I noticed that you have a new edition out of On Being a Dictator with Two Co Writers, which is a book on dictation. And I wondered how your dictation process works now and how it's changed with AI tools for speech to text.
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Well, there's one other cautionary tale I want to throw in there because I. Man, it's probably been 30, maybe even 40 years that I've just dictated my writing. That's how my process works. I love just walking and dictating. And you know this, Joanna. It just gets your creative process going. It gets your thoughts going. And I love hiking and I'm outside and I've got myself so trained that I can't sit there and stare at the screen and be very creative. I have to be out walking and moving around and I go hiking and mountain climbing and everything's wonderful and slight. Problem happened last August as I was climbing down a mountain pass in the rain on the rocks and the Mud was like Vaseline. And I slipped and fell and I broke my ankle and I had to limp a mile back to my car on this rocky trail on a broken ankle. And I was 12 weeks in a boot and then in an ankle brace and no tears or anything. It healed just fine. But for those 12 weeks, I was unable to do writing the way I wanted to write. I couldn't really walk. I wasn't supposed to move around very much. And so I had to. To just sit, like on the back porch with my digital recorder and stare off into the distance and dictate and, man, that cut my productivity in half. It's not the same just sitting there as it is walking. So I guess my downside was I was so dependent on being able to write while I walk that when I suddenly couldn't walk for 12 weeks, I didn't have my own plan B very well in action because, I mean, I got my book done. I was a little late on it, but it was not as much fun to sit there and write. So anyway to your question, though, the dictation process hasn't really changed because I'm an outliner. I go through and I have my 90 chapters outlined or whatever, my big books. And I know exactly what happens in chapter one and chapter two. Now, they might change, I might modify the outline. So it's not like I'm completely locked in. But I'll take my notes for usually two chapters, sometimes three. If I go out on a really long hike and I just. I get into the zone, I. I know what's going to happen, and I just tell my story and I dictate it. And I've gotten it so that if you just play my raw dictation tapes, they're pretty much like an audiobook. I'm pretty good at being consistent, not stumbling. So that's what I've done all along, but only in the past year or so. Okay. And. And I would take those audio files and I download them, and I had a typing service, so I would upload them to my typing service. And they loved working with me because the typing service usually works on, like, legal documents and medical reports and things like that, which are very boring. And they liked my zombie detective chapters or they liked my epic fantasy chapters. So they. They would always fight over my stuff, and I'd get it turned around fairly quickly, so it wasn't causing much problems. I would get their dictation back that, like in word files, two days maybe. So not really a problem. But it's not cheap it was like a penny a word to get it done. So 100,000 word book was whatever that was, $1,000. And as of last February, one of my other dictators at Superstar's writing seminar was last February, she was so excited, came up and said, oh, you've got to try this AI transcription. And she showed me how to do it and I played with it a little bit. And what I use is called Mac Write, but there are other transcription things out there. And suddenly I just feed my audio file into it and it transcribes it. And it takes a little while to teach the damn thing not to rewrite my work.
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Joanna Penn
Particularly with fantasy.
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Kevin J. Anderson
All I use it for is to transcribe what I wrote. But I've got my AI trained right now so that it pops out and it does all the drudgery work so I don't have to put the paragraphs and the quote marks. And it's kind of mind boggling to me how well it does. And for a while, you know me well, I'm not an anti AI person, but I don't want to get people put out of their jobs. And so I thought, but my typing service, then I don't use the typing service. And those people who depended on me and my friend said, Kevin, if they're a decent typing service, don't you think they're already using this to do the first cut on your transcriptions? And I went, oh, probably. So why should I pay somebody else to run the AI thing that I can just run it myself and I get it done. Like, I come home, I get my dictation things, I load the files up, I go off and eat lunch and I come back and they're transcribed. It has taken an entire chunk of the pain in the butt, time consuming work that has nothing to do with being creative. And it, to me, it has made things much more streamlined. The book I wrote probably 10 years ago called On Being a Dictator because I was really one of the first early adopters of walking and dictating. This was the first. Everybody's always asking, well, how can you do that? Well, I got tired of answering them, so I wrote it up and now they have to pay five bucks to get my answer answered.
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It is a really useful book and I love the fact that again, you're being adaptive and you're changing the bits of the process you don't enjoy or the drudgery side or the, the overly expensive side for what it is. And you've changed that process, but your creative process remains the same. It's not like the AI has changed your bit of the process, and I think that's really important. And I love that you're adopting these different things.
- [36:57]
Well, the walking and dictating, that's the fun part. Why would I want an AI to do that for me, that's the fun part. Look, I'm one of these writers that really does enjoy writing. I mean, I love going out and doing my chapter and seeing the adventures unfold. And especially when I do, I have a humorous mystery horror series called dan shamble zombie PI. And we just did a Kickstarter for book 11 on it, and it's a bunch of dad jokes. It's like the Naked Gun meets the Addams Family. And. And those stories are so much fun to write. And I find myself, like, laughing out loud when I go out dictating those things. And my wife will say, kevin, you're writing a Dan Chamble book right now because you're always in a good mood. But I love going out and do that. Why would I want an AI to do all the fun part? AI and computers are supposed to take the grunt work away, not the fun work away.
- [37:49]
Oh, absolutely. Now, I also wanted to ask you about Kickstarter. So you've done seven. As we record this, Kickstarter projects across various genres. So what. What part does Kickstarter play in your author business? And what are any of your tips for authors who want to use it in 2025?
- [38:07]
Well, it has entirely changed how I do things because I remember I came up through trad, and in trad, you have to convince some other publisher that they should publish this project that I want to do. And I would always involve writing proposals up and trying to convince an editor or publisher that, yes, they should take a chance on this project or that project, and then they would pay you in advance, and that's what I would live on while I wrote the book. Indie is entirely different. You don't get paid anything until you publish it and you start earning sales and royalties. Well, Dan Shamble is a good example because I love this series. It was with a traditional publisher and they did the first four books in the series. Let's just say that we didn't really see eye to eye because. Because I do my own marketing. As you know, I've been doing this for a long time. I kind of know what works and what doesn't. So this is a fast and funny series. You read one in a couple of sittings and then you want the next one. And I'M a fast writer. So they bought the first three books and I said, great, let's bring each book. Let's bring them out like every six months. And they went, oh, no, we can't do that. It has to be a year and a half apart. I went, well, but this is a. You don't want a year and a half. And so we. We didn't see eye to eye on that. And so then I wrote a standalone story. Like, here's my original. Just an introduction to Dan Shamble. It's a standalone mystery. And I wrote it and I was going to publish it myself, upload it before the first novel came out so that, like, here's an appetizer. You can read this free story and then get interested in the series. So I wrote it. I was going to publish that. They got all bent out of shape. No, no, no, we have to publish it. So I'm all right. I don't know that you know anything about ebooks, but. Okay. So I gave them the story, but they, of course, couldn't release the story before the book was published. They released the story a year later, before book two was published. And I was, you know, you can. This is audio. You can hear the sound of me slapping my forehead. And then the book comes out. It's $15 as a trade paperback. It was 15 for an ebook and 15 for the print book. And I said, that's insane. You put the ebook at like $5 or something like that. Like that. And they said, well, we don't want to cut into our print sales. I went, well, it's apples and oranges. The ebook readers are going to buy the ebook and the print book readers are going to buy the print book. So they said that their ebook sales were disappointing.
- [40:30]
And I went, well, duh, that's because they're so expensive.
- [40:35]
So anyway, after four books of that, and I am going to answer your question about Kickstarters after all this, I promise. So they did four books and I got the rights back. Back. And I released a short story collection because I had written a bunch of these other short stories and that came out and it did okay. And I reprinted them and they did okay. But I'm writing Dune novels and I'm doing these really big projects that frankly paid a lot. And just my reissues of the Dan Shamble books were okay, but they weren't huge hits. But I really wanted to continue the series that just. There was no reaction, real incentive to do so. And then my friend Dean Wesley Smith, who's Run a lot of Kickstarters, Said, kevin, you should run a Kickstarter for it. And I had this attitude that, well, Kickstarters are for whiny authors that don't have any money and they're begging for money. And he said, no, you got it completely wrong. And he's right. I had it completely wrong. It's not for whiny authors begging for money. It's a way for you to connect with your fans, to give your real fans a chance to get, like, a backstage club that they get either. I mean, my Kickstarter people get their books three, four months before anybody else can get them. And they might get expanded editions or they might get separate things. And so, okay, I decided to try if anybody wants a new Dan Shamble novel, which I wanted to write, and the fans kept asking for. So I ran a Kickstarter for the, like, another Dan Campbell no novel, and bam, it funded in like, 30 minutes. And it ended up like 15 times what we asked for. And it raised more than triple what the trad publisher was paying. And I went, oh, okay, this is pretty nice. And I had another series that I had done the first book of called the dragon business. 47 north published it. It was sort of like the Princess Bride meets Dirty Maratin Scoundrels. It was a fun fantasy caper, and it did okay, but not great. 47 north is Amazon's print imprint for science fiction and fantasy. And surprise, surprise, brick and mortar bookstores don't want to carry books that are published by Amazon, So the sales for that weren't as great as they expected. And I got the rights back. And I wanted to do a sequel to it because I wanted to build that into a fun fantasy series. And I thought, oh, well. Well, why don't we see if the Kickstarter people want a sequel to that? And again, I ran a Kickstarter for it, and again, more than triple what the trad publisher was paying. And remember, I'm already an indie author and an indie publisher, so I know how to publish a book. It's not like this is a learning experience for me.
- [43:17]
But just on that, just to bring you back to Kickstarter for newer authors. I mean, obviously you're talking about established series, so people might think, well, there's already readers for that. But what is different about Kickstarter? And are there things that newer authors who don't have such an extensive career as you could use it for?
- [43:36]
Well, actually, it's almost the opposite answer, because this is really designed for people who do have a platform who do have a fan base because you can tap into them. If you're brand new and don't have followers, you have to find some way to get people interested in your product project. Maybe it's connected to a very interesting subject. In fact, one of my grad students right now is a recovering alcoholic and she's got a whole bunch of self help books on how to overcome addiction. She's not famous, nobody really knows who she is, but she's plugged into this network of people who are trying to help one another through situations like this and so she's able to get attention for that particular subject. I'm going to run a Kickstarter this spring with my grad students because the poetry concentration director also runs this big writer's workshop in Montana, I think, which is for indigenous writers and it's taught by all indigenous instructors and there are a lot of like foundations for the arts supporting them, but they never have enough money to run the workshop. So we're going to run a Kickstarter for them and we will be tapping into a lot of people to say help support this indigenous workshop. And I haven't run it yet, so we don't know if it's successful, but I'm pretty confident it's going to be and my students are going to help promote it. Now they're not famous, but when you have this good cause that you're promoting it for, then you can get attention that way. But if you're just. I'm Bill, brand new indie author and here's my short story collection, here's my Kickstarter that you may be starting too soon for that. Because the steps of doing a successful Kickstarter, you have to have a platform and an outreach and some reason for people to want to do it. And also you need to be able to convince your backers that you will actually deliver on what you promise. Because I've supported probably 50 Kickstarter campaigns and probably 20 of them. I never got the stuff I paid for because they just don't know how to produce it. So don't let that happen to you. Make sure you know what you're doing at 20 books. Last year or the year before, I was talking to the head of publishing at Kickstarter and she was kind of rolling her eyes and shaking her head saying that they've had people that ran campaigns for a fantasy book and the campaign was successful. And then the person wrote her and said, okay, my campaign was successful. Now how do I publish a book?
- [46:24]
Well, we generally say now you should have written your book before you do a campaign. That's the advice, I think, yes.
- [46:31]
I mean, even me, everybody knows that I'm going to be reliable. I've written 190 books. If I say I'm going to write one, I'm going to do it. But I feel that you want to deliver your stuff fairly soon while people remember that they're still waiting for it. How many people are really still waiting for the next Game of Thrones book, giving up on that? I write my book before either completely done or at least the draft is done and I'm editing it before I run the campaign because I want to be able to turn it over and just deliver the books within a month or two. I always under promise and over deliver. So right now I've got the Dan Shamble campaign that ended in like the first week of November. I promised them books by March. We are sending them out this week because I got it done faster. There are times where they are delays, especially if you're doing say bespoke editions that have to be shipped from China or something that those are things you can't count on. But I always really want to have everything done and ready. Well, and the other thing is I plan maybe two, possibly three Kickstarter campaigns a year. I don't want to go to my backers and say, hey, support my next one if I haven't delivered the previous stuff yet. You want to be reliable, make sure you're not doing it too soon. There are pieces you need to put in place. Here's an example of. So I'm writing Dune books and things. Those go to the trad publisher because they have a much bigger footprint in brick and mortar stores and things. But Kickstarter lets me do the projects that are my passion projects, really big things that I want to do that might not fit with TRAD publishing. My biggest campaign ever was last year and I wanted. I've written a lot of short stories over my career and I thought, well, I just want to collect my short stories. And in fact I ended up with a whole lot of short stories, like 150 of them or so. And I even found the very first thing that I wrote when I was 8 years old. I typed it on my dad's typewriter. It was this little three page story about a mad scientist making monsters monsters. And I found that one and so I included that in there. So that meant that by putting the story when I was eight years old, I could do this short story collection that covered 50 years of my career. And each one of those stories I wrote a little intro of here's how I wrote this one or here's how I wrote that one. And so I collect. It was three volumes of science fiction, two volumes of fantasy, two volumes of horror, dark fantasy. See like 750,000 words all told.
- [49:24]
I think, wow.
- [49:26]
And here's all. And this is a huge job just putting all these stories together. But here's the point. And yes, I do have one and I eventually get around to it. So I put all these things together and I went to my New York literary agency agent and I knew the answer, I just wanted to do it. So I went to him and I said, so this is the guy who sold like million dollar contracts for, for me. And I said, I'm going to do a seven volume collection of my reprint short stories and I want to do them all in hardcover. Who could you sell that to? And it was like silence on the phone. He said, well, nobody, nobody would want that. Nobody publishes short story collections. Nobody buys them, nobody wants them. And I said, okay, thanks. And I ran a Kickstarter and we did $80,000.
- [50:12]
Yeah.
- [50:13]
So hello, my fans do want on it because with the Kickstarter, it's between creator and the reader. There aren't 25 other middlemen between it. There aren't all these other people telling you, no, you can't do it. So it's just a direct me and the readers. And I guess the point of that was this was a project I wanted to do without Kickstarter. I could never, never ever have done because it, I mean, it took a lot of time and a lot of work and it was expensive to do those books. So if I didn't have the money from Kickstarter, I could not have seen that project through.
- [50:56]
Well, I did want to ask you about short stories and doing short story collections was one of my reasons that I wanted you to come back on the show. Because in the indie space people think, well, why would I bother writing short stories? It used to be, I mean, there are obviously still short story markets and lots them if you focus on that. But many indie authors are like, why would I bother? So, thoughts on short stories?
- [51:19]
Getting back to the long career retrospective. When I started out, every author's career path was you wrote a bunch of short stories, you published them in the numerous magazines and you built up a little bit of a following and then you graduated to writing novels. Short stories were your training ground. That's not the case anymore. Because there really aren't nearly as many short story markets and even then you might not get it published. But what the big advantage indies have is if you write a short story featuring your series character, well, then you use that as a reader magnet. You put it in your newsletter or you use it get a free story when you sign up for my mailing list or something like that. So short stories have a very good purpose right now is you use them as like. Like carrots to get people to check out your series. Or you can use it to maybe test out a new character if you want to. And always. Short stories is a great way to experiment as a writer. I mean, you might. It takes me a couple of days to do a short story. So if you want to try, well, maybe I should try dark fantasy and see how it works. Works. Well, write a short story and see if it works rather than writing a novel, which is going to take you however long it takes you to write a novel. So it's a training ground and that's very good to do. But today I would look at short stories as an adjunct or as supplementary things rather than your main focus. They're kind of like the garnish on a plate instead of the steak make. And I would. But there are many ways to use them. And you can swap short stories if you're in like other. Other writers have newsletters that you give them a story and they give you a story. So then you can get their readers to read your character and maybe pick up your series. That's where I would do it. And the Kevin J. Anderson short story library that came from people who were already interested in my stuff. If you're brand new and nobody and you don't have a big following already, I'm not exactly sure that that would be my main focus. Doing an original story collection.
- [53:39]
I will come back on that though. One of the reasons I'm thinking of doing this on Kickstarter is because I have bought so many on Kickstarter. I buy a lot of short story collections from people. I don't know who they are because I like reading short story collections. So that, I guess is one of those things that when you find like a tiny niche of who are interested in a certain type of product, then there are people there. So that's actually why I was thinking of even doing one on Kickstarter because I am part of that audience. So I guess it's a different angle.
- [54:09]
But you do have a following and you do have a platform.
- [54:12]
That's true.
- [54:14]
Now for you, though, one of the interesting enticements might be to do a short story collection paired with one of your writing books. Like my grad students, we assign them your building your business plan book and they read it every spring and build their business plan based on your book. So you might want to do here's my story collection, and here's my. If you have a new book on.
- [54:38]
Joanna Penn
Writing advice or something, or writing short stories.
- [54:41]
Kevin J. Anderson
Yes, absolutely.
- [54:43]
If you have one on writing short stories, that would be an ideal pairing. Like, here's my short story collection and here's my book on how to write short stories. Stories. That's genius. That would work. Brilliant.
- [54:55]
Yeah. And I think that's what we think around these Kickstarter projects is it's not like on Amazon, where if you pair something and your algorithm goes horribly wrong because those readers don't normally buy that kind of thing. Whereas with Kickstarter campaigns, you can put these things in and it doesn't mess up some algorithm somewhere.
- [55:14]
Exactly. And then, so, oh, here's the other thing with doing the Kickstarter and raising money that way, that is completely separate from your indie publishing. So when I get a Dan Shamble Kickstarter and those books go out again, they're going out to all my Kickstarter backers in the next week or two. The official release of this book to the public is like April. And so then we put up pre orders on Amazon and then everybody else buys them. And the Kickstarter effectively gave me my book advance like I used to get from trad publishers. Publishers. And then the sales go on sale to the general public because most people don't buy their books through Kickstarter. It's a very. It's a special audience. And so most people are going to wait for it to come out on Amazon. So then you basically start all over from scratch. But hey, I just got a whole bunch of extra money up front to do this project. I am clearly a convert, as you can tell.
- [56:10]
Absolutely. Now, we're almost out of time, but I want to come back to something you said earlier. You said, how do authors screw up their own careers? And then you said, well, we could talk about that if you like. And I was thinking that, yes, I would like to talk about that. So how can authors screw up their careers? Or I guess, how can they avoid that?
- [56:30]
Well, my biggest piece of advice is don't be an asshole. Authors boy. Well, first off, I have a policy of I do not make political postings on any of my social media. That is a great way to get rid of half of your readers to start spouting something. But I wasn't joking. Don't be an asshole. Authors talk, readers talk. If you're like this total jerk, people are like, I like the books but I can't stand the person. So I'm not going to buy anymore. So just don't do that. Deliver your stuff when you say you're going to deliver it. If you promised everybody your next book is coming out in April, well, don't make it five years later. I mean there, obviously there are extenuating circumstances. You could have medical issues or some other things, but prove to be reliable and deliver what you say you're going to deliver. And I like networking. And networking works the opposite way too, because if you screw somebody over, everybody else is going to know about it. And in the indie author community, just look at all the people who come to Superstars or to Author Nation or the came to 20 books or these various things. People will know if you stop being ethical and reliable. I have a policy of I just don't ever talk smack about other authors. I was on a panel once where it was like about best selling books or something and everybody was just bitching and whining about the Twilight books or about Hugh Howey's books and they just, they didn't like them or Dan Brown's just went guys. Tens of millions of people bought them. So there was something done right. Learn from it rather than complain about it. And I think we're all colleagues and like if Joanna, you're successful doesn't make me any less successful. I like to read books too. So just because somebody's selling books doesn't, doesn't cost me anything. I believe in the rising tide lifts all boats. I like being supportive and, and helpful and I do my best not to be an asshole and help other people. It's karma points. It comes back at you. And it works the opposite way that if you're this very negative person and you constantly screw things up, you're alienating your readers, you're alienating your fans, you're being a jerk on social media. Well, that's a great career suicide. Just look at some of the actors who have had careers that have instantly crashed and burned because. Because of some stupid thing they did. So. Stupid thing.
- [59:13]
Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. So you've basically gone for the personality as opposed to the craft, which I think is really interesting. I was kind of expecting you to say they stop writing or something like. Or they Stop marketing or something like that.
- [59:26]
Well, I mean, obviously, if you stop writing, people are gonna. The attention span if you do a series. And I joked earlier about Game of Thrones. I mean, there's a contract there that you started reading this book. You invested lots of time in this series, and it's. I don't know what it is now. 10 years, 12 years since the last one. I'm not waiting for it anymore. I loved those books. I'm not waiting for it anymore. If you do a series and you're producing them regularly and you just stop, the reader's attention span is not long because there are so many other things to read. Don't expect them to be like pining by the telephone, waiting for somebody to ask you out on a date. They will move on if you're not producing things. Now, again, we get back to the longevity of a career. It is exhausting to write lots of books a year, and most people can't keep doing that for 20 years or 30 years. That's one of the reasons, especially indie authors, where readers expect you to write several books a year. Some indie authors I know are writing a book a month. I couldn't do that for any long period. Well, I couldn't do that probably for a single year. But you start building expectations, and when you fail to meet those expectations, they will leave you very quickly. That's why you should have plan B's. If you really, really can't stand writing your steampunk vampire romance series after book number 29. Well, make sure that you have some other series you're starting and building up. Well, Hugh Howey's got several series that are going and lots of authors that are like, Michael Anderley has all kinds of series and Craig Martel has all kinds of series. And you don't just put all your eggs in one basket because you need to have plan B and plan C and to get to circle around to what I started with.
- [61:19]
Yeah. Well, that is fantastic. So where can authors find you and your books and everything you do online?
- [61:25]
All right, well, my. My website is wordfire.com and my store is wordfireshop.com because after Covid, I realized I needed to sell books direct, and that's doing very well for me. Facebook. Just look up my name. Kevin J. Anderson. I've got a couple of different pages, and you'll find it. And also on wordfire.com, there's a whole section about the graduate program in publishing. If anybody's interested in getting a Becoming a master of publishing with a piece of paper to prove it.
- [61:53]
Joanna Penn
Oh brilliant.
- [61:54]
Kevin J. Anderson
Well, thanks so much for your time Kevin. That was great.
- [61:56]
Thanks Joanna. I always love talking to you.
- [62:03]
Joanna Penn
So I hope you found this episode interesting and that it inspires you to adapt to changing technologies as well as have a think about your author career as a long term game when you have to stay nimble and reposition over time. And of course that's what keeps it fun as well as creative. And Kevin is a great example of someone who so certainly seems to still be having fun after all these years. So let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel. Comment on X at the Creative Pen or email me joannathecreativepen.com and send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Next week I'm talking about AI and writing with Alicia Wright, who is an IP lawyer and author with degrees in computer Science and an mfa. She spans both worlds of computers and art and I heard her speak at Author Nation and she was fantastic. So I'm really excited to bring that conversation to you next week and we delve into things like copyright and fair use and the way we're both using AI tools now. And yeah, it was a really fun conversation. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today.
- [63:18]
Kevin J. Anderson
I hope you found it helpful.
- [63:21]
Joanna Penn
You can find the backlist episodes in show notes@thecreativepen.com podcast and you can get your free author blueprint@thecreativepen.com blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.