The Publishing Performance Show

Kevin J. Anderson - Mastering the Publishing Multiverse

September 12, 2024 • Teddy Smith • Episode 3

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Kevin J. Anderson is a New York Times bestselling author, best known for his work on the Dune series and Star Wars expanded universe. As co-author of the Dune prequels and sequels with Brian Herbert, Kevin has significantly expanded Frank Herbert's iconic science fiction universe. His contributions to Star Wars include 54 novels, comics, and young adult series, helping to shape the franchise's literary landscape. With over 24 million books in print, Kevin's prolific career spans both traditional and indie publishing, offering unique insights into the evolving world of authorship.

In this episode:

  • Kevin's experience writing in the Dune and Star Wars universes
  • The transition from traditional to indie publishing
  • Using Kickstarter and Patreon to engage with fans and fund projects
  • Insights into the film and TV adaptation process, including Dune
  • The benefits of dictation for increasing writing productivity
  • The value of networking and attending writing conferences
  • Advice for new authors on building their platform and career


Resources mentioned:


Book recommendations:


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Join our Facebook Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/publishingperformance/

Teddy Smith (00:02.115)
Hi everybody and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm here with Kevin J Anderson. I've been so excited about this interview and Kevin J Anderson is the author of over 180 books including books in the Star Wars, X -Files and the June Universe which is the most famous one which is the we want to talk about at the moment and he's also got books in lots of other series like published and self -published so I think we're gonna have loads to talk about today. Thank you Kevin for joining us.

KJA (00:30.024)
Glad to be here. sounded like a very interesting podcast, so I'm glad you invited me.

Teddy Smith (00:34.984)
Thank you very much. mean, all of the audience here are self -published authors and authors, so I think they're going to be really excited to hear what you've got to say. I thought we could start off just by talking a little bit about your background into starting writing, how you got started and how you got the incredible opportunities to work on the Dune and the Star Wars universes.

KJA (00:55.586)
Sure, so I've been around quite a long time. My first novel was published, man, like 34 years ago or something like that. So I started out full on in the old school traditional publishing way. And I published a few original science fiction and fantasy novels from trad New York publishers.

And it was on the basis of those novels that I came to Lucasfilm's attention and they asked me if I would, would I be interested in writing Star Wars books for them? And I went, well, I'd to write Star Wars books. And all told, I did something like 54.

Teddy Smith (01:27.6)
Ha

KJA (01:34.216)
novels and comics and graphic novels and young adult series and things. So I did a lot of Star Wars work, which kind of led into X -Files and Batman and Superman and some movie novelizations. There used to be, you might not remember this, but it used to be that almost every movie that came out, somebody wrote the novel of it. And that was like a good gig that somebody would send me a, here's the movie script. And I had to turn it into a

Teddy Smith (01:55.874)
All right, okay.

KJA (02:02.806)
paperback novel and people just, but now of course it's on streaming in two months. At that time you had to read the book while you waited for it to come out on DVD or even VHS tape or something. Anyway, so I did a lot of that. And then my biggest deal was when I connected with Brian Herbert, the son of Frank Herbert, the original author of Dune. And after Frank Herbert had passed away, we completed the story that Frank had started writing. And then we did a bunch of other prequels and

Teddy Smith (02:08.0)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (02:14.296)
You

KJA (02:33.02)
and some other books in the Dune universe, which led to, after many years working on the recent legendary Dune films that just came out and the upcoming TV show called Dune Prophecy is from one of our Dune novels called Sisterhood of Dune. we're kind of deeply involved in that universe. But to kind of rewind.

Teddy Smith (02:59.011)
That's amazing.

KJA (03:00.674)
about maybe 14, 15 years. I was fully into the traditional publishing, but I was watching a bunch of big warning signs and publishers were, I mean, there used to be a dozen or more big publishers that you could offer your books to. Now they're down to the big five and lines were being cut and bookstores were going out of business and this indie publishing started up. So I was in kind of a golden situation because

I had a fan base, a bunch of people had read my books already, and I had a whole lot of existing books that I had written that were out of print. And back in, I like to call them the good old days, publishers would let your books go out of print and they gave the rights back to the authors. So I had all these books I'd already written that just weren't being published. And so I figured out how to indie publish those and started doing that around 2009, 2010 and was sort of the

just a little bit behind the big first gold rush days. And I've been kind of a hybrid author ever since doing, I run my own publishing house. We published over 400 titles from a hundred plus authors. got, I run kickstarters and Patreons and all kinds of things that is, it's opportunities that authors have now that.

boy, when I was starting out, you were just, you had to go with the big boys and you had to do what they told you to do. And that was all, that was your choice. And I did that, but then those choices were no longer the right choices. And then I had other options. So as your audience knows, I'm sure.

Teddy Smith (04:40.631)
Yeah. When we were talking before the call, you mentioned that even when you started out writing, even back then, people were saying like, in the author is not going to work. And people basically been saying the same thing ever since. And you have to go down the self -published route, down the published route, Do you think that's still the case now? You don't have to be going down the published route. The self -published route is absolutely a great place to go down.

KJA (05:07.254)
Well, I mean, when I first started out, and I'm going to sound like an old fart if I keep saying that, when I first started out way back, but it really, was sort of this doom and gloom. was so hard to break in. It was like this one in a million chance you would ever get your book published. And you had to go to a slush pile with hundreds, if not thousands of other novel manuscripts waiting there. And you had to get an agent. And whenever you...

Teddy Smith (05:14.056)
Hahaha

KJA (05:36.106)
you did get something published, all of my colleagues would be telling me that, this is the worst time ever to get into publishing and it's everything so bad out there. And then I started writing Star Wars books and hitting the bestseller lists. And then they were still telling me this is the worst time ever to get into publishing. And year after year, that's all I heard. But it's completely turned around now that I think this is the best time ever because you, look, anybody can get their book published now.

You don't, you might not be a good book and you might not sell any copies of it. But I never had that option before that there were so many people that wrote a book that never ever saw the light of day. And now you can get your book published. It doesn't take a, don't need a PhD to figure out how to do a KDP ebook or something like that. I mean, you can get your book out there, but then you get to the next hurdle of, okay, now who wants to read it and who's going to buy it?

Teddy Smith (06:25.953)
Yeah.

KJA (06:34.88)
all that. it's, you've become more than a writer. And in fact, I don't know anybody who's just, all I want to do is write books and do no other part of the work. I don't know that those writers can survive anymore, or certainly not the indie route.

Teddy Smith (06:48.823)
Yeah. No, possibly not going to make it. I was speaking to Isabel Knight recently about like building, like about author PR. And essentially she was saying, you've got to really look at it as a business now, not just focusing on the writing. It's got to be looking at your whole author brands and how you can build that whole relationship up with your, with your audience and, you know, marketing, the marketing side as well.

KJA (07:11.852)
Well, and just think about like musicians. You might just want to be a musician and write music and play it. But if you don't want to go on stage and go from like bar band to bar band and perform, well, then who's going to listen to your music? And you know, it's that's part of the job. And it has always been part of a creative's job to find an audience. mean, minstrels used to go around from kingdom to kingdom. had to get paid, right? I would

Teddy Smith (07:35.937)
Hahaha.

KJA (07:39.062)
Personally, I would love to just sit here and write books all day long and never do another thing with it and just have the royalty checks come in. But, you know, that doesn't happen.

Teddy Smith (07:45.665)
Yeah. With your writing, was there much difference between doing all of the writing entirely from your own ideas that you came up with yourself compared to writing it for other people, for example, like with the June books? What was the differences between the two?

KJA (08:04.982)
Well, it's still writing. mean, I was always a fanboy. grew up, I saw Star Wars when it was first in the movie theater. I loved Star Wars and I had...

know, Millennium Falcon model that I built for my bedroom and stuff like that. So I was always a fan. I watched Star Trek all the time and I watched all the TV shows. I, in fact, when I was a brand new writer just in high school and stuff, I would write my own Star Trek stories. I didn't realize at the time that you couldn't, you weren't allowed to get them published unless you just did fan fiction. But...

Teddy Smith (08:32.79)
Right, okay.

Teddy Smith (08:38.198)
You

KJA (08:40.488)
I started out that way and I love, it has to be something I love. mean, I really do love Dune. I really do love Star Wars. And although Dune's something a little bit different because it really is just being Brian who are carrying on that fictional legacy. But for the writers who say, know, how can you write in somebody else's universe with somebody else's characters? How can you write Luke Skywalker? It's not mine. I have to do it. Well, you know, every writer has to be bound by certain

Teddy Smith (08:48.15)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (08:52.919)
Yeah.

KJA (09:10.324)
parameters. I'm writing a story that's set in London, well there are certain details of London that I have to get right. And if I'm writing a story set in Star Wars, there are certain Star Wars details that I have to get right. you know, I'm researching a fictional place instead of a real place.

Teddy Smith (09:17.452)
Yep.

Teddy Smith (09:27.649)
Yeah.

KJA (09:29.538)
But I really, I put as much work into those books as everything else. I don't want to write anything that I don't have 100 % coming from my heart.

Teddy Smith (09:40.427)
Yeah, definitely. With that world building you're talking about, it's not just the June and the Star Wars books that have that really rich world. Also your own writing has, you have the exact same thing where you're creating that world which is really relatable to people. Like you said, if you're talking about London, it needs to be good. When you're doing that world, how do you keep organised with all of the different moving parts? Because it's literally just in your head.

KJA (10:03.254)
Yeah. Well, I,

even when I was in university, I would just suck at taking notes. I would try to take notes and I would lose track of what the lecturer was saying and I got it better if I just focused and gave it my full attention. And when I'm writing a series, I mean, I've got this huge science fiction series that's up to like 15 books now. I just keep it in my head and I keep going. And the problem is if you stop for a few years and write other things, then come back to it.

then you do forget all the details of how they all come back. So that means you gotta reread all the books and kind of load them back up. I really, really wish I had been diligent while writing them that I had kept a, like a Bible or something that just listed all the planets and all the characters. And I just don't have the patience for that. I'm off writing the next chapter and...

Teddy Smith (10:38.038)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (10:57.731)
I was reading an interview with JK Rowling the other day on YouTube and she was saying how when she's talking about her characters, she's got like whole backstories for all of them where she couldn't like recall where they went to university, all that sort of thing. But your approach is just to keep writing and just it'll come out.

KJA (11:15.232)
Well, and I do a lot of editing and I rewrite it and I have test readers and they'll often catch me on like, wait, you you contradicted this in another book and, and they usually fix it in time. If I don't fix it, well then that's the inspiration for another book that you can explain whatever the contradiction was. So.

Teddy Smith (11:17.462)
Yeah, of course.

Teddy Smith (11:31.467)
Yeah. What was the process like getting your novels into filming? Because I know you're a producer in some of the Dune films. What was that process like? Was it very straightforward?

KJA (11:44.77)
It was long and agonizing is what it was. they're just just to get the and the Dune movie and Dune by Frank Herbert is is like the best, best selling science fiction novel of all time. And it's won all these awards. It's sort of like science fiction's version of Lord of the Rings. It's everybody's read it. Everybody knows it. And that still took 25 years or so to get going. I have several of my other projects that are

Teddy Smith (11:46.711)
What?

KJA (12:14.462)
in production, in development, in whatever, which means that people in Hollywood are talking about them and I'm waiting for the film to actually start rolling. it is a very, very long and frustrating process. my attitude is kind of, I would love for it to happen, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm busy writing other things and...

You just you can't believe anything they say. we're going to make this TV show next year and five years go by and they still haven't made it and It's it's a crapshoot. I mean some sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn't I have a very kind of a jaded Attitude toward that. I mean, I love it that they're interested. I hope that they will actually pay me money for the option or something like that but

Teddy Smith (12:59.851)
Yeah

KJA (13:08.69)
I don't lose sleep over it counting down the days because it may or it may not happen. We've got one right now called Stalag X. It's like human POWs in an alien concentration camp that I wrote with Stephen L Sears, who was the producer of Xena Warrior Princess way back. And we wrote this graphic novel in

Teddy Smith (13:24.832)
Yep. Yep.

KJA (13:30.242)
something like 2003 and it started coming out as comic issues but then that comic publisher went out of business so we got the rights back and we sold it to another comic publisher and they brought out one issue and then they went out of business and then we got it to another one and then it finally got published as a graphic novel and then it got optioned again and then the option lapsed and it got optioned again and then the option lapsed and and right now it is optioned by Francis Lawrence the guy that did the Hunger Games and Red Sparrow and I Am Legend

and he's optioned it and that option just expired but he renewed it because he still wants to make it and they're getting the script written and okay, it's been three years though, we're waiting to see something happen but that's how it happens in Hollywood. And I'm not saying he's making things up, he's really earnestly trying to do it and I would love for it to happen. I just...

Teddy Smith (14:10.988)
Ha ha ha.

KJA (14:26.754)
I'm not waiting to pay the bills with whatever comes in because it might be 10 years from now before it happens. It requires patience is what I'm saying. Lots of patience and optimism.

Teddy Smith (14:32.8)
Yeah, I was speaking to a writer the other day.

Teddy Smith (14:39.114)
Yeah, I was speaking to a writer the other day who has been writing a series of novels with the aim of them being turned into a TV series. That was kind of the way she wrote them. Is that the way you approach writing some of those books or was it just write the books and if they get taken on, that's great?

KJA (14:52.618)
Yeah, the books have to be what the ultimate goal is. I mean, I write books because I write the books. And if somebody does take my books and turn it into a TV show, it might be a Broadway musical before they get done with it. Who knows what they're going to change. You try to be in a position where you can do some creative control and insist that, no, no, you don't put submarines on the planet Dune. You actually have to have sand and sand worms.

You know, doesn't always happen. I'll just, but the thing is, even if they make a bad movie or a bad TV show, it still sells a whole lot of your original book. And the book is what I wrote. The book is, is my creation. And, and that's the thing that I want people to, to read and remember.

Teddy Smith (15:39.094)
Yeah, amazing. So inspiring hearing this because so many people, it's like their dream to have this sort of writing put on the screen like that.

KJA (15:46.112)
Well, it's literally one of those chasing the pot of gold or the fairy lights. I've known people who have literally given up their career because they're chasing after the option and they believe that this is going to get made and it never gets made. in the meantime, they've stopped writing books. So they've lost all their readers because they haven't produced any new books. And see, that's why I even love the indie publishing even more, because I am in complete control. I can publish the book.

as fast as I want it to come out. I have series that, you I'll do a new book every year. I'll run a Kickstarter for it to see if the fans are still interested in it. And I control the release date. I control what the cover art looks like. And of course, it makes me sound like a control freak. But I like being the one who decides things rather than relying on other people because I've

When you have large teams doing things, somebody might be sick that day, somebody might get a divorce and decide to stop working on it. There are all kinds of other factors. And if your livelihood is counting on that, I would rather count on my own reliability instead of a whole bunch of other people.

Teddy Smith (17:05.741)
Yeah, brilliant. That's really good advice. Thanks. You talk about your Kickstarter. I know you're right. You're launching Kickstarter like now at the moment basically for your new series, the Dan Shambel books. Well, not your new series, sorry, the new book in the series of the Dan Shambel, the Zombie PI books. So Kickstarter is, that's gonna be really interesting to those of the authors on this show because that's, I've seen it, it talks about a lot in the industry at the moment. quite a, it feels like quite a difficult thing to do, but can you tell me a bit about that?

KJA (17:16.481)
Yes.

Teddy Smith (17:35.874)
campaign, how that's worked.

KJA (17:36.672)
Well, so I wrote this series that I just loved called Dan Shambles Zombie PI. It's sort of like the naked gun in the Adams family. It's just really silly and funny. It's meant to be laugh out loud. He's a zombie PI and he solves cases with werewolves and ghosts and mummies. And his best friend is a human cop and he's got a lawyer partner and he's got a ghost girlfriend.

Teddy Smith (17:47.188)
You

KJA (18:06.29)
It's silly and it's lots of dumb puns and kind of intrinsic humor. And I just, fell in love with it. I loved writing it. My wife says I'm in such a good mood when I'm writing these books and they're just funny. And I published the first four of them through a traditional publisher and they didn't take off the way I had wanted them to. I'm...

Teddy Smith (18:19.052)
Hahaha.

KJA (18:32.098)
And again, this is why I kind of like to control it because the other publisher, they brought them out like too far apart because these are fast and fun, entertaining books. You don't want to wait a year and a half to read the next one. You want the next one right away. And, and they charged $15 for the ebook. And then they complained that the ebook sales weren't very good. And I went, well, duh, you're charging too much for it. So finally I got, I got the rights back to them and I republished them in my own, wordfire press.

Teddy Smith (18:54.943)
Yep.

KJA (19:01.858)
And then I did a couple of story collections and I wrote another novel in the series and I just released it but I didn't really push it or promote it. I just kind of put it out there. And I just wasn't, I was kind of depressed that the series hadn't taken off because I really loved it. And the fans kept writing. They said, well, where's the next one? Where's the next one?

And a friend of mine who had done a bunch of successful kickstarters, he said, well, if the fans want it, why don't you run a Kickstarter and have them put their money where the mouth is. And I said, I mean, at the time I had supported some kickstarters, but I thought a Kickstarter was I'm a poor starving author and I can't afford to publish my books. So give me money. And that's, that's not what it is at all. A Kickstarter is basically a way.

Teddy Smith (19:46.389)
Hahaha

KJA (19:52.332)
to give your core fans like early access to this book, like months before the rest of the public can see it. It gives your fans a way to be like, they can get a character named after themselves if they bid at a certain level, or they can help create the cover art, or they're involved in the process, and we can give them exclusive Kickstarter only things. so I didn't.

I didn't know what was going to happen. So I said, all right, if you want another Dan Chamble book, I love this series, but I kind of was letting it, letting my zombie PI die. And so we ran a Kickstarter and holy cow, it made me three times as much money as the traditional publisher was paying for those books. And I went, okay, this might be the way to do it. So, so I wrote that book and published it. And then I, so then I got a,

Teddy Smith (20:31.021)
Hahaha.

Teddy Smith (20:39.894)
God.

KJA (20:49.282)
a bunch of Kickstarter backers. And I had another series that was called The Dragon Business, sort of a medieval con man comedy thing. And I loved that book and I wanted to do a sequel. Amazon, Amazon has their own publishing imprint called 47 North and they had printed the first one, but they weren't interested in another one, but I wanted to do the series. So I said, okay, let's do a Kickstarter and see if you want to do the series again. Bam. I got

two or three times what I got paid in the first place for it. So I'm like full on, hey, Kickstarters are the way to go. And then, so the following year I did another Dan Chamble novel Kickstarter. And that one also was very successful. the one, so the one that's running right now as we're talking about this is this year's Dan Chamble novel. I try to do one every year, but I wanted to make the campaign even bigger, not just here's another novel.

So I've got a new novel and I've got a new story collection. So there's two books coming out with it, but we've also got a new card game that we've done with a gaming company, a Dan Chamble card game. And we did a jigsaw puzzle, the cover art for the new novel called Horn Dogs is really just gorgeous. It's my zombie PI with his gun drawn in a Mexican standoff with a unicorn pointing at his horn at him. So this is a Dan Chamble.

Teddy Smith (22:13.228)
You

KJA (22:15.966)
solves the mystery of the secret society of unicorns. So it's, that's a fun one. So we did the jigsaw puzzle, a card game, a story collection and a new novel. So we're calling it the zombie PI apocalypse. And that's the campaign running and, and it, it'll end like the end of October or early November, something like, don't remember the exact date, but anyway, so. Support the Kickstarter if you want it, but Kickstarter is a way.

Teddy Smith (22:29.452)
Yeah.

KJA (22:46.194)
for indie authors basically to get in advance because all the actual readers are paying money upfront for the book so that I can pay to produce the book and then send them the copies when it's done. And if it makes enough money to kickstart it, then I can actually pay my food bills and stuff too.

Teddy Smith (23:06.882)
So with your books, obviously you've got a name behind you for your Kickstarter. Kickstarter has got a bit of an advantage over people maybe who are just starting out. So if you were just starting out, is there a best place to start with trying to get those payments for your first books?

KJA (23:24.054)
Well, that's kind of the question for all authors, that you have to start as soon as possible to start building your platform, whether it's building your social media presence, your website, your newsletter, everything you do should be trying to get followers because those are the ones that are gonna buy your books. And if you go to writers conferences, if you go to Comic Cons, you go to places just so that people will start

to notice you, look, I've been doing this a long time and I've got 24 million copies of my books in print. So I do have an advantage because I have a readership, but it's never too soon to start. in fact, I just, here's kind of another new thing. I just launched my Patreon because a lot of other authors have a Patreon and I just launched it. It's Kevin J. Anderson. can look it up on Patreon, but that's...

Teddy Smith (24:19.212)
I saw some of your recipes on there.

KJA (24:21.378)
I do a lot of cooking. I'm a very good cook and I post pictures. Everybody's always asking me for my recipes. So now it's like, all right, well, if you want my baked chili rellenos recipe, you've got to go join my Patreon. But the other cool thing is we need to... I'm giving them like early access that if you're at a certain level, the moment I finish a novel, I will send them a PDF of the word manuscript.

Teddy Smith (24:34.476)
Ha ha ha.

KJA (24:51.296)
So they get to read it even before the Kickstarter people do because they get to read the manuscript. And if they read it fast and tell me I made a mistake, well, I might even be able to fix it before we publish it. So the early access is one thing. And another thing we're doing is sort of a monthly zoom call so that the fans can just chat with me and we can talk about stuff. so Patreon is another thing that, again, when I started out, none of these options were on the table.

Teddy Smith (24:56.258)
Amazing.

Teddy Smith (25:02.779)
Hahaha

KJA (25:20.672)
We never were able to do this sort of thing. We were at the mercy of what the big traditional publishers marketing department decided to do. And I like having the options. These are glory days, I think.

Teddy Smith (25:35.138)
Amazing to have that touch point with your fans where you can even chat to them over a Zoom call or like, you know, get them to be your advanced reviewers as well for your book. And I think even a small author would be able to do something like that, you know, like just start getting those, even if they weren't getting Patreon.

KJA (25:43.03)
Well, here.

You know, there's a thing, I can't remember who came up with it, but it's called your thousand true fans. That if you can come up with a thousand people that want to read your books and they're dedicated, they go out and buy every book, then you're a successful author. You don't have to depend on Waterstones or Barnes and Noble or any big bookstore chains. If you've got a thousand people who buy your book, you can pretty much have a career as a writer.

Teddy Smith (26:14.529)
Yeah, there's a great book about that by... Yeah, there's a great book about that by Pat Flynn. I don't know if you know him, but it's called Superfans and he does. He's got the Smart Passive Income. That book's really good. So if people want to think about those first thousand fans, that's a really good resource to start with. It's something I've used lots.

KJA (26:15.668)
don't have a million people, but a thousand is a good place to start.

KJA (26:33.73)
Well, it's, try, I try every, I've got like three Facebook pages. I've got Twitter, I've got Instagram. I've gotten, well, I don't do a blog much anymore, but it's exhausting. In fact, it's probably 70 % of my time and the other 30 % is actually writing books. But, you know, if nobody reads your books, then there's no point in writing them. So it's the investment you have to make.

Teddy Smith (26:46.124)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (26:58.114)
Do you outsource any of this work to other people? Like it's almost exhausting hearing about so many things.

KJA (27:03.397)
I mean, some of the actual work work, like I pay somebody to lay out my books and I pay cover designers and I have a proofing team and, I have somebody who I write my newsletter, but I have somebody format it and send it out on MailChimp and everything. So whatever I can delegate, do. But the fan interaction is not something I want to delegate because I want them to genuinely interact with me. And of course the writing is not something I can delegate that.

Teddy Smith (27:26.721)
No, of course.

KJA (27:32.534)
That's something only I can do. Face to face meeting the fans at a Comic Con? that's only, I can't hire a stunt double, it has to be me.

Teddy Smith (27:40.066)
So obviously when I speak to you I'm like you've got so many projects going on and it makes me feel like I'm not working hard enough because you've got obviously your films you're working on you've got your books of course your writing every all that stuff with your fans

KJA (27:57.012)
And comic books, I write monthly comic books and I've got my newsletter and I'm a graduate professor. teach graduate students in publishing and I help run a big writing conference and we travel a lot. We just came back from Dragon Con, which is the largest pop culture con in the world, I think. And then we got Salt Lake Comic Con coming up and we have writers workshops that are coming.

Teddy Smith (28:07.564)
Yes, I was going talk about that next.

KJA (28:27.168)
I don't know. I like to keep busy.

Teddy Smith (28:28.15)
Ha ha ha ha.

Yep. Well, you've got just talking about one of those things you spent since you're a professor at Western Colorado University and yeah, you're teaching a master's course in publishing books. So it doesn't just cover the writing, it covers like basically the whole business of the writing too. what can people expect from that course? What does it cover?

KJA (28:37.718)
Yes.

KJA (28:50.784)
Well, I mean, the university actually has a master's degree in genre fiction. there you can be, and I would have loved to take that when I was starting out. So you can learn all about romance and science fiction and mysteries and fantasy and all that kind of stuff. So you can, you can get your MFA on how to write genre fiction, but we like to say that, that we can teach you how to write, but then we teach you what to do with it afterward. So I've, like I said, I've spent

decades in the publishing industry, in the trad publishing industry, but I've also spent many years running my own publishing house and doing the indie stuff. I, what I teach is sort of a half and half traditional and indie publishing, but we teach contracts and copyright and book design and fonts and we make them, the students design their own covers. They do their own editing. They lay out.

their books, they market the books, they run ads, they do like everything from start to finish. And they, so they do two main projects. One, they edit an original anthology, which we get funding from Draft2Digital, which most of your audience should be familiar with what Draft2Digital is. So they fund us every year. They give us $5 ,000 so that we can pay pro rates for the short stories in this anthology. And the students come up with the idea.

Teddy Smith (30:01.708)
Yep.

KJA (30:14.274)
and they read the slush pile and there's usually like 500 submissions that come in. And in fact, when this is being broadcast, our anthology will have just closed. So it's called Confounding Cupids When Love Goes Array, I think is the subtitle. Sort of humorous, romanticy kind of stuff like that. But the students came up with that. They wrote the call for submissions. They will be reading all these stories. They'll argue over which ones they want to accept.

They have to write the rejection slips. They issue the contracts. They copy edit the stories. They put the book together. And then we have this big book launch just before they graduate with their master's degree. And then for a solo project, they reissue a classic of literature, a public domain, an H .G. Wells book or a Jules Verne book or something like that. They pick something that they're passionate about. And then they, they.

get the text and they edit it, they proof it, they design the book, they lay it out, they do every single step hands on. So by the time they graduate, which is in one year, so it's not a huge long investment of time, in one year they come out of it with two books published with their names on the cover that they've actually done. And one of my criticisms about other academic programs is that they're all very esoteric and...

you don't learn anything practical. Well, in my publishing program, you actually learn how to do things. I guess, I don't know if you want to put a link in there, but my website is wordfire .com, like words on fire, wordfire .com. And there's a whole section there about the graduate program. And we are open for applications. We usually fill up every year, but I would love to have people from your podcast come on it because they're already interested in indie publishing and.

And we, as far as I know, this is the only graduate program that fully emphasizes indie publishing rather than just getting a job at some New York publishing house.

Teddy Smith (32:15.19)
Yeah, we'll definitely put a link into the chat about it. And yeah, definitely go and check that out if you're interested. mean, is it in person in America? It's not.

KJA (32:23.042)
no, that's the other thing. So this is it's called low residency. So that means that it's all online except for one week in person in Colorado. OK. Well, before we before we go on and they think I want to stop because I've got our shipping or is making noise behind. I don't know if you can hear it or not, but I would just want to close the door so we don't get the background noise. Were you hearing it or not? OK, look, it's easy to close the door. just let's just pause there.

Teddy Smith (32:31.681)
Right, okay, great. And is that... Sorry.

Teddy Smith (32:43.766)
Short, yeah, yeah. A little, but not too bad. I'll move it and edit, yeah.

KJA (32:53.09)
and then I'm gonna limp across the.

KJA (33:08.962)
There, you saw my action shot, how fast I'm walking these days. All right, I hope that was a good breaking point so it's not too hard to come back.

Teddy Smith (33:11.49)
Looks good.

Teddy Smith (33:17.984)
No, that's good. Let me just think. Great. Let's have quick drink.

Teddy Smith (33:30.901)
In teaching so many other people during your course, it must be a great way to sort of deepen your own understanding in the industry as well. How has that helped to your own knowledge?

KJA (33:41.516)
Well, it's really kind of intimidating because if I'm the professor teaching them the stuff, I better keep up on all the new stuff happening. And a lot of these are very active, very dedicated indie authors already. And they sometimes know more than I do about some of the subjects, which is kind of good because publishing is not like teaching ancient Greek or something like that. This changes every month.

we have to rewrite our syllabus every single year. Like, that's no longer relevant and this is new stuff. And, you know, two years ago we didn't even have to mention AI and now we've got to mention AI and talk about it. there's just, everything's changing. And because I'm the teacher on this stuff, that means I really have to spend a lot of time keeping on the top of my game. And...

So I go to like Author Nation every year and we have something called Superstars Writing Seminars that we run that that's very indie focused. And I just know a lot of people in the industry and all of your indie author friends know that when we get together, all we talk about is publishing and writing. We don't talk about like sports or anything else. That's our conversation. We go out for beer and that's all we talk about is vellum and cover design and draft a digital and

Teddy Smith (34:52.883)
Ha ha.

Teddy Smith (35:02.956)
Ha ha ha.

KJA (35:03.756)
Kindlepreneur and Kickstarters and Patreons and I guess the more boring cocktail party conversation unless you're another indie author.

Teddy Smith (35:12.578)
I'm going to Alternation this year for first time, really excited about that. So yeah, I'm going to.

KJA (35:17.186)
We'll meet in person then. I'm looking forward to it. I went every year when it was 20 bucks. And so this is just got to, it's a new kind of makeover. we'll, I'm very supportive of them. want to see what they can do.

Teddy Smith (35:24.268)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (35:29.332)
great. I already spoke to Craig Martel a few weeks ago and he was saying how it's going to be changing, it's going to be getting better as well. So I think if he's given it the stamp of approval, then it must be good.

KJA (35:38.434)
Well, he was he was our Zeus on Mount Olympus from 20 books, but I think I think he was a little bit worn out because it's a big job. And so I'm I'm happy to have him get a little bit of stress, less stress in his life.

Teddy Smith (35:43.331)
Ha ha

Teddy Smith (35:47.979)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (35:54.447)
Las Vegas is quite hard work as well, isn't it? You just mentioned there superstars and talking about conferences. So tell us a bit about superstars and also how networking has helped your journey because I do a lot of networking for all my businesses that I've run. I've, to me, I found it to be one of the most useful ways to meet people and to...

to grow my business, both from the stuff you learn and also the people you meet. But tell us a bit about Superstars and how that's worked for you.

KJA (36:23.874)
Yeah, so Superstars we founded about 15 years ago now and at the time there just was no business of writing conference out there. There were all kinds of writers conferences that teach you, you know, plotting and characters and things, but nobody taught you what to do when you filed for copyright or how to read your contracts or and this was started just when ebooks were taking off. So what do you do with ebooks and how do you do this? And my

I was -

quite a top bestselling author at the time. And I had a bunch of bestselling author friends and we started talking like, once you become a bestseller, there's not too many people that you can complain about. They're complaining about stuff. And because they all just go, gee, I wish I had your problem. So we met, it was me and Brandon Sanderson, my wife, Rebecca Mesta, who I co -wrote a bunch of Star Wars books with me, David Farland, who was a

Teddy Smith (37:13.634)
Ha ha ha.

KJA (37:23.95)
New York Times bestselling fantasy author and Eric Flint, who's like the god of alternate history. We all got together and just spent a weekend exchanging information about here's the business stuff that I learned that they don't know or that they learned that I don't know. And we just had this exchange of ideas. And we realized it was so useful that we wanted to just take it on the road that maybe other people would learn this as well.

So we founded the first Superstars Writing Seminar and we held it in Pasadena, California. I think we had 60 people attend it.

But we just loved it. was this huge network and everybody was sharing their information and everybody was learning and it became such a tight knit group that the next year it grew and then it kept growing. And we got to the point where you have to cap it at 400 people and it's held in Colorado Springs every year in February. So it's a beautiful snow capped mountains behind us. so we we've had tons and tons of industry leaders,

and bestselling authors and successful indie authors. And we have lots of sponsors from draft to digital to Atticus to audible .com and ACX and all kinds of different people working in the industry. So it is much along the same lines as 20 Books and Author Nation, but we're the OG writing, business of writing conference, we say. it's, we've been around, but we've got a great

network and to get back to what your comment was, the network is everything. mean, this is like your safety net. It is your support system. It is your informational. It's your hive mind database. Like, does anybody know how to fix this in vellum? can't figure it out. And it's just this constant, everybody's learning, everybody's sharing. somebody said this to me that

Teddy Smith (39:16.972)
Ha

KJA (39:28.226)
of all the industries that they had been working with, they have never ever seen anything like indie publishing about how helpful and supportive and cooperative the entire community is. I mean, you don't see that in like software developers where everybody's sharing their new secret of how they did something. Well, if somebody at 20 Books to 50K figured out

Teddy Smith (39:49.888)
Yeah.

KJA (39:54.658)
of a trick to make your Amazon rankings go higher. You couldn't stop them from shouting it out. I mean, you would think somebody would keep it as a trade secret, but nobody does. all share it. So Superstars is a huge network of mine. My graduate students, I've now unleashed 53 master's degree publishing people on the world, and they're all going out and teaching and helping and learning things.

Teddy Smith (40:01.568)
Hahaha

KJA (40:22.498)
I enjoy being part of a supportive system rather than a destructive system where everybody's stabbing you in the back. That's not my thing.

Teddy Smith (40:30.262)
Yeah, I do a lot of networking with Amazon product sellers and it's nowhere near as supportive. Like people are much more secretive about the methods they've used to like game the rankings or something like that. So yeah, don't be afraid to speak to other authors basically.

KJA (40:44.8)
Right. Well, and it's not necessarily gaming the rankings. It's just like, did you know that you could put extra keywords if you do this? like tricks and helpful suggestions and things like that.

Teddy Smith (40:57.623)
Yeah, no, of course. With your networking, do you have any groups, like Facebook groups or anything like that, that you particularly have found useful for you?

KJA (41:07.778)
Well, my master's degree students have their own group with all the alumni on it, and they are constantly sharing things. Superstars has a really big group of all attendees and past attendees. So that's its own network of, I don't know, like 1 ,000 people now, just all those. And they're not just...

lurkers. These are cutting edge people actually in the trenches actually doing stuff. The 20 books to 50k Facebook page is just loaded with information. There are no secrets out there. You just just going to be overwhelmed by data. You have to sift through it and find what's going to be useful for you.

Teddy Smith (41:40.961)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (41:46.88)
Yeah, with the superstars, it's next year, the next event, isn't it? When's the date? Brilliant.

KJA (41:52.278)
Yeah, next February, I think it's the first week of February. So it's superstarswriting .com, think. Search for superstars writing, you'll find it.

Teddy Smith (42:01.472)
And what topics can people expect from it this year? Have you got any particular speakers you're excited to unveil or is it all still under wraps?

KJA (42:09.346)
I'm not sure that they've announced all of them yet. I think some of them are featured on the website, but we have a whole day that is sort of master class level craft day so that there are people really...

Jonathan Mayberry is a New York Times bestselling action thriller writer and he teaches you how to write fight scenes. I give a whole workshop on world building. one of my big things is I do all my work by dictation. I walk around and I dictate. And so I give a workshop on how you can get into doing dictation, because it'll double your writing speed. It really does. We do that. There are Kickstarter workshops. There will be Patriots.

workshops. There are like real hands -on useful information that and I think we have like five or six tracks of programming going on and there's a VIP banquet and all kinds of fun stuff.

Teddy Smith (43:13.28)
Yeah, you even wrote the book on being a dictator called on being a dictator.

KJA (43:17.238)
Yes, called on being a dictator. in fact, I just, just updated it because it was, think about five years old. So we needed to add things about AI transcription and, and all kinds of new advances that have come up and

we'll be releasing that update in the next couple of months. But yeah, I wrote it. I just got tired of people saying, I tried dictation for five minutes and it didn't work for me, so I couldn't do it. And I went, well, you didn't try typing for five minutes and gave up on it. I mean, it's a learned skill. You have to get better at it. truly, I'm kind of in, I'm in a quandary right now because I've gotten to the point where...

I do all of my writing by walking and hiking and dictating. That's how I do everything. And since you're just seeing me from the waist up, can't see, I've broken my foot a couple of weeks ago, so I can't walk around anymore. And I'm now being very frustrated because I've got a book to write and I can't do it my normal way. But I'll sit in my chair on the back porch and I'll just talk to myself and get lots of writing done.

Teddy Smith (44:03.836)
Hahaha

Teddy Smith (44:09.266)
Ha ha.

Teddy Smith (44:22.752)
And what do you do once you've recorded all of your dictation? What do you do from that? Do you just transcribe it yourself by typing it out or do you use some tools?

KJA (44:28.936)
no, no, no, that would take forever. got, I used to have an actual human typing service and they did quite well for me, but now I use something called Mac whisper, which is an AI transcription that takes word for word what I've dictated and transcribes it. And then I cleaned it up.

the chat GPT will put in your quote marks and commas and everything like that. So it's not doing the writing for me, it's just transcribing for me. But it's really fast and fairly cheap and I can get it done that way. So I do the dictation, then I plot my recorder into the cradle and I have it transcribed while I'm off eating lunch or something.

Teddy Smith (45:12.903)
That book's available on Amazon as well. I think I'm going to read it now because that sounds really interesting.

KJA (45:16.598)
Yeah, it's called on being a dictator. But one of the big things that I do is that I do finished prose, but I've been doing this for decades. Instead of thinking up a sentence and typing it, I think up a sentence and I speak it. But I've trained myself to do that. It's like reading the audio book in my head. But if you're just starting out, you're not going to be at that level. So one of the things I advocate is just use it like for brainstorming. If you're about to

You're trying to plot your big epic fantasy. We'll go for a walk and just sort of, hey, how about if we did this with the dragon coming or here's the legend of the five scrolls and you can just sort of do notes to yourself. And it's a lot better than walking around with a notebook in your hand trying to scribble things as you're walking. And my dialogue is really great because...

the way my characters speak or the way people would actually speak because I'm speaking it, not typing it. If you're typing it, you might not notice that you just put four words that start with the letter S in a row. But when you're talking, it doesn't happen.

Teddy Smith (46:21.388)
Yeah. Did you, do you ever find you're doing like the accents of your characters whilst you're dictating?

KJA (46:30.644)
I do that and in fact it's useful now because it helps the Mac Whisper transcription to know when I'm having different characters talking. It will recognize that it's different voice patterns. But it's like role playing. I really get into the character when I'm writing it and I try to speak in their voice so that the dialogue sounds a little bit more personal.

Teddy Smith (46:56.257)
Yeah, that's really interesting. I wonder if a book could be written through almost like, you know, I can't, what's that word? When comedians do that improv, yeah, could a book almost be written like in improv? It sounds like you're just doing improv with yourself. Like, could you get a couple?

KJA (47:11.117)
like an improv.

KJA (47:17.1)
Well, I I've done this on like convention panels or something where it is like an improv where they will throw a story prompt at me and I'll just spout off, come up with a story. I mean, there are other writers who do that with a keyboard and they'll type on demand, but I'm kind of better at just sort of speaking it out loud and talking.

Teddy Smith (47:38.624)
Yeah, brilliant. A lot of the stuff we've talked about today, obviously, you've got years of experience. a bit for people just starting out and what's the marketing things they should be focusing on, you think, on at first? know, they've got just maybe the first few books. there particular ones you think would be the best ones focused on?

KJA (47:57.442)
Well, and I mentioned earlier, but it is never too early to start building your platform. if you want to be a writer, start your Facebook page. Hi, I'm a writer and I like to write books about dragons. then you might get 10 people to follow your page because they saw you said dragons. And then you might get a hundred people and then all of those people are potential readers. And so start.

start building up your identity as a writer as soon as you can. And then the other thing is you need to write a lot. It's like an athlete. You get better by practicing. And you can't just write a book and hope for it to be a best seller. Just write and then keep writing and then you build on the next one and you build your fan base and...

Maybe you have sold 100 copies of your first novel, but then your next one might sell 200 copies and then just keep building it. And it is a long, slow process. If you are in this as a get rich quick scheme, well, that's probably not the best approach.

Teddy Smith (49:07.586)
I think that's probably a great message to end on. It's not a quick get rich quicks theme. It's got to practice and to hone your craft down. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it today. I think it's been a great episode. Everyone's going to learn a lot about your background and your writing. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the or follow you, where's the best place to do that?

KJA (49:17.057)
Awesome.

KJA (49:28.15)
Well, like wordfire .com is my main website, which sadly doesn't get updated as often as it should. My Patreon is, is KevinJAnderson. So if you go there, you'll get a lot of, like up to date recipes, hiking photos, first look at my draft manuscripts and things. I'm on Facebook as, official KevinJAnderson page, Twitter it's

Teddy Smith (49:41.27)
Recipes.

KJA (49:55.188)
I think it's the real KJA, my initials. X, sorry, not Twitter. And I go to tons of conventions and I go to Comic Cons and writers conferences and we hope to see you at Superstars or Author Nation. There's a couple of obvious places. And if you check out my Kickstarter before it ends, I hope you look at the Dan Chamble stuff and...

Teddy Smith (50:01.783)
Ha

Teddy Smith (50:12.426)
Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. Sorry.

KJA (50:23.724)
Patreon or whatever, just, I got a lot of books out there. I hope you find one that you can enjoy.

Teddy Smith (50:26.211)
Usually we ask people, ask people we're interviewing, like what's one book they recommend that everyone should be reading? But I think...

KJA (50:36.706)
Well, I would tell them to start with the very first of the Dan Chamble books called Death Warmed Over. And if you like that, there's 10 more of those. So that's a good place to start.

Teddy Smith (50:46.528)
Yeah. You have me with the naked gun references. I think that sounds like right up my street.

KJA (50:51.51)
Well, it's a bunch of really stupid puns and it's the... I love it. I just... I write so much big serious stuff like Dune that it's fun to just be able to goof off sometimes.

Teddy Smith (51:03.208)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, June is quite serious, isn't it? no, no. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. It's been great to speak to you. Hopefully we'll speak to you soon. I'll see you at the conference. Thanks.

KJA (51:07.188)
Not a lot of comic relief in Dune, right.

KJA (51:18.188)
Thanks, Teddy.