The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

<p>Is AI really the end of creativity, or the biggest emancipation of creative energy we've ever seen? <strong>How can authors thrive in a time of super abundance</strong>, when anyone can make anything? What happens when publishers become technology providers, and agents start shopping for books on our behalf? With Nadim Sadek.</p> <p>In the intro, my <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/live/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars</a>. </p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><a href="https://www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="662" height="245" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/The-Creative-Penn-Podcast-and-Patreon.png" alt="" class="wp-image-36660" style="width:546px;height:auto" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/The-Creative-Penn-Podcast-and-Patreon.png 662w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/The-Creative-Penn-Podcast-and-Patreon-300x111.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 662px) 100vw, 662px" /></a></figure> </div> <p>This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Patreon.com/thecreativepenn</a>&nbsp;</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><a href="https://www.nadimsadek.com/" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Nadim-Sadek.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-37490" style="aspect-ratio:2.316742081447964;width:542px;height:auto"/></a></figure> </div> <p>Nadim Sadek is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Shimmr AI, an AI-powered book marketing company, as well as the bestselling author of children's books and non-fiction books, including <a href="https://amzn.to/4tdcwwK" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title=""><em>Quiver, don't Quake: How Creativity Can Embrace AI</em>.</a></p> <p>You can listen above or on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">your favorite podcast app</a>&nbsp;or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Show Notes</strong></p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Using AI as a research partner, editor, and constructive critic when writing a book</li> <li>The ratio of dreaming to execution</li> <li>Why publishers still draw red lines at AI-written words, and why that may change</li> <li>Inside Shimmr's three-engine advertising system: Strategizer, Generator, and Deployer</li> <li>Multimodal interactivity, agentic purchasing, and the idea of the Panthropic</li> </ul> <p>You can find Nadim on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadim-sadek-23443210/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">LinkedIn</a> or at <a href="https://www.nadimsadek.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">NadimSadek.com</a>.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript of Interview with Nadim Sadek</h3> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Nadim Sadek is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Shimmr AI, an AI-powered book marketing company, as well as the bestselling author of children's books and non-fiction books, including <em>Quiver, don't Quake: How Creativity Can Embrace AI</em>. So welcome to the show, Nadim.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> It is lovely to be here. I feel very privileged to be invited onto this. Thank you.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Oh, I'm excited to talk to you today, and we're really talking about AI. I wanted to start with the fact that you do seem to have a sort of relentless optimism. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How do you remain so optimistic about AI when the publishing industry that we both work in seems so overwhelmingly negative? </h3> <p>Lift our eyes to the horizon—what is the bigger picture?</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Oh my goodness. That is a big one. I think my optimism is quite confined actually in the area of publishing. If you were to ask me to speak about AI more broadly—which you're not, but I'm going to give you a little bit of it—I've got lots of concerns.</p> <p>That includes the advent of autonomous weapons and economic singularity, where the wealth from AI as an industry is going into just a few hands, and energy usage, and cultural homogenisation, I suppose, and the potential for brain rot. </p> <p>There's a whole pile of stuff which is really not very good about AI, and all the normal things about fraud and theft and so on.</p> <p>However, if you recognise that and then you say what's going on in publishing, then the obvious thing that you first have to deal with is what did happen with copyright. Is it appropriate to say that things have been stolen and taken without permission and so on? It is.</p> <p>It's going through the American courts at one pace. I saw that Penguin Random House have started a case against OpenAI in Germany, where there will be a much faster legal conclusion—a judge's conclusion, I think.</p> <p>This will begin to put parameters on how copyrighted materials can be used, and possibly also some retrospective judgment about what has happened to this point and what can be done about it.</p> <p>So it's good that you've asked questions so early in our conversation, because I think —  </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">It's important to contextualise my optimism. </h3> <p>It is whilst noting with regret the behaviour of the AI industry—the models themselves—in not dealing with copyright in the most generous or appropriate fashion.</p> <p>I think we should also recognise that <strong>copyright probably wasn't designed for machine learning in the way that it is</strong>. Probably the industry wasn't terribly well prepared to note, negotiate with, and navigate the very fast-moving technological culture of AI companies. So I think lots of mistakes have been made on both sides.</p> <p>When you put all that to one side, what's left for me is <strong>an amazing emancipation of creative energy and also a huge efficiency being brought to the publishing industry</strong>. We can talk about both those things further, but for me that is what's going on.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>The efficiency of bookmaking and publishing generally—the whole workflow of getting a book out of somebody's head and into a reader's hands—I think is immensely streamlined and improved by AI.</p> </blockquote> <p>Actually, if you talk about it carefully, which I'm sure we will do, the ability of creators to share and let others experience their creative endeavours becomes so much better, so much fuller, so much richer. So that's why I'm excited about it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Well, let's get into those two things then. You mentioned the emancipation of creative energy, and you've worked with various AI tools as part of your creative and business processes. You've said that AI can be a creative companion. So specifically when it comes to <em>Quiver, don't Quake</em>, for example—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How are you using the various tools in such an emancipated way?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Well, just to put a bit of a broader context on it, <strong>we're an AI-native company at Shimmr</strong>, and separately I wear a hat as an author.</p> <p>You mentioned the AI books and the children's books. I'm also writing a book about the psychology of motorcycling. So it's a very odd authorial footprint, but it means that I kind of tramp around the place and learn different things.</p> <p>What I've noticed, even within Shimmr, is that the whole team has been using AI tools very differently. Lots of people are very bright in the company. They're all brighter than me, and I salute them and love them. But they've all used AI to become more creative in their own ways.</p> <p>For example, our Chief Commercial Officer is very numerate and logical, and not loquacious. She prefers to say things straight and simply. She has become an unbelievably creative financial modeller and analyst because she uses AI in lots of different ways. </p> <p>So she has flourished and grown so much, and is creative in a way that she never could be before—not only around numeracy and financial matters, but in thinking through new concepts for sales and marketing and for our commercial development.</p> <p>I've just noticed all around me this going on. When it comes to me, I prefer to express myself through writing. I talk a bit as well, as you can tell, but my favourite means of communication is just writing.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">When I was writing <em>Quiver, don't Quake</em>, I would use AI in a number of different fashions. One would be for research. </h3> <p>One of the chapters is about the psychology of creativity. I'm a psychologist, so I tend to come at things from a psychological perspective. What is the psychology of creativity? Well, here comes a million-word answer from an AI—this person said this, this person said that. </p> <p>Then I kind of focused my research in particular areas and assembled them by drawing from the outputs of several AIs about what has been said about AI, what the science says about it, what sociology says about it, what particular creatives that we're all aware of say about it, whether they're in the advertising industry or musicians or artists or whatever. So that was a very rich way of researching things.</p> <p>I would often put a chapter in—this is a slightly different use—a manuscript that I'd written and say, &#8220;Read this as if you're somebody just coming across my book, and tell me where the reader might struggle between one paragraph and another, or where there's a logical fallout, or where the concept isn't really very fully excavated and developed.&#8221;</p> <p>It would occasionally prompt me to say, &#8220;You could probably do with a line that brings the reader from this point to that point.&#8221; And usually I listened to that and then wrote something new.</p> <p>In another use case, I eventually gave it the whole book and said, &#8220;I think I've done an okay job here and I quite like the flow and I'm sort of satisfied enough, but before I send it to the publisher and say, &#8216;there you go,' what do you think? Are there any ways in which this book could become a better and more interesting read?&#8221;</p> <p>It came back fairly promptly and said, &#8220;Well, what you haven't really done is considered what all the naysayers would say. You've done your dark moments of militarism and all that stuff, but what about some of the other stuff closer to publishing or creativity?&#8221; </p> <p>So off I went on a new round of research, and did some myself and used the AI for other bits.</p> <p>The funny thing, really the ironic thing here, is that the book is much better, and most people salute the book for the eighth to ninth chapter that talks about the constructive critics. </p> <p>I assemble them all and articulate all their arguments and say how hideous AI is and how terrible it is for the world and all of us. And then I try to repudiate some of them, not in a defensive way, but just to say, actually, yes, that's one perspective and here's another one. </p> <p>That chapter, ironically, about how AI is terrible was prompted by AI. It said, &#8220;You should really have a go at me.&#8221; And so I did. So that was another use case.</p> <p>Then finally—perhaps I'll say this—I have a friend who is, I think, the Editor-in-Chief of Penguin in India. I got to know her at a book fair or something. We started chatting, and I told her about my kids' books. I said, &#8220;I could really do with an editor on these ten books that are due to be published.&#8221; </p> <p>She very generously, amiably, and very constructively gave me feedback on each individual book and then on the whole set. I was really happy with it. I said to her, &#8220;That was a delight.&#8221;</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">She said, &#8220;You'd be much better off working with Editrix.&#8221;</h3> <p>I said, &#8220;What's Editrix?&#8221;</p> <p>She said, &#8220;Well, it's an AI platform I've created where you can go and self-edit.&#8221;</p> <p>I said, &#8220;You must be kidding. I'd much prefer chatting to you and our interactions.&#8221;</p> <p>She said, &#8220;Yes, well, go and try it.&#8221;</p> <p>So I got an account for the Editrix AI. Off I went, gave it my books, and lo and behold, it came up with some incredibly sophisticated and subtle observations on the books that neither Meru nor I had seen.</p> <p>For example, there's a story where a boy who lives in a house on a hill meets another boy on a bridge, and they end up in a silly confrontation. They're young and foolish, and it sort of transpires that the other boy lived in a local village. </p> <p>Now, I suppose in retrospect, it's pretty obvious that this could be seen to be colonialist, imperialist, and a sense of entitlement from the boy at the top of the hill crossing the bridge first and so on. Hadn't crossed my mind.</p> <p>The AI said, &#8220;I can tell from the rest of your writing that you don't really have a sort of racist or imperialist or superior attitude to things, but in this story, there could be a misapprehension that you do.&#8221; I thought, wow, what a great warning. So I changed it.</p> <p>There are almost endless ways—and I can tell you others, because I'm writing a book about clouds at the moment—in which AI can help you as an author. I've just shared some of those with you.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes, well, I love that. I also use it for research. I definitely use the &#8220;give me feedback as a reader avatar, as a reader of this type of genre&#8221; or whatever.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I use different tools as well, so I agree with you. All of that is, I think, what a lot of people are doing. You also said you did a lot of the writing and rewriting, so the human was very much there. </p> <p>This was not an AI-generated work in any way. It was using an AI as a sort of collaborator—a creative companion, to use your words—which I think is great.</p> <p>One of the things that AI-positive people like us are finding is that there's so much negativity around the traditional publishers, around other authors, around supposedly negative backlash from readers. I think there's a lot of very noisy people who are probably making this sound worse than it is. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Since you are so embedded in traditional publishing in so many ways, how are publishing people thinking about this?</h3> <p>Do you think it's just different in terms of the creative side versus say the marketing side? What is happening there, and what do you recommend for authors?</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> What I'm observing is that there is increasingly confident adoption of AI for corporate efficiency, which is a polite way of saying where one can see profitability being improved.</p> <p>Could you streamline legal contracting? Yes. Can you manage royalty payments better? Yes. Are there better sustainability prospects with managing a warehouse and distribution and so on with AI? Yes. </p> <p>Could you improve your marketing by looking at competitive titles and trends, and optimising your metadata and your SEO and now your GEO, all using AI? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All of these things can be assisted.</p> <p>Can you manage much more of your backlist, where you don't have the human or financial capital to manage all of those titles in a truly respectful and invested way? Yes, yes, yes. So wherever there's corporate efficiency, I see publishers being increasingly bold about saying they have integrated AI into their workstreams.</p> <p>What's much more tentative and hesitant is where there's discussion of authors—and I do hesitate to use the right words here—being assisted by, employing, working with AI. I kind of shorthand it as creative emancipation. It really means very many different things.</p> <p>Let me give you the example that I referred to briefly a second ago of <em>Cloud Land</em>, which is probably my first real novel. I'm very lucky. I sit working every day at a desk that's got three windows, and I look at the sky, and every day it's different, and I'm fascinated by it. </p> <p>I've been flying around the world since I was very young—my father worked for the World Health Organization, we moved between many countries—so I've also seen clouds from the sky a lot. I've noticed that in different parts of the world there are different cloud formations.</p> <p>It came to me one day that it would be very interesting if the clouds were somehow sentient, and that there is a cloud society, and that Cloud Land lived above human land and absorbed and observed us. </p> <p>Actually, the more I started thinking about it, the more I thought, well, we kind of evaporate. We give off vapour all the time and it rises up to clouds and maybe we're sending DNA signals to it, and it condensates and sends rain and storms and winds and lightning and thunder and all. </p> <p>There's a huge amount of interaction between Cloud Land and human land if you think about it.</p> <p>So I went into an AI. I said, &#8220;Hey, I've been thinking about this, blah, blah, blah. Any observations on what I've been saying so far?&#8221; I think one of the first things it said to me was, &#8220;You are actually playing with quantum physics.&#8221;</p> <p>I had no idea what quantum physics were really. I thought, well, this is interesting. I went and researched quantum physics, and actually there is some of that in it. If you count Cloud Land as a creative notion—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The original idea, the creativity, came wholly from me, and then the development of it has been assisted by working with AI. </h3> <p>I as a creator have spent much more time originating ideas about a story than would historically have been true. </p> <p>I probably would have gone to a library, tried to find the right geography textbook, read up about clouds, discovered what the nomenclature is, thought about whether I could put characters to cumulonimbus versus stratus something or other, and kind of worked my way gradually through it.</p> <p>There is something that I refer to in <em>Quiver, don't Quake</em>, which is what I call the ratio of dreaming to execution. </p> <p>I think previously, without AI, creators would probably spend 80% of their time researching and trying to get information and assembling things and editing documents and spell-checking and doing a whole pile of different tasks</p> <p>None of which I actually dismiss, because I think sometimes those difficult and <br>&#8220;menial&#8221; tasks give you time to let ideas percolate and flourish and grow. It's just part of the process.</p> <p>But whereas before, I think we probably spent 20% of our time originating and 80% of our time assembling, I think it's inverted now. You can probably do 80% of the time you want creating and 20% of the time fiddling about getting your act together.</p> <p>So I feel that that's a huge emancipation of individual creativity. There's also—and we can talk about this if you wish—I think a much broader sociological phenomenon going on, which is really about every person in the world, all 8 billion of us, being creatives. That's the way I see the world.</p> <p>I think that only a minority of that 8 billion have the gift of craft that we recognise—of writing or drawing or making music or being an architect or a biomedical scientist or something that's creative and assembling things. And AI gives you courage and helps you to identify what you wish to make. </p> <p>I really don't mean creating the artefacts. I don't mean painting or making a song or writing a book. I just mean helping one to express and articulate oneself so that one's creative idea is shareable and experienceable by others.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Well, it's interesting. I mean, everything that we've discussed, you're really saying that the main line is the actual writing of the words, because none of us can articulate how ideas come.</p> <p>Especially with Claude, we might have a creative spark, but I'm sure you've found the same: if I go to Claude, which is my favourite, with my creative spark, by the time we've discussed it, possibly over days, I've lost track of who said what. </p> <p>The idea definitely started with me, because the AI at the moment doesn't have its own creative spark in terms of its own drive to write a book, for example. So it starts with me, but then it goes back and forth, back and forth—sparks new ideas, something it wrote makes me think about something else.</p> <p>I think the difficulty with how publishing seems to be doing this at the moment is that it is just the written words on the page that is their red line around &#8220;have you used AI to generate a book?&#8221; But even that, I just think, surely that will change. </p> <p>For example, in the publishing industry, ghost writing—or writing dead authors, like Wilbur Smith—I was going to say Wilbur Smith is a good one. I mean, we've seen them, just different dead authors essentially writing in the voice of those people. </p> <p>So I just see that there are many possible places where publishers might want this kind of tool. I don't know—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Do you see any openness to the actual words themselves?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> I think you're right to identify that that is the place that it gets stickiest. What you kind of do in your private time—imagining and dreaming things up and interacting—it's a facsimile for talking to your friends or another author or something. It's just an AI companion. </p> <p>So I think that that is, you're right, less scrutinised. It is when one examines the words on the page. </p> <p>It's funny—it's almost as if it's a measure of how hard did you work to do this? Or did you just splatter it down on the page by pressing a button somewhere? It's almost as if, as creatives, we have to evidence that we have suffered, you know?</p> <p>I think there's a different form of suffering when you write with AI. It's true that if you command AI in some way to write for you, the default writing will be pretty anodyne, pretty bland, pretty mundane. It is deliberately so. </p> <p>AI is created and it is tuned to be inoffensive, to please most people, to be accessible to most readers and consumers of it.</p> <p>So it's another thing that I encourage people to do: don't approach AI with a kind of Google mindset where you just do a question and answer—&#8221;what time is it in New York now?&#8221; &#8220;Well, it's five hours behind&#8221; or whatever. </p> <p>Instead you say, &#8220;Hey, listen, I'm thinking about clouds, but I want a bit of spittle going up and down between the two, and I'd quite like a crazy cloud that harasses us.&#8221; Well, now I'm putting in some of my idiosyncrasy and my eccentricity and my personal perspective. </p> <p>The more you do that, the more that even if you did press a button and say, &#8220;Command, I want you to write this book,&#8221; that will no longer be a bland and mundane bit of output. It'll be very tuned by your interactions, and it'll exhibit some of your nature.</p> <p>So I think there probably are factories—there's always factories. They're probably—and actually I know this—writing a lot of romance, writing a lot of porn, things which are fairly well parametered. </p> <p>You know what happens in both of those genres more or less, so it's pretty easy for a machine to emulate what an author might write there and go and do it.</p> <p>But if you get into something like, &#8220;a sand dune was my cousin&#8221;—like, okay, well that's a bit different. What do you mean? And there it becomes a much more interesting bit of writing. So I think we're going to see a spectrum.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">To come back to your question about where publishers draw red lines, I think it's where they just see straight away mundane output that doesn't feel like it had a lot of craft or ingenuity or hard work to it. </h3> <p>But I believe that as we go on, that's going to become harder and harder to establish. As we become more sophisticated users of AI, and AI's capabilities to understand us and to work with us become better, then I don't think it'll be such a big question where the words came from. </p> <p>What we'll feast on with each other is our creative ideas and how they're expressed, but not how they were produced.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I mean, I always say to people, I'm not a word generator. That's not what makes me or my books worthy. It is what I do with it. It's the stories I tell, or it's the personal things behind it. </p> <p>So generating millions and millions of words, whether you generate them by typing or handwriting or AI or whatever, it isn't the word generation that is the point. It's all of the things that make that finished thing what it is.</p> <p>So anyway, let's come back to the other thing, because you mentioned that publishers seem very happy around corporate efficiency, anything that drives profitability. You also mentioned that Shimmr is an AI-native company. </p> <p>Now, I, and many people listening—we are a one-person company. So I run my own company. It's a publishing company. I do all my publishing, I do all my marketing, I do all my business as just me. So I also use AI for a lot of this stuff. I wondered—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How do you see publishers changing to become more AI-native? How can we as individual author-publishers do that too?</h3> <p>Because it feels like a massive mindset shift, not just plug in Opus 4.7 here.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> I have been found saying at various publishing events—and it is deliberately a little bit provocative—that I believe that publishers have always been technology providers to creatives. It's not only what they do, but it is a part that they don't seem to embrace very hard.</p> <p>Even if you just go back to Gutenberg—I mean, here's a printing press, it's a bit of technology. &#8220;I'll make your book, I'll make your words into books.&#8221; It started there, and it's always been. That applies to distribution and e-commerce and audiobook manufacture and all sorts of other things along the way.</p> <p>So I encourage publishers to accept the notion that what they should do to attract authors in the future is partly—only partly—develop their own house AIs. It can be as ethically trained as that house wishes to deal with the copyright furore. </p> <p>It can be tuned to do editing in a particular way. It can have a specific way of copy editing. It can have a collaborative notion. It can have an assistant that helps you understand genres and hotspots and competitive titles. </p> <p>It can help you to think about, as Americans might say, what's hot and what's not in the world at the moment. So you might be more attuned to what the market demands, if that affects you at all. Some writers don't care, and that's fine.</p> <p>It can certainly help with all the marketing then. How can you produce social media content that's appropriate to your book, and all the rest of it. So I think there's a way in which publishers could massively enable authors. </p> <p>I talk to tons and tons of authors clearly about Shimmr, and what they all resent, I would say, is finding their time stolen by trying to flog their work rather than make it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> So the marketing process is just theft of creative time for most authors, and they hate doing it, and they're often not very good at it, because it's a completely different skillset from creating great stories or writing non-fiction books about particular subjects.</p> <p>So I believe that authors should be embracing the notion that publishers will create their own house AIs. And goodness me, we might even decide which publisher we prefer to go to on the strength of their AI position. Wouldn't that be interesting? But that is what I see the future being.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes. I mean, definitely there's some quite significant authors—Dean Koontz, probably one of the biggest—who went to Amazon because of their technical ability around publishing and marketing. </p> <p>He was like, &#8220;Yes, I want this because of this.&#8221; Not that he'd be in bookshops or whatever—of course Dean Koontz is—but yes, so I think you're right there.</p> <p>For individuals also, as you know, we can use AI to help us market. I upload my books to Claude when they're finished, and I've just been marketing today. I'll say, &#8220;create 10 Midjourney images based on this book and give me all the marketing copy.&#8221; So I think we can use it now to help us be more efficient.</p> <p>On the other side of that, I think the bigger thing that's starting to happen is marketing is now much easier in one way.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes. Mm-hmm.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So it's getting fuller, or even more.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So how do we deal with this? Because Shimmr is an AI marketing company. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How are you thinking about the predominance of very, very good AI marketing now?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes, and it gets better all the time. It's a great question. Obviously, strategically, as an enterprise, we've really had to think about this one. If I go back one step, I always believe that innovation succeeds when it starts in a narrow space.</p> <p>So when Shimmr launched, we put ourselves forward and were quickly embraced, I have to say, as automated advertising that sells books. Nothing particularly more complicated than that. &#8220;Okay, you do ads, you automate it for me, and it'll help flog my books. Yes, that's it.&#8221; We had a rush. </p> <p>We've worked with about 250 publishers. As you might anticipate, it started with smaller ones, then got bigger. We now work with the biggest as well.</p> <p>That notion of automated advertising selling books was successful. Actually, that was about three years ago—a bit shorter than three years ago. What's happened in that time is that we have now collected a ton of data, and meanwhile the AI models have become more sophisticated and competent.</p> <p>Maybe I should just pause briefly and say what Shimmr actually does. We've got three main engines that are all chained together, to use pretty old language. </p> <p>The first one is what we call the Strategizer. It reads the book, it understands what we call its book DNA. So it's the structural elements of what the narrative is, who the protagonists are, and all the rest of it. </p> <p>It's also a psychological study of it—what's going on, what are the emotions or the values, what are the interests, how they intersect, where are the tensions, all those sorts of things.</p> <p>The Strategizer decides, &#8220;Well, reading everything between the covers of this book and understanding the author's intent, this is the best way to put this book forward because here are its strong points.&#8221; </p> <p>It hands that off to the second machine, which we call the Generator, which says, &#8220;Thanks for the creative brief. I'll make you the ads now.&#8221; It does videos and music and captions and all the rest of it.</p> <p>Then it presents its newly baked campaign to the third machine, which is the Deployer, that says, &#8220;Okay, well, I know where to find the audiences for this. If that's the DNA of the book and this is the campaign that manifests it, then I know where to find these people.&#8221; </p> <p>It goes and autonomously deploys it in various media channels to specific audiences who might be interested in that content.</p> <p>So that's what we started doing, and that generated a huge amount of data. Where we've got to recently—really in the last six months—is understanding that, as you've just said, most people can generate their own stuff. So in some ways they can look just like a mini Shimmr. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The thing that differentiates the content is always the strategy. </h3> <p>What we have learned to do now—and it's because of an agentic framework—is we've moved beyond what's between the covers of the book to look at life. We look at culture, what's going on, what are the trends, what's in and what's out. </p> <p>Even if you take a particular trend—let's say, fascism—what's the language associated with it that's being treated positively and respectfully, and what's the stuff that leads to it being dismissed straight away? All those sorts of nuances around everything.</p> <p>But equally, as well as going deep with a set of agents on what fascism might be in today's culture, we also go wide and say, &#8220;Well, how does that sit next to loyalty or hedonism or ambition or something else?&#8221; So we get this very, very circumspect analysis of the market. </p> <p>Then, indeed, if you do write a book about—I'm really going off-piste here, but you know, the hedonism of fascism, like, God, that would be a weird book—you discover that actually you're not really competing with another book, but you are competing with that specific podcast and this movie that came out, and another movement that's born in Italy but it's moving across Europe now or something.</p> <p>So we were able to produce strategies which now lead to a much broader offer, one which is much more sophisticated and much more likely to drive success in a book or in a creative enterprise. </p> <p>It informs product listings, metadata, author communications, PR, SEO, GEO, and of course the thing that we started with, advertising. </p> <p>So things that you see made by Shimmr should be much more resonant and much more attuned to the world, and commercially much more likely to drive success, than simply saying, &#8220;Here's a book, make ten Midjourney images out of it.&#8221;</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> It's really about the quality of the briefing and the quality of the assets that you're able to produce by having a much more sophisticated Strategizer. </p> <p>So we've gone back into the intellectual property and the human analysis, in a way, of the world. To understand where a specific piece of creative work sits in culture and society has become a much bigger proposition.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Right. So you did mention podcasts there. So as in, you might present to a publisher &#8220;these are the podcasts that they should pitch&#8221; for example?</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> There's that, of course, but it's also, don't think that this book is competing with these three titles which your team put together. It's more that, if people want to listen to hedonistic fascism, they can listen to that podcast before they read this book.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Okay, that's interesting. Interesting times. </p> <p>So we don't have much time left, but I think one of the biggest questions that people have—even if they're AI-positive, as I am and many people listening are—it's not that we're worried about AI replacing us, because we know we're individuals and all that, but we are slightly concerned about the volume of books in the market. </p> <p>And not just books, but TV shows and YouTube and TikTok. It's very hard to stand out.</p> <p>You do say in the book: &#8220;When anyone can make, maybe creativity lies not in the making, but in making others care.&#8221; </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How can I move up the value chain? So for many of us who make an income this way, what are your recommendations?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Great question. And actually I think it's really central. My latest catchphrase is that in a time of super abundance, we need super discoverability. </p> <p>So it's exactly as you just said—tons of work, tons of movies, tons of podcasts, and tons of everything. If you believe in what I've been saying, which is that we're emancipating the creative spark of 8 billion people, there's going to be even more.</p> <p>So I believe that the solution is what I call multimodal interactivity. That doesn't mean multimedia—it means multimodal. Multimodal means you can engage with an experience in different modalities—the same idea.</p> <p>So my conviction is that if you write a book or make a painting or have a piece of music that you've come up with—or anything really, creatively—and you wish it to both survive the first six weeks of its birth and then thrive in a more perpetual way in society and culture, then people have to be able to experience and engage with your idea in multiple modalities.</p> <p>I would always write a book, because that's what I do. Others produce a podcast or write a piece of music—whatever the same sort of things. Any one of us needs to make sure that that reappears and is experienceable and interactable with in different modalities. </p> <p>So my book should have some Instagram reels. There might be YouTube shorts, there might be a podcast, there might be a piece of music associated with it, it could be a movie. It could be a game, it could be an app.</p> <p>You really have to think about allowing your creative idea—more than your creative artefact—to live in culture. Sure, you want to make an income from the artefact that you are good at producing. </p> <p>As many of your listeners, and I, would be writers of books, we want that to persist as a revenue stream, and it should do. I would simply argue that making sure that whatever you've produced in your book is manifest, and people can interact with it in other modalities, is the surest way to get it seen and discovered.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes, it's interesting. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">I've actually started looking at making my non-fiction books into skills.</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> And also making markdown MD files—books as markdown files for agents to buy.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Very good. You are way ahead of the curve.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Well, I sell on Shopify, as do many listeners, and Shopify, as I'm sure you know, is now enabled for agentic purchasing. We are in ChatGPT. So it's really interesting to think, well, if the agents go shopping for people now and in the future, what you want is to be able to find it.</p> <p>Also, I haven't actually put an explicit licence, but people email me and say, &#8220;Can I upload your books into an LLM?&#8221; And I'm like, &#8220;If you buy a copy from me, then yes, you can.&#8221;</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So I think it's changing. And as you say, I do think that people are more and more going to want to say &#8220;buy the PDF and put it in NotebookLM&#8221; or use it as a skill.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> That's right.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> That kind of thing.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Yes, and then they go on a walk with their dog and they listen to the podcast about your book, which they've created on NotebookLM. It's exactly that. </p> <p>I think my worst fear for publishers is that they lose so much of the value chain—distribution, creative collaboration, all sorts of things along the way—that the worst position they could end up in is simply as book manufacturers, which would be just one small manifestation of a creative idea.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Well, I'm excited about the future. I hope you are too. I think you are. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are you particularly excited about in terms of the changes coming?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> Well, if I can be my most extravagant now, my greatest excitement about AI and the changes that are coming are that it'll produce what I describe as the Panthropic.</p> <p>The Panthropic is a way of seeing AI not as a companion or some anthropomorphic being, but instead the repository of everything that humans have ever thought or felt or created or shared, accessible to us all in an anonymised way. It's just a repository of interactable information. </p> <p>My excitement about it is that the liberation that that gives to information—which becomes knowledge, which of course we all know leads to some power—should result in truly new thinking, new philosophy, new spiritualism, possibly new questions about what it is to be a human being and what life on Earth is all about. New economics, new employment, new education.</p> <p>I think one can too easily underestimate the massive liberation of intellectual consideration and creativity that's about to surf across the globe, and I'm so excited by it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Mm-hmm. Yes, me too. Very interesting times ahead.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?</h3> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> I think the easiest thing is just to go to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadim-sadek-23443210/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">LinkedIn</a> and find me there as Nadim Sadek. </p> <p>You can also go to my personal website, which is <a href="https://www.nadimsadek.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">NadimSadek.com</a>, and that'll take you wherever you want on different journeys and different parts of my career. It'll also give you links to books. </p> <p>Of course, they're available in all formats—audio, paperback, ebook—and in many different languages, all through Amazon and other platforms, and Spotify and Audible and all the usual things.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> All the usual things. Well, thanks so much for your time, Nadim. That was great.</p> <p><strong>Nadim:</strong> It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.</p><p>The post <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2026/05/08/ai-creativity-and-the-future-of-publishing-with-nadim-sadek/">AI, Creativity, And The Future of Publishing with Nadim Sadek</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com">The Creative Penn</a>.</p>

<p>How is the German market different to English speaking markets, and why might it be worth looking into translation? <strong>What are the best ways to translate, self-publish and market your books in German?</strong> With Skye MacKinnon.</p> <p>In the intro, thoughts on feeling empty after a book, and the benefits of SubStack for authors [<a href="https://starkreflections.ca/2026/05/01/episode-472-going-all-in-on-substack-with-orna-ross/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Stark Reflections</a>; <a href="https://wishidknownforwriters.com/episodes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Wish I'd Known Then</a>]; <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/live/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars 16 and 23 May</a>.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://www.publisherrocket.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" width="400" height="85" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PublisherRocket.png" alt="" class="wp-image-33606" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PublisherRocket.png 400w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PublisherRocket-300x64.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></a></figure> </div> <p><a href="http://www.publisherrocket.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>This episode is sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="https://publisherrocket.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Publisher Rocket</a>, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at&nbsp;<a href="https://publisherrocket.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.PublisherRocket.com</a></p> <p>This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Patreon.com/thecreativepenn</a>&nbsp;</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://skyemackinnon.com/" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" width="789" height="300" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Skye-MacKinnon.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-37479" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Skye-MacKinnon.jpg 789w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Skye-MacKinnon-300x114.jpg 300w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Skye-MacKinnon-768x292.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 789px) 100vw, 789px" /></a></figure> </div> <p>Skye MacKinnon is the award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of over 70 books across romance and children's books under multiple pen names, most of which are also available in German, which is her bestselling market. Her latest book for authors is <a href="https://amzn.to/4uoKJKP" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title=""><em>Self-Publishing in German: How to Translate, Publish and Market Your Books</em>.</a></p> <p>You can listen above or on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">your favorite podcast app</a>&nbsp;or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Show Notes</strong></p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Why the German-speaking market is much bigger than just Germany, and which genres sell best there</li> <li>Title protection laws, the Impressum, and translator copyright</li> <li>How to find and vet human translators, and what a quality translation actually costs</li> <li>The current state of AI translation for fiction, and why quality assurance passes are essential</li> <li>Distribution decisions: the Tolino Alliance, Skoobe, libraries, and why IngramSpark doesn't work in Germany</li> <li>Marketing in German: BookDeals, LovelyBooks, ads, BookTok, and why pre-orders matter even more</li> </ul> <p>You can find Skye <a href="https://skyemackinnon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">SkyeMacKinnon.com</a> and her children's books at <a href="https://islawynter.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">IslaWynter.com</a>.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript of the interview with Skye MacKinnon</h3> <p><strong>Jo: </strong>Skye MacKinnon is the award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of over 70 books across romance and children's books under multiple pen names, most of which are also available in German, which is her bestselling market. Her latest book for authors is <em>Self-Publishing in German: How to Translate, Publish and Market Your Books</em>.</p> <p>Welcome, Skye.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Hi. Thank you so much for having me.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> This is such an interesting topic. But first up—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> I've always loved writing, but I was always told, &#8220;Well, you can't be an author. Get a proper job.&#8221; So I became a journalist and did that for a few years, but there was always that love of creative writing. </p> <p>At some point when I was getting more active on social media, I was following some other indie authors and realised they're just like me. They're not special people. I had always pictured authors as these mythical beings high up above the rest of us.</p> <p>That gave me the courage to put out my own book. I self-published from the start, never even looked into trad publishing, and that was in 2017. I was really lucky because my first series totally hit it off. I was able to quit my job a year later and I have been a full-time author ever since.</p> <p>I started with romance and then, by accident, got into children's books. Which has been great fun. I don't even have children myself, but it's just that palette cleanser in between. Writing about cute animals and unicorns and just bringing some fun into everything.</p> <p>Nowadays I have about five or six pen names, depending on how you count, across genres, although most of it is romance, and that's my bread and butter really.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes, I'm certainly one of those people who wish I could write romance. It always just seems to be the most profitable market in any language, I guess.</p> <p>Let's get into the book. It's a fantastic book. I've been through it myself. It's really packed full of everything you need, so we can't cover everything. </p> <p>Let's start by considering the German language in general. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why is German a good language market to consider expanding into? </h3> <p>And for anyone who might not realise, why is it more than Germany?</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Well, Germans love to read, and depending on the statistic that you look at, they're generally seen as the third largest book market in the world after English and Mandarin Chinese. So it's a huge market, even though you think of Germany as a small little country in Europe. </p> <p>As you said, it's much more than Germany. Yes, you've got about 83 million people in Germany, but then you've also got Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, parts of Belgium, Luxembourg, and even Italy. So if you look at the whole footprint on the map, it is much bigger than just the one country.</p> <p>A lot of young people there still read and go to bookshops. There's a huge bookshop culture. You will find, if you go to a high street there, way more bookshops than you do here in the UK, for example. </p> <p>There's demand for quality and for really gorgeous books. They have been way ahead of the curve when it comes to special editions and sprayed edges, and they also like translations.</p> <p>I found one statistic where about two thirds of all newly released titles in German are actual translations. Readers are used to translations, but until a few years ago it was all trad-published translations. So this transition is coming now. It's coming very, very fast, especially with AI.</p> <p>They generally are very open to translations as long as the quality is there.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So what about specific genres then? Obviously we mentioned romance there, and romance is not just one genre anymore. Whatever they're writing—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How can somebody tell if it's worth expanding into German? </h3> <p>How do we do this? It takes time and effort and money, potentially.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> It can take a lot of money, so it is worth doing research. There's one easy way, which is just looking at your current sales and looking at how many books you're selling in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at the moment in English. </p> <p>That can give you an indication of which of your books might be already quite popular there. Sometimes it's quite surprising. </p> <p>A lot of my books sell very differently in German than they do in English. I've got one series that did okay in English, and I almost didn't translate it. The German version is, I think, my second bestselling series in German and has completely surprised me. So sometimes it's worth just experimenting a bit. </p> <p>Otherwise, obviously as you said, romance is doing really well. There are a few surprises though. I had a chat with Draft2Digital and they gave me lots of information from their statistics, and they said about 40% of all the western title sales on Draft2Digital are actually in Germany, which is just a huge percentage.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> In English?</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Across languages.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Germans, to be fair, they love their westerns. My dad in Germany, he has been watching westerns for I don't know how many decades. It is one of those things that is just really popular there.</p> <p>Another thing is anything that is set in other countries and really has the location as almost like a character. There's lots of Cornwall, Scotland, different islands, but also mountains and cities. </p> <p>So if your book is set in, even in New York City, if it has a clear setting—if it's not just that it could be any city—then that's a good one to think about translating.</p> <p>In general, most genres can do well. There's a few where you have to be a bit careful. Second World War books, for example. If you have a book that portrays every single German as a Nazi and as evil, it might not do as well in Germany. So some common sense when it comes to historical books.</p> <p>Otherwise, just look at German retailers, look at what is selling there—and not just Amazon. Places like Thalia, which is part of the Tolino Alliance, and they have about 40% of the market. So it's really important to look at them too, and not just at Amazon.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> We'll come back to the distribution in a minute.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">There are some important differences between the German market and the US/UK market. </h3> <p>Obviously we're talking about a different language, but of course there are a few things that are different that some people might not think about. So give us a few of those things that people definitely need to think about.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Okay, so even before you start publishing, you need to be aware that title protection is a thing in Germany. Your book can't have the same title as an already published book. That is a law that is basically there to avoid readers being confused. </p> <p>So if you had five books with the same title, readers might not realise which book is by which author. You have to do your research and check if anyone else is using your title. </p> <p>There are some exceptions—if it's a completely different category, so if there's a children's book with that title but you write spicy romance, then the chance that the reader gets confused is much lower.</p> <p>Quite often you can then contact either the author or the publisher and ask, &#8220;Can I get written permission to use that title?&#8221; I did that for one of my series and it was totally fine. Just be sure to get it in writing, because if your book suddenly becomes a huge bestseller, they might reconsider. </p> <p>So title protection is an important one. You need to research that before you publish. </p> <p>One thing that people sometimes get confused about is reusing their English title. That's totally fine because it's your own title. So if your English title hasn't been used and you want to keep that same title, that works. It's just about other people's books where you can't use those titles.</p> <p>Another important legal bit is the Impressum. It's the copyright page. To be fair, websites that are targeting German readers or a German audience have to have that Impressum. </p> <p>It's usually on page two of the book, and it has things like your legal name, your address, and then the usual things like the translator's name, cover design, and other things you would usually put on a copyright page.</p> <p>The problem is that technically you need to put your legal name in there unless you have a limited company, in which case you can also put the business name there, and your address. </p> <p>A lot of people obviously don't want to do that for privacy reasons, especially romance authors where it's sometimes a bit sketchy when it comes to some readers who get a bit too obsessed.</p> <p>There are services where you can pay a monthly or yearly fee and then use their address. It's a bit of a legal grey zone, but a lot of German authors are doing it because—especially as indie authors—we don't always want to put our legal address out there.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Just for people listening, I use my accountant's address. That's quite common. I mean, you have to share your address on your email for anti-spam laws and all that kind of thing. As you say, there are ways to use other addresses. That just needs to happen.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What else then do we need to think about?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> There are things about the translator. A lot of things that people are sometimes scared about is when they hear that there is a copyright issue with translators and they think, &#8220;Oh, my translator has the copyright. I can't do anything.&#8221;</p> <p>Actually, the translator is seen as an author—almost like a co-author of the translation in German law—because, to be fair, it's not just putting one word into another. Translation is quite a creative job, especially when it's fiction. It is a very creative job where the translator has to put a lot of their own creativity into it. </p> <p>So in German law, they're recognised as the creator of that translation and therefore have certain rights. But you as the author, as soon as you have a contract with your translator—which is why you always, always, always have to have a contract—you get the usage rights.</p> <p>This means it's exactly the same as with your English books. You can do with them what you want. You can get audiobooks, you can do print books, you can do whatever you want in different formats. It just needs to be clear in a contract that the translator is giving you the usage rights of that translation.</p> <p>That's something that people sometimes find a bit scary, but actually it's really simple. Translations have been done for so long. It's a normal thing. It's just called slightly different. It has to be set out in a contract.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Just on that, that's when the translator themselves is in Germany, because if they are based somewhere else, still doing a German translation, that's not necessary. So that's something else for people to consider.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Yes, definitely. To be fair—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">I would always try to get a translator based in the country. </h3> <p>I mean, I'm a native German speaker, but I've been in Scotland for so long now that I am not confident enough to translate my own books anymore because I'm not surrounded by German 24/7 and my grammar is slightly off and I don't have that up-to-date, modern lingo.</p> <p>So if it's a translator who's only just moved somewhere else or a few years, that's fine. But if it's someone who's been in the US or UK or somewhere else for 20 years, I would be a bit more hesitant. That's just a personal perspective on that.</p> <p>One other thing that's different is <em>Sie</em> and <em>du</em>. There are two different kinds of &#8220;you&#8221; when you talk to someone. There's the formal <em>Sie</em>, which you use basically amongst adults, in business contexts. </p> <p>But even my German grandma—she had a friend and they used the formal <em>Sie</em> for about 10 years as friends because in German etiquette, the older person has to offer the younger person the informal <em>du</em>, and they never did that for some reason. We found it hilarious as kids that they were still using the formal <em>Sie</em> as really good friends.</p> <p>So there's an entire culture there that people who haven't been to Germany or haven't lived there for a while just find a bit difficult, because there are so many different unwritten rules about when you use <em>Sie</em> and when you use the informal <em>du</em>.</p> <p>It's weakened a bit over the years and nowadays even strangers would sometimes use the informal <em>du</em> depending on the context. It really depends. A good translator will usually handle that themselves. </p> <p>They will find a scene where, for example, especially in romance, you meet as strangers in the beginning, so you use the formal <em>Sie</em>, and then at some point that formality turns to informality.</p> <p>The translator will usually choose that moment and add a little extra scene or a sentence where they either offer it to each other or they just naturally switch into it. But then there might be an internal little monologue of, &#8220;Oh, he just used the informal <em>du</em>—I guess we're at that stage,&#8221; or, &#8220;I really appreciate that.&#8221;</p> <p>Just to make it more natural, because that's something I quite often see with AI translation where that doesn't happen, and readers get confused. Why did they just switch from <em>Sie</em> to <em>du</em> without any kind of acknowledgement of that?</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> This is the same in Spanish and other languages, I imagine.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Yes, French as well. Italian too, I think. A lot of European languages have this.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I think that's something that English speakers just don't get. It is a really interesting moment. I guess that might not happen so much in other genres—that really is a thing in romance. </p> <p>I was just thinking about some of my thrillers. They may never have time to get to <em>du</em>.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> But then sometimes using <em>du</em> can also be a rude thing. So if you have an antagonist who really doesn't like your protagonist, they might just use <em>du</em> as a rude sort of address. Again, that's something that English speakers just wouldn't understand or even think of because we just have the one &#8220;you.&#8221;</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> We just have the one.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> It's the tone. Of course, it's the tone.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Exactly, yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Okay, well let's get into the actual translation of the books themselves. Over the years I've worked with lots of humans. I've also licensed my rights. I've used different AI tools. I mean, there are tons, but as we record this—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are the options that are available for translations? Give us some tips on working with humans and finding humans.</h3> <p>Because it can be super pricey. And of course most of us will never know about the quality until we publish it.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Oh, yes, definitely a note on that. I found that quite often you will already have German people on your newsletter list or on your social media, and most of them will be super happy to give you some feedback on your translation. </p> <p>That's something I've used a lot. Not for German, because I speak the language, but when I did French and Italian translations. My French is—well, it used to be quite okay. It is passable at best now. So I would never feel confident enough to rate a translation. </p> <p>So I asked my newsletter list, &#8220;Are there any French people here who would be happy to read the book? I'll send you a free copy at the end, and some swag.&#8221; There were a surprising number of people who got back to me.</p> <p>The same applies to German and other languages, because if you don't speak the language, you sometimes lack the confidence of knowing if this is any good. Getting some reader feedback is super helpful.</p> <p>For finding human translators, the easiest of course is word of mouth, and I'm a big fan of that because you get instant feedback on whether someone is good or not and whether it's easy to work with them. </p> <p>Then there are freelancer platforms. Reedsy is one where everyone is vetted, so that's pretty good. But there are tons of other ones like Upwork and Fiverr, though there you have to do all the vetting yourself, so that takes a lot more time and effort.</p> <p>There are also more and more agencies—translator agencies who specialise in doing indie book translations. There's Literary Queens, there's Valentine Translations, there are tons of them.</p> <p>Then there's also, which I think a lot of authors ignore or don't know about, translation databases. There are two databases for German translators, for example, where you can search and you can usually narrow it down to whether you want literary translators, what kind of fiction or nonfiction you want.</p> <p>An important thing is that a literary translator is very different from a standard translator who translates birth certificates or formal documents. You want someone who has experience with fiction if you write fiction. Someone who knows about adding drama through language.</p> <p>Sometimes, for example, when you have an action scene, you might have shorter sentences. If you have someone who doesn't know about stuff like that, they might just think, &#8220;Oh, in German it sounds really nice to have this really long sentence.&#8221; Those little nuances are where having an experienced literary translator is a big bonus.</p> <p>There are some platforms that do royalty-split translations that have been quite popular in the past. Most of them I wouldn't really recommend because you just don't get those professional translators there. </p> <p>You usually get people who speak the language but don't really have much experience. So you might end up with a pretty bad translation, or people might just be using AI translations without telling you.</p> <p>If you use a human translator, always, always get a sample, because yes, they might have amazing credentials, but until they've actually translated one of your books or a scene from your book, you don't really know how good they are.</p> <p>I like to always use, if I write romance, a slightly sexy scene, because sex seems to show you if someone can translate or not. It's just what I've found, because if it sounds absolutely awkward or more like mechanical rather than an emotional, spicy thing, then that's a clear point for me to say, &#8220;No, thank you. I'll look for someone else.&#8221;</p> <p>Action scenes, sexy scenes, really emotional ones, dialogue that has a bit of colloquial language or humour—those are good scenes to choose as a sample because that really shows you if a translator can do their job or not. Then, again, have some German people from your list give you feedback on that.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Also, if you work with human translators, always try to make sure that they will be available for your entire series. </h3> <p>And not even just a series—if you have lots of books, try to grab that translator, lock them in your basement, and never let them go, because you want their style for all your books.</p> <p>Just like you have a style as an author, translators have a style and that will always shine through, as much as they try to be as close to your original. A bit of their style will always come through. It helps to have the same translator for at least the same series, preferably for as many of your books as possible.</p> <p>You really want to tell them in the beginning, &#8220;This series has nine books. I want you to do all of these, even if we only do a few of them at the beginning. Are you available to do the rest later?&#8221; Because you don't want to end up having to find a new translator in the middle of the series.</p> <p>That gives you a whole lot of extra work with trying to have a world bible that explains which words get translated and which get left as the original, and stuff like that.</p> <p>When it comes to non-human translation, it's very different because of course you don't need to do all that vetting. </p> <p>Tools have different capabilities and abilities, but in the end, if you put your book into a translation tool, you will always get a slightly different output. So it's not quite the same where you need an entire vetting process.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Just on the human translation, I think I'd be right in saying that every single author in the world would love to have the best human translator translating their book, whatever genre it is. That would just be amazing for all of us. But let's face it, that's extremely expensive.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So if I've got, let's say, a 70,000-word thriller, how much money are we talking about? </h3> <p>An approximate number, so people know what that might be.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Usually it goes by the word, but by the target language word count. Although it depends on the translator, traditional translators usually go by the target language because that's what they actually produce as their output.</p> <p>The average at the moment is anything from about seven to nine euro cents per word as the medium price. You will find cheaper people. </p> <p>You can go up as high as you want really. I have definitely seen translators who charge 15 cents and above per word, but those will usually be the ones who have worked with a lot of trad publishers who are used to being paid like that.</p> <p>Although even in trad publishing, the rates are going down. With more and more authors wanting translations, I think in general rates are going down. Good for us, not so good for the translators.</p> <p>You're definitely looking at thousands, even if you translate novellas. Then it depends—some translators have editing included, sometimes they don't. </p> <p>A lot of them will have arrangements with other translators where they give the translation to another translator for them to edit it. Sometimes that's included in the price, sometimes it's extra.</p> <p>Always make sure it gets edited, because just like when we write a book, it will never be exactly perfect. I say that as someone who writes very clean because I have a journalism background, so I'm used to writing really fast and clean for deadlines, but there will always be a few typos that just wriggle their way in. </p> <p>Typos are evil like that. It's the same with translations.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So we are probably looking at 2,000 to 10,000 pounds, dollars, euros. We are talking about quite a lot, and this is the main reason I think that now, with AI becoming a lot better, people are looking at this. </p> <p>Originally—and I don't even know, probably eight years now since I did my first, might even be a decade or more—I did at some point do a version in DeepL, which was an early AI translation tool. This was nonfiction, and then paid an editor, a German editor, to then edit that in German. Those books still get good reviews.</p> <p>But now people are looking at options like GlobeScribe and ScribeShadow, or even just using Claude or ChatGPT. I'm actually working at the moment on a Claude Code pipeline through lots of different QA passes. </p> <p>That's been really interesting for me, because I can say, &#8220;Okay, now you are a reader who likes these kinds of books. Read it for that.&#8221; And because we can now put really big books in, I can actually get a lot of really interesting feedback.</p> <p>So I feel like there's a lot of potential with AI—potential for good stuff, potential for bad stuff too. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So talk a bit about that and what to watch out for with AI.</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Okay, so I'm very much pro-AI and I use AI in lots of different things in my business, just to preface that. However, with translations, I'm still a bit wary, just because I have seen a lot of bad AI translations.</p> <p>To be fair, I've experimented with it myself for one of my other pen names. It was readable. It was definitely readable. It had sometimes beautiful, gorgeous prose. Really. But there were, occasionally—quite often even—bits where I stumbled as a native speaker. </p> <p>It's readable and, if I just need a little quick book in between, I would be mostly happy with that. I would read it. </p> <p>It's the same as some of the early KU days where you found a lot of bad quality writing, but you just wanted to read it because the story was pretty good or because you were reading it in KU and so it didn't really matter that much.</p> <p>There is that spectrum of quality where you have the, &#8220;Yes, it's good enough to read,&#8221; but, &#8220;Is it good enough to be up to your standards?&#8221; That's a decision that everyone has to make for themselves. </p> <p>If they want the same quality that they put into their English book, or if they're fine with just offering that book to a new audience because maybe you wouldn't be able to do it otherwise.</p> <p>I totally see that. Translation is so expensive. I don't even know how much I have spent on translations over the past few years. I'm lucky that most of my books make it back within the first weeks or months. I've never had a book that didn't make its money back, but I have heard a lot of people where that's not the case.</p> <p>It is a lot of investment and I would never tell someone to go into debt or anything to do translations. Do it when you're at a time where you can afford it, or where you can also afford the loss if it doesn't work out.</p> <p>Now, AI has changed that slightly because it now opens it up to almost anyone. Some of the AI translation tools are a few hundred pounds, but if you do it in Claude or ChatGPT or something where you already have a subscription, it can actually be quite cheap. You can do it for a few dollars or pounds.</p> <p>I love, by the way, having someone in the UK. I'm so used to automatically saying everything in dollars, but actually I should be using pounds.</p> <p>I think if you know what you're doing—and you clearly do, with your several passes, you know what you're doing with AI—but if someone just puts their book into Claude or ChatGPT or some random tool, it might just not be good enough.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Let's say it won't be good enough if you just do that. We know that. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">You have to have QA passes—quality assurance. You have to have rules per genre. </h3> <p>There are ways of doing it. It's kind of like you have to get to know how translation works. It's a process. It's not just a translation, like you put something in Google Translate or a menu or something, because we do care. I think that's really important.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Yes. I think if you don't know how AI works—that you need detailed prompts, that you need a style guide, that you need all that extra material and not just your book, all those rules—then please don't do it.</p> <p>If you value your German readers—and I think sometimes when I see people just churn out those translations without doing any quality control, using exactly the same cover or even just putting a German flag on it or something—I really feel bad for German readers because they're not being valued as having the same sort of value to us as authors as our English-speaking readers.</p> <p>Maybe I'm a bit biased there because I read in multiple languages. I want to be able to get the same sort of quality in all languages. I want the author to think of me as being special because I'm their reader and I'm their customer.</p> <p>I think we are on the way where AI translation can be almost autonomous. I would personally always have a human look over it. I know what I'm doing, and I'm almost happy with my translation system that I've built now in AI, but it still needs that human touch for a few things.</p> <p>It still needs me to tell the AI, for example, &#8220;This is where we switch from <em>Sie</em> to <em>du</em>.&#8221; This is where I need to keep certain words in. </p> <p>For example, I write a lot of Scottish books, and so words like &#8220;glen&#8221; or &#8220;loch&#8221;—they are words I want to stay the same in my German translation. I don't want to translate it to the German equivalent of &#8220;lake&#8221; because that just misses that Scottish context.</p> <p>Things like that need instruction. A human translator will usually know that and chat to you about which words you want to keep and which ones you want translated. AI just needs our guidance, our helping hand, and if we don't know enough about the target language, we just miss knowing that.</p> <p>Now, a lot of tools do it all for you basically, and they set up all these rules. I think many of them are at a very advanced stage now. But AI isn't perfect and it likes to hallucinate, it likes to add random things. So I will always still have a human touch at the end, even if it's just a quick edit.</p> <p>A lot of people think that they just need a proofread after an AI translation, but AI doesn't really make typos—or not to an extent that humans do. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So proofreading isn't really what's needed for an AI translation. It is actual editing where you go for the style, the phrasing, and sometimes the context.</h3> <p>There's one example I always like to give. I have an alien romance where they go on a honeymoon, and because he's an alien and she's human, he misunderstands and thinks she wants to go to an actual moon. So it's a little pun in the book. </p> <p>It doesn't work in German at all because the word &#8220;honeymoon&#8221; has nothing to do with moons or planets in German. </p> <p>An AI would probably just try to translate that in a way that's quite close to the original. But my German translator, she had to come up with several different ways of fixing that issue, because humour is hard. It's hard even for humans to get the humour translated in a way that is still funny but also culturally appropriate.</p> <p>If you have a book that is full of puns, it gets harder with AI. I am not saying it's impossible, but it needs a lot of handholding.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes, I think humour is hard to translate in general, isn't it?</p> <p>Let's move on to the distribution, because again, having done quite a lot of different languages over the years, I do use Amazon KU for my books in German and Italian and Spanish and some French.</p> <p>So I haven't gone wide in terms of ebook and print or audio, in fact, because I have a lot of books and it is hard to go wide in English, let alone in other languages. But you mentioned earlier that Thalia has 40% of the market or something, and that special editions and print books are important. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So what are the decisions we have to make around the actual publishing?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> In Germany they did a really cool thing, and I wish they'd done that in other countries. When the bookshops saw that Amazon was growing and posing a threat to them—not just with print books but also with ebooks—a lot of the German bookstores got together and they formed the Tolino Alliance.</p> <p>They have big book chains like Thalia, but also I think it was over 1,500 indie bookshops that all got together. They all support this ecosystem for ebooks, which means they all share the same e-readers. They share the same sort of backend for the shops, which made it really easy for them because they didn't all have to develop an ebook system.</p> <p>It saved them a lot of money. It made it really easy to tell readers, &#8220;This is the Tolino system. You can get your books at our bookshops, but you can read them on your Tolino e-reader no matter where you get the books from.&#8221; The Tolino e-readers are actually the same as Kobo e-readers, just rebranded.</p> <p>They've got that big advantage there—these independent bookshops and book chains all got together. Now it's hard to find numbers because Amazon doesn't really like to share their numbers, but it's about 40% of the German ebook market, which means it rivals Amazon. They have about the same.</p> <p>Then the rest is split by Apple Books, Google Play, and some of the smaller players. So it is a huge chunk of the market.</p> <p>I'm wide with pretty much all my English books. So for me, I looked into KU, but when I saw that I was going to miss out on 60% of the market—even if Amazon has 45%, that's still a big chunk—I decided to go wide. </p> <p>To be fair, I haven't regretted it, because Tolino are amazing to work with. I like to compare them to Kobo because they have a really lovely human team where you can just email them and tell them, &#8220;I've got a new release coming up,&#8221; and they will put you into different promos and it's all free.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Jo: Do you publish direct to Tolino, or do you use Draft2Digital?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Yes, you can publish direct to Tolino and that's actually the best way of doing it. You don't have access to their marketing opportunities if you use a distributor. </p> <p>The Tolino dashboard is annoyingly all in German, but by now every browser has a translating plugin built in. I know lots of authors who don't speak a single word of German who navigate Tolino very successfully.</p> <p>They started with only ebooks in the beginning, and then about two weeks after the first edition of my book on German translations was published, they introduced print books, which meant my book was immediately out of date. I was fuming.</p> <p>But this time they introduced audiobooks a few weeks before my Kickstarter launch for the second edition, so this time the audiobook part is included. I was very happy about that, because it was a pain to just tell everyone, &#8220;Well, this book is out now but it's actually missing a big part of how to do print books in Germany.&#8221;</p> <p>So Tolino does print, ebooks, and audiobooks. And just because you're in KU with your ebooks doesn't mean you can't publish your print books via Tolino. I highly recommend that, because IngramSpark—which most of us indies use for distribution for print books—doesn't get you into the German bookstores.</p> <p>They used to. Then German stores have fixed price laws where books have to be the same price in all stores, and IngramSpark kept going against that. They kept sending them the wrong prices. So German bookstores at some point just said, &#8220;Nope, we've had enough of this. We no longer take books from IngramSpark.&#8221;</p> <p>So now Tolino, in my opinion, is the best way of getting your books listed in German online bookstores, but they can also help you get into brick-and-mortar stores. </p> <p>One of my books was featured by them, I think two years ago, and it was in about 300 of their shops all across Germany. It had its own little pedestal and it was amazing.</p> <p>Tolino love working with their indie authors. They also love romance, which is always a bonus because some stores are more prudish than others. It's really easy to work with them. They speak perfect English, so you can do all your communication outside of the dashboard in English.</p> <p>Their audiobooks feature is very new. Until they did that, it was much harder for German audiobook distribution because places like Findaway Voices and other distributors wouldn't get you into the Tolino Alliance stores for audio. That's a big chunk that we were missing out on.</p> <p>I was always looking for ways to get my German audiobooks into those stores, but the German distributors that I found were really difficult to upload to, to be honest. I'm a very technical person, but it challenged even me. </p> <p>I did not like that experience at all. At some point I really just gave up and wanted to throw my computer out of the window.</p> <p>So when Tolino introduced that, I was celebrating internally. The only problem with their distribution at the moment for audio, because it's so new, is that you can't exclude any shops. So it's all or nothing. </p> <p>They will get you into all the different places, including Audible, Spotify—you name it, lots of different streaming services and retailers—but you can't exclude any.</p> <p>So while they don't actually want exclusivity, if you published it yourself at the same time through ACX or Findaway Voices or something else, you would have duplicates, and of course, we try to avoid those.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Jo: Is it human narration only, or do they also accept AI narration?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> They accept AI narration. The thing with Tolino is that they want everything made very clear. If you publish any books with them that have an AI production aspect, you need to put that into your Impressum. For audiobooks, there's a box to tick to make it clear.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Hmm.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> So they are open to it all. You just need to declare it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Which I think should be true everywhere, to be fair.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Oh, definitely. And a lot of German distributors—while I was researching for this book, one thing I always looked at is, &#8220;Do they need you to declare your AI use?&#8221; More and more German distributors and retailers now want you to do that. I think that's the way it's going.</p> <p>It's not a judgement thing. I think it's just making it clear to readers. In Germany, it's all about transparency. That's why there are all those laws with GDPR—everyone will have heard about that one by now. But there are lots of other laws where it's all about consumer rights and transparency, and that's one of them.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Jo: Is there anything else on the distribution side we need to think about?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> One thing I like to highlight is libraries, because that's quite a big thing in Germany too. They love books and bookstores and they love libraries. Some of the ways we get our English books into libraries—like a distributor like Draft2Digital for OverDrive—OverDrive is growing in Germany.</p> <p>There are other systems like Onleihe, just to name one. You can't get into those through, for example, Draft2Digital or PublishDrive or StreetLib. Tolino gets you into those.</p> <p>There are also subscription platforms that are growing. I think it's the same as in the English-speaking market. People love a subscription, and I love them. I just don't like exclusivity. So I very much support any subscription platform that doesn't require me to be exclusive to them.</p> <p>Skoobe is one of them. They used to be an independent platform, and then the Tolino Alliance bought them. So now they're integrated into the Tolino stores. That means it's really prominent. </p> <p>Basically, any time you go to an ebook on, for example, Thalia, it will have a banner there saying, &#8220;You can also get this in our subscription.&#8221; So it's taken a while to grow, but actually in December I now made more with their subscription programme than I made in book sales.</p> <p>I think three of my books were in their top 10 in December. To be fair, that was a pretty good month. But it definitely shows that it can take a while to grow these subscription platforms, but when you do, it can be really successful and very much worth it. </p> <p>So I highly suggest looking into those sorts of platforms too, not just the standard retailers and the platforms that you're already used to.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Fantastic. So we've now got translations, they're on the various stores, and then just like in English, one of our next challenges is actually marketing the books. </p> <p>Now this becomes another challenge, because one of the reasons I am in KU for foreign languages is because you get the five free days and you can do Amazon ads. I mean, you can do Amazon ads for wide books too, but it's easier to know that there are some options for marketing at all.</p> <p>I don't do email marketing. I don't do social media, so I'm pretty bad at marketing in foreign languages. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So what are your suggestions for those who want to do more active marketing in German especially? </h3> <p>Or even if we don't speak German, it can't be all the personal stuff. But are there also advertising things like BookBub? What are our options basically?</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> There are quite a few things. It's not quite as easy as in English, of course, but I think sometimes you have to remember that you already have most of the material for marketing when you've released a book.</p> <p>You will have made graphics in English, you will have written a newsletter, you will have done some social media posts. All that material is already there, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.</p> <p>You can just translate that, and for that, AI translation is really good because it's very quick. You don't have to bother your translator. You can just get that done. That's what I had to remind myself, because in the beginning I did everything from scratch and it took me forever and I was hating it.</p> <p>Then I realised, well, I could just look at the newsletter I wrote three years ago when that book released in English and translate that. That's done within a minute and I can send that out. So remember that you have a lot of content already.</p> <p>There's no BookBub or nothing as big as BookBub. There is a site called BookDeals, which sends out newsletters for both reduced or free books and also for new releases. I use them for pretty much all my new releases, or at least always the first in series.</p> <p>They're nowhere near as big as BookBub, so don't expect miracles, but I generally always break even or a bit more. It's hard to tell, of course, especially if you do several things for a new release. But my instinctive look on this is that it's worth it.</p> <p>BookDeals is the big one. There are a few other promo sites, but to be honest, I've not really found any of them to give me a positive ROI. I experiment with them occasionally and I listed them all in my book just for completeness, but BookDeals is the big one.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Then there is LovelyBooks, which is the German Goodreads.</h3> <p>Some Germans also use Goodreads, so always make sure to have all your German books listed there. But LovelyBooks is the big one.</p> <p>I love that place because people are so much kinder than on Goodreads. I avoid Goodreads completely. If I need a review, I send my assistant there to look at reviews. I don't go there. It is scary.</p> <p>LovelyBooks—the name is kind of telling. It is a more lovely place. People are generally more friendly. They are probably a bit more critical when they write reviews than they are on retailers, but I have found it really nice to build a community there.</p> <p>You can do these book clubs where you give away a copy of your book, either as print books—or I always do ebooks because I don't want to send books to Germany. Then people discuss the book as a sort of book club and then they review it at the end.</p> <p>I have had great success with that. I've built up a community of readers who will now buy my books too, even if they don't get them for free. I found some beta readers through that. So I love LovelyBooks.</p> <p>The annoying thing again is it's in German. However, their support all speaks English and you can email them with questions. They're really good.</p> <p>Even if you don't plan to run any book clubs or anything like that because you don't speak the language, I would always advise just setting up an author profile there because it makes it easier for your books to be found.</p> <p>You can track reviews, you can track reads, and that just gives you an extra place to get more visibility for free.</p> <p>Ads—there's not much difference compared to what you do for your English-language books. The one thing is with Facebook ads, now because of EU data protection laws, it's much harder to target because people can opt out of ads and targeting.</p> <p>In general, cost-per-click ads are cheaper than in the US or the UK, so that's a bonus.</p> <p>BookTok is big and only growing there. I don't really do social media for my German books because I just don't have the bandwidth. I wish I could, and I know some people who outsource that.</p> <p>In an ideal world, I would have a social media account for every single language, but it's not an ideal world and I just have limited hours in the day. But even just creating an account so that people can tag you, so that people can find you, can already be a good start.</p> <p>One thing that's not maybe a marketing strategy as such, but something I like to highlight, is pre-orders. If you write in series, always, always make sure that the next books in your series are up for pre-order, because—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">German readers have been burned so many times by authors or even publishers who just translate book one in a series and then stop.</h3> <p>They are quite hesitant sometimes to start a new series when they see it's book one of something and they don't see the next book up for pre-order. To be fair, it's similar in English. </p> <p>I always make sure to have a pre-order up for the next book. Because people would just not read the series until it's complete or until they know it will be complete at some point.</p> <p>So always set up a pre-order if you can. Don't set it up when you don't actually know when your translation is being done, or choose a date far in the future. </p> <p>Just make it very clear to your readers that you are intending to translate the entire series, that you're not going to disappoint them, that they're not just wasting their money on a book one only to never find out what happens next.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Fantastic. Well, this is a big decision for people to make, I think, because there's no point in doing one book in German and then not doing anything else, in the same way as doing one book in English or any language. You have to think about investing in an audience. So lots for people to think about.</p> <p>The book is fantastic. It's called <em>Self-Publishing in German</em>. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So where can people find you and your books online?</h3> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> For my author-facing things, just go to <a href="https://skyemackinnon.com/authors" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">SkyeMacKinnon.com/authors</a>, and there you find the book about German translations. You also find more information on what I do. </p> <p>You can book consultations with me. I love doing those one-to-ones, especially about translations, because you can really dive into someone's catalogue and look at what would be a good strategy for someone, rather than just in general.</p> <p>Otherwise, it's <a href="https://skyemackinnon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">SkyeMacKinnon.com</a> for all my romance. If you want adorable children's books, it's <a href="https://islawynter.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">IslaWynter.com</a>. That's Wynter with a Y.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Skye. That was great.</p> <p><strong>Skye:</strong> Thank you so much for having me.</p><p>The post <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2026/05/04/self-publishing-in-german-how-to-translate-distribute-and-market-your-books-with-skye-mackinnon/">Self-Publishing in German: How to Translate, Distribute, and Market Your Books with Skye MacKinnon</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com">The Creative Penn</a>.</p>

<p>How can you navigate uncertainty in a constantly changing market? Why is persistence the key to a sustainable creative career? Plus why distribution is so important, and the four ways to monetise your creative work. All this and more with Adam Leipzig.</p> <p>In the intro, my reflections on running an author-publisher business after a fantastic e-commerce workshop run by <a href="https://blubolt.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Blubolt</a>, and why you will always pay for marketing with either your time or your money; <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/live/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars</a>; and last call for my Kickstarter <em><a href="https://www.jfpenn.com/bones" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Bones of the Deep</a></em> &#8211; J.F. Penn.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://www.draft2digital.com" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" width="430" height="144" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/draft2digital.jpg" alt="draft2digital" class="wp-image-23600" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/draft2digital.jpg 430w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/draft2digital-300x100.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 430px) 100vw, 430px" /></a></figure> </div> <p><a href="https://www.draft2digital.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a></p> <p><a href="https://www.draft2digital.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Today's show is sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.draft2digital.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Draft2Digital</a>, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.draft2digital.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.draft2digital.com</a>&nbsp;to get started.</p> <p>This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Patreon.com/thecreativepenn</a>&nbsp;</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://adamleipzig.com/" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" width="919" height="300" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Adam-Leipzig.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-37454" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Adam-Leipzig.jpg 919w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Adam-Leipzig-300x98.jpg 300w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Adam-Leipzig-768x251.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 919px) 100vw, 919px" /></a></figure> </div> <p>Adam Leipzig is a producer, former studio executive, and educator whose work spans film, media, and technology. He served as a senior executive at Walt Disney Studios and as President of National Geographic Films. </p> <p>His film credits include <em>March of the Penguins</em> and <em>Dead Poets Society</em>, with projects recognised by the Academy Awards, BAFTA, the Emmys, and Sundance. He is the author of several books on filmmaking and his latest book is <em><a href="https://amzn.to/41WJqGJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Fearless Persistence: Creative Life, Creative Work, and the Ten Laws of Culturenomics</a></em>.</p> <p>You can listen above or on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">your favorite podcast app</a>&nbsp;or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Show Notes</strong></p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Why writing books still matters in a world saturated with visual media</li> <li>The Jeffrey Katzenberg &#8220;next&#8221; lesson and the power of fearless persistence</li> <li>How uncertainty and the &#8220;long middle&#8221; are essential parts of the creative process</li> <li>What film editing can teach writers about cutting, shaping, and refining their work</li> <li>The 10 Laws of Culturenomics, including why awareness is not desire and why distribution is everything</li> <li>How generative AI is changing filmmaking — and why creatives should be the architects, not the tools</li> </ul> <p>You can find Adam at <a href="https://adamleipzig.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AdamLeipzig.com</a>.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript of Interview with Adam Leipzig</h3> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Adam Leipzig is a producer, former studio executive, and educator whose work spans film, media, and technology. He served as a senior executive at Walt Disney Studios and as President of National Geographic Films.</p> <p>His film credits include <em>March of the Penguins</em> and <em>Dead Poets Society</em>, with projects recognised by the Academy Awards, BAFTA, the Emmys, and Sundance.</p> <p>He is the author of several books on filmmaking and his latest book is <em>Fearless Persistence: Creative Life, Creative Work, and the Ten Laws of Culturenomics</em>. Welcome to the show, Adam.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Thank you so much for having me, Jo.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I'm excited to talk to you today. You have written several books, but you have worked on many more films. So I wondered, why do you think books still have a part to play in reaching people? </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What do you love about writing books that is different to your filmmaking work?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> You can put so much information in a book, and the beautiful thing about a book is that you can pick it up wherever you want, whenever you want, and leave it off and go back to it. It's just waiting for you and it's there. </p> <p>It really allows me, and other authors like me, to share information in a different way, with more details and more stories and more specificity. I love the ability to just share that information and have it always available. You don't need a device, you don't need to have a subscription. You can just go to it whenever you want.</p> <p>You asked me what I love about writing. Like a lot of writers, I'm not sure I love writing, but I do love having written. The thing about a book is that it's a very solitary exercise.</p> <p>A film is a highly collaborative exercise. No movie gets made by one person. It's made by hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. But this book is just me and a laptop and notes and a lot of thought. </p> <p>It's a very introverted, almost monkish existence while you're doing that, and then it has to go out into the world—and that's when it really starts to interact with people. </p> <p>So there's this huge difference between being alone and being always in a collaborative environment, which is what happens when I'm making a movie.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Most listeners will be independent authors in some way, and a lot of us do this because we're control freaks. We like being the only people. </p> <p>So how is that different? You mentioned collaboration in the film industry, but is it almost freeing to do a book without having that? I mean obviously you have editors and publishers and stuff, but—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Is it freeing in some creative way?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> It is really nice, because there is not another point of view in the room and I can just say what I feel and know that that's there. </p> <p>At the same time, you're right—I have had some amazing editor help and I've had some great early readers that have given me feedback on it and helped me make it so much better than it was when I finished the first draft.</p> <p>I knew that going in. I always test and share what I'm doing to make sure that it lands in the way that I wanted it to land, and it can be helpful for people.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Getting into the book, you have a chapter on &#8220;what you do matters.&#8221; I feel like this is super hard. This is not a political show, so we're not doing politics, but there are a lot of big things going on in the world.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">It can be very hard as writers to think, is writing my book actually going to make a difference? </h3> <p>So how can you encourage people?</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> That's the hardest thing, Jo, because there is a lot going on in the world right now. Everything that's going on in the world right now exists because it's following a certain narrative. I don't believe that narratives are come up with because people look at things that are happening and say, &#8220;Oh, well let's just write what happened.&#8221;</p> <p>I think that we do things from micro experiences that we have with ourselves, our relationships, our families, to the macro experiences of politics and global situations. I believe that happens because there is a narrative that is being followed.</p> <p>So what I say to all creative people is that it's our job to craft and express the narratives that matter—and different narratives—so those narratives can be followed.</p> <p>One of the points that I make in the book is that poets are not overtly really dangerous people. Poets are generally lovely people, a lot of them don't talk too much. </p> <p>They're great to have dinner with, and they just work with words—and often not a lot of words, right? Because beautiful poetry is often concise and simple and spare.</p> <p>Yet there are places where poets are in jail. Because the narratives of those concise, spare, gorgeous idealistic words matter so much that those voices need to be silenced, which means those narratives are dangerous sometimes. Those narratives present an alternate world, an alternate view of reality.</p> <p>I think it's really our job as creative people, as entrepreneurs, as people who are essentially creating narratives out of the soul of our lives and our experience—we want to express those to the world. It's really important for us to express those to the world, especially now, especially because so much is going on. </p> <p>Those narratives are going to become pathways that others can look at and maybe follow. I think that's really important. It's the reason why we do our work.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I absolutely agree with you around writing the narratives that we want in the world. &#8220;Be the change you want to see in the world&#8221; and all that. </p> <p>I also want to call out the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of books now published, and you come from the film industry, and many more people really watch films or play games than read books.</p> <p>I've wondered about this myself. I've written a few screenplays and sometimes it feels that wouldn't it be better to try and put our words into a visual medium? A lot of authors listening will do micro video like TikTok and all of this. So this is back to the question of—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why books? How can we change these narratives when we feel like we're drowned out by all the media?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I think it's great for authors to express themselves in other media. I have a pretty active Instagram channel, and I love doing that, but it's a really different thing. I'm talking to people in two-minute bursts with very specific things. It's not the same and not the same detail as a book.</p> <p>If we let our understanding of the ocean of content that is always coming to us stop us from doing anything, we wouldn't do anything. That's also true about movies. There are probably 10,000 movies made every year. There are a few hundred that are released. </p> <p>So if every day I thought, &#8220;Oh, the movie that I'm working on is maybe not going to be released because there's only a small percent of movies that are made that are released.&#8221;</p> <p>Or worse than that, &#8220;Of all the movies that are made, there's 500 different shows on Netflix and Apple and Amazon and there's so many choices.&#8221; If I thought that everything I was going to do is going to be drowned out, I wouldn't do anything.</p> <p>I just don't believe that's true. I think it's our job to do things. Yes, there's an ocean of content out there, but what we do really matters, and it doesn't have to matter at gigantic scale. We don't know the scale that our work is going to achieve over time.</p> <p>One of the early films that I worked on is a film called <em>Dead Poets Society</em>, and that script was passed on by every studio at least three times. It's probably a film that I couldn't get made now for all kinds of reasons, because it's not a sequel and it doesn't have superheroes or visual effects.</p> <p>When we made that movie, we didn't know the impact it was going to have. It could have been drowned out by things, but it rose to a level that everywhere in the world I go, someone has seen that movie, including people who were not born when that movie was made. </p> <p>We don't know the long arc of our work and the people that it affects.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I love that movie too. &#8220;Oh Captain, my Captain.&#8221; I can hear everyone saying that behind the screens.</p> <p>This brings us to the title, <em>Fearless Persistence</em>, because of course <em>Dead Poets Society</em> ended up being an incredible success, but not everything turns out so well. I wondered if you could talk about this persistence. </p> <p>How do you keep creating after something you perceived as a failure, or perhaps all the things that didn't get made? </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why is persistence so important that you use it in the title?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I've been super fortunate. I've worked with amazing people and on great projects. I've made 40 films at this point, and I'm making more. I've tried to make 400 films. I failed at getting them made 90% of the time, and that's okay. I just keep going.</p> <p>When I was working at Disney and I was an executive at Walt Disney Studios for seven years, there was one movie that we were opening and nobody had really high expectations for it. But it opened huge on a weekend and it beat the competition. </p> <p>We were in our Monday morning meeting and we were dancing on the tables and we were so excited. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was running the studio at that time, came in, looked around the room, put his hands on his hips, and said, &#8220;Next.&#8221; We just had to move on. </p> <p>I really learned the meaning of the word &#8220;next&#8221; about four months later when we had a film that we all knew was going to be hugely successful and make a lot of money and give everyone their bonuses, and it completely bombed at the box office. It was like you gave a party and nobody showed up to eat the hors d'oeuvres.</p> <p>We were in the Monday morning meeting, very glum and not sure what was going to happen. Were we going to be fired? What was going to happen? And Jeffrey walked into the room and said, &#8220;Next.&#8221;</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Mm-hmm.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> And we just keep going. I think that is the great and defining quality of people who really have sustainable lives, either as creatives or business people or entrepreneurs. We're persistent. We're just like those little birds—you put their beak in water and they just keep bobbing up. We just keep going.</p> <p>It's not about the people who are the most talented, because I'm certainly not the most talented. I'm certainly not the smartest. I'm certainly not the most creative. </p> <p>There are people who are smarter and more talented and more creative than me all the time, and I get so much energy in being able to know them and work with them. But I am super persistent. I don't stop.</p> <p>If there's something that I really believe in, I'll just keep going. I started taking notes on this book 10 years ago. There are movies that took 12 years to get made. You just keep going.</p> <p>There are times, as a producer, where everybody's fallen away. There was a director attached, there was a star attached. They all left, they did other projects. The material is no longer under option. You don't even have legal rights to it anymore. </p> <p>You just keep blowing on the embers and then eventually maybe it gets made. That's what it's about.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Do you think there's some kind of serendipity or something more that makes a book or a film? Is it timing? Is there just some chemistry? </p> <p>You talked earlier about testing and sharing things to see if they're going to work, but as you mentioned, some films you think are going to be amazing and they bomb. Other things are a slow burn. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How do you know when to make a film if you just can't predict this stuff?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> You can never predict it, but I think you start with: do you really, really think about it all the time? Do you really care about it? It's not like you're in a meeting or you read a script or you hear an idea and you're super excited about it—but are you still excited about it tomorrow morning? The next day and the next?</p> <p>If you keep waking up every morning thinking, &#8220;Wow, that's great, I've got to get that forward,&#8221; then I think that is the first indication for me that it's going to have some staying power. </p> <p>I don't think I am that different from everybody else. So if it's something that consistently excites me, I feel like there's going to be at least some other people in the world that it's also going to excite.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Do you think you have a voice, I guess, as a filmmaker as much as a writer? </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Are there things that excite you consistently that you're drawn to? Or do you think it's much wider as a filmmaker than a writer?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I think it's a lot wider as a filmmaker. Part of it's also just my capacity right now as a writer. I really like the writing in <em>Fearless Persistence</em> and I also recorded the audiobook. I love listening to the audiobook experience. I think it's some of the best writing I've ever done.</p> <p>I have not yet found the capacity to write a novel or to write fiction in the way that other people can. So part of it's just my skill and capacity at this point in my writing career, where I think I'm pretty good at expressing ideas in a nonfiction setting, but I haven't developed the skill set for fiction.</p> <p>In movies, I make documentaries. I make fiction feature films. What attracts me is character. It's always the character, the people, the journey.</p> <p>Are the people really interesting? Do I want to spend two hours of my life in a cinema with them, or 10 hours of my life watching those episodes on a streaming channel? That's what always starts with me. If the character is interesting, then I'll keep going.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I think the book, <em>Fearless Persistence</em>, has a lot of your character in it and your experience. It's not just a nonfiction book of prescriptive rules. You did bring a lot of voice into it, I think.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Thank you. I try to make it be like we're sitting down and we're talking and we're having a conversation.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Coming back to the book—a quote from the book: &#8220;Uncertainty isn't the enemy of creativity. It's its greatest ally.&#8221;</p> <p>You talk about these messy and unpredictable times. I'm what we call a discovery writer. Some people say &#8220;pantser.&#8221; It mostly is quite chaotic and unpredictable. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Could you talk about this uncertainty and messy creativity?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> One of the things I really try to do in <em>Fearless Persistence</em> is give support to all of us in this messy, unpredictable—what I call &#8220;the long middle&#8221;—where stuff is happening, but you're not seeing obvious results out there. You're either in the world or in your project, and you're just in this mess.</p> <p>That mess is a beautiful place, and I'm trying to give support to the fact that that mess is gorgeous and it's part of the process. It's part of everybody's process. We shouldn't feel as though we are not doing our job when we're in that long, unpredictable, uncertain middle.</p> <p>Because out of that, we discover what we actually want. It gives us a way to refine our taste and refine our direction because we are so uncertain.</p> <p>Then there's this moment—and I don't know if you find this in your own writing, Jo—but there's this moment where that uncertainty changes into: there's no choices here at all. This is just what I have to do.</p> <p>I actually think that the greatest freedom is when there's no choices. Where the path is just there, but we've got to get through the thicket to get to that path. And there's always a thicket.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> There's a moment for me where the chaos becomes more certain and I'm like, okay, that's the story. I thought it might have been something else, but now that's what it is.</p> <p>I often have too much material as well. So I wanted to ask you about this too, because as an author with a book, editing is hard for us. Of course there are lots of words and we have to go through it all, but editing on a film—I can't even imagine how hard the editing process is. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Could you talk about editing and how you cut and organise these massive projects?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes, editing is really hard, but it's also so fun. I think being on a set is great. It's the most fun a kid could have. But being in an editing room is also the most fun a kid could have, because you have all of the pieces and there are so many ways to do it. This is where a film is actually made—in the editing room.</p> <p>Probably the way books are made also is in the editorial process between the writer and your own brain as the editor, or if you have someone who's helping you edit it.</p> <p>Editing is really interesting because it's the only craft that did not exist before filmmaking. Everything else existed, right? There were scripts, there were actors, there were costumes, there was art direction, there was production design, there was music. </p> <p>Editing was a craft that had to be invented for film. So it's a craft that's only about 120 years old.</p> <p>When we make a film, the first thing that the editor does is just put all of the scenes together in a first editor's cut, a rough assembly. It's basically every scene that was in the script as it was shot, and the editor just tries to choose the best angles.</p> <p>That generally comes out maybe a week or two after we wrap photography, and that first cut could be three or four hours long because it's got everything in it.</p> <p>Then the process is: let's take that out. Let's take that out. You don't need this. You can move this scene here and move it there before the other scene. We don't really need that shot. Or can we get to a closeup there? And you get it down, down, down—just like in writing where you kill your darlings.</p> <p>I actually find editing the most fun I have. &#8220;Oh, I don't need that sentence.&#8221; Or, &#8220;I can take out three words here and the sentence is better.&#8221; We go through exactly the same process in film editing and squinch it all down to the most compelling and efficient way to tell the story.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I'm glad you say it's fun because I also like editing. I find the editing much more creatively fulfilling because I actually can figure out the book that way. It's so funny, I think as writers, many people either love the editing or they love the first draft. It seems like you enjoy the whole process.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I like the editing so much more than the first draft. I feel like I had to get through the first draft. That was my long middle, that was my uncertain period, that was my thicket. Then my editing was, &#8220;Oh, great. Let's cross this out. Let's change that word. Let's lose that paragraph.&#8221; That was fun.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So let's say we now have a book or we have a film. In your book, law eight of culturenomics is that &#8220;without distribution, there is nothing.&#8221; So now we have to get this out there, and this is really difficult. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Can you talk about how film distribution has changed? Can you also reflect on how it is for writers, because our distribution has changed a lot too?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> So, as you mentioned in the last section of the book, I've observed over the past 30 years that when a work is both aesthetically really excellent and also economically viable and sustainable for the creators, it always observes these ten principles. I call them the 10 Laws of Culturenomics.</p> <p>One of them is &#8220;without distribution, there is nothing,&#8221; by which I mean: unless your audience, your market, the people that you are seeking to share or serve with the work—unless they can get it, it doesn't really matter. It's like that tree falling in the forest and no one's around to hear it.</p> <p>I always think about my market and my distribution before I start making the movie. I was thinking about that as I was writing the book, because I really want it to be there to meet people where they are and I want them to be able to get it.</p> <p>Film distribution has changed a lot, especially during the pandemic. People stayed home and cinema admissions have fallen off 30% from pre-pandemic levels, so people are going out to cinemas less. </p> <p>That means fewer films are being distributed in cinemas for any viable period of time. Sometimes some movies will be out there for one or two days, literally, in cinemas, and then they go right to streaming.</p> <p>On the streaming side, there was a glut of streaming content. All the streaming channels overinvested in streaming. There were too many shows. I don't know about your Netflix queue or your Amazon queue, but it's unnavigable. There is so much stuff. Now they've cut back a lot—they're just doing a lot less.</p> <p>We're in a situation now where anything can get out there somehow. The question is, does your market, does your audience know about it? Do they want to invest the time to experience it?</p> <p>One of the other Laws of Culturenomics is that &#8220;awareness is not desire.&#8221; There's a lot of things that we're aware of that we don't want to spend our time with. Everybody was aware of Disney's new <em>Snow White</em> movie. Nobody wanted to go see it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I must say, I'm not the key demographic for that!</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> But you knew about it?</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Was that a live action one?</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I don't understand those live action ones, to be honest. Maybe that's why—</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I think we are sequelled out. I look at the movie business and I just think what audiences really want is something new, please. Something we haven't seen before. We don't want the 95th iteration of something from the MCU. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The studios, because the movies cost so much and they're so risk-averse, talk a lot about &#8220;pre-aware titles.&#8221;</h3> <p>In other words, titles that you've heard of before, so you're going to go see the movie.</p> <p>It works to a certain extent, but I just think it's cinematically boring. In that world, you never could have predicted <em>Oppenheimer</em>. You never could have predicted <em>Barbie</em>. Movies that really don't have a precedent, but they did so well because they're different. I think audiences are craving something different right now.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> It's interesting though, isn't it? I agree on one level, but then I also watch <em>Bridgerton</em> and we watched the latest series as soon as it came out. I guess that is pre-aware to a point. I don't read historical romance, yet I really like the show. I think it's because of Shonda Rhimes. I watched <em>Grey's Anatomy</em> for about 20 years.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> She's great.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> She's amazing. So I feel like this is why it's hard, isn't it? It's hard to know. As fiction writers particularly listening, we have very specific genre audiences, and they often don't cross over into other genres. They love their genre fiction. So it is hard to balance original work that may not be easily sold and the other stuff. </p> <p>I guess that's why the studios do it, right, because they think they can make enough money with the next Marvel movie.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes, but I'm curious to know what you think about this, because even within a genre, a really good genre movie or a really good genre book is not the same as all the other books or films in the genre. It's familiar in that it does what the genre says you have to do, but it's different. </p> <p>It's got those unique things that make us feel like super fans, that we really love it. It's familiar enough to fall within the genre—and yes, genres have rules that you've got to follow—but then there's something unique and different that's exciting. And that's why we say, &#8220;Hey Jo, you've got to read this book.&#8221;</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I agree with you. I love that you said &#8220;awareness is not desire.&#8221; This is another problem with our creative work, right? We have to do marketing. We can throw all this stuff out there, and yet it may or may not work. </p> <p>So let's talk about your book marketing. Obviously you are on this podcast, and I presume your publicists are pitching lots of podcasts, but—</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are you doing to promote the book that might be different to a film release?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Well, I don't have a hundred million dollars.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Surprise!</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Right? I've got a few hundred dollars, so we're just doing it this way.</p> <p>As you know, once upon a time, legacy publishers actually did marketing. Legacy publishers barely do any marketing now. Every author has to do it themselves. So we have to do this ourselves.</p> <p>It's been the hardest thing. I think it's the hardest thing that we've all had to adopt, that we have to do this thing where there used to be a marketing department and you just hand it over to them and we could just be in our own little creative space. But no, we've got to do this also.</p> <p>So what am I doing? I've amped up my social media. I'm speaking. I am on podcasts like this. I'm sharing as much as I can. </p> <p>I'm asking circles of people who have been early readers of the book. I'm really grateful because I've had really enthusiastic response to it, both from creatives and also some business people, which was surprising to me, but really great.</p> <p>Someone said, &#8220;This is the best business book in the past 10 years,&#8221; which is really interesting, right? Because you read it, Jo, as an author, but she read it as someone who sits on the board of major companies. That was a pretty interesting response.</p> <p>I'm just asking them to be advocates and share it around. I'd just like to be those people who blow on the embers and let's see if we can make a fire.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> We talked about the fun bits earlier. I'm enjoying our conversation, but I know that marketing is not necessarily in the fun bucket. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Are you finding bits of the marketing you enjoy?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes, I love meeting the audience. I love meeting the people that I'm writing the book for and sharing it with.</p> <p>I've been fortunate enough to be asked to run a writer's workshop in Greece for the past few years. It's a retreat centre called Rosemary's House. It's on the east coast of Greece. A dozen writers. </p> <p>I work with writers all the time, but they're always writing a specific thing, like a screenplay or something. This was a dozen writers all writing different things, and I'd never done that before. I had an extraordinary time.</p> <p>The first year I went, I'd had all these notes for this book, <em>Fearless Persistence</em>, that I'd been compiling for some time. But there I was in the room and I was with the people that I was really intending to write the book for, and that kicked me in the butt and I wrote the book.</p> <p>Then the next year I was back and I finished it while we were there at the writer's retreat. So that was great, and I was with another group of writers. I'll be back there again later this year and the book will be out.</p> <p>So it's this fabulous continuation of really engaging with and meeting the people that I'm seeking to serve with this book.</p> <p>I really enjoy encouraging and mentoring and sharing the systems that are undergirding the creative process, and then the process of how do you build a sustainable life, including all these super practical things that they don't teach you in art school or writing school or film school or even business school. </p> <p>How do you actually build a sustainable life in this practice? I love that. I guess that's marketing, but it's also just being with the people that you're there to serve.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I love that you use &#8220;serve.&#8221; I use the same word. I say, &#8220;Who do you serve?&#8221; And that can help people, because I feel like creative people are like, &#8220;We don't want to be marketers, we don't want to be salesy.&#8221; So if you reframe it as service—who are you trying to help, who are you trying to entertain—that actually helps.</p> <p>Coming to the business side, you mentioned systems. You are right, the book has a lot of business in it, which I love because we talk a lot about business on this show. In one section you say there are only four ways to monetise your creative work. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So could you talk a bit about those different ways to monetise your creative work?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes. This has been true for maybe 5,000 years because it's not about technology, it's just about how work is monetised. There are only four ways that any piece of work is monetised.</p> <ol class="wp-block-list"> <li><strong>For sale.</strong> You have a book, and you go to your favourite bookstore and you buy the book, and now you own the book.</li> <li><strong>For rent.</strong> You could rent a book from your library, or in a movie context, what you're really renting is the seat for two hours to watch the movie.</li> <li><strong>On subscription.</strong> People have subscriptions to Kindle Unlimited or other platforms, or people have subscriptions to a streaming service.</li> <li><strong>Free</strong>. When it's ad-supported. That's like linear television where there's ads, or Amazon where there's ads and you don't pay for it.</li> </ol> <p>For sale, for rent, on subscription, or free—those are the only ways anything is ever transacted.</p> <p>When it's ad-supported, for example, some people have YouTube channels that are very successful. YouTube is free, and then YouTube is making money from the ads and the creators are getting a tiny little slice of the ad revenue.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Like this podcast. I have sponsors who pay, and they're all related to the author industry. They're companies that I use and work with. I personally recommend them, and that means this podcast is free.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Thank you, sponsors.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Yes, thank you, sponsors! I also have patrons—people who subscribe to the show to support it as well. So I guess we don't have to be in one bucket or another. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">We can have our work in different buckets.</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Ideally, you can have your work in every single one of them. Not always, not necessarily always at exactly the same simultaneous moment, but at a certain point as the work gets out there into the world, as it's lived long enough, it probably will be in every bucket. </p> <p>That's great because we want our work to be as accessible to the people that we're serving in any way they want to get it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I totally agree. And your audiobook, as you mentioned, will be available in those different formats as well.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I find that, especially with nonfiction audio, what I love is being able to listen to just a chapter, just a chapter in a specific part. Someone could actually listen to the 10 Laws of Culturenomics separately to some of the rest of the book. I love that.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I'd never done that before. It was so powerful to record the audiobook because up until that moment, my relationship with this book was fingers typing keyboards, electrons on a screen. It was a completely silent experience. </p> <p>Then I was in this recording booth in Los Angeles and I started speaking the words, and I was visualising the people that I was writing it for as I was doing it. It was so powerful. Then I listened to it and I thought, wow, this is actually a really good experience.</p> <p>It was so powerful that I was recently in Paris because I'm working on some films that are in Europe, and I decided to create a special advanced listener edition of the audiobook, where I took the chapters and put them into individual or grouped listening units. </p> <p>In a recording studio in Paris, I recorded some prefaces and reflections on those listening units, which are now thematic. </p> <p>I'm really proud of that edition. It's not for everybody. The regular Audible audiobook is going to be out there, but this version, which is on my website, I think is a really wonderful version for someone who just wants me to walk with you as you go through the experience of the book.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Are you selling that direct from your website?</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes, I'm selling it direct on the website.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Brilliant, because we all do that too. You can actually make more money selling audio direct than you do from the streaming.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Yes.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I realise we don't have much time left, but I need to ask you this because the film industry and publishing are in this great time of change with the advent of generative AI. </p> <p>We've seen in the last week the actor Ben Affleck's company, InterPositive, has been acquired by Netflix. So it seems like technology is disrupting a lot. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How do you think we can navigate this time? What are your feelings around this new wave of generative AI?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> It's a great tool. It's not a great writer. It's actually really a terrible writer. You can always tell when generative AI has written something because it has a certain very annoying style, but it's a great tool. I use it in my production.</p> <p>I teach at the business school at UC Berkeley. We train people on how to use it for various kinds of problems and solutions. But the important thing is that you are the architect of the machine. It's a machine. It is like a paintbrush, but it is not the hand that holds the paintbrush.</p> <p>So I am not concerned that AI is going to go make movies that we all care about, and I am not concerned that it's going to disrupt, in the largest sense, the employment picture. Certainly some jobs are being lost, but new jobs are being gained. It's really interesting. </p> <p>For example, you mentioned Ben Affleck's company, which Netflix just partnered with. It's not making new content. It's creating a better production workflow. It's taking what is shot or what is planned in the production workflow and just making it better and more efficient and implementing it and adding to it.</p> <p>That is a really good use of AI. All the creative power retains within the hands of the creative humans, but it's giving the humans more tools.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> I've been reflecting on the idea of the film director, in that people often know their names and they win awards, and yet they didn't necessarily write the script. Some do, obviously, but they didn't act in it, they didn't do all the editing, they didn't do all the different jobs, but it's their creative vision. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So is that how you see us playing that part?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> I do. I think that's a really good analogy. And look, AI—it's good. It's going to keep getting better. It still has massive error rates, so we still have to be very careful about what we attribute to it and what powers we give it, and what facts we believe from it.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> So what are you excited about next? Obviously you are promoting this book, you are doing speaking things, but are you looking to your future continuing to work across film and books?</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are you excited about in terms of your creative projects?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> The big arc of my creative life is creating ecosystems where creative people can do their best work. This book is part of that. </p> <p>With the movies that I make, as a producer, I try to create the ecosystems where people can do their best work. I envision, and I'm excited about, continuing to do that. Whether it is in a book or in a workshop or in a film that I'm making. </p> <p>I just want to keep doing that: creating these ecosystems where people can really do great work and express themselves creatively, entrepreneurially, and with a positive view of the world to come. Because that is a responsibility, coming back to the first question you asked me.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Brilliant. </p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">So where can people find you and your book and everything you do online?</h3> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> You can find me at my website, which is <a href="https://adamleipzig.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AdamLeipzig.com</a>, just like the city. Of course, the book is available wherever you buy your books, and the Kindle and the audiobook are exactly where you would expect to find them.</p> <p>You can also find me on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/AdamLeipzig" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Instagram at @AdamLeipzig</a>, and you can find me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamleipzig/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">LinkedIn</a> as Adam Leipzig. I love interacting with people, so come and find me. <a href="https://adamleipzig.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">AdamLeipzig.com</a> is the best place to find everything.</p> <p><strong>Jo:</strong> Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Adam. That was great.</p> <p><strong>Adam:</strong> Jo, thank you so much for having me. It was great talking with you.</p><p>The post <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2026/04/27/navigating-uncertainty-and-fearless-persistence-in-a-long-term-creative-career-with-adam-leipzig/">Navigating Uncertainty And Fearless Persistence In A Long Term Creative Career With Adam Leipzig</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com">The Creative Penn</a>.</p>

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<p><strong>Are you tired of the hustle-harder approach to book marketing?</strong> What if a quieter, more creative strategy could work just as well — and feel a whole lot better? How can special editions, physical letters, and library outreach bring readers to your books without the daily grind of ads and social media? Sara Rosett shares her <strong>low-key approach to marketing, direct sales, and the creative business</strong> of being an indie author.</p> <p>In the intro, dealing with uncertainty, and <a href="https://betterfasteracademy.com/books-by-becca-syme/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Becca Syme's Quit books</a>; <em><a href="https://creativepennbooks.com/collections/the-successful-author-mindset" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">The Successful Author Mindset</a></em>; Building resilience and the creative lies that writers tell themselves [<a href="https://wishidknownforwriters.com/episodes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Wish I'd Known Then</a>]; <em><a href="https://amzn.to/4clkb5M" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">On Writing</a></em> &#8211; Stephen King; <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3NXuQLX" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Big Magic</a></em> &#8211; Elizabeth Gilbert; </p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/kwl" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="176" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-1024x176.png" alt="" class="wp-image-35982" srcset="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-1024x176.png 1024w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-300x52.png 300w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-768x132.png 768w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-1536x264.png 1536w, https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/KWL-Primary_Colour-2048x352.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure> </div> <p><a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/kwl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a></p> <p><a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/kwl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>This podcast is sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/kwl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kobo Writing Life</a>, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the&nbsp;<a href="http://kobowritinglife.com/category/kwl-podcast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kobo Writing Life podcast</a>&nbsp;for interviews with successful indie authors.</p> <p>This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Patreon.com/thecreativepenn</a>&nbsp;</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://www.sararosett.com/" target="_blank" rel=" noreferrer noopener"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Sara-Rosett.png" alt="" class="wp-image-37462"/></a></figure> <p>Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 books across 1920s mysteries, cosy mysteries, and travel mysteries, as well as nonfiction for authors. She's also the co-host of the fantastic Wish I'd Known Then podcast. </p> <p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Why low-key, personality-driven marketing can be more sustainable than aggressive advertising</li> <li>How to pitch your books to libraries using a simple email strategy</li> <li>The pros and cons of special editions, physical letters, and Kickstarter campaigns</li> <li>Shifting from retailer-first releases to direct sales through a Shopify store</li> <li>Co-writing nonfiction and the power of series bundles for reader discovery</li> <li>Drawing creative inspiration from other industries and international storytelling trends</li> </ul> <p>You can find Sara at <a href="https://www.sararosett.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">SaraRosett.com</a> and at <a href="https://wishidknownforwriters.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">WishIdKnownForWriters.com</a></p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript of the interview</h3> <p>Jo: Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 books across 1920s mysteries, cosy mysteries, and travel mysteries, as well as nonfiction for authors. She's also the co-host of the fantastic Wish I'd Known Then podcast. Welcome back to the show, Sara.</p> <p>Sara: Hi, Jo. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back.</p> <p>Jo: It is great to have you back. You were last on the show five years ago, around February 2021, and we talked about <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2021/02/22/write-a-series/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">writing a series</a> — and you have a great book on that. But first up, give us an update. What does your author business look like right now, and what are you up to with your writing?</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How Sara's author business has evolved</h3> <p>Sara: Well, it's changed a lot.</p> <p>I sat down to think about this and I thought, yes, I have got into direct sales. I've done Kickstarters. I have a Shopify store now. I've really shifted from releasing first on the retailers. I don't really do that anymore. I've done some special editions, some physical things — I'm sure we'll talk about those later.</p> <p>Still doing the podcast with Jamie, the Wish I'd Known Then podcast, we're still doing that. I also have a Mystery Books podcast, which is an episodic podcast that comes out in seasons. I do a short season, about one a year, so I keep doing that. Writing some nonfiction.</p> <p>I did the <a href="https://amzn.to/4tJnB9B" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">trope book with Jennifer Hilt for mystery and thriller</a>. And writing-wise, I've created a spinoff, a short spinoff in the 1920s series. I'm still loving the 1920s timeline. But I've slowed down a little bit on the releases. Busy, but good.</p> <p>Jo: Busy, but good.</p> <p>All right, we're going to get into all of those things. Although I must say I had forgotten about your Mystery Books podcast and going to seasonal. I also had my second podcast, Books and Travel, which is now on a kind of hiatus, but going to a seasonal approach is actually really interesting.</p> <p>Do you find that listeners come back to that podcast?</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The power of a seasonal podcast</h3> <p>Sara: Yes, and it surprises me because I've always thought you have to be weekly with a podcast to gain any traction at all, which I think is the best way to do it. You can build an audience quickly then, but I just knew I couldn't sustain that.</p> <p>So when I set out, I started with maybe seven to ten episodes and I did them each year — each year has had a season — and I do five to ten episodes. Readers find it, and I have highlighted specific books. I think maybe they're searching for a podcast about the Thursday Murder Club or something like that.</p> <p>They find it that way, and I get downloads, just steady downloads throughout the year, and I don't do much. I do some Pinterest pins for that, and that's about all I do. This is one of those things — it's the kind of low-key marketing that's low threshold, but it does work.</p> <p>I think if your readers are looking for stuff to listen to about the topic you write about, it could be a good way to do some low-cost, long-tail marketing. I love it. I keep doing it because I love it.</p> <p>Jo: That's great.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Low-key marketing that fits your personality</h3> <p>Jo: As you mentioned, I really wanted to talk to you about this low-key, non-hype marketing. We've met in person a number of times, and I think we're quite similar — we're quiet, reserved.</p> <p>We are quite low key. I just put content out, and yes, I do some paid ads or whatever, but I just don't find the hype marketing something I want to do. I like the attraction marketing, and I feel like I do intuitive marketing.</p> <p>So how does your low-key marketing fit with your personality?</p> <p>Sara: Well, I did try some of the more promotional marketing. I tried to have a street team back when I heard authors talking about that.</p> <p>I thought, oh, I'll do a Street Team, and that doesn't really match with my readers. My genre — that's just not a thing that happens a lot there. So I backed off of that, and I've tried ads. Not really interested in those. I'm not really good at them, and I don't really want to get good at them.</p> <p>So I've searched for ways that I can find readers that don't rely on ads. I've really focused on my newsletter, and I have two of those. I have a main one that goes out to my readers who sign up in the back of the book. And then I have a New Release in Historical Mysteries newsletter that goes out about twice a month most of the time.</p> <p>That's just curation. I'm saying, hey, these are the new books that are out. I feel like those are easy to do. They fit with my personality, which is like, here, let me give you some information about what's going on in this genre. I do newsletters, the promo sites, the smaller promotional paid ads — I do those occasionally. I have a rotation that I go through, and I try to get a BookBub. If I can, that's great.</p> <p>I've just done things that are leaning into what I feel comfortable doing.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Pitching books to libraries</h3> <p>Sara: A lot of it is finding small sites where I haven't run an ad. Let me see if there's anybody who wants to sign up or get a free book through me here. I've done some BookFunnel marketing, where you can join the group promos. I like those.</p> <p>And I've reached out to libraries because I feel like my books appeal to libraries. They like the 1920s historicals. It's an easy way to reach people — it's attractive to libraries.</p> <p>So I had a list of libraries in my state, and I have an assistant who helps me out. She emailed down the list. She picked a few every week and messaged them and said, hey, this is a local author. She lives in this state. Here are some books you might enjoy from her.</p> <p>And I have, because of you, large print — I got into that when you started talking about large print a couple of years ago. So I have large print case laminate books that libraries like. I just do things like that, things that are not the norm.</p> <p>Hardly anybody is talking about marketing to libraries. But I try to do that. Sometimes I'll just think of something. I was at the library and I thought, wow, look at all these hardcover case laminate books they have in this large print section. Maybe I should try that. And then I search out and try to figure out if I can do it.</p> <p>Jo: And just for people who don't know, case laminate is a hardback.</p> <p>Sara: Yes.</p> <p>Jo: That's really interesting. You mentioned the libraries and the list. Was that a list you were able to buy? I remember years ago I had someone on the show who was doing that kind of thing. Or was it that your assistant had to go through and find all the libraries, find an email address, that kind of thing?</p> <p>Sara: I think I found it through Sisters in Crime, which is a mystery writers' organisation, and I think they had a contact list — you could get libraries and bookstores in your area.</p> <p>I think I started with that and then just research. And I'm sure now with AI, you could put in where you are and say, in a radius of 250 miles, what is near me? And you could probably get a great list.</p> <p>Jo: Absolutely. And when the assistant is emailing, is it just information about you and then saying, would you like to buy? Because you have a big backlist, and we don't want to be sending loads of expensive hardbacks to libraries unless they're actually going to buy. What's the process to actually sell to them?</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The library email approach</h3> <p>Sara: I wrote up an email and introduced myself. I leaned into the &#8220;I'm local — I live in the same city or state that you're in.&#8221;</p> <p>Then I described my most popular series and said the first book is this. I put a link to a PDF that they can go look at. I think it's on my website, and they can go see the books. They can print that out, of course, and it has the ISBNs. I make sure they know they can order them from Ingram, and that's all I do.</p> <p>Then when I had a new release, we switched it up and put that at the top. But I have all the books in the series so they know it's a series.</p> <p>Jo: That's fantastic. I love that.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Set-and-forget promotional marketing</h3> <p>Jo: A lot of what you were talking about was newsletter, email marketing, some ads, but nothing aggressive — as in you're not monitoring it every single day. The email pushes, like a BookBub or free books, bargain books — you can book it and then it's almost set and forget, isn't it? You don't have to log in every day to check the results. Is that what you mean?</p> <p>Sara: Yes. And I like those because they are set and forget. You just have to remember to drop the price and then reset it on Amazon, and then they send it out to their list and hopefully you get some traffic from that.</p> <p>I like that much better than Facebook ads, because with ads I feel like you have to go in and monitor the comments and check on how they're doing. It's a more full-time type job. If you're doing a lot of ads, it's a couple of hours — for me anyway, because I'm not very savvy with it and I'm not as experienced. So it would take a long time to increase my knowledge there.</p> <p>Jo: To be fair, both of us have had many years when we could have become experts, but the fact is it doesn't suit our personalities.</p> <p>I am now working with Claude Code a bit more to do Amazon ads, but even then we go in once a week and Claude does a few things and then we log out again. I'm not doing this daily stuff, and I may eventually get back into doing it for Meta. But in terms of what I mean by low-key marketing — it's lower stress when you don't have to do stuff every day.</p> <p>And I guess what you're doing with the Mystery Books podcast, with the library pitches, with the batching — is that what you're doing? Putting aside time for marketing occasionally?</p> <p>Sara: Yes. And that's what I do. I'll think, oh, I haven't checked Kobo promos, so let me go check that, because I do use those too.</p> <p>I'm wide, so I'm trying to find things that bring my books to readers everywhere. I use the Kobo promos, I use Kobo Plus, I use Draft2Digital to get digital books into libraries. I'm always running — if they have a library sale anywhere, I sign up for it and I just do these occasional things.</p> <p>It's not every day, and I like doing things in phases. I like doing a special edition and working on that and then being done with that and putting that away and going back to writing or whatever. I don't mind doing promo for a little bit, but then I don't want to do it every day.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">A project-based approach to the author business</h3> <p>Jo: We are similar in so many ways. I also have this project approach to life and business. If I'm writing a first draft of a new book, pretty much everything else goes out the window.</p> <p>Sara: Yes.</p> <p>Jo: Exactly. I just don't have the bandwidth. I'm not in that head space.</p> <p>And then, as we record this, I've got a Kickstarter coming up for <a href="https://www.jfpenn.com/bones" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Bones of the Deep</a> and yesterday I did the book trailer, and I'll do the push for the Kickstarter and then I'm just going to stop.</p> <p>Sara: Well, the positive way to look at that is it's focus, right? We can focus for two weeks or a month or whatever — two months doing a Kickstarter or whatever — and then we're done with it, and then we move on.</p> <p>Jo: That just seems more sustainable to me. I didn't like doing everything every day or every single week.</p> <p>Sara: Me either. I like switching it up, and I do enjoy the different phases of writing.</p> <p>I like the research and then I like doing the — well, I don't like the drafting that much, but once I get a draft done, I like the editing. And then when it comes time to promote it or do a special edition or whatever, I enjoy that part. Finding whatever I'm going to use for the interior photos and stuff — just things like that. I enjoy each phase and I like switching it out.</p> <p>Jo: I think that's really good. Some people think this writer's life is you write new words every single day and you manage your ads every single day. That seems to be what some people do, but that's certainly not us, is it?</p> <p>Sara: No. And that's great if you want to do that. I just don't want to. And I think we've come to the point now where each person can do this as they want. Hopefully people don't feel the pressure to meet these self-imposed deadlines or parameters that don't exist. There's no rules for writing or publishing. You can do whatever you want.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Social media — or not</h3> <p>Jo: Let's just mention social media then. What are you doing for that?</p> <p>Sara: Not much!</p> <p>Jo: Nor me!</p> <p>Sara: I'm dabbling in Pinterest because I think that could have the longer tail. I do a little Instagram, but that is about it. And I really considered just leaving it altogether.</p> <p>I'm never on Facebook. We were talking earlier about saying no, and I don't want to join any more Facebook groups. I don't care what information they have. I figure I'll hear about it on a podcast if it's great.</p> <p>I think social media has changed so much. In the beginning, it was great — you could find readers. Now it's just much harder to connect with readers there. I want to have a presence so that if people go look for me, they'll find my books and hopefully find a link to download a free book and read it or an audiobook and listen to it. Then they can get on my newsletter and connect with me there. That's my philosophy.</p> <p>Jo: I think so too. I am on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jfpennauthor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Instagram @jfpennauthor</a> in that I do post pictures there, and even very recently I've discovered how to do a reel, which is just hilarious — I'm only about seven years late.</p> <p>But I don't check my DMs, so if anyone messaged me on Instagram or Facebook, I'm just not getting them.</p> <p>Sara: I know. And I feel like there's so many places people can connect with you. I put up a post on Facebook and said, I'm not going to be here much anymore. If you're looking for me, you can find me on Instagram maybe, or sign up for my newsletter to really stay in touch.</p> <p>Jo: I think that's what we have to do. But our idea of this project-based approach to the author life and the author business doesn't suit social media, because the people who are really good on social media are on it multiple times a day, creating content multiple times a day. It just suits some people and not others.</p> <p>Sara: I do things and I take pictures and think, oh, I'll put this on Instagram. And then I don't ever do it. One time we went on a road trip and I took a bunch of paperbacks and dropped them off in the free little libraries. I took a picture at each one and I never posted those ever. I ran across them years later and thought, oh yeah, I did it but I didn't post it on social media. That's just not my thing.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Special editions and physical design</h3> <p>Jo: Although you did just say that you like doing the art and the photos, and you've done some beautiful special editions. You've done letters, you do a lot of physical design for your books. So talk about that — why you're doing that, why it's fun, and the pros and cons, because it can be a time suck and a money suck.</p> <p>Sara: Yeah. I think you have to figure out where your gauge is for that, because you can go all in and do everything for the special editions.</p> <p>I've come to the conclusion I'm going to survey my readers before I do another one and say, what do you really like about them? Because I do mine and release them on my Shopify store first — is it just that you're getting it first, or do you like all the bells and whistles?</p> <p>I enjoy doing the endpages and the ribbon, and I've done character art for them. But since my books are set in the 1920s, there's a lot of photos from that time period that are available. In Deposit Photos, you can go in and search for those.</p> <p>The last two books I did, I used photos that I thought captured what the characters would look like. That was a lot of fun to find and just include photos instead of character art. And it was a lot faster than waiting for character art too.</p> <p>The pros are that it's fun and you get to do things you don't normally get to do — finding beautiful illustrations for the endpages, doing the sprayed edges, just making it really special.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Storytelling through letters</h3> <p>Sara: I enjoy doing things that you can't do on Amazon. You just can't do letters on Amazon.</p> <p>With both Kickstarters, you could get three physical letters in the mail. They were a story told through letters, and they had art. The first one was black and white, and then the second set was colour.</p> <p>Since then, I've done colour, and it's a challenge to write those because it's a totally different type of writing. It's a 1,000 to 1,500 word little snippet, and where you end is important so that readers will be looking for the next one.</p> <p>Including art — whether it was a map, illustrations of what the view looks like, what the house looks like. Not that I illustrated it — I had somebody else help me do that.</p> <p>It's fun to think about how stories can be told in different ways. I love novels, but 70,000 words is a lot of words. That's a big project. Sometimes it's nicer to have a shorter project. The letters were shorter and a shorter time investment. I enjoyed them for that.</p> <p>For the cons — it's just a longer ramp up to get it going. If you want to do a special edition or letters or book boxes or anything like that, just estimate how much time you think you need and then multiply by three or five, because it's going to take so much longer than you think. Would you agree with that, with your special editions?</p> <p>Jo: Yeah. Although I think now I've got a process for it.</p> <p>Although, I did my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuOPhJfXPkA" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">book trailer for Bones of the Dee</a>p yesterday, and it reminded me — the book trailer is 30 seconds, and it took me nearly ten hours!</p> <p>Sara: I do believe that though. I completely believe it.</p> <p>Jo: Because I'm a bit of a control freak. I love working with Midjourney. I say I think I'm a control freak — of course I am. We all are as indie authors.</p> <p>But I'm a very visual author, and you sound like you are as well. I see the book, and if I'm generating pictures of the characters or the ship or what happens in the storm or whatever, then it needs to look like what's in my head. So I end up generating and generating, and then I did music and then — yeah, it's very creative, but it takes a heck of a long time.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">From Kickstarter to Shopify store</h3> <p>Jo: Coming back to your letters and your Kickstarters — I did go check. It's been a while since you've done those. Have you changed to using your Shopify store, and will you do another Kickstarter?</p> <p>Sara: I may do another Kickstarter. I do feel like I found new readers on Kickstarter. That's a pro definitely — people will see your work that maybe would never see it on Amazon.</p> <p>It's a much smaller pool to stand out in. Whereas on Amazon there are thousands and millions of books, on Kickstarter there might be five historical mysteries or two at that moment. So it's easier to stand out.</p> <p>I'll probably do another Kickstarter, but to me it was difficult with the prep that went into it. Then the launch, and the launch kind of stressed me out. I know we talked to you on our podcast before your first Kickstarter and you were a little stressed, so I'm not as stressed as I would be with the first one.</p> <p>But it is a lot to prepare, and I do feel some pressure that I want this one to do well. And then the fulfilment — I like to do things in phases, so I felt like it was hard for me to move on to anything else while I was waiting for the books to arrive, because I didn't feel done with that until I had sent out the books. It just seemed like it took quite a bit of time.</p> <p>So with my next release, I thought, I'm going to launch this on my Shopify store and see how it does.</p> <p>I still did the special edition and I still did a lot of the things I learned to do with Kickstarter, like emailing my list a little more often and highlighting these special things. And coordinating with a couple of other authors in my genre to say, hey, I have a book out and it's a special edition — you might be interested. And then share their stuff when their book comes out.</p> <p>The first one I did, I had the book sent to me. I signed them, packed them, and sent them out. But the second one, I said, to save time and money, we were just going to do a digital signature. I had them shipped directly from Book Vault to the reader, and that just helped simplify things so much.</p> <p>Launching on my store, I didn't see quite as many sales or bring in quite as much money as I did on Kickstarter, but it took a lot less time. I feel that was a good trade-off. It simplified the time it took to do it, so I was able to get back to writing more quickly.</p> <p>The second one I launched on my store as well. I've done the spinoff series on my store — it's a three-book series — and I'll probably do the third book on my store too.</p> <p>Then maybe when I go back to my original 1920s series, which is the one that does the best and is my most popular, I may go back to Kickstarter with that one. I think it's nice to have the choice to launch on my store or Kickstarter. I can choose — do I have enough time to do it the way I want to on Kickstarter?</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Scarcity, direct sales, and training readers</h3> <p>Jo: I feel like launching on my store, there's less of a time pressure. We don't really have scarcity in our business, and the only way to make it scarce is to have a limited-time offer. Which to me, Kickstarter by its very nature is a limited-time offer.</p> <p>Obviously it's easier for me because I'm near BookVault, so I go up there and physically sign the books, and I like doing that occasionally. But I hear you with the direct store, and I also presume it trains people to buy from your store.</p> <p>So how has your revenue shifted from the big stores like Amazon, Kobo, to Shopify, Kickstarter, direct sales?</p> <p>Sara: It's shifted a lot. I do the Shopify store just like I do everything else — in phases. I'm like, hey, I have a new release. Go buy it at my store. And I have a lot of sales.</p> <p>I also launched a third set of letters last year around October, leading into November. I said, you can get this series of letters — two a month all year in 2026. Go to my store, sign up for it, buy it there. They'll be launching in December.</p> <p>I push it, I talk about it. I do a podcast about the letters or the special edition on Mystery Books podcast. I ran a couple of ads, got the word out, saw some sales, got everything done, and then it just kind of tapers off.</p> <p>What I need to do is continue to market it, especially to my list — hey, did you know I've got these bundles? Did you know you can get bundles of paperbacks or audiobooks over here from me at a discount? I need to work that into my newsletter strategy.</p> <p>It's kind of like I use it in phases. I still have books on all the retailers and still promote those and link to them. But that's not my focus now. If I'm going to send traffic anywhere, I'm going to send it to my store.</p> <p>My mindset is more on direct sales and the special things I can do — the special editions, the unique things they can only get from me. I'll still do a BookBub if I can get one, and push that to the retailers. The smaller newsletter sites — I use those to reach readers there. But my focus is definitely on the special editions and doing things on my store that you can't get anywhere else.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Beyond ebook, audiobook, and paperback</h3> <p>Jo: A lot of people, new authors particularly, are thinking about ebook, audiobook, paperback. And all of those you can get anywhere — for both our books, you can get them in those formats anywhere. And large print as well.</p> <p>I have large print paperback, and I actually remember, it was probably five years ago when you were here and you mentioned large print hardback. And I was like, oh yeah, I should do that. Of course, I never did. You can't do everything.</p> <p>Sara: You can't do everything.</p> <p>Jo: You can't. But I think you probably can do a large print hardback on Amazon now with KDP Print — you can do hardback — but none of them are as good quality as the printing we get elsewhere.</p> <p>Also, as you say, all those special things — you actually can't sell them on Amazon. People can sell them secondhand or whatever, but you just can't do that. So I think that's the creative fun of having your own store or doing Kickstarters or selling direct — just all the other fun things that satisfy us creatively too. Because it's not all about the readers, is it?</p> <p>Sara: Right, because we want to be enjoying what we're doing. We don't want it to be a slog.</p> <p>Jo: What's the fun in that?!</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How long Sara has been an indie author</h3> <p>Jo: Just remind us how long you've been doing this now.</p> <p>Sara: My first book came out in 2006. It was traditionally published, and I had a series of ten books with a traditional publisher.</p> <p>Then as that one was getting near the end, I was experimenting with indie — was a hybrid for a while. Then I went all indie pretty much.</p> <p>Jo: In what year?</p> <p>Sara: That was probably — I think my first indie book came out in 2012. So for a while I was trying to do indie and a traditionally published book, and that was very — I felt like I was torn in all kinds of different directions. I thought it was going to be so much simpler just to do this all myself. Maybe not, but —</p> <p>Jo: Pros and cons, as we said.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Co-writing the Mystery and Thriller Trope Thesaurus</h3> <p>Jo: One of the things you've done recently is co-written a <a href="https://amzn.to/4tJnB9B" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">Mystery and Thriller Trope Thesaurus with Jennifer Hilt</a>, who's been on this show as well as your show. Tell us about co-writing, because I don't think you've done much co-writing.</p> <p>Sara: No, I hadn't. That was the first co-written book I'd ever done. And it was a great experience. Jennifer Hilt made it so easy. She has several books in this Trope Thesaurus series, so she had a format and we just used her format.</p> <p>We took the tropes and divided them up. She took half and I took half, and we went off and wrote on our own and came back together and then we would trade.</p> <p>It was really easy. I don't know that this is the way co-writing usually goes, but we did have a contract and we started out with all the normal things — a plan and a contract. We had to decide who was going to coordinate everything for the cover and the copy editing and all that.</p> <p>When we got done, we used Draft2Digital and did the payment splitting, which made that part easy. It's been a great experience, and I think it's just because Jennifer has done this before and she's really easy to work with. I highly recommend co-writing if you can find somebody like Jennifer who's already done it and can take you through the system.</p> <p>Jo: I think that's the point — if you have someone like Jennifer who has a layout, it's a bit like the For Dummies series. I had an opportunity to do something with them at one point, and it's so formulaic in terms of doing it, and then you're filling it in. Clearly Jennifer's managing that really well.</p> <p>The co-writing I've done with various people has been pros and cons, but it's not been in an established series. I love that you say that, but just to warn people — that might not be your experience.</p> <p>Sara: Yes. And I think it's so much about personality and how you work together, how you each write, and your deadlines. If you try to set a really close deadline — we pushed our deadline out. We had planned to do a Kickstarter with the launch of the trope book, and then she ended up moving and I had a bunch of stuff going on. We were like, you know what, that's fine. We won't do a Kickstarter. And it was okay.</p> <p>You just have to figure out how it's going to go. And if you have someone that's flexible when you need to be flexible, that's so important.</p> <p>Jo: Adjusting is the reality of life, isn't it? And I feel like the Trope Thesaurus — it's not going to necessarily have a spike sale and then disappear. It is an evergreen book, right?</p> <p>Sara: Yes. People will find it when they find the series. It's not something that has to be pushed during a certain time period and then we're done. It's a long-term, evergreen type book.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The role of series and bundles</h3> <p>Jo: Talking of series, you've obviously got multiple series. People should definitely go look — you've got great branding and your series are so clear. What part do series and bundles play in marketing in general, and in your direct sales?</p> <p>Sara: I like to bundle them for my direct store because I figure I need something special about my store — a reason for people to go there. They can get the books on Amazon and Audible and Spotify and all these places, so why would they go to my store?</p> <p>I've really leaned into bundles for the store, so they can get a three-book audiobook bundle or the whole series in pretty much all my series. They can do the paperback bundling.</p> <p>I've done a paperback starter series bundle where they can get each book one in my first three series bundled together through Book Vault. I thought I really need to do that with the audiobooks. That's on my list — to create a starter audiobook bundle.</p> <p>Bundles do well on Kobo. They draw readers in over there. And for the rare times I can get a BookBub, I think bundles seem to appeal to BookBub. If I'm going to pitch something, it seems like they like bundles.</p> <p>Readers like them too. Part of it is the convenience. You've got the whole series together and you can just read one after another. You don't have to go find it and figure out what order they're in.</p> <p>Jo: They do. And I love offering bundles in the Kickstarter as add-ons and on my Shopify stores as well.</p> <p>Because I'm always surprised — somebody's just found me and then they order the <a href="https://jfpennbooks.com/collections/bundles-and-book-stacks" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">13 ARKANE thriller paperback bundle</a>, and I'm like, okay, wow. That just feels like a win.</p> <p>Sara: Yes. I love to see those come in and you think, oh, I wonder how they found me. Why they would dive in with the seven-book series. That's fantastic.</p> <p>Jo: It is interesting. With the paperbacks and the shipping, you drop some money for a complete print series. And then obviously it's usually a bit less on things like audio and ebook bundles, but it's still a real commitment.</p> <p>So yeah, everybody, we love bundles.</p> <p>Sara: We do.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What Sara is excited about next</h3> <p>Jo: I wanted to come back to the podcast, Wish I'd Known Then, which is brilliant. I often refer to it on this show. Hopefully we share quite a few listeners, and you and Jamie talk about industry changes, personal things. Given all the stuff that's going on, what are you excited about? What are you experimenting with? What changes are you seeing that you're enjoying?</p> <p>Sara: We appreciate the shout-out. Every time you give us a shout-out — and I do think we share a readership. I think you are our most frequently mentioned other podcast. We are always referring to you on Wish I'd Known Then.</p> <p>What I'm looking forward to is — I like seeing what other businesses or industries are doing and seeing if I can apply that to writing and books. That's how I came up with the letter idea. I saw some people doing that. I found out later there were some mystery-related mystery letter subscriptions, but I didn't know about them and they weren't well known.</p> <p>I thought, oh, I could try that. So I'm looking forward to doing more creative things that we haven't had the opportunity to do, but now we are going to have the tech and the fulfilment to do.</p> <p>Merch could be fun. I haven't ever delved into that. Translations — I didn't even mention translations earlier. I've done a couple of languages in my historical series, and I think it's really interesting the options we have now in translation. The books could go into so many more languages, so much easier. So I'm looking into that.</p> <p>Just reaching out and trying some of these new things that are on the horizon. You're much more futurist than I am. I'm much more about looking back at the past and going, oh, that was cool. Maybe we can do something similar, but different now.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Finding creative inspiration from other industries</h3> <p>Jo: That's interesting. How are you finding out that information about what other industries are doing? Because the curation of the information stream is hard for all of us.</p> <p>Sara: I don't know. I seem to run across things. I'm always reading and browsing online and seeing what people are talking about.</p> <p>I did see a post years ago about a company that was doing special edges — limited-edition special edges. When I saw that, I thought, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And I hand-stamped snowflakes on a Christmas book.</p> <p>Jo: Oh, I remember that. I actually bought a stamp. I got a (skull) stamp made.</p> <p>Sara: Oh, awesome.</p> <p>Jo: I never used it!</p> <p>Sara: Well, it's a lot of work. It takes time. But they're very special. Each one is unique, just like a snowflake. Each book has all these different types of snowflakes and ink colours on it.</p> <p>I'll see something and think, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And then I'm always consuming really quirky media. I'm into Asian dramas — Korean dramas, Japanese dramas — and I'm seeing trends over there for storytelling. The vertical dramas they're putting out, super short.</p> <p>I just wonder what that's going to turn into in the future. I'm not a video person, but in the future I think there could be short little videos that we could make of our books. That would be just crazy. I don't know that I would have the skills to do that, but we might be able to hire somebody to do that for us.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Korean dramas and new storytelling trends</h3> <p>Jo: There are lots of AI apps that are already helping with that. I do love making book trailers.</p> <p>And I have also thought about my short stories particularly — turning them into short videos. I've written a few screenplays, so I'm also thinking about that kind of visual-sized content. I also watch a lot of Korean shows.</p> <p>Sara: Oh, do you?</p> <p>Jo: I love Korean shows.</p> <p>Sara: Oh, we have to talk later.</p> <p>Jo: They're very good. I also like the Korean sports stuff and the cooking stuff, and they're just so good at hooking you in.</p> <p>Sara: Yes, they are.</p> <p>Jo: They are so good.</p> <p>Sara: They're really good at blending genres. And I've noticed with their storytelling, they're doing a lot of these stories they call isekai stories, where the main character falls into a story. I heard somebody talking about it, saying they think that's popular because we're so familiar with media entertainment — we kind of know where the story's going. So that's a new way.</p> <p>If your character falls into a fictional mystery and knows who the bad guy is and is trying to prevent a death or something, that's a completely different story than just a straight mystery.</p> <p>Jo: That's interesting. In a way, the LitRPG genre where the character goes into a game, or the character is in a game — I suppose it's got some relationship to that. But I think K-Pop Demon Hunters is like the most successful film and music and all of this kind of thing. It's clearly coming to more Western audiences.</p> <p>Sara: Yes. It's becoming much more mainstream than it used to be, I think.</p> <p>Jo: That's really interesting given that you're mainly a historical author. Are we going to get 1920s Korea?</p> <p>Sara: Oh, maybe. That's an interesting time period. Maybe my character needs to travel there.</p> <p>Jo: You have a travel series, don't you?</p> <p>Sara: Yes. I have a modern, cosy kind of travel series, and then in my 1920s series, it takes place mostly in England, but I have a spinoff with a character who's gone to Egypt, and I have three books set in Egypt.</p> <p>Jo: Well, you never know.</p> <p>Sara: I know. Maybe they need to travel.</p> <p>Jo: I love it. Okay, where can people find you and your books and your podcasts online?</p> <p>Sara: Thanks for having me. This has been so much fun. You can find me at <a href="https://www.sararosett.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="">SaraRosett.com</a>. My store is SaraRosettBooks.com. You can find the podcast with Jamie and me, Wish I'd Known Then — it's everywhere, Apple, Spotify. We're even on Substack now. Yeah, that's where everything is.</p> <p>Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Sara. That was great.</p> <p>Sara: Thank you.</p><p>The post <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2026/04/13/special-editions-seasonal-podcasts-and-the-art-of-low-key-book-marketing-with-sara-rosett/">Special Editions, Seasonal Podcasts, and the Art of Low-Key Book Marketing with Sara Rosett</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.thecreativepenn.com">The Creative Penn</a>.</p>