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

This might have been our least-organized show ever, but it's only because we're working so damn hard for you, folks! We started by talking about how nutso things have been lately, then segued neatly into a few voicemail questions. After this, we moved the part where we revealed the REWARD LEVELS for our upcoming Kickstarter project "Fiction Unboxed" -- which now has a fantastic new video! Watch it here, wherein we're going to write a book, live, in 30 days and let the world watch, launching April 22nd. And why do you care so much about the reward levels? BECAUSE IF YOU JOIN THE PROJECT ON THE FIRST DAY, YOU GET SHIT CHEAPER. That's how it works, yo. We talk through most of the levels in the podcast -- as well as the rationale behind all of them, so that you can learn from our experience if you decide to crowdfund a project yourself -- but here are a few of the most important ones: $49 is the "All Access Pass" level. We assume this is the no-brainer level for most of you. It's where you get access to everything that matters -- video/audio of our story and marketing meetings, access to the drafts (raw, edited, polished) as they're created, digital copies of the book we produce when it's done AND all of our transcripts, assembled into a SECOND book (a reference book that comprises a record of Fiction Unboxed), and so on. BUT IF YOU FUND THIS LEVEL ON DAY 1, IT'S ONLY $39. (Look for the level identical to the $49 level, except that it's only $39.) There's also a "no-brainer plus" level for $99 (with a bunch more stuff), but that one is only $89 for early joiners. If you want to be sure not to miss out on "early joiner" discounts and extra rewards, be sure to join the Fiction Unboxed mailing list here. You'll also see a "participation level" for a bit more, where you can vote on the book's story and direction, plus joining in live Q&A and more. We also mentioned the two highest-level rewards, because if you're thinking about picking them up early (they're limited), you'll want to think about it, ask your spouse, etc. They are: The $5000 level includes everything at the lower levels plus an in-person weekend story workshop in Austin, Texas with all three of us. The maximal $10,000 level includes the workshop and everything else… but also has us editing and polishing your manuscript, creating a custom marketing plan for you, and having you on the podcast to promote and tell your story. After all of this, we still had energy to talk about some reality-check stuff about being a full-time writer. However, I don't have time to write it out here, so you'll need to listen or read the transcript (which we'll have done in a few months… there's a bit of a lag here for "real-time" transcripts, sorry.) So yes, listen in or hang tight, because we talked about what it's REALLY like. (If you must READ this kind of stuff and don't want to wait for the transcript, it's a lot of harsh-reality stuff and downer things we're known for, and this post about self-publishing realities may suit you in the meantime. You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isdADyj2v0 SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

We opened this week's show by talking more about our upcoming Kickstarter project "Fiction UNboxed", wherein we're going to write a book, live, in 30 days (from a total blank slate to publication in ebook, print, and audio) and let the world watch. If you haven't read the details on Fiction UNboxed yet, you really should. It's something the world hasn't seen before. We're thinking of it as a "concert" for writing, and we hope it'll demystify the idea of how to tell stories and free a lot of writers' minds. Oh, and be sure to sign up for the notification list because we're going to give out an awesome bonus (a to-be-determined video tutorial) for people who fund us at a certain level on the FIRST DAY. After that, we had on our guest Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1000 Copies. And man, is Tim a man cut from our same cloth. He gets that successful authors really need to be marketers too. Tim confirmed a lot of what we talk about a lot and gave us plenty of great new ideas too… some having to do with our "offer" to get readers on our mailing list and one biggie about how we need to start an autoresponder for our new subscribers YESTERDAY. Oh, and that site Tim mentioned for A/B testing of all sorts of things? That's PickFu.com. This one is chock full of nuts, folks. Listen up. You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db6WGvM1qVg SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This was the episode where we finally revealed that enticing, exciting, tantalizing upcoming Kickstarter project we've been telling you all about. Ready? Look away if you don't want spoilers. For our Kickstarter project, we're going to write a book, live, in 30 days, and let the world watch. On day 1, we'll have no idea of anything about the book: its title, its genre, any of the characters, anything in the plot, etc. On day 30, we'll have a finished book, in ebook, print, and hopefully even audio, ready for distribution. We're going to show you everything. We'll post each day's new words, post every stage of the ongoing edit, record our story meetings and show you those, share all of our emails about the project, and so on. YOU WILL SEE EXACTLY HOW WE MAKE A STORY FROM NOTHING. We're super excited about the idea. The actual Kickstarter campaign begins on April 22, and we'll reveal more in the coming weeks. But we need something from you first! See, we're going to give out a bonus to people who fund the campaign at a certain level (to be announced) on the first day. We'd like for that bonus to be some sort of video training: us showing you how to do something, step by step. We need your suggestions for what you'd like us to show you in that video training, so please contact us here and let us know! Be sure to sign up for the Kickstarter notification list now so that you won't miss the release… you ARE going to want to get that bonus, and it's only available on the first day! You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj3nUCRKx1s SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This week, we talked a whole lot about a topic that listeners have been clamoring for: our creative process. We've talked a lot lately about our upcoming Kickstarter project, which will deal with the Realm & Sands (that's Johnny and Sean) writing process. This episode was kind of a primer, dealing with the evolution of process between The Beam: Season One and the newly wrapped The Beam: Season Two, which will be released on May 1. (By the way, be sure to join the Realm & Sands "Outlaws" list to get first crack at The Beam's new season when it's available, because it'll be discounted for the first few days and you won't want to miss it.) We covered the ways in which the Realm & Sands process has evolved (and continues to evolve), how Collective Inkwell's process compares, how solo writers can adapt our collaborative processes, and more. As a bonus, we also talked about how fun it is to intersect works in the same world without making each dependent on the others. (Our rule for Beam world stories is that we can't require anyone to read the other works, but the other works can add to the enjoyment of each other and leave Easter eggs. Specifically, we talk about how much gonzo fun we've had cross-pollenating The Beam, Lexi Maxxwell's erotic The Future of Sex series, and our fictional author Sterling Gibson's Plugged and his forthcoming books. (Side note: We and Lexi have been unable to get The Future of Sex price-matched to free on Amazon, but you can read it free on Lexi's blog … just make sure you understand that it contains some very explicit sex scenes.) You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVnmYKLkBMA SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This week, we had Ray Chase, the voice actor who played Boricio on the audiobook version of Yesterday's Gone, on the show. Ray was a big old handful of hilarity and fun. Ray's voice acting is absolutely phenomenal, and we're really hoping to have him read a part for The Beam, which we recently signed into audiobook production (seasons 1-3) with Podium Publishing. But Ray isn't just an audiobook narrator! Oh, no, he does a ton more. Check out Funsplosion for a lot more awesomeness, and if you're into it, consider backing his Kickstarter. We did! Before Ray joined us, we talked about a few other things, partially centering on Sean and I spending four days in person last weekend talking through a massive story meeting. In a few days on the SPP blog, we're going to be running a kind of 30-day "bootcamp" designed to address some of the biggest roadblocks we hear from listeners and readers. It is, of course, totally free. If you want to know when that begins, be sure to join our Repeaters list. We gave a bit more detail on an upcoming Kickstarter project we're going to be doing, on our process and how other writers can take what we do and use it to become more productive. We'll tell you all about it in two weeks for SPP episode #100, but suffice to say that we've never seen anyone else do anything quite like it. We announced the DEBUT OF THE WRITE. PUBLISH. REPEAT. AUDIOBOOK! You can get the WPR audiobook here, and we're so, so, so proud of it… and thankful to our narrator on this project, Simon Whistler from the Rocking Self Publishing Podcast. (And we also put a TON of other audiobooks into production last week! We played through a few voicemails. We talked about some new things we've learned about glossy vs. matte covers for our print books, and why we'd choose one or the other in a given circumstance. You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwQ_74FyAM SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

Yay! We finally managed to get Lexi Maxxwell back on the show! You may or may not care about Lexi's erotic works, but you should care about her as she relates to us. We produce Lexi and enjoy working with her, but we also use her growing empire as a testing ground for the things we later do on our empires: working on her website, her Facebook page, etc. She's a super-smart gal with a knack for marketing and fan connection, and we can all learn a lesson or two from her. Lexi was her usual dirty self on this show, so consider yourself warned. (But we'd all love it if you'd head over and "like" her Facebook page -- oh, and while you're at it, you can "like" the SPP page too. ) We talked about how to make your fans love you, how to reach new readers by considering your work to be part of two genres, and a ton more. SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

Featured image credit Blue Lily Photography Today's guest was Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist and the follow-up, Show Your Work. This was our longest SPP episode yet, so buckle in. You're going to feel so damn inspired. (Incidentally, we gave Austin adequate chances to escape but he kept saying he wanted to stay. Do you hear that, police out there investigating a hostage claim?) Dave has a huge boner over Austin's work, and hence is to thank for wrangling him onto our show. Dave wrote a tribute post here, and I have to say that after reading Austin's stuff myself, I basically want to invite him to be our fourth host of SPP. What he says is what we say, and what we say is what he says. Show Your Work is all about networking without networking and marketing without marketing. To increase exposure to your work, SHOW your work. For a preview, here are a bunch of book interiors he's already shared. This was a hell of a show. We even asked him about putting a unicorn in a story as a way of mashing-up our inspirations. Enjoy! You can watch the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i-DerlGKZ0 SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

Hangout #2! Here ya go, kiddies! If you'd like to participate in future hangouts (we do one every month), be sure to join our "repeaters" list. That's the list we tell about such things, and then you can join us and get your questions answered live! Here's the YouTube version:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F29b7qIQtSs

This is a bit of a mishmash show because we had a guest scheduled and he never showed up. So we had to wing it without a clear topic. Hopefully we didn't do too shittily. First of all, some announcements: 1. SPP is now sponsored by 99designs 99designs is a great service we've used for book cover design and talked about as awesome BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN PAYING US. If you do need a book cover or any other graphic service, head on over to 99designs.com/spp and they'll give you a Power Pack Upgrade, normally priced at $99, for FREE. 2. SPP now has a Facebook page We have BIG plans for SPP's Facebook presence, but it begins with a contest. If we reach certain numbers of Facebook "likes," EVERY fan of the page will get a prize. Head on over to the page, Like it, and give us your thoughts on what the prize should be. (The contest starts next week.) 3. We're going to be doing a Kickstarter campaign Listen to the episode for details, and listen in future weeks for further info. You're going to love it. For most of this week's show, we talked about Facebook marketing, which Sean has been doing a lot of, as it pertains to promoting authors and selling books. There's more mishmash in here too. Hey… we did our best, making up topics on the spot to fill a no-guest show! You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi7ZGNNUBjI SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This week's guest was Charlie Hoehn , who Dave apparently has a crush on. Dave also referred to our thumbnails on the YouTube version, from Charlie to me (Johnny) to Sean to Dave himself, as "the devolution of man." Charlie recently launched a new book that the anxiety sufferers among you should check out (Play It Away: A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety), but more relevant to our audience is the fact that Charlie has been behind the scenes of some major book launches, most notably Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Body. So we drilled him for info. Among Charlie's tips are: • Get beta readers to help you decide and refine your book's content (more for nonfiction than fiction) • Do research about what's hot BEFORE writing anything (yes, even for fiction, if only for positioning) • Get beta readers • Use your network -- and if you don't have one, develop one now • Get beta readers This show's transcript is available in full below the video, provided by our sponsor CaptionAccess. If you do any multimedia work at all, you need to be providing transcripts or captioning. Even setting aside the search engine benefits of transcripts, the deaf and hard of hearing market is huge, and almost nobody is serving them. Does that sound like an opportunity to anyone, in addition to making you a generally cool person or company?  You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKJOQFO6BEQ SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This week we had back our friend and SPP regular contributor Joanna Penn. Joanna is always way ahead of the curve on new and breaking trends that we all should be paying attention to, so we collectively paid a ton of attention. (In fact, we paid SO much attention that we started her appearance early and kept her late enough that she ran out of wine, and we still didn't really cover enough.) We started out by talking about speaking opportunities for writers (Sean and I want to get paid to speak), based around Joanna's conveniently timed new book Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts, which you should go and pick up if you're at all interested in speaking -- whether you consider yourself an introvert or not. (I've read it, so I can tell you it's awesome. So go get it.) Throughout the rest of the show, we talked about how to take ONE book and turn it into MANY income streams by exploiting all the rights that are available and exploitable: making audiobooks, creating various versions, translating your work and selling it into new and growing markets, and outright selling your rights so that other people (who know those markets better and have reach into them) can sell into them for you. This episode is JAM-PACKED! Enjoy, and don't forget to check out Joanna's book if you're considering speaking as a publicity avenue or income source. This show's transcript is available in full below the video, provided by our sponsor CaptionAccess. If you do any multimedia work at all, you need to be providing transcripts or captioning. Even setting aside the search engine benefits of transcripts, the deaf and hard of hearing market is huge, and almost nobody is serving them. Does that sound like an opportunity to anyone, in addition to making you a generally cool person or company?  You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC7S7gJGgD4 SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

After a false start last week, we got Lindsay Buroker on the show for this episode. Lindsay has been in self-publishing for long than we have and has been speaking on her blog about the industry and how-to and why-to and general -to sorts of things for authors for longer than we have. She's also somehow managed to develop a legion of loyal fans of her Emperor's Edge series who were numerous enough, devoted enough, and proactive enough to start up a fan forum to discuss her books and to write fan fiction. That's pretty cool. In this episode, one thing that kept coming up over and over was the idea that you can't think short-term in this business. The market will change, tactics will come in and out of favor, and the "now" solution isn't always the best solution. We get mired in what's happening this second, but you have to think like a businessperson and always remember that persistent writers are going to be writing for their whole lives. So you've got to plan that way. This show's transcript is available in full below the video, provided by our sponsor CaptionAccess. If you do any multimedia work at all, you need to be providing transcripts or captioning. Even setting aside the search engine benefits of transcripts, the deaf and hard of hearing market is huge, and almost nobody is serving them. Does that sound like an opportunity to anyone, in addition to making you a generally cool person or company?  You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_FacwZGZF4 SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of  The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

This isn't an official episode, but I figured I'd put it on the feed because I know that *I* would never want to watch a 1.5 hour YouTube video if I were in your shoes, yet might like to hear what we talked about on the hangout. If you'd like to participate in future hangouts (we plan to do one every month), be sure to join our "repeaters" list. That's the list we tell about such things, and then you can join us and get your questions answered live! Here's the YouTube version:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7CUD0ssfw

After a stupid debacle wherein Google shit itself and made our usual Google Hangouts On Air impossible, we had to postpone the guest we had scheduled until next week. We'd planned to have Lindsay Buroker on, but all we did today was to waste her time. Sorry, Lindsay! Because we didn't have other plans in place, we answered voicemails and live questions. Here are a few of them: • What's our opinion of mind-mapping software Scapple? • How do you avoid genre cliches when writing in a genre? • Is it possible to self-publish games via self-pub platforms? • Are we planning to publish ongoing updates to our self publishing book Write. Publish. Repeat. as the indie publishing landscape changes? And lastly, we took a voicemail from Demelza, who had such a wonderful down-under accent that we missed her question. It had something about publishing episodes versus full seasons. This show's transcript is available in full below the video, provided by our sponsor CaptionAccess. If you do any multimedia work at all, you need to be providing transcripts or captioning. Even setting aside the search engine benefits of transcripts, the deaf and hard of hearing market is huge, and almost nobody is serving them. Does that sound like an opportunity to anyone, in addition to making you a generally cool person or company?  You can view the video version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s74kfEVgNFw SHOW TRANSCRIPT Transcripts of  The Self Publishing Podcast are provided by CaptionAccess. You can download the PDF version of this week's show here, or click the box below to read it in-line on this page.

We started the show with a few announcements: • We're holding our first-ever SPP "ask us anything" Google Plus Hangout on Thursday, 1/30 at 9pm Eastern time. You should be able to find it here at that time. (We will also record this and post it on our usual YouTube channel, so if you don't have live questions, you may just want to wait.) • Sean and I -- and, it turns, out, MAYBE DAVE -- will be at the South by Southwest (Interactive) festival from March 7-9. We're not hosing a formal meet-up, but we'll hang out and post our whereabouts on social media, so we hope you'll watch our social media accounts and come hang out if you're there. • Our previous SPP guest, writer-specialist lawyer M. Scott Boone, is blogging a copyright course. You can follow it for free here. • Lastly, the Unicorn Western 1 and Fat Vampire 1 Podiobooks (podcast audiobooks) are now available. You can find them online here or can search iTunes to find them. Now, on to the show. We talked a lot about our marketing plans for 2014, mainly centering on what we've already done with the Realm and Sands blog. Our first (and very well-received) blog post was What Defines You? and was followed up with Is Revenge Ever Justified? We have high hopes that doing "old Johnny style epic blog posts" will help us to engage with readers and help us bond people to our fiction. We also talked about how Lexi Maxxwell is doing the same thing on her erotica blog, starting with her first post This is Who I Am (link not entirely NSFW but definitely racy). We talked about how we're officially working with Lexi as producers, so you'll see a lot of similarities between her marketing styles and ours this year… because we're pushing her as much as she's pushing us. This show's transcript is available in full below the video, provided by our sponsor CaptionAccess. If you do any multimedia work at all, you need to be providing transcripts or captioning. Even setting aside the search engine benefits of transcripts, the deaf and hard of hearing market is huge, and almost nobody is serving them. Does that sound like an opportunity to anyone, in addition to making you a generally cool person or company?  You can view the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yujLlh4rjA The full show transcript follows, or you can download the PDF version here. ROUGH EDITED COPY SELF PUBLISHING PODCAST #90 JANUARY, 2014   CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTIONACCESS contact@captionaccess.com www.captionaccess.com *  *  *  *  * This is being provided in a rough-draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * *       Introduction Welcome to the Self-Publishing Podcast, where if you want something done right you've got to do it yourself. Now, here are your hosts, three guys who spend most of their time up in the trees:  Johnny, Sean and Dave. JOHNNY B. TRUANT:  Hello everyone welcome to the Self-Publishing Podcast, the podcast that's all about how to get your words out into the world without contending with agents, publishers, or the other gatekeepers in traditional publishing. I'm Johnny B. Truant, here with the other two thirds of the dynamic trio: Sean Platt, and David Wright.  You know it's funny, Dave, my wife has gotten to the point where she, after the show, asks: How was the podcast? Okay, they were good. Any new Dave stories? And I told her about how the Dave stories on the last one totally kind of bummed me out and made me want to slit my wrists.  I'm like yeah; I'm down because Dave told stories. SEAN PLATT:  I wonder how many -- JOHNNY B. TRUANT: --People say the exact same thing? SEAN PLATT:  How many lives Dave is a part of? I mean how many shadows has he brought into households across the nation? JOHNNY B. TRUANT:  You say very few,