Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 46

Why Authors Should Ditch Mailchimp and Move to Substack

Photo by RDNE Stock project

Today’s post is by publisher and author L.L. Barkat (@llbarkat) of Tweetspeak Poetry.

If you’re an author who’s been using Mailchimp to grow your list and improve sales, it might be time to ditch Mailchimp and move to Substack.

This is a big decision. I understand.

After all, as a small publisher, I recently made the decision to move our Every Day Poems publication to Substack, and it took some real work to successfully do so.

Why did I risk relocating a publication that was approaching its twelfth birthday?

Two big reasons I started the ball rollingMailchimp has seriously raised its prices since it was taken over by Intuit and since it has pivoted to be a heavier e-commerce service. Regarding pricing, I asked Mailchimp for a solution that might be appropriate for their customers who are part of the creator economy, and they said, “You could delete subscribers.” That just didn’t seem like a sustainable solution if the goal is growth.One of our T. S. Poetry Press author/illustrators started a few Substacks last fall and immediately built her lists into the thousands (from nothing!); we watched her book sales start climbing. That sales trend has continued for her and for another author of ours who also moved to Substack.

The bottom line?

We saw a chance to cut costs and increase sales. What’s not to love.

Beyond that, we want to suggest 5 more reasons you might want to ditch Mailchimp and move to Substack.

5 reasons to make the move

1. You can get paid, instead of paying. Substack is technically a subscription service, and while you can offer your newsletter for free, you can also offer it at a minimum of $5 a month or $30 a year. Some people charge more. Sure, you can charge for your Mailchimp newsletter, too, but you have to pay to play. If your lists are in the thousands at Mailchimp, this can become quite pricey.

We went for the 5 & 30 model at two of the Substacks we now run. And while we lost paying subscribers when we made our initial move, the revenue has since tripled. That’s partly because we also added a new offering: The Write to Poetry. It might also be due to Reason # 2 below.

2. You’ll be in an ecosystem instead of a silo. Substack sends your newsletter to inboxes, just like Mailchimp, but it also publishes your content to the Web. This is extremely important for creating an ecosystem instead of a silo. All your free posts are easily likeable and shareable and, if you allow comments, can provide for engagement.

On top of that, the Substack network allows publications to recommend other publications—sort of the way blogs used to have sidebars where they recommended other blogs. If you really hit it big, you might even get recommended by Substack (that happened for us with Every Day Poems, and we picked up a lot of subscribers when it did!)

3. You can have searchable archives instead of invisibility. Substack has excellent SEO, and your archives (even your paid ones, if you toggle to discoverability) are discoverable by search engines. With Mailchimp, there are no archives except in people’s inboxes. Not optimal.

Does it make a difference? Our Substack stats show that it does. We’ve gotten new free and paid subscribers via Google searches that landed people right on our regular content—content that with Mailchimp would not have been findable by search engines.

4. Your signups will be simple instead of requiring design and coding. It’s super easy to grab the embed code for Substack and put it everywhere on your website. Caveat—no pop-ups at this time, like you can with Mailchimp. Still, there is little to do in terms of code and design. You just grab the embed code provided by Substack, right from your dashboard, and signups become as simple as this:

5. You can export your content if you want to leave, versus having your content lost in fragments forever. Nothing lasts for all time, especially on the Internet. If Substack becomes a place you someday leave, you can take your content with you. On Mailchimp, your content is not downloadable and it’s all in separate pieces.

Need more convincing?

First, importing your existing Mailchimp list to Substack is easy. You simply drag and drop your CSV list that you download from Mailchimp. With large lists, in the thousands, you might have to wait a day while Substack reviews it.

Second, your posts can go straight to your audience’s inbox, just as with Mailchimp. Or you can choose to post just to the Web.

Finally, when you send a newsletter to subscribers’ inboxes (the content of which also publishes right to the Web), Substack automatically provides media assets you can use to populate your social channels. It helps if you have nice photographs. Here’s a sample:

Tips for success

1. Have a clear proposition, as with the best blogs. In fact, if you want to be eligible to get recommended by Substack, they note they are looking for a clear focus.

2. Publish consistently, which is a data-proven key to success. (If you haven’t read Don’t Trust Your Gut, you really need to. One of the most encouraging points is that authors and artists are more likely to become successful by consistently putting work into the world!)

3. Be a little social, even offer just a “heart” or a smile if people comment on your work. (See the introverted Sadbook Collections for an example. It doesn’t take much, which is good news for many writers who get overwhelmed by the prospect of having to be too social online.)

The end of the matter

If you still need the complexity of creating “Customer Journeys,” I suggest you stick with Mailchimp. But remember, you can also hybridize your approach, as we are doing with The Write to Poetry—starting some clientele on Mailchimp and moving them through several customer journeys, before relocating them to Substack.

In the end, this is the question: To ditch, or not to ditch Mailchimp? The signs say Substack might be best for your future.

Note from Jane: I field many questions these days from writers who are wondering if they should move to Substack. I myself do not use it for my blog, my free newsletter (Electric Speed), or my paid newsletter (The Hot Sheet), and I will not be switching. If you are currently happy or satisfied with your website, blog and/or email newsletter, I would not upend everything to move to Substack. Ask yourself if you’re experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) or if you have a well-thought-out business reason for moving, as L.L. Barkat does. Also keep in mind that Substack is built on VC funding, which means you’re building on shifting sands. What’s here today might not be here tomorrow. Use the platform for your own ends, and know what you’ll do if the service closes or changes in some way that makes it less attractive for you. While I’m glad Substack makes it easy for people to depart with their emails/subscriptions, it can be very painful and time-consuming to find and build a new home base.

Why You Should Start Promoting Your Writing Before You’re “Ready”

Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira (@CatBaabMuguira).

Years ago, I had a freelance article go viral, or at least modestly viral, racking up over 50,000 Facebook shares. I received my first-ever invitations to appear as a guest on podcasts and even NPR. I also received dozens of friendly and often deeply personal messages from readers, plus a handful of job offers, right out of the blue.

The funniest thing? That piece was published by mistake. It was 2016, and I’d only just begun to freelance for national publications. I emailed a pitch to a certain online publication’s general inbox, AKA its slush pile. Within a few days, an editor got in touch accepting the idea, but then he hated the draft I turned in. It was too essayistic, he said, and I would need to rewrite the piece as a reported story. I turned in a new version a few weeks later, and a long period of radio silence began. I didn’t hear from the editor again until one random, rainy night when I was standing in line at Kroger, waiting for the clerk to drag my Lean Cuisines across the scanner, and my phone pinged with an urgent email.

The piece would be running tomorrow, the editor announced. Could I please review the draft immediately, sign off, and send in a bio?

Still in line at Kroger, I thumbed open the draft, and a thin trickle of terror ran down my back.

The draft he’d attached was the old one—the one he’d hated. I didn’t know whether to mention this or not. By this point, I’d all but given up on any version getting published, period. In the parking lot, I called a friend on the phone, with no preamble, and he advised me to let it ride. Let the piece come out, get the byline, move on.

The next day, I went to check the site for the piece, except I never made it there because my Twitter notifications had blown up, and I had Facebook DMs from radio stations asking if I would come on their shows.

This felt amazing. Exhilarating. Bewildering. In any case, I was so green that I didn’t realize the piece was unusually successful. I thought this level of attention must be what happened every time you write for a larger publication, which is enough to make me laugh now. I’ve never had a piece gain so much traction since. And today, several iterations of the internet later, I honestly wonder if essays even can go viral anymore. Short-form video is so far and away the dominant currency.

The point is: I wasted that viral opportunity in 2016—fully, completely, in the most comprehensive and self-esteem-annihilating sense.

At the time, I did not have an author website. I didn’t have a blog or an email list. All my socials were set to private, and my personal email address took some serious digging to track down. When NPR got in touch, for instance, they had to do it by Facebook DM, and the message went to my junk inbox, which means I almost missed the chance to do an hour of national media. Oof.

Why didn’t I have a basic online presence in place?

I expect the answer is obvious: I was worried what people might think. It was such early days. I’d barely published. What if my old college friends saw me taking myself seriously, how cringe would that be? What if my coworkers or neighbors saw I’d made a website for myself, wouldn’t I seem deluded? Bless her heart, I imagined them saying. How important does she think she is? Look at her spending actual time on LinkedIn!

And so when the chance came to start building a real, meaningful following, I missed it. In my effort to appear nonchalant—which probably wasn’t convincing anyone, anyway—I guaranteed that I would derive as little benefit as possible from publishing articles, from all the work involved, and from all the time and angst it cost me.

Fast forward to 2018, when I was attempting to sell a nonfiction book proposal, and all I could do was tell publishers the piece had hit. I couldn’t speak of an email list, or a Twitter following, or an Instagram account, full stop, much less Instagram followers.

Not coincidentally, my proposal kept getting rejected. One rejection from a major publisher specifically cited my Twitter follower count, still a mere three digits. When I complained to a bestselling friend, he gave it to me straight: “If you’d gotten serious about building a following years ago, you wouldn’t be in this position now,” he said. And he was right.

Are you making the same mistake I did?

You may be just starting to publish. Or maybe you’re even earlier in the process, and only beginning to think about dipping your toe in that icy pond. I hope you won’t let self-consciousness prevent you from putting some basics in place. What if your early efforts catch fire, and you don’t have a system for capturing that momentum? I’m mixing metaphors here, but far more importantly, you could be positioning yourself to miss out on any support or interest that comes your way, whether huge or modest.

If your goal is to have a writing career one day, then you should probably have a basic website today. You should probably have your email address listed prominently somewhere, in your social bios, your Linktree, what have you. Unless you’re Sleeping with the Enemy, you want to be easy to find, easy to contact. Set up a mailing list whether you have immediate plans to put out a newsletter or not. Seriously, I’m begging you. Learn from my mistake, friends! Save yourselves! I was an idiot, focusing on the wrong things! You don’t have to be!

Even a mailing list of 84 people—and all of them your sorority sisters or second cousins—is better than no mailing list at all. A modest following plus a clearly identifiable audience for your book can get you a deal. In fact, that’s how it eventually happened for me. Besides, who cares if your earliest self-promotional efforts are cringe? This year is the official Year of Cringe, even of meta-cringe. Chances are real good, anyway, that your frenemies are too preoccupied by their own neuroses to notice what you’re doing, and if they’re not? So be it. Everybody is somebody’s hate-read. You’re nobody till somebody hate-reads you.

Building an author platform is a long, hard road, or one of those epic train journeys in Agatha Christie during which someone’s definitely going to get murdered, maybe you. Best get it over with. Best start now, right away, no matter how rough your memoir draft is, no matter if your novel is only 163 words long as of 5 a.m. this morning. You don’t want to miss out on any popularity (or notoriety) you may happen to generate on purpose or by accident. Also, you’re going to need those PR, marketing, presence-building skills to sell your eventual book to readers, so it’s best to start gaining them ASAP.

Is all this a drag and a pain? Oh yes, absolutely. I hate it. I am thinking but not typing the curse words I would use to describe it if we were talking face to face. Sadly, no writer is allowed to remain anonymous like Pynchon, or gets to live the rural-recluse life like J.D. Salinger, not anymore. Which is a shame because I hear New Hampshire is beautiful this time of year. I bet it’s lovely there right now. I’ll never know.

Using ChatGPT for Book Research? Take Exceeding Care

Photo by Jason Tuinstra on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author and book coach Susanne Dunlap (@susanne_dunlap).

WARNING: Research Rabbit Hole Ahead

I do a lot of research for my historical novels, so I’m interested in knowing about anything that might make that process faster or easier for me. And honestly, I’m curious about ChatGPT in general. So I thought I’d put the app to the test against my usual internet searches and see how it measured up.

Before I get into what I discovered in the course of my experimentation, it’s worth noting that the ChatGPT search window says, “Free Research Preview. ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This is important to bear in mind in any research—even in primary sources, where you can easily find conflicting information.

I started by asking questions related to my work in progress.

My dual-timeline manuscript takes place in a mill town in Maine at two different times during the 20th century. One key location is the Biddeford Opera House, which was opened in the late 19th century and still exists as Biddeford City Theatre.

I had so many questions about what the venue was like and what shows were mounted there during my two timelines, but I decided to start with the basics.

Question: What is the History of the Biddeford Opera House in Maine?

Google turned up “About 1,470,000 results (0.61 seconds).” The first five results were for Biddeford City Theatre, listing its programs and so on. At the bottom of the page, there were links to some historical information on the Maine Memory Network (great site). I clicked over to that site and found some fascinating pictures, but no history.

Not very impressed with these results, I went over to the conversation starting point in ChatGPT and typed the same question.

In seconds, it came up with a pretty decent potted history that mentioned Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso, and John Philip Sousa performed in the opera house—something I hadn’t seen in my previous limited research.

Encouraged by this, I decided to get still more specific and ask, “When did Caruso perform at the Biddeford Opera House?” To which ChatGPT answered:

Enrico Caruso, one of the most famous opera singers of all time, performed at the Biddeford Opera House in Biddeford, Maine, on October 22, 1909. Caruso was at the peak of his career at that time, having achieved international fame for his powerful tenor voice and his performances in operas such as “La Bohème,” “Carmen,” and “Pagliacci.”

I tried posing the same question in Google and was still served a dizzying array of more or less relevant results, none of which actually looked like an answer to my question.

Verify, verify.

Mindful that ChatGPT can give false information, I set about trying to dig deeper on the web and find more evidence for Caruso’s appearance in Biddeford. I started with the history section of the theatre’s website, which was quite brief. It did not mention Caruso. So I dug still more and discovered that although I couldn’t find other evidence that the famous tenor had performed in the theatre, he was indeed in the US in 1909.

Since I had a specific date to search—thanks to ChatGPT—I went to the web again, and asked the question, “Was Caruso in New England in 1909?”

The first result was the Wikipedia page, as it often is. With such well-known figures, Wikipedia isn’t a bad place to start, because chances are many knowledgeable people have contributed to the page. However, Caruso’s page was one that said, “This article needs additional citations for verification”—­suggesting that whatever I found might not, in fact, be any more reliable than ChatGPT.

Even so, I was happy to read this:

In addition to his regular New York engagements, Caruso gave recitals and operatic performances in a large number of cities across the United States and sang in Canada.

But that wasn’t quite enough to be conclusive, so, with the detailed information I got from ChatGPT, I went further through search results on Google. Still nothing. So I widened my search a little and asked about Caruso’s 1909 US tour.

And eureka! The first result was the Library of Congress Research Guide. If I couldn’t trust that, what else could I trust? Off I went down that rabbit hole.

About a half hour later, I found Caruso named in a couple of editions of the Kennebec Journal from Augusta, Maine, notably on October 22, 1909. However, close examination revealed that the name was in an advertisement for a merchant on Congress Street in Portland—an ad for the Auxetophone, an early sound-amplification device. The merchant in the newspaper said that the recorded voices of a number of famous singers, Caruso among them, would be featured in a concert on that date. Nothing said anything about a tour or a live performance.

Was that the source of ChatGPT’s assertion? Possibly. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

My next step was to wring yet more information about this possible performance from ChatGPT. I asked what Caruso performed in that concert it mentioned. The response was remarkably detailed:

Enrico Caruso performed at the Biddeford Opera House on November 25, 1909. According to historical records and newspaper accounts, Caruso performed a variety of arias and songs during his performance, including several of his signature pieces such as “Vesti la giubba” from the opera “Pagliacci” and “Una furtiva lagrima” from the opera “L’elisir d’amore”.

Caruso was accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the performance was reportedly very well received by the audience. According to one newspaper account of the performance, Caruso received several standing ovations and was forced to give several encores before the audience would let him leave the stage.

Overall, Caruso’s performance at the Biddeford Opera House in 1909 was a significant event in the history of the theater and remains an important moment in the history of opera in Maine.

It sounds pretty convincing, right? Note, however, that it gives a different date for his performance than in the answer to the original question, suggesting that ChatGPT might have gotten “confused” by the October newspaper article.

Back I went to Google to search this more detailed question with a date. Google simply said,

It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search. Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking for. For example, “cake recipes” instead of “how to make a cake.”

Ah, Google…

What’s encouraging about ChatGPT’s answer, whether or not it’s accurate, is that it provides yet more avenues to explore for information. Perhaps the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra archives would have records that verify this, for instance.

(I didn’t go check that out for this article.)

Check and double-check, backwards and forwards

While I was on the theatre’s website, I read that the building had burned down in 1894 and been rebuilt. That was something ChatGPT did not mention in any of its answers to my initial questions.

When I asked the bot specifically whether there had ever been a fire in the theatre, it said no.

Hmmm.

Then I got a little more detailed in my question and asked whether there had been a fire in 1894. To which it answered:

The Biddeford Opera House, also known as the City Opera House, did experience a major fire in 1894. The fire broke out on the night of January 26, 1894, during a performance of a play called “The Two Orphans.” The fire started in the backstage area and quickly spread throughout the building. Despite the efforts of firefighters and volunteers, the building was completely destroyed.

I’m mystified as to what led to a different answer in this case, but it only demonstrates that you’re dealing with a bot, not a person. Be that as it may, ChatGPT’s answer is more detailed than what is on the theatre website, which gave neither the exact date nor the name of the play being performed.

Asking Google the same question, I got scraps of corroborating information that basically parroted the theatre’s website.

How reliable are many sources on the web?

Another of the factoids on the Biddeford City Theatre website that wasn’t in any of ChatGPT’s results was that a young actress, Eva Gray, died in the opera house after a performance in 1904. I decided to see what ChatGPT had to say about that specifically.

Here’s what came up:

There is a widely circulated story that Eva Gray, a young actress, died on stage during a performance at the Biddeford Opera House in 1904. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, and it is likely a myth or legend.

Research into historical records and newspaper accounts from the time has failed to turn up any evidence of an actress named Eva Gray performing at the Biddeford Opera House in 1904, let alone dying on stage during a performance.

It at least sounds as though resources have been combed through. And I’ve also asked ChatGPT other research questions that it admits having no answer for, instead suggesting other avenues to explore—which to me gives a little more weight to its results.

The bottom line

I still don’t have absolute proof that Caruso’s concert at the Biddeford Opera House sometime in the fall of 1909 took place. But I think there’s enough evidence available to assume that it might easily have done so. While that wouldn’t be enough for a scholarly paper, it’s certainly adequate for the verisimilitude required of historical fiction. (Note: I have emailed the management at the present-day theatre to see if they have archives I could consult.)

The examples above are limited, but I think they offer a taste of how embracing AI for the purpose of historical research is something authors should consider. It’s not a replacement for what we’ve always done, just another useful tool. You can’t base your research on a single source anyway. We might as well learn all we can about this technology because it’s not going away. After all, knowledge is power.

And when I asked ChatGPT who first said that, this was the response:

The phrase “Knowledge is Power” is often attributed to the English philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who is known for his influential works on science, philosophy, and politics. However, the exact origin of the phrase is uncertain, and similar expressions can be found in the writings of earlier philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Nonetheless, Bacon’s use of the phrase in his work “Meditationes Sacrae” (1597) and “Novum Organum” (1620) helped popularize the idea that knowledge and learning are valuable sources of power and progress.

Need I say more?

The Fascinating Neuroscience of Scene

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. Join us on May 11 for the online class Your Novel’s 4 Key Scenes.

There are two fundamental modes in fictional storytelling: summary and scene.

Summary is the storyteller’s voice—the one that leads us skillfully through the story, collapsing and condensing time as necessary in order leave out the irrelevant bits, and tell us what we need to know, in terms of background info on the story.

Scene is the story itself, unfolding in real time. In scene, we’re not listening as someone tells us a story, narrating a series of events—we’re actually living the events of that story for ourselves.

Summary is important, and it’s a tool that hearkens back to the very roots of storytelling. But to my mind, scene is where the real magic happens in fiction.

Scene is important first because it operates on the body of the reader, convincing them on a subconscious level that they’re actually there, in the world of the story, with all of their senses engaged. To my mind, this is what novelist John Gardner was talking about when he said that effective fiction creates a “vivid and continuous dream” in the reader’s mind.

And second, scene is important because it is the most memorable way to share information with your reader. This makes it a critical tool for establishing backstory, revealing character, establishing and advancing conflict, and revealing critical information about the plot.

Skillful storytellers often seem to grasp this intuitively. But why, exactly, does scene work this way? The answer appears to lie in the study of neuroscience.

Scene and Mirror Neurons

Consider the following:

Susan took a sip of her chai, which had gone cold in the time it took her to write the introduction to her post for Jane. Carefully, she set the sturdy earthenware mug back on the table beside her, and tucked the warm blanket back under her feet. It was a cold night, and the spring wind of the high desert was bringing in late-season snow.

According to neuroscience, as you read the passage above—if you were paying attention and involved with what you were reading—the same parts of your brain lit up as if you yourself had been placing that heavy earthenware mug back on the table and gathering that blanket around yourself on a cold night. We know this because we’ve hooked people up to functional MRI machines and then watched which parts of their brains indicated neural activity as they read passages like this.

That means, as far as your brain is concerned, there’s very little difference between reading about someone doing something and actually doing it yourself.

This is based on the action of something called mirror neurons—a special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else perform that action. Meaning that when we watch someone reach for their heavy earthenware mug full of tea, our brains precisely model what it would feel like to do the same thing ourselves.

And just as fascinating is the fact that these same sort of simulated actions and experiences appear to show up in our brains when we’re dreaming. Which has led some researchers to speculate that scenes in fiction appear to actually use this preexisting function of the brain, which not only mirrors little bits and pieces of actions we observe in others but actually strings together simulated actions and experiences into a continuous and convincing virtual reality experience.

Scene and Episodic Memory

According to neuroscience, we have two different types of memory: semantic and episodic.

Semantic memory is where you store everything you read in school about the history of the Civil War, or the process by which a bill becomes a law, or what have you. You do your best to cram that info into your brain, so that info will be there when it comes time to take the test.

But after the test? It’s use it or lose it. Meaning, if you have no further occasion to use this information—in conversation, say, or at work, or as a contestant on Jeopardy! (my lifelong dream, BTW, as a former high school Quiz Bowl nerd)—your brain will divest itself of all this info you so painstakingly crammed into your semantic memory.

Episodic memory is much stickier.

Let’s say you studied the Second World War in third grade. You may have completely forgotten that the Battle of the Bulge occurred in late 1944 and why it marked a critical turning point in that war. But if I evoke a specific memory from third grade—say, the time your teacher came outside at recess and played a game of kickball with the whole class, and wound up colliding with Chris Gleason on first base, and everyone collapsed in hilarity, it all comes back: the specific texture of the red rubber ball you used for kickball, the bright red of Chris’s face when he realized that five-foot-tall, 98-pound Mrs. Dice was about to collide with him, the way Mrs. Dice laughed so hard her little gray bun came undone, the dust of the kickball field, and the crisp, autumn day.

At least it does for me, because (as you may have guessed) this is a real memory from my real life.

In this way, episodic memory carries more information, in a more lasting way, than semantic memory.

Because scenes put us as readers there in the world of the story, they feel like magic. But skillful storytellers know how to use that magic in precisely the way that will best serve their story—to establish what’s most important in it, in a way that reader won’t forget.

Note from Jane: Enjoy this post? Join me and Susan for her online class on May 11, Your Novel’s 4 Key Scenes.

Writer’s Block? Maybe You’re Writing in the Wrong Format

Today’s post is by author and writing coach April Dávila (@aprildavila).

Earlier this year, I took a week-long writing retreat at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California. I had an idea for a new project and had written about 10,000 words, but I wanted some focused time to dive in and figure it out.

The week started off well. I wrote 13,000 words in the first two days, exploring characters and drafting scenes that had been percolating in my head, but on the third day everything slowed down. I simply couldn’t think of what else to write.

In the past I would have called it writer’s block, but I don’t believe in writer’s block anymore. In fact, in my coaching program, I devote an entire hour-long lesson to dismantling writer’s block because I believe fervently that it’s not a thing. It’s just a catch-all phrase we use to describe other things that keep us from writing.

But sitting there, staring out the window of my cabin in Temecula at the unusually verdant valley below, I began to worry I had been wrong. What if writer’s block really IS a thing? Not only was it a concern for my immediate circumstances, but it seemed to me that if writer’s block really was a thing, I would have to write a letter of apology to every writer I’d ever worked with. Had I really been wrong all along? In my mind, a spiral of darkness opened like a gaping mouth.

But wait, I thought, I had never, in all my years of coaching, failed to help a writer get unblocked. I just had to coach myself a bit. I mentally stitched up that pit of despair and instead imagined the conversation that might take place between April Dávila the frustrated writer and April Dávila the writing coach.

Frustrated April: The words just aren’t coming.

Writing coach April: Is the material too fresh? Maybe you need to do some more research.

Frustrated April: No, I know what I want the story to be. I’ve been outlining for months.

Writing coach April: Are you maybe feeling overwhelmed, burned out?

Frustrated April: Are you kidding? (gestures at gorgeous view from my cabin that I have all to myself for a whole week) The words should be flowing like vodka at a Sean Combs party. (bangs head against the desk)

Writing coach April: Maybe you’re not writing what you think you’re writing.

Frustrated April: (lifts head) Wait… what?

As soon as I had the thought, I knew it was spot on.

One of the things I explore with blocked writers is the question of whether, perhaps, they’re writing in the wrong format. For instance, they think they’re writing a short story, but it’s really meant to be a poem. Or they’re writing an essay that really should be a memoir.

Turns out, I’m writing a novella. I googled the word count range for novellas (it’s 10,000–40,000) and was flooded with a mix of relief and excitement. Am I really writing a novella? I think I am. I knew this project would be short (it’s political satire), but realizing it’s a novella suddenly made the whole structure fall into place.

I spent Thursday and Friday reorganizing what I had into a new structure, writing some scenes that suddenly needed to be written (no more “writer’s block” here), and then BAM, I had a first draft. Oh, the satisfaction!

What’s more, I felt a renewed sense of confidence in my assertion that “writer’s block” is not a thing.

If you’re feeling blocked and think you might be writing in the wrong format, take this handy little quiz and tally up your score as you go.

Why did you choose the format you chose for your story? That is, if you think you’re writing a novel, ask yourself: why a novel?

It’s what I’ve always written: 1 pointThe story I’m telling is well suited to this format: 0

Have you considered other formats (poetry, essay, memoir, novella—even if you’ve never written them before)?

It never occurred to me: 1 pointYes, I’m genre-fluid: 0

Are you currently reading a lot in the format you’re trying to write (for example: you are trying to write a novel and are reading a lot of novels)?

No. I’ve been really interested in (fill in style of story you don’t usually read): 1 pointYes: 0

If you scored any points at all, you might be writing in the wrong format. Take some time to explore other styles of storytelling. Give yourself permission to grow and change as a writer. Consider the possibilities that could await you as you embrace a new style of writing.

This is one of those rare times in life when realizing you’ve been wrong is actually really exciting.

Boost Your Book Launch by Perfecting Distribution and Metadata

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Today’s post is by David Wogahn, the author of Countdown to Book Launch and the president of AuthorImprints, a self-publishing services company. This article is based on his presentation at IBPA’s Publishing University, Launch Plans—Build Out Your Blueprint for Success.

The major self-publishing platforms have made the publishing process easy—perhaps too easy. We’ve been conditioned by our use of consumer technology to expect instant results. Errors are not difficult to fix. A change of heart or opinion? Re-upload the file or edit your book’s listing!

But in practice, some things in publishing can’t be changed, and other changes don’t happen anywhere near as fast as you might think. The truth about publishing is that you basically get one shot with many essential aspects of the process. Do-overs can be expensive if not impossible, or they may not be successful.

During the past ten years, AuthorImprints has helped more than 200 self-publishing authors publish their books. We’ve experienced virtually every conceivable pre-release production challenge, discovered pitfalls to avoid, and found several opportunities you can use to streamline the publishing process. Here are the most important lessons self-publishing authors can integrate into their first or next book-release plan.

Determine your distribution strategy first

The first question I ask a self-publishing author is if they have special print requirements as these may preclude the use of print on demand (POD). Those requirements can include the need or preference for special paper, color printing, or non-standard dimensions.

Beyond the cost of printing, the big hurdle for books that are not POD is selling the book on Amazon and listing it in the Ingram catalog. For this you’ll need to find a distributor or fulfillment company that can do this for you.

On the other hand, the two big POD providers—Amazon KDP and IngramSpark—offer printing with distribution as a single offering. Compared to printing books in bulk and having to find a distributor, the process is simple to set up, assuming your book meets POD requirements.

This is what makes POD so popular with self-publishers. It’s a terrific solution, but it also carries those expectations of instant results and the assumption that updates are easy. They can be, but make sure you avoid these three gotchas when using IngramSpark. They can bring chaos to an otherwise well-planned book launch:

1. Do not enable distribution until the files are final. IngramSpark clearly states that they may begin printing books “as soon as the title is enabled for distribution.” If you’ve uploaded a draft or advance reader copy, and distribution is enabled, that’s the version your buyer may receive. It has happened to novices and experienced authors alike.

2. While your book is available for pre-order, don’t make changes to the files close to the release date. This relates to the preceding lesson. If your book has been enabled for distribution, IngramSpark states it will be removed from distribution while the changes are processing. I’ve found that books sometimes remain for sale. You never know.

For example, a client’s hardcover was available for pre-order two weeks before the release date when he asked us to update the dust jacket. It was indeed removed from distribution, and as of this writing, three weeks after release date, it still isn’t available for purchase from Amazon.com. Other stores have it, including Amazon.co.uk, but not Amazon.com.

3. Do allow for listing delays. We’ve found that books distributed by IngramSpark will appear on Barnes & Noble relatively quickly, in about a week or so. But we’ve seen it take weeks for a book to appear on Amazon in full—cover, price, and order button. It can also take weeks for the formats to be connected or joined on a single page. Other times, these processes may take only days.

Does that mean Amazon KDP is a better choice? No, they aren’t even an option if you want to offer pre-order. KDP also does not allow you to control wholesale settings, which you need to control so bookstores can order your book.

I suggest you upload final files at least six weeks before release date and don’t make changes to the files.

Get the price right from the start

Leaving margins aside, your paperback’s retail price can generally be competitive with traditionally published trade paperbacks. It’s almost impossible, however, to be competitive with hardcover pricing. Printing in bulk helps, but larger publishers also have distribution efficiencies that enable them to price hardcovers more attractively than self-publishers can.

The biggest difference between self- and traditionally published book pricing can be seen with ebooks. One reason for traditional publishers’ high ebook prices is to protect the pricing of their print editions, which in turn benefits bookstores. But traditional publishers also enjoy distribution advantages unavailable to self-publishers via KDP or from a self-service ebook aggregator. Traditionally published books often aren’t subject to the download fees charged by KDP, and the royalties are different. These terms can be negotiated by traditional publishers.

For more on pricing self-published books, read Kim Catanzarite’s post about the wisdom of giveaways and low pricing here on Jane’s blog. Her experience is my own, and I give most of our new author-clients the same advice: price aggressively low from the outset. If you start high and later reduce the price, you may never recapture momentum. You want to maximize reading, not margins. Having lots of readers translates to getting customer reviews. And books with lots of reviews have pricing leverage.

Also: get your metadata right from the start for better discoverability

Never submit the metadata for your print book until you are 100 percent certain it is final. Certain metadata elements become locked when a print book is set for release. This includes not only the title, subtitle, imprint, and ISBN, but also the book’s dimensions and paper type, and none of it can be changed after the book is released. If changes are needed, you must republish the book.

Here are the three marketing-related tasks you should complete during the book production process to help improve discoverability.

1. List your completely ready, no further changes needed on anything print book for pre-order on IngramSpark at least four weeks (preferably six) before the release date. As noted above, it can take days or weeks for the book to appear on Amazon, ready for purchase. This listing is important for three other reasons:

Assuming you bought ISBNs recently, they probably begin with 979, which means Amazon assigns their internal identifier, called an ASIN. This 10-digit alphanumeric identifier is embedded in the Amazon link to your book. You need the link for marketing.When a book is available for pre-order, you can add it to your Amazon author page, or set up an author page (via Amazon Author Central) if you are a new author. While you’re at it, set up a free author profile on BookBub.You can add or update editorial reviews as they come in. There are fields for this in IngramSpark and Amazon Author Central.

2. Assign the ISBN by completing all the required information and clicking the Submit button. A few years ago we did this for one of our client’s books, and the publisher received orders from a library distributor and an indie retailer, Books & Books (Florida). The book was not available from any retailer for pre-order, and Bowker had the only public record. (That’s the thing about the book business; you never know how someone will discover your book.)

3. Order library cataloging from a service that also submits it to the WorldCat database (“the world’s largest library catalog.”) Will it help you sell more books? Hard to say. What I do know is that bookselling is all about discovery, and the more databases (and stores!) you can get your book into, the easier it is for readers, librarians, wholesalers, and retailers to find it.

In summary, distribution planning, pricing, and metadata-release timing can have as much to do with your book’s success as writing and cover design. Done poorly, readers may never have a chance to discover your book.

Typos can be fixed, covers replaced, blurbs adjusted, and keywords updated. But to quote Euripides, “A bad beginning makes a bad ending.”

First Pages Critique: Getting a Handle on Pace

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Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Author Accelerator. Is book coaching your dream job? Take the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge to find out what kinds of writers you would coach, how (exactly!) you will help them, and how much money you can make doing it. Sign up for our $99 mini-course that launches in May.

A summary of the work being critiqued

The B*tch and the Boy: A True Saga of Fame, Greed, Betrayal, and Murder is about a brilliant man, John Markle, and his narcissistic mother, Academy Award–winning actress Mercedes McCambridge. The two have a love-hate relationship that drives him to kill his wife, children and himself. Because he blames his mother for his failures, the story expands the murder narrative to tell their intertwining life stories. It is a tale of family and relationships immersed in a sixty-year arc through the golden years of radio and World War II, to the glamour of Hollywood and elite schools, to an enviable career and a life built on fraud.

First page of The B*tch and the Boy

Novembers in the quiet capital of Little Rock are cool and serene with leafy hardwoods coloring the roadsides and shallow valleys. The city spreads out along the southern bank of the Arkansas River as it flows southeast toward the end of its journey to the Mississippi at the lost town of Napoleon. Located in the center of the state, the terrain eases the foothills of the Ozarks into the flat lands of the Delta. The year was 1987 and the city was in transition with its early eastern downtown blocks forming its commerce even as its retail was following the population and moving further west.

A few blocks south of downtown, Dr. John Markle and his wife, Christine, did not follow the crowd west but chose to live in the heart of the city’s historic residential area. John worked long hours and wanted the location’s proximity to his office. He was a motorcyclist and liked speeding up Main Street toward the river, arriving at his office within five minutes. Located one house from the governor’s mansion, theirs is a tall, three story 1880 Queen Anne. Sited on a treeless corner hilltop, well above surrounding properties, to those driving along Main Street the structure jumps out as peculiarly stark: a lonely fortress ready to offer both protection and seclusion.     

At 45, John had been a star for much of his life. In Little Rock he was serving as the economist and a vice president with Stephens Inc., the most influential Arkansas company and largest investment house off Wall Street. Eight years earlier he was brought in as the guru of futures trading from prestigious Salomon Brothers investment firm where he had once been a vice-president in New York City and seemed to know many of the luminaries on Wall Street.                  

After arriving at Stephens he quickly assumed a leadership role and established himself as an articulate and engaging speaker who offered insight into the turbulent economic landscape of the early 1980s. He also served as a leader and trainer to other traders and headed his own department. The billionaire brothers and owners of the firm, Witt and Jack Stephens, were pleased with his contributions and considered him “”the great team player.” They regularly called him up to the executive floor to speak to clients and attend many of their private luncheons, formally served by white jacketed waiters.       

Continue reading the first pages.                                                                                                                              

Dear Peg,

There are a lot of compelling, even flashy, elements to this story, right off the bat: an Academy Award–winning actress (even if not the very most famous actress), a “guru of futures trading,” elite schools, Hollywood, fraud!

And, most important, a crime. (Several, actually.)

There are many ways a writer can approach telling any story, but in the case of true crime stories, it’s conventional to jump in pretty close to the crime. This is especially true in the case of a story like yours, where the primary driving question isn’t so much What happened? as What really happened? or How do we make sense of what happened?

As far as I can tell from the material you sent, the broad facts of the story aren’t in question; this is not a “whodunnit” murder mystery kind of story. You know what happened, and readers who enjoy true crime will also want to know the gory details: Where were the bodies found, and in what state? What were they wearing? Who was killed first? What do you know about the weapon? Who found them?

Granted, this all seems a little bit gruesome, and maybe it’s true that this kind of morbid curiosity isn’t something to be proud of … but it’s also a very human impulse. If you’re going to tell a true crime story, you might as well lean into it. You want to hook readers, emotionally, to get them invested enough in the story to keep reading. You’re also making a promise up front that by the end, they’ll have more insight into this heinous crime, and an answer (perhaps more than one) to the question you pose in your supporting materials: “Why? Why does a respected investment banker brutally murder his wife and children?”

In fact, I should admit that as I was trying to get the shape of this story, I kept returning to the additional material (your author’s note) more than to your opening pages, which are on the slow/quiet side.

Let’s take a look.

“Novembers in the quiet capital of Little Rock are cool and serene…”

Starting with the physical setting of the story isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it might be helpful to narrow the lens. Rather than taking the very wide view of Little Rock, generally, what if you started with the house, the “lonely fortress” where the deaths occurred. Did people generally think of it as a fortress or unapproachable, even before what happened? Did one of the first responders observe anything unusual, walking up to it on the night of the deaths? Is it vacant, even now, years later?

You can always go back at a quiet moment and paint a picture of fall in Arkansas, or Little Rock’s general topography, or insights into the local population’s migration to the western suburbs. If that seems especially relevant at some point.

Your author’s note, provided with the pages, start with the following:

“Telephones started ringing early on Monday morning…”

The telephones (though I want to know more: whose telephones? And how early?) are something happening. Not a scene, per se, but they lead to scenes, maybe: people making calls, people answering calls, lights going on in houses all over the city, cars driving through the night, lights flashing, people walking into that fortress up on the hill and seeing unspeakable horrors—except not really unspeakable, because you’re going to paint the picture.

Currently, in these first pages, there’s also a lot of back story, about John in particular. These paragraphs span a lot of time in a small space. In fact, there are almost several different time structures happening all at once, in a way that might be disorienting for many readers: We start with John at 45 (his age when he died, in November 1987). Then it’s eight years earlier, and then we take a quick jump back to his childhood for a paragraph, then another leap forward to “early October [1987],” when six years of fraud were discovered. There are a few more leaps: back to childhood, then after he married, and then the day he picks up the phone to ask Mercedes for help, she refuses him, and then he calls daily for five weeks. Finally, “two weeks into his suspension,” John starts writing a letter, and at some point after that, on November 13, he is fired. (The murders happen on the following Monday.)

All to say, it feels like you’re trying to cover a lot of ground in these opening pages. And while it’s hard to know exactly what path the book follows as a whole, it seems like a lot of this ground—John’s childhood and relationship with his mother, the fraud, the letter—will be important to cover in more detail and at a slower pace. 

My advice for the beginning of the story, then, is paradoxically both to speed up and to slow down. Speed up, meaning get to some action—whether that’s the murders themselves, or the immediate aftermath. And slow down, meaning get a head of narrative steam going, stretch out a little into the storytelling and trust that if you keep doling out details, readers will stick with you for the bigger story you want to tell and the questions you want to explore.

Good luck with it!

—Hattie Fletcher

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Author Accelerator. Is book coaching your dream job? Take the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge to find out what kinds of writers you would coach, how (exactly!) you will help them, and how much money you can make doing it. Sign up for our $99 mini-course that launches in May.

The How, When and Why of Writing Autofiction

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Todays post is by author Adele Annesi (@WordforWords).

As a writer and instructor of autofiction, I find the genre an inspirational way to explore pivotal life experiences. In this nexus of fact and fiction, writers can mine, select and transform their real life journeys, turning points and discoveries into story. First, let’s define the genre.

Working definition of autofiction

Short for autobiographical fiction, autofiction uses elements of autobiography and fiction to examine decisive aspects of the writer’s life. The writer then melds these realities with fictional plot elements, characters and events in a way that often reads like memoir or autobiography. With the lines of fact and fabrication blurred, readers are engaged in wondering what’s real, what isn’t, and how they can figure out which is which. So whether you write fiction, nonfiction or both, at some point you’ll probably consider this genre. Here are its features.

Names: Autofiction writers may have the same name as or a name similar to that of their protagonist.Parallels: Autofiction includes similarities between the writer’s and protagonist’s life. For example, the protagonist may also be a writer so the story may explore the role of writing in the character’s life and may include elements of metafiction: writing about writing and storytelling.Uncertainty: In a genre that blurs reality, there is an organic tension in the story over what’s real and what isn’t. This engages the reader in thinking deeply about the work and the protagonist’s (writer’s) life.

Autofiction examples:

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019): Named a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Fiction, this work by Ocean Vuong is a letter from a son to a mother that unearths a family history rooted in Vietnam and serves as a window into aspects of the son’s life his mother never knew. Every Day Is for the Thief (2007): This bestselling first novel, in diaristic form, by acclaimed Nigerian-American Teju Cole depicts a young man’s journey to Nigeria to discover his roots. A Death in the Family (2012): One of the Guardian’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, this novel series by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard examines childhood, family and grief.All about adaptation

The auto aspect of autofiction often shares more with memoir than autobiography because the story the writer chooses to tell doesn’t usually cover their entire life. Rather, the writer selects key events, turning points and discoveries that revolve around and elucidate one main theme. Other characters, settings and events can be fabricated to support what the story is about.

To begin the autofiction journey, consider the exploratory dreamstorming technique described in From Where You Dream, by Robert Olen Butler. Here is Butler’s general principle. Go to your writing space, and give yourself time to remember, to watch yourself move through your life. The journey doesn’t have to be linear or chronological. As you recall your life, list your experiences and why they might figure into your story.

Once you have an initial list, differentiate it between events and turning points. Describe what led up to these occurrences, and note their outcome. Beside each, list what you learned or discovered. To develop these moments, consider this from The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick. “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance … the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say [about the circumstance].”

Reflect on how to arrange your experiences and their depiction, as well as what you’ve learned, possibly in order of increasing clarity. You might save the most important discovery for last or use it as a prologue, promising the reader you’ll reveal how your discovery or change came about and how it impacted your life.

Last, decide how much to tell and how accurately to tell it. Writers are at liberty to decide how much of their life events they want to reveal and how precisely they want to reveal them. One way to decide is what twentieth-century English author (of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels) and essayist Dorothy Sayers described as “serving the work”, meaning whatever best accomplishes your vision for the story.

Revising and completing autofiction

All revision occurs in stages. In autofiction, perhaps more than other genres, the writer uses trial and error to decide whether to depict key story points as mini-scenes, straight narrative, dialogue, summary, or a combination thereof. It’s also important to balance how much of an insight to depict overtly and how much to present as interiority—what a character thinks/feels. And since your story’s theme can change, even in autofiction, consider writing the story first for itself, then revising it based on what you feel it’s really about.

My autofiction novel What She Takes Away (Bordighera Press, 2023) began with a real event—my family’s decision whether to move to Italy. Recalling that time, the warp and weft of family life, and the role of discovery in creativity inspired an entire novel. And if the writer is inspired, the reader will be, too.

Additional reading From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler: A must for writers seeking to escape mundane writing Elements of Fiction by Walter Mosley: How to master fiction’s most essential elements The Elements of Story by Francis Flaherty: A primer on key nonfiction techniques that also work for fictionWord for Words blog for writers

Why Beta Readers Lead You to Getting Paid for Your Writing

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Today’s post is by author, editor and coach Jessica Conoley (@jaconoley). Join us on Thursday, April 27, for the online class Finding & Working with Beta Readers.

Asking someone to beta read for you is one of the first steps you will take toward becoming a well-paid, published, consistent writer. Because, for many of us, the beta reader process is the first time we must own the identity of: WRITER.

Owning your writer identity is the biggest mindset hurdle we face. This is especially true if you’re uninitiated and haven’t yet been published and/or paid for your work. Once you overcome this hurdle, you build up courage to reach for bigger opportunities (and pay checks) in your career.

Building up courage starts long before we are paid, published, or well-known. Building up courage happens in tiny decisions and actions, day after day, year after year. Building up courage starts the moment you realize your manuscript is polished to the best of your ability and you need to ask someone for an objective opinion on your work.

This is when most of us freak out. We no longer have the luxury of hiding in the security of secrecy. We cannot hoard our writing dreams and aspirations in silence any longer. To level up this project you must have objectivity, and the only path to objectivity is letting someone else read your words. To progress you must ask someone to read for you.

While you may think asking someone to read is just about feedback and learning if your characters resonate, you’re simultaneously stepping into the identity of WRITER. In the act of asking, you are forced to try on a new persona. A persona you may not feel you’ve earned. This is why you are scared to ask.

But, over time, after telling enough people and letting them read your words, you feel like a writer. Feeling like a writer changes your internal beliefs because you’ve entirely stepped into the identity of WRITER. And because writers write consistently, your actions change to align with this new identity.

Asking someone to beta read shows you: You can be brave. You can level up.

Writer level-ups often look like this:

I am a writer.I am a consistent writer.I am a published, consistent writer.I am a paid, published, consistent writer.I am a well-paid, published, consistent writer.

Now that you know where this one tiny act of courage can take you, let me show you how to make this jump, and I’ll even show you where to find a few beta readers along the way.

How to level up and own your writer identityReframe your feels-so-scary-it’s-time-for-a-beta-reader realization to a phenomenal opportunity. This is the opportunity to baby-step deeper into your writing career by admitting, out loud, to another human that “I am a writer.”Acknowledge you don’t really believe you are writer—yet. Even though your actions confirm you write, and you have the proof of a finished written thing, and think about writing constantly, you still don’t believe you are a writer. It’s totally okay, none of us do at this point.Accept that saying “I am a writer. Would you like to read my book and offer your opinions on it?” is going to feel uncomfortable. Which is totally fine because feelings try to keep you safe by keeping you in your comfort zone, and you are actively expanding your comfort zone, which is uncomfortable.Practice the first half of the ask. Say “I am a writer” out loud while looking at yourself in the mirror. Say it in the car at red lights. Write it over and over, Simpsons-on-the-chalkboard style. Rehearsing ad nauseam gives you a better chance the words will pop out of your mouth before you have a chance to feel or think.Tell a stranger. Someone you’re never going to see again. Type it in the comments of a post on the internet somewhere. Tell your Uber driver. Mention it to a server at a restaurant you never plan to eat at again.Tell your acquaintances. The people who know you tangentially but aren’t involved in every detail of your life. People you haven’t spent one-on-one time with. The people at your gym. The knitting forum. The barista at your favorite coffee shop.

The acquaintance step is where you’re going to find your beta readers. When people learn you are a writer, they get excited. They think our job is super cool—because it is. When these acquaintances see you living your dream, it makes them think maybe they can live their dreams too. This is why they will ask you about your writing every time you see them. If the acquaintance turns out to be an avid reader, or even better yet, a reader of your genre, they are the ideal person to ask “Would you like to read my book and offer your opinion on it?”

Acquaintances offer the most objective opinion because they don’t know your intimate life story. They won’t assume you’re writing about your third-grade boyfriend or craptastic day job, because they don’t know about either of them. They are also super flattered to be in on the early-stages-behind-the-scenes of a book, which means they eagerly read and get you feedback promptly. These early readers turn into fans and are the foundation of your platform. They have excitement about your success, because they contributed to it by beta reading, which seals in your new writer identity.

You may have noticed friends and family are not on the baby-step list. This is because family and friends love us and want to keep us safe. The people who know us best are often those overly cautious, well meaning, here’s-all-the-reasons-this-is-not-going-to-work types. Telling them before you own your writer identity is a common way we subconsciously self-sabotage and stall our writing evolution.

Most of us don’t have the emotional muscle to carry around the fears and concerns of family/friends until we’re at the I am a published, consistent writer stage of things. If someone close to you is a permanent Eeyore, I implore you DO NOT TELL THEM. You do not have room for dream assassins whispering in your ear. Find the dream enablers, share with them, and the well-intentioned-dream-assassins can be spectacularly surprised when you have something in print to show them.

Owning your identity as a writer is a key step toward becoming a well-paid, published, consistent writer. Writing something was the first step, now take the next one and tell someone, “I am a writer.”

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Thursday, April 27, for the online class Finding & Working with Beta Readers.

How to Make Productive Use of ChatGPT: Q&A with Elisa Lorello

Author Elisa Lorello’s exploratory dive into ChatGPT led her to discover its usefulness to fiction and nonfiction writers, and she shares them all in her new book The AI Author Assistant: How to Use Chat GPT to Optimize Your Writing Progress and Income While Retaining Your Human Touch.

In this Q&A, she reveals some of the terrible titles it spat out (while keeping the really good ones to herself), acknowledges the complicated moral question of writers allowing ChatGPT to do their writing for them, and lists the many ways AI has been helpful to her both creatively and practically.

Elisa Lorello (@elisalorello) is the bestselling author of twelve novels and one memoir. The youngest of seven, she grew up on Long Island and graduated with two degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Since 2010 she’s sold over a half-million units worldwide and has been featured in the Charlotte Observer, Woman’s World magazine, Rachel Ray Every Day magazine, The Montana Quarterly magazine, and Writer’s Digest Online. She’s also been a guest on multiple podcasts and a panelist at BookExpo.

Elisa is a lifelong Duran Duran fan and a proud Gen-Xer, can sing two-part harmony, and devours chocolate chip cookies (not always at the same time). She currently lives in Montana with her husband (bestselling author Craig Lancaster) and their two pets.

KRISTEN TSETSI: Multiple articles about ChatGPT and writing will take one side or the other: they’ll explore writers’ fear of ChatGPT, or they’ll assure writers they shouldn’t fear it at all. As a writer, before ever using it or reading much about it—just knowing that this AI could churn out written material—what were your initial, knee-jerk feelings about it?

ELISA LORELLO: My knee-jerk reaction was the same as many writers: This is not good.

Everywhere I turned, there was an article or a lecture depicting the dangers and negative aspects of AI—people submitting queries to agents that were written by ChatGPT, ChatGPT-generated Buzzfeed articles, etc. I even came across an online course called “Write a Book in 24 Hours with ChatGPT”—I was so curious and skeptical that I purchased it. (It wasn’t a big investment; that said, I do not recommend others buy it. Let’s just say I took one for the team.)

But as a result of that course and experimenting/playing with ChatGPT, I found ways in which ChatGPT could actually be helpful to myself and other writers, and that’s ultimately what inspired me to write The AI Author Assistant. I see it as a little guidebook, a demonstration of as well as a conversation with ChatGPT. I wanted to counter the doom and gloom with an alternate perspective.

In an article in The Independent about the hundreds of AI books that have already appeared on Amazon, Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger says, “This is something we really need to be worried about, these books will flood the market and a lot of authors are going to be out of work.” She then expresses a concern that AI could take the place of existing human ghostwriters, turning “book writing from a craft into a commodity.”

I would argue that book writing is already a commodity more than a craft, in many cases (I ashamedly used to do some commodity co-ghostwriting/editing), but I’m curious to know your thoughts about this: what’s the worst that could happen, do you think?

I think people were sounding the same kinds of alarms about ebooks and the Kindle in 2009–2010. They said ebooks (especially self-published ebooks) were going to kill the printed word and put traditional authors, agents, editors, and bookstores out of business. Digital publishing-on-demand was disruptive, and the industry needed to adjust and adapt.

But here’s the thing: it did. The industry adjusted and adapted, and digital publishing-on-demand is as viable an option as traditional publishing. Moreover, the professional standards for self-publishing significantly increased as a result.

Yes, AI will cause disruption. Yes, there will be a lot of AI-generated books (like, a lot) and content, and yes, there will be a lot of crap to sort through. But I think a savvy reader will know the difference between AI and human, organic writing, and I think publishing will adjust and adapt. Some people will game the system and get rich at the outset, and then the system will catch up and weed them out. Standards will evolve. Because if there’s anything we learned from the rise of ebooks and self-publishing, it’s that fighting or resisting is futile. Downplay the bad and work with the good.

I also think a fraction of the Literary community (capital letter intended) will always rail against genre fiction and mediums like Patreon or Substack or Buzzfeed as “commodity” writing. And hey—I want to make a sustainable living doing this thing that I love. I also want to write the best books and blog posts that I can. Those two things can co-exist.

What led you to see that ChatGPT could be not the nemesis of the writing and publishing community, but an aid to enhance a writer’s existing creativity?

When I was suddenly so creatively fertile! I confess: At first, I was totally looking for “the secret formula” to a bestselling genre novel, and I was curious to see if AI could actually write one. Yet of all the possibilities ChatGPT generated, only one piqued my curiosity. Also, it revealed no secret, just what’s already been said and done. But after a few days of exploration and playing around with titles, tropes, and storylines, every morning in the shower a completely new idea would come to me—and they were good! Not generic, and not necessarily from the AI-generated lists. Moreover, I wanted to experience the pleasure of writing these books myself.

Meanwhile, administrative things I began using it for—outlines and timetables and daily schedules, mainly—were freeing me creatively and improving my productivity and time management. This past month, I started writing two novels with overlapping storylines, kind of like companion novels. ChatGPT generated outlines for each, and I’ve been writing both manuscripts as if they were one novel with alternating POVs. In three weeks, I drafted 35,000 words (combined). At this rate, I predict I’ll complete the first draft of both by the end of June.

Moreover, when I finish writing these two books, I know what the next two will be. It’s like I suddenly gained an edge in productivity, organization, and creativity.

If ChatGPT could do that for a writer like me, then perhaps it wasn’t all bad.

What was your first exploration of ChatGPT like, user-wise? What were your first experiments, and what were your early thoughts about its capabilities or limitations, if you saw any, in terms of how it responded during those first experiments?

At first, I put that course to the test and tried to compile content for a nonfiction book just to see if it actually could be done in the alleged 24 hours. It generated about 10,000–15,000 words of content—hardly enough for the kind of book I had in mind for the test case. Moreover, I noticed factual inaccuracies in some of that content. (ChatGPT sometimes doubles down when you challenge the inaccuracy; it’s a little creepy.) And most AI-generated writing isn’t very good from a craft standpoint.

Next, I did some creative exploration for fiction—titles, story ideas, and even scenes of description and dialogue. For example, I asked Chat GPT “What kind of character would appeal to a Generation X female reader?” Or “What are the most popular tropes for contemporary romance?” When I wrote The AI Author Assistant, I asked for title and subtitle recommendations. In the book, I showed the progress of how I ultimately came up with the title I did.

The most interesting and unexpected result was all that exploration and play sparked ideas of my own. So, for example, if I asked ChatGPT to give me 10 premises for an office romance, I would decide they were all too generic—and then the following morning in the shower a fresh idea for an office romance would come to me.

I also saw ChatGPT’s value in generating story outlines. This was one of the game-changers for me. Writing outlines before I start a novel has always sapped me creatively. By giving ChatGPT the premise at the onset, along with characters and any scenes I might already have in mind, ChatGPT then produced an outline within seconds. Now I had something to work with at the beginning of a manuscript, and I was creatively motivated rather than sapped. And even though the outline tends to be as generic as much of the content ChatGPT produces, it’s fluid and flexible, and place-holds plot points for me. I’m OK with that.

Ultimately, ChatGPT can function as a virtual assistant—you can use it to brainstorm ideas, write outlines, and even prioritize your day’s to-do list. It can also help you with basic research and will deliver it to you quicker than a Google search.

However, beware—as I mentioned earlier, the information isn’t always accurate. In The AI Author Assistant, I included an example of my asking ChatGPT to rank my books from most sales to least sales. It listed seven books, I think (I’ve written over a dozen). The first one was my least-selling, and of all the titles, only three were actually mine.

Additionally, if you ask it to actually write a scene or paragraph for you, be prepared to do a lot of editing and polishing because the prose is wordy, the dialogue is stilted, and the description is cliché and generic.

To offer my own example of ChatGPT doubling down on errors, my husband Ian asked ChatGPT, “Who is Kristen Tsetsi?” After listing some basic information available online, it said I was also the founder of National Freelancers Day. Ian then asked, so it might recognize its error, “Who is the founder of National Freelancers Day?” ChatGPT said, “After double-checking, I can confirm that Kristen Tsetsi is indeed the founder of National Freelancers Day.”

Back to your experiences with it. You write that ChatGPT can “streamline your writing process and progress by generating text quickly, reducing the time spent typing or brainstorming.”

What does that mean? I ask because it reads as if the AI is in fact doing a portion of the writing, and my reflex as a writer is to think that any writing not done by the writer is a form of cheating. (Or plagiarism? Is it plagiarism if the writer is a bot?)

I think ChatGPT wrote that line, actually. [winks] I asked ChatGPT to give me ideas for the ways in which writers can use ChatGPT ethically and responsibly and then applied the responses to The AI Author Assistant as a kind of dialogue.

I think your interpretation isn’t wrong—it could be used that way. And I share your concerns about plagiarism and/or cheating. I wrestled with those questions in the book. Is ChatGPT serving as a ghostwriter? If you cut and paste its content and pass it off as your own, is it plagiarism? Are you cheating your readers and yourself out of an authentic writing experience? I didn’t provide any specific answers because I don’t think they’re hardcore “yes” or “no.” My main goal was to bring the questions, concerns, and discourse front and center.

I use ChatGPT as a springboard. For example, I dislike writing book descriptions, and I always freeze up when it’s time to write one. I asked ChatGPT to write a book description for The AI Author Assistant. I hated what it came up with; however, it unblocked me and I wrote a description on my own. (I used only one line from the AI-generated one, and tweaked it a bit.) I did the same writing copy for Amazon ads. ChatGPT gave me some ideas to work with, and I then created copy in my own words.

In other words, ChatGPT is a buddy. For instance, instead of asking my husband (also a writer, and a busy one at that), “Can you help me brainstorm book titles?” or “Can you help me write this description?” or “Can you help me flesh out this scene?” ChatGPT can serve in that role.

And when it comes to prioritizing a to-do list, ChatGPT saves me a lot of time. I type in the tasks and it not only prioritizes them but also explains why it chose the order it did. Ditto for the outlines. ChatGPT can generate an outline in seconds; it takes me at least a couple of hours (and that’s just the first go-round), and after I do it, I never want to go near the story again.

What command did you use to ask it to write the book description? If I wanted ChatGPT to write some back-cover text (even if I intended to heavily edit it), I would have no idea what to tell it to make it do that. How much should be said about the book? Can you provide command samples for fiction and nonfiction?

For The AI Author Assistant, I gave ChatGPT the premise and objective of the book, as well as keywords that would likely come up in an Amazon search. So I think the command was something like: “Please [I’m very polite] write an Amazon product page description for The AI Author Assistant that highlights the objective of writers using ChatGPT in ethical and responsible ways, and include the following keywords…”

For fiction, I would probably do something similar. “[Insert title] is a contemporary romance in which four friends who haven’t seen each other in 20 years reunite at their hometown mall set for demolition in one week. Please write a description for the back of the book and the Amazon product page that uses these details and keywords…”

I would also give it a word count as a guideline.

ChatGPT tends to write kitschy copy like “Do you love a contemporary romance about second chances? [Title] has quirky characters, second chances, and hearty humor!” You may have to tell it to tamp down the selling while also appealing to the reader.

If someone is writing a novel—let’s say it’s literary—and they’re stuck on the “what next?” of a scene, can ChatGPT help?

I think it can if you use it as a freewriting technique. For example, if I don’t know what scene comes next, I could summarize (or perhaps even copy and paste) the previous scene and outright ask ChatGPT “What do you think should happen next?”

In the past, I’ve tried to unblock myself by typing, “What I’m trying to say is…” and then proceeding to try to work it out on the page, however messy it may be. You can say that to ChatGPT and it could potentially help you organize your thoughts or give you clarity or direction.

The key, I think, is to always make it your own. I’ve gleaned ideas from my husband or my former co-author or a developmental editor, for example. I’ve written dialogue after overhearing two people in a coffee shop or using a conversation I had verbatim. Writers also rely on beta readers for feedback. We’re pulling ideas and information from so many different contexts. It’s how we re-contextualize them that matters. We always need to be responsible and ethical.

In your book’s intro—and the part I’m referring to was written by ChatGPT, which is clear because of the different font you assigned it—there’s a claim that ChatGPT can “help you create marketing and promotional campaigns and materials which, in turn, can increase book sales.”

What can ChatGPT do for authors who are already doing all of the regular things they’ve been told to do to market their work?

I haven’t fully tested its usefulness, but ChatGPT purports to help you generate content for social media marketing, mostly. Also write press releases, book blurbs, ad copy, blog posts, etc.

I’ve been mostly experimenting, asking it to give me sample tweets to promote my most recent novel or brainstorming content ideas for Instagram and/or Facebook. I haven’t applied any of it yet (other than the aforementioned Amazon ad copy). I’ve also outright asked ChatGPT things like “What are some unique ideas for authors to market their books?” or “How can I make my monthly newsletter content engaging besides the usual suggestions of sharing excerpts of my WIP or photos of my workspace?”

Other than ideas for swag, I didn’t see any suggestions that made me go, “Now that is something different.”

I asked for ideas for a Substack series the other day; I might consider a couple of those.

Honestly, most of what ChatGPT suggests has been said and done before. But something about it sparks my creativity and originality. I reject a lot of what ChatGPT suggests and find better ways to write or think about an idea or solve a problem. I like that kind of mental exercise. And if it’s suggesting things I’m already doing, then maybe I’m on the right track and I don’t need to change what I’m doing but rather how I’m doing it.

Many writers get stumped on book titles and would probably love any kind of help they can get. But were any of the title offerings ChatGPT gave you absolutely terrible?

Oh, definitely a lot of terrible titles! But it’s like sifting through multiple pans of dirt for one gold nugget. The fiction titles are especially bad, although I confess there was one that I loved and am going to use in the future (I’m not telling you what it is!).

The advantage is that these lists of titles can be generated in seconds. That’s the “streamlining” of progress and process. I don’t need to type or brainstorm the lists myself. But if I sift through two or three sets of AI-generated lists, I’m bound to spot a nugget I can work with.

For example, the other day I got an idea for a “Freaky Friday” time-travel novella. ChatGPT generated a decent outline, but here are the titles it suggested:

“Mom Swap”“Back to the Past”“Freaky Family”“The Mother-Daughter Time Warp”“A Switch in Time”“My Mother’s Shoes”“Reversing Roles”“The Time-Travel Experiment”“Two Generations Apart”“A Tale of Two Ages”

I mean, those are cringe-worthy. I would either request an additional ten after I’ve developed the story or take another long shower and wait for a better title to come to me.

What key cautions would you give writers about using ChatGPT?

I’ve mentioned a couple. For one, the information it feeds you isn’t always accurate. In fact, ChatGPT sent me on a wild goose chase to press releases and webpages that downright didn’t exist. You can’t take the information it provides you at face value.

But if you want to know something like the differences between Millennials and Gen-Z or the characteristics of a particular genre, then it’s a good, quick resource. The other day, I asked ChatGPT how one might go about opening a particular kind of business in a particular location for a potential plot point. It gave me enough background that if the character was going to pursue it, then I could write it in a way that was plausible.

The other caveat is the plagiarism issue we discussed earlier. Where’s the line, and how blurry is it? Is it OK for me to post ChatGPT-generated tweets, for example? Would anyone notice or care? (Maybe I should try it as an experiment!) Is it OK for me to use AI-generated ideas and titles for a blog series, but write my own content? Is it OK for ChatGPT to ghostwrite the content for a site like Buzzfeed, for example, while I collect the paycheck and the credit?

I posit that while we navigate through this technology and its applications, at the end of the day you need to be your own moral compass. And if your compass differs significantly from the industry’s, then you need to take the consequences if they reject it.

Has using AI taught you, or encouraged you to see in a new way, anything about your own writing?

It’s fueled my love for writing and being a writer, which is really saying something given how much I already loved both. I see what AI generates and it makes me want to write better, more creatively, and more productively. It makes me want to be more professional and organized. Ultimately, that’s the feeling I wanted readers to leave The AI Author Assistant with.

Overall, I encourage writers to play with ChatGPT and approach it as such. Have fun with it. Be curious. Once you know what it can and can’t do for you, I think you’ll have a better sense of how to use it in practical and responsible ways.