September 1, 2025 • 64 mins
In this session, we talked about the GEN48 film festival, success as an author compared to other art forms like music and film, creation science such as making things as experiments, production costs and pricing, and focusing on getting projects done.
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(00:00):
Yeah, it's been 2 weeks since wedid this.
Can you believe it? I'll hit all of the news for
this week. Thursday Film 3 Space.
We are interviewing Fabian from Glyph.
We talking about their platform and what it allows you to do for
AI creations and also creating infrastructure for AI creations.
(00:28):
Cool platform. If you haven't played with it,
this month's audiobook release is The King in Yellow The Mask
by Robert W Chambers. It's available on all of your
favorite platforms. Do please check it out if you
have not already. Also, the article for the month
(00:49):
for writers on how to get started if you are inexperienced
is available. A couple of tips and tricks to
get off the blank page. It's available on Sub Stack, no
charge and check that out. Subscribe and get it dropped to
your inbox every single month. Also, the session from 2 weeks
(01:16):
ago of this space, Writing, Publishing and Authorship is now
available on podcast platforms wherever you should like to
listen. That's Apple Podcasts and
Spotify and Pandora and Audible.Gosh, you know, the list goes
(01:38):
on. There's Pocket Casts.
There's this weird stuff that pops up in the stats every once
in a while. You can't even keep track all
that stuff occasionally. Also, pre-order for next month's
ebook and audiobook has begun. Love, death and explosives.
(01:59):
Thomas Pynchon's polypsychology.It's a nice medium length essay
on Thomas Pynchon's work and postmodernism.
You know, all sorts of stuff. We got Neil coming up.
Hey, you are up on stage. We're hanging out.
(02:20):
How are you? What are you doing?
Are you ready for Gen. 48 this weekend?
I don't even know what Gen. 48 is.
Yeah, no, I I will not be participating in Gen. 48.
I haven't signed up. What's the thing?
A left? What's that?
A left is the new thing. Yeah, what it's just better is
(02:47):
that. It's not.
That's not how I would contextualize it.
I would say it is more or less aplatform for in painting and for
being able to swap elements morenatively within a video clip.
(03:08):
That's how I would frame it. So it's not a, it's not a full
model, it's just a feature set. What's up, guns?
If you want to come up, raise your hand.
Do they have to know what? Like can I just create something
on some other platform and then just submit it?
(03:29):
You are allowed to use I think, don't quote me on this.
I think it's like 70 to 80% of the material that you put into
the contest needs to be made on runway.
Will they know that? Yeah, that's the next question.
I suppose I mean they they can look at your account on the back
(03:54):
end and tell if you made such and such clips over the course
of that 48 hours, if that's whatyou're asking.
I mean, that's a very easy thingto answer for them.
Everything doesn't need to be made.
Yeah, well, definitely. But everything doesn't need to
be made on the platform. But it does.
It is a very high percentage of the material needs to be
(04:17):
generated on the platform and I would assume within that 48 hour
window. Michael, Why is being a
successful author so challenging?
You would have to ask somebody else, 'cause I am not a
successful author. What's that?
You're breaking up on me a little bit and also my answer
was you would have to ask somebody else because I am not a
(04:38):
successful author. Is it is it harder than kind of
the other kind of art and air quotes mediums?
You know, whether that be, you know, I, I would consider, you
know, poetry as a different medium, you know, images, video.
I'm sure I'm I'm leaving some other categories out.
(05:02):
Writing seems extremely time consuming, so I think that.
They're very fast writers. I am not one of them.
Here's what I will say, though. As somebody who has done music
and film and books, I will say this.
(05:25):
In terms of pursuing a successful music career in any
sort of elevated sense, that is by and large in 2025, the most
difficult one. Because that industry has been
(05:52):
very buttoned up for a very, very long time in a way that I
don't think a lot of people understand in terms of like the
legal aspects and the networkingand and all sorts of stuff.
I cannot complain about music. I came out ahead on music.
(06:13):
I made money in music, but I didall kinds of different stuff.
If I was trying to pursue music in the last decade, I would
focus purely on being a solo acoustic act and making
recordings very basic, maybe putting them out only on band
(06:39):
camp and booking like regional and and doing like a mix of
original and cover material. That worked, that made money,
and I taught lessons and I did ahandful of other things.
That form of things is stable. Trying to push up beyond that
(07:04):
without real management or assistance.
That's when things start to get really messy.
Now on the film side of things, super interesting place to me
and perhaps to you as well. It takes a lot of heavy lifting.
(07:26):
It is the most complex production of of of all those
three things that I mentioned, books, music and and film.
It takes the most kind of like dotting the IS and crossing the
T's across the board. But in terms of like what you
have to do to make it in that ifyou're doing a big production,
man, it can be outrageously expensive.
(07:48):
However, my documentary that's out, you know, broke broke into
profitability on the day one it was released.
You know, because I did it all myself and it cost me no money
to make. That said, like getting
(08:09):
distribution is tough. It is a long Rd. in that way.
To dig up and understand and sort out does take a lot of
diligence in terms of the technical requirements.
The broader you try and get distribution, the the more there
(08:29):
are. I've been lucky to to get three
things distributed over the lastX number of years.
That's astounding to me to stilleven today, you know, it blows
my mind. I would love to work on more
stuff that gets distribution in the future.
That is definitely my intent fornext year.
(08:50):
Now in terms of books, again, all of my books are in profit,
both books and film, totally profitable music wise.
I mean, I have friends that are still technically, you know,
they owe money to record labels.I don't.
(09:11):
I made money off the music playing out and and doing all
kinds of stuff. But some of the worst
investments I made were making records and, and not necessarily
the recording part because I wasable to manage some of that.
But the like getting CDs pressedwas outrageously expensive back
(09:32):
in the day. And it still is that side of
things. It gosh, I mean, it was just so
cost inhibitive. And vinyl is the same way.
If you don't already have an audience, you know that I have,
I have copies of CDs that I pressed years ago and have never
(09:54):
done anything with just sitting on them, lots of them.
So that side of things is very tough.
I have no DVDs of movies sittingaround.
I've never made them. You know, I assume there is a
way of of doing that. Amazon pulled down their digital
(10:15):
manufacturing hub so you could go to Amazon and get CDs made
and DVDs made and a handful of other things.
Now the print on demand offeringthey have is exclusively books,
as far as I'm aware. That aspect of things has been
(10:35):
great. Now there is a lot going on in
terms of the discussion in regards to books and Amazon and
print on demand and Audible and exclusivity of those platforms
and going wide and distributing on other platforms and
competitively. When I started doing that stuff
(10:57):
in 2019, I was very happy to keep it simple.
Now that I've been doing it for X number of years and I have a
catalog and I'm I'm learning more about what is working with
my audience and what is maybe seasonally attractive to
different audiences or differentsectors of my audience.
There's things I'm thinking about over the next, you know,
(11:19):
year or two that I would like toimplement and test over time.
That's not to say that everything I've done has worked.
Some things haven't. Some things I've done just
'cause I wanted to do them. Sometimes things sneak up and
(11:39):
surprisingly managed to be like significantly more successful
than other projects. Tartaria being amongst those
Anunnaki kind of beginning to dip its toes into thinking about
that conversation. I suppose you might say that
said like have been and you knowthis like was super lucky to
(12:04):
have sponsorship from entertainment to make that video
initially that got turned into an e-book that I would have been
able to pursue distribution for and things like that.
So all that stuff kind of stackson top of itself and you learn
additional lessons and you see kind of what works.
That said, books cost me no money to make.
(12:27):
You could make them really expensive if you want to get
like some other narrator. I do that myself an an editor.
I have beta readers, alpha readers, beta readers, and beta
listeners checking the work. Does that mean it's perfect?
Almost certainly no. But then again, I listen to
(12:48):
professional audiobook productions and read
professional book productions, and they're also not perfect.
So I'm seeing and hearing this stuff out there.
I'm doing the best I can. That said, all of my releases
are profitable and because of keeping the cost as low as
(13:10):
possible and trying to, you know, find what hits and
allowing things to be a slow burn someday.
You know, it really surprises mewhen I started gathering up data
early last year, like just how much the branding material has
(13:30):
moved. I also thought the National Park
stuff was like vastly underperforming compared to how
much work I put into it. That's not totally the case,
actually. It turns out luckily.
Now getting into fiction, I can tell you, you know, new lessons
(13:51):
from that is like find and writewithin genres and topics that
have an audience around already.You know, my audience, which has
been which for the first four years of writing was non fiction
real hard to transition them over to my fiction work.
My not a lot of overlap. What's up, Neil?
(14:17):
Do you ever feel it like you're put into a box because of that?
So you've had success with a certain audience and a certain
genre, so now you've got to continue to play in that box.
I don't ever feel that way. No, OK.
I don't. There's things I want to double
test and see if like is this, was that experiment replicable?
(14:41):
And if it turns out that it is, then awesome.
If it turns out that it isn't, well then I'm going to do
another test and see what happens.
I can tell you, having done non fiction exclusively for a
handful of years and then getting into fiction, fiction
(15:04):
has a much bigger audience at least willing to try stuff.
And also the price points that I'm putting out my fiction at
are just vastly lower than what I was able to do non fiction at
because of the pictorial elements and stuff.
Can you explain that more? Why is there a big price
difference? Yeah.
So when I did the Chicago 1893 book and when I did the the the
(15:33):
first couple of national parks book and putting them out on
Amazon, I wanted the best paper to be able to hold the color ink
and give people a really great experience with those books.
So it means that the print cost per book goes up significantly
compared to exclusively editorial.
(15:55):
When you're just printing words,you can print it on cheap paper
and you don't have to be concerned with color printing.
So you're able to manufacture books that are much cheaper in
cost and price. Those are two different things.
So the cost of the print and theprice at retail.
That said, you know, every experiment I've done, I've
(16:19):
learned more and more and have gotten to be able to like hold
this stuff and look at this stuff and understand how it, it,
it works better and better. What's the markup on that?
Kind of depends on the the factors that you choose.
So I. Mean 20 percent, 40%.
(16:40):
Again, it really matters it it depends on the paper, the print
color or black and white. There are cover quality things
that are a factor to page count.So like, you know, you can try
(17:01):
and make a really long book, butthen you have to like raise your
price a lot because the per pagecost to print it goes up with
every page. You know, over a certain amount,
it might not be viable for you to sell that book because you're
going to have to put the list price at like 30 bucks or
(17:24):
something. And that's like not, you know,
for an indie author, people giving you a shot, it's very
tough to convince them to spend that amount of money on
something particularly like fiction or whatever.
Like people are willing to spend, you know, low dollar
(17:46):
amounts like 10 bucks on new fiction for a paperback.
You know, not, not too bad. They're willing to spend less
money for ebooks, say 299. And if you are pricing your
ebook at 299 and you're below 10megabytes on Amazon, well then
you can make 70% of the sale. That is pretty good in the grand
(18:14):
scheme of things. So like that's just one example,
but it goes down, you know a lotfrom that.
If for a $0.99 ebook, the rate the, the royalty rate is like
35% on Amazon. So you're making like $0.35 a
(18:34):
copy. Now with that said, that might
not be vastly different than thetraditional publishing world
because of all these different costs.
Maybe they give you an advance, which at this point is almost
unheard of. Other things that come in to
(18:55):
cost, say an agent. An agent might a lit agent might
take 10 or 15% of you know, whatever you negotiate with a
publisher. You know other costs that go in
there. You know, if you're doing
marketing, paid marketing, a lotof traditional publishers aren't
(19:16):
doing marketing for you unless you are an established name that
they know are going to move X number of units.
You know, plain and simple, there in 2024, there were like
four books in fiction or whatever, or actually a total
that moved 1,000,000 copies. OK, that's outrageous.
(19:44):
And it going down from there like the top X number of books
or whatever. Then I saw this list not too
long ago. You know, it, it starts dropping
down a lot. They're just the average book.
And this is across the board. Indie or traditional publishing
(20:08):
is moving 100 to 150 copies. OK.
Like, it's not a lot. It's very low.
That said, like I have a couple that have broken through that
and you know, that's the stuff that I've had the longest out.
And they'll continue to build onthat.
(20:31):
That said, there's newer stuff that I've got that's like in
that range and preparing to to go beyond that so that you know,
that's cool. It's hard to, I would say, know
(20:51):
necessarily how something's going to go.
If you've got if you got time and you've got the network, then
you can push stuff. If I had a choice and I do have
a choice, but if I could make the choice, I suppose I might
add that in. I would probably spend the
(21:14):
majority of my time doing video because it's easily the best
return. But hey, you have to write a
video too to. Explain that to me because where
are you generating revenue off of videos?
Amazon and Filmsy for Anunnaki. Yeah, that's what two and two
(21:38):
years I've seen from you. No.
Yeah, but those are the only twothat I've actually pursued for
distro. Oh, no, yeah, no, I'm it's, it's
it's not a sign against you. Yeah.
The the two that you've made or was that I've seen you fake.
Yeah, those have been, yeah. It's it's hard dude, like to be
(22:01):
able to get your stuff ready to submit and push it through.
There was one other one that I submitted to Amazon that was
rejected, like when we did the the contest for with Chris that
he did with the cameras up contest.
(22:25):
I pushed that one through and that was rejected probably for a
number of reasons. It didn't have any dialogue.
It was incredibly short. That said, there's other stuff
that I could potentially packageand maybe gather up and try and
do as like a, maybe a, a series or something like that.
(22:47):
But again, the amount of time topush that stuff is high.
And also the likelihood in termsof like SEO for it being found
now or, or is tough. I could be pushing eyeballs at
that. But if I'm going to spend my
time, I want to push eyeballs atstuff that I know moves like the
(23:08):
Chicago 1893 project, my National Park stuff, the
branding stuff, Tartaria, you know, there's an audience out
there for that. The Anunnaki thing, there's
there's an audience out there for that.
Those are the ones that I have found to be the most viable and
valuable to to spend the time on.
(23:30):
So you're slowly hoping that that 12 mile long ship actually
is the Anunnaki. That is, your sails will be
through the roof. The what is the what do you mean
the 12 mile long ship? Oh, astronomers.
And there's back and forth on. This.
Oh, good, Good call. Yeah, that'd be hilarious.
Yeah. Yeah.
(23:51):
You know, that's the thing, likepeople like weird conspiratorial
type of stuff. Mysteries of the universe and
the, the, the agnostic. So I don't mind making the stuff
I like making and I like playingaround with the imagery and
writing it and all the tools andgoing through some of the
(24:14):
exercises to make them multimedia experiences.
That's cool to me. That said, yes, I want them to
do well and make money and stuff, but like, I also just
like creating this stuff. I'm going to make something, you
know, do. You ever put pictures in your
e-books? Yes, in fact the Tartaria ebook
(24:36):
has pictures. The Anunnaki ebook has pictures.
So as do the National Parks ones, as does the Chicago 18931,
as do the branding books they have pictures on.
What's your next story? What's your next subject?
The next one is Love, Death and explosives, Thomas Pensions,
polypsychology. That's going to come out next
(24:57):
month. And then I've got a paperback
I'll put out in November. I've I've got another National
Park stand alone release that I'll put out in October.
And then I've got one more fiction short story, audio drama
I'll do in December. So that's everything slated for
(25:20):
this year. And then I'm going to reposition
a little bit because I'm not going to do an audio book a
month next year. I can guarantee you that.
It's just too strenuous. I do want to get back into video
stuff. And also I know what I'm going
(25:41):
to produce next year in terms ofbooks and audio books.
But as it is right now, it's gonna be a much reduced schedule
in that sense. Like I'll probably end up
putting out like 3, maybe four or five ebooks, audio books next
(26:04):
year, depending on like how things go essentially.
But yeah, there's there's three things I've got kind of like in
mind that I can that I can manufacture for next year.
So that's that's what I've got. You find it's easy working with
(26:26):
another person on a certain project?
Or is it too difficult? I mean, I was in a band, you
know, for a long time and we didoriginal music.
So I don't mind working with people on creative stuff so long
as like everybody kind of has a strong point and making that
(26:46):
like they're real kind of focal part of things and, you know,
meeting the deadlines and meeting their obligations.
Yeah. So I don't, I don't really mind
about that. That doesn't, doesn't really
bother me. I, I don't mind working with
people. That said, I, I like to
(27:09):
typically like have projects where I'm collaborating, but
then I like to have stuff where I'm doing it kind of solo on my
own as well, just because it's like a good balance.
And like, if you're waiting on something to hit a deadline with
a group project, you can always still work on your stuff.
(27:29):
Yeah, but I don't know. What's that I?
Like getting I like getting feedback from other people
actually working alongside them.It's tough.
Yeah, I've never. It's from a stylistic
standpoint. Oh, sure.
(27:49):
Well, I mean in terms of visual style, like you're great at that
and like better than me for sure.
Like not even that doesn't even need to be said, but you know,
in in that sense, you know, obviously like the stuff that
that we've worked together on, like the your visual knowledge
and capability, your, your strengths there.
(28:14):
I just, you know, I'm happy to defer to you and just give the
feedback on it just to kind of like help the, I guess the
creation process or the curationprocess move forward.
You know, that's the way I, I think of it like it.
I'm a, I'm generally a slow writer.
(28:35):
I would say I'm a ineffective visual artist.
I mean, I can do photography andlike I can use the, I can use
the the the image models and stuff to, to make things.
But in terms of them being art, you know, or artistic integrity
(29:00):
on that side of things, like, you know, I have none.
I don't claim to, yeah. Me either.
Whatever. Yeah, and my wife got a Kindle
recently. I don't know what drove this,
but she's an absolute passionatereader right now and I cannot
get that thing off her eyeballs.Tell her to get my books.
(29:23):
I will. Are you hoping that she gets
sued by Netflix for this? Love, death and explosives.
I don't think I will be because there's nothing there that is
necessarily like, you know, there's not enough there.
You know what I mean? I.
(29:43):
Don't know that skull looks a lot like the skull that I see on
before each episode. I mean, a skull looks like a
skull, you know, like it's goingto be tough.
I did definitely like make them look different enough.
(30:04):
I mean, and not be oriented around that.
And also like it's not a brand. It's just a title with some
imagery and like, it's fine if. You say so.
Yeah, there's. There's no bad press though, so.
Hey, if if they come after me, gosh, you know.
(30:25):
Be awesome. Wait, they don't even have a
skull in their thing in their logo?
No, like, you know, like before each episode it does like the
the where my thing is that BlackMirror that does that.
I don't know it. It has like the four little
quadrants with the icons. Yeah, no, I definitely, I
(30:46):
definitely leaned on their theiraesthetic, but it it isn't the
same thing, you know what I mean?
Like it's completely different. They have like a weird, their
death is just an X, it's not a skull.
And then they have a robot thingand I don't have a robot thing.
I have a bomb. So like, no, I don't, I don't
(31:07):
think so. I think like they have a really
hard time making the argument that there's like infringement
there when like the icons are different.
It's not arranged the same way. I use a plus sign.
Like, who cares? It's it's fine.
You know, it's not the same font.
It's not the same colours. Like, yeah.
(31:30):
What, what are what are two significant changes that you've
seen over the past few years in terms of publishing?
People becoming very vocal about, I guess like I think the
dominance of like hyper liberal culture kind of controlling that
(31:55):
vertical and pushing out other voices that don't toe that line.
I think that's like a major change that's occurring right
now this year. And while it was like certainly
something that was getting talked about over the last
couple of years, it's really kind of pushed to the forefront.
(32:22):
I would say also like the prevalence of audiobooks and how
necessary it is to basically be a part.
I, I actually did a webinar earlier today with an audiobook
distributor. A woman was talking about audio
books and like, you know, doing a cost breakdown of some of that
(32:44):
stuff. And like, obviously I do my own
narration. Whereas like if you have
somebody narrate your book, it can cost you thousands of
dollars, which basically, like, I mean, if you're going to put
out a book from top to bottom, when I look at some of these
(33:04):
platforms talking about it, they're basically outlining 5 to
$10,000 worth of cost to put outone book.
And as I said before, the average book, trad or indie is
selling 100 to 150 copies. Go ahead and do the math on what
(33:24):
you need to price your book at. If you are incurring costs of,
you know, 5 to $10,000, you know, they're losing their ass
on that stuff. And indie people that get
suckered into some of the predatory schemes that are out
(33:47):
there in the indie world, like Ihave to be cognizant of that
stuff. Like I said, I've always done
this stuff. I've been in media for a long
time. So like, yes, some things I've
done have been bad. I improve them over time.
It's OK to change your cover. It's OK to make edits on a
(34:12):
manuscript and resubmit that to KDP.
All those features are there if you catch something or you want
to change graphics out or you want to add a section, like it's
perfectly fine. The Chicago 1893 book has three
editions, the 1st edition, Thoseare collector's items.
Now, you know, it's fine. Those, those would be the kind
(34:36):
of things I would say. So like, I think that we're
going to see like a really big ideological shift in traditional
publishing, not, not this year, probably not next year, but over
the next couple of years, we're going to see probably that and
more broadly, media shifting a little, a little away from like
(34:59):
very radical positions. And then audio books.
I would say that I, I don't wantto say that it's going to go up
more. I would say that like we're kind
of peeking on that where we're hitting like critical mass to
the point where it's like you must have an audio book out to
be competitive in your publishing endeavour.
(35:22):
I think that's kind of where we're at.
I would say the next thing to bethinking about and obviously you
and I talk about this and talkedabout this earlier and think
this way is to have like a multifaceted approach to what you're
doing. Maybe you're maybe you've got
imagery, maybe you've got editorial, maybe you've got
(35:43):
audio. Well, you know, put them all
together and then you can make video and now that's an
additional product. So I think that like I think
that more of these books are going to be really thinking
about how do we package or couple a video product along
with this editorial or this audio book.
(36:06):
And that's something that, you know, happily, I've been
thinking about for a long time and been doing the documentary
that I put out for Chicago 1893 came out one year after the
book. So it came out in 2020.
I've been doing video collections for the National
Park stuff just as long my branding book that also has a
(36:28):
course that's available and I'llbe doing Volume 3.
The fiction stuff I've been doing, those have obviously
video components as well. So that's something like being
multivariate, multimedia, whatever.
(36:48):
However you would like to phraseit, that I think is not in those
two points that you asked about,but the thing to think about in
the future. How many characters is love,
death and explosives? The words or letters?
I don't know. Did you count them?
No, I didn't. Hallmark 9 10111213141516171819
(37:14):
plus the the plus sign, so that's 20 and then you've got
three spaces, so 23 characters. I could be wrong, but yeah.
No, in the book. In the book.
Oh. How many characters?
I mean 10 thousand 50,000 words.How?
Many characters. Oh, oh, oh, wait, you want to
(37:37):
know how many characters are in it?
Let's see, I don't even know. 40,000 a little over 40,000
characters right now there, it'sjust under 7000 words, so it's
not incredibly long. When's that releasing?
(37:57):
September 1st. Good.
Why I? Tried the whole podcast like
book to podcast thing. It's it's doable.
It's super messy. I thought it would be easier.
Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'll do the yeah, yeah.
(38:19):
I thought it would be easier. OK, I will do the recording of
the audio book thing on this probably next week because this
week is going to be tough and I've still got it out to a
couple of beta readers who I'm waiting for last minute feedback
on. I have like a little bit more to
(38:40):
write. I might even try and wrap that
up today. And then I'm going to do layout
on Monday for this so that I cansubmit it.
And it'll be of, you know, I have to get it in within a
certain amount of time for pre-orders.
And then I'll switch gears over to the audiobook production so I
(39:02):
can make sure that that's out inSeptember as well.
But yeah. Does this story lend itself lend
itself to video? This is non fiction, so this is
actually like an assessment of the writers of Thomas Pynchon's
Canon and like his place within literature and stuff.
(39:26):
Yeah, OK. This isn't, this isn't fiction.
It's not a short story. Yeah.
So this is kind of like academicin a very loose sense.
Any. Questions do you have for me,
Michael? Do you want to read it?
Yeah. OK.
Trying to stay on topic here with your space.
Yeah, writing just seems Yeah, it's it's probably my just lens.
(39:49):
It just seems so time consuming to create a.
You know, good enough. Well, I think that you can do
small stuff to kind of stretch out.
You can do blogs, you know, where you know, I'll put out a
(40:13):
blog once a month on Substack that's only, you know, anywhere
between 502,000 words and I havea month to do it.
You know, that's pretty reasonable.
Now the. Other side of that is doing
books where I'm, you know, not just like rapid fire, I'm doing
(40:36):
like legit research that does take a long time.
You know, it this, I've this piece I've been working on, I've
been doing since like April and it's only like I said, it's
under 7000 words. So it's not incredibly long.
I am a slow writer, but also this is a highly detailed
(41:03):
editorial. I would say it's like, like I
said, it's it's like probably postgraduate level collegiate
reading if you were wanting to assess it in that way.
(41:26):
So it's not, it's not, it's not a book made out of cardboard.
I'm it's not even going to be a book, it's just going to be an
ebook. It's not long enough, I don't
think, for print. Maybe it will be, I don't know,
I get to see once I start layingit out, but I don't intend to do
(41:49):
a paperback out of this. Maybe in the future if I revisit
this in maybe a year or two. So Thomas Pension is releasing a
book in October, which is why I've bumped this up to a more
pressing release because I want to get it out before he puts out
his book. And you know, if I come back to
(42:13):
it in a year and I have more to say, which is totally viable,
then I'll write more and I will re release it.
And if it can become a proper paperback, then I'll do that at
that time. But you know, that's that's a
whole other can of worms. I got to just get it out the
door in its current state. First have.
(42:35):
You ever talked to him? No, no one talks to him.
That dude is more reclusive thanme.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Well, you're writing a book about him.
I like him. You should be.
You should be able to. Lots of people have written
books about him. Yeah, no, but you're Michael.
You should be able to do the theepilogue or or something, I
(42:58):
don't know. He doesn't care about me.
That's that's. That's what you think?
Well, I feel confident in that position.
We can, we can ask Julianne, youknow, she came up the stage.
What are you thinking about? What do you have comments on,
questions on what would you liketo promote, What are you doing
(43:21):
today? How are you?
Hey, so I guess you're talking about like having not just the
book, having all these other different things connected to
it. Like one thing I was thinking of
doing is like with my fantasy novel having like like a
metaverse experience attached toit.
A. Lot of work.
Yeah, I guess it. I guess it depends.
(43:42):
I mean, some things could be simpler somewhere complicated.
I guess I'll just see how the cookie crumbles.
I mean, I can just tell you, just write it first, Julianne,
I'm going to tell you right now.Get that thing out the door.
Once you start dealing with like3D graphics and environments and
extended reality, it's a lot of work.
(44:05):
There's no simple parts about itand like, you can make something
that's almost like unpopulated and very experienced more or
less like a desert, but nobody'sgoing to want to touch it
(44:25):
because it it doesn't have anything for them to do.
I put out a an Instagram lens for the Chicago 1893 project a
couple of years ago and it was basically just a one to one
scale replica of one of the buildings that was on the
grounds in 1893. And like this is again, it was a
(44:48):
building that was like 90 feet tall, 60 feet long on each side.
So you could pull this thing up in your phone and walk around
it. You had to be outside in a field
to walk around it. It it got I think somewhere
around 30,000 uses that. I consider that to be a great
(45:11):
win. Like the fact that 30,000 people
open that and walked around thatbuilding or even just looked at
it for a minute or whatever is awesome to me.
And I can tell you the work thatwent into doing that was
extensive and creating a more dynamic metaverse experience is
(45:38):
it's not going to be linear, it's going to be exponential in
the complexity of of creating and launching it.
So I did draft like a building in the central land, but The
thing is they updated the SDK tosomething else and migrated and
so now I have I've been dealing with that so I'm trying to not
(45:59):
lose all my work. Right.
That's another thing is these platforms, the technology
infrastructural and front end constantly is updating and
changing. I don't think you can actually
boot up the, the, the Chicago 1893 experience anymore.
I don't think it's there anymore.
I know that I can't update it anymore because they
(46:21):
discontinued the piece of software that was used to do it,
which was Spark AR. You know, luckily just happened
to be at the right place at the right time, had the assets, had
the capability to compute all ofthe hardware to be able to
manufacture and, and launch the thing and did it.
(46:42):
I have video footage of it and available all over the place.
And I think there's pictures in the new 3rd, 3rd edition of the
book and stuff. It was cool.
And you know, I would do all that stuff again, but that's not
a hot, that's not a hot sector right now.
(47:04):
Maybe in the future it will return to being a hot sector,
but right now it isn't. And you know, as much as I like
my VR helmet, write your book. Just write your book and get
your book done and get your bookout.
Don't worry about all the other peripheral stuff.
Just get your book out. Yeah, I do tend to get my eyes
(47:27):
on different things. You do, which is OK, but you
know, just just launch, just getsomething out the door.
You can Polish it up more over time.
You can build on the experience if it's worth it, if there's an
audience for that, that want more or willing to, to, to buy
(47:50):
more or participate in more, do that then.
But don't, don't overcomplicate your mission by adding on all
these stretch goals just to launch.
Pointless, totally not worth your time.
Just finish your book, get your book out, see how that's
received. You know, work on promoting.
(48:10):
And here's the thing I didn't have, again, like I'm not a
successful author, but I didn't have any real traction with all
of my books until I had a few books out.
So you know, I would be able to launch a book and you know, it
(48:36):
would be received and I would have, I would have a little bit
of buzz around that that releaseand then it would taper off.
Now basically, you know, every day, regardless of whether or
(48:59):
not I'm putting out a book and again, I'm putting out one audio
book or possibly ebook bundle a month this year, every day
something is going on with my books in terms of listenership,
readership. And same, same with the, the
video work, it's being watched, you know, it's being purchased
(49:19):
and rented. And like, it's because there's a
wealth of material out there that people are able to find the
projects. They don't care about me.
I, I'm gonna tell you that rightnow.
I do not matter in the grand scheme of my media catalog.
(49:41):
People like the stuff. I am inconsequential, you know,
so, you know, just put your workout there, Let people, I mean,
I, I guess there's some people who might be following me from 1
medium to another one project toanother.
(50:02):
I know there are, you know, and we, we do love them for that.
But in the grand scheme of things, it's a lot more people
that I do not know, have never heard of, will not meet, have no
information about that are buying these books, listening to
these books that are renting thefilms on Amazon and stuff.
(50:23):
And that is perfectly fine and OK.
They do not have to like or careabout me in any real sense or
way beyond that. They are happy to just engage
with that stuff and go on about their life.
Yeah, another set back was that my e-mail marketing platform,
they decided to terminate me andthey didn't give it like a good
(50:46):
enough reason why, I mean as AI,but they think it's just bad
luck. So I'm just restarting on
another, you know, marketing platform.
But that was. What are you?
What are you doing with the marketing platform?
I mean, well, I mean I wasn't using right word just just just
to send emails. OK, why don't you just use sub
stack? The one I was using it was it's
(51:08):
like free under certain subscribe.
Like MailChimp or whatever. Yeah.
And so then then that Mailer Lite, then then they I don't
know why they terminated me, butso, so that's a set back because
because I had like a long welcome sequence and that takes
a while to do. So I did.
I have started. Yeah, your drip campaign.
Yeah, I have started doing it on.
(51:29):
But what are you selling on there?
What are you, Julianne? What are you selling on that?
Is when you sign up, you get like a productivity list and
then there's a a welcome sequence and.
No, no. What are you selling?
There are some affiliate links for.
OK, yeah. And I'm going to tell you this
right now. Like man, write your book, all
(51:54):
this other stuff. I don't, I don't like you don't
have an answer for me. Even what you were selling like
an affiliate link to somebody else's product is what you were
going to start an an e-mail liston and you were using like you
were trying to build an e-mail list for that man that.
Well, it's more, the whole thingis more like a warm up thing and
giving like information and likethe the affiliate link.
(52:17):
It's not like a big part of it. I think it's only in like.
But it's the only part where youwere going to make any money.
I guess like they're like, if you want to say right away, yes.
Yes, right away making money yes, 100%.
That is what I am concerned withand that's what I'm concerned
with for you, Julian, because we've known each other for a few
(52:37):
years. I, I like the experiments.
I, I totally do. But you know what I like more
than experiments? That the reason why you don't
see other people doing these experiments is 'cause they don't
usually pan out in anything. Do stuff you see other people
(52:58):
doing. But I asked AI about all my
ideas. It actually would.
What would I like the best? Was the discord idea because I
could like make money quickly onthat one.
No, you can't. AI is full of shit.
First off, it's going to just tell you.
It's going to be very encouraging.
(53:20):
It's not going to give you a brilliant idea because it is
only it it it's only reflecting on what your prompt was as the
Oracle. It's not going to give you some
like mystery thing that nobody'sever found, man.
I'm telling you, Julian, write your book, write it, get that
(53:41):
done. Just finish it.
I mean, I mean, like I've been doing this space for how long
and you've been talking about the fantasy book, Finish it,
Just write it. Just do that.
All this other stuff like doing a discord or doing affiliate
marketing links for with a, a, a, an e-mail list, like I don't,
I don't, I don't know why you'redoing it.
(54:03):
I do not understand why you are doing these things like at all.
Yeah, I guess I'm like, like yousaid, experimenting and well,
here's the thing, I do have likeI have a regular job and then
and then I had like on the side.I feel like, I mean, I feel like
I like I really look to do wouldbe like just building websites,
(54:24):
but I don't want to do that. I want to do something that has
like passion in it on the side too.
So like the creative writing stuff, that's like more the
thing. Yeah, do it.
Finish it. Yeah, building websites sucks,
man. I did it for a number of years.
It's fine, but it's exhausting, especially now.
It's like the Internet sucks. The Internet and the web, it's
(54:46):
just totally, just gag me already.
It just is the worst. But yeah, you know, put out a
book, Julianne. That's why we're here.
That's where we're talking aboutwriting and publishing and
authorship, not about how do youmaximize affiliate linking
through your e-mail list. God.
(55:11):
Well, I did notice that because I see other people doing it, but
I, I, I didn't realize that it seems like you kind of have to,
it seems like it may be the bestaffiliate marketers.
They already have something elsegoing on for them.
And this is just like a, a side they put out there and they make
money. So it might be fun just to do it
as a beginner, but I realize it's not like the most lucrative
thing all the time. It's not fun at all.
(55:32):
It's not fun in any way. It's just maximizing for
fractions of pennies, man. And you have to have a massive
audience that is like you have to basically look, affiliate
marketing has been trumped by influencer marketing at this
point. If you don't have a massive
audience to move eyeballs and buy something right now, then it
(55:53):
it kind of is ineffective. You can't build up affiliate
marketing for pennies or tiny percentages of a sale or
something. And like you have to, you either
are able to capitalize on that with a, a Instagram post or a
massive e-mail list of 10,000 people on day one or you're,
(56:17):
you're, you can't, you know, it's like, don't, don't spin
your wheels on that. Go write a book, man.
And I'm not telling you you're going to make a bunch of money
off of books. You're not but.
I think a weird thing about it is like, I think just maybe just
the from like a beginner's mindset, like, oh, just making
my first few bucks. I'd probably, it's probably kind
of weird. I I don't know, maybe like make
(56:39):
a few few few bucks on like on your side versus your career
job. That's like, oh, wow, but that
would probably get old pretty fast when it's like only a few
bucks. But I think I'm just have weird
be like brand new thing about it.
I don't know. I don't know.
It's not a brand new thing though, because you've been
talking about that stuff for a long time.
I feel like I, I mean, I've, like I've said, Julian, I've
(57:01):
known you for like what, 2 yearsat this point?
Yeah, I guess I mean like personal life, I guess I'm
trying to like just figure I'm like Ikigai and things like
that. So it does get, I mean, I know
it's more of a scenic view than like to.
Don't get sucked up into the nonsense like start up crypto,
(57:25):
like hustle culture nonsense. Who cares about that?
That's sucks and it's boring. And also that was that was 1015
years ago when that stuff was worthwhile.
That's over now. Like that's totally done.
They've sealed up all the opportunity.
(57:46):
It's it's closed. You have to be a complete lying
shill to breakthrough on anything and that's not you.
Yeah. At any rate, write your book,
man, Julianne, write a book. So it is drafted and then my mom
read it so now I've been like editing it again.
(58:07):
So just. Put it out.
Well, the next step I was going to have like a professional look
it over. You can get beta readers, that
would be a thing. That was for the Discord idea
that had something to do with like that, but.
You don't need Discord to have beta readers.
You don't need to main, you don't need to create and manage
(58:29):
and maintain a Discord just for beta readers is what my point
is. Like the all these side
missions, these are just distractions.
I'm going to be honest with you.They're, they're just stopping
you from, you know, they're, they're just like little like
alleyways you're walking down that aren't actually taking you
in the direction you want to getto the destination.
(58:51):
That that could be true. I'm just hitting you with my
observation over the course of like 2 years of listening to to
you talking because we used to hang out on the on what's his
name space in the mornings. That was God.
That was like, oh. Glassy.
Yeah, on glassy space. That's where we met in.
A space recently, Yeah, those were nice.
(59:11):
Yeah, those were cool. But even by then, even when he
was doing that stuff, that whole, that whole genre was
already cashed at that point in time.
And like you were talking about these same exact things then.
And that was like two or three years ago.
And I'm just saying, you know, I'm merely saying that if it was
(59:32):
going to do something, I think you would have found some kind
of sequence of growth with it orsuccess with it.
Just write your book, put on a book, man, and you'll have more
fun with that. That'll be way more exciting
than dicking around with affiliate marketing in Discord.
Yeah, because I got my, what is it?
(59:54):
I got my brand new phone in, I guess it was during the
pandemic, my old one, I couldn'tget spaces on.
So then. So so then I got spaces, was
able to go on Spaces and then I kind of introduced me to the
like the money Twitter people community.
So that kind of like. Get away from those people.
Yeah, that got that, got me likeall into that.
(01:00:16):
And then I got into Web 3, whichis has been fun, a little crazy,
but fun. So yeah, I guess.
Yeah, I know it's you know, we've been like could do things
faster and better, but it's justfiguring things out you.
Don't have to do things faster. You just have to do a thing just
the one thing and like finish it, you know, not get not be so
(01:00:40):
divergent and like testing out trying to chase little rabbits.
You know this is not worth it for you.
But any rate, yeah, I usually only hang out in here for an
hour. Julian, we're 5 minutes over.
So as it is for today, I do appreciate you hanging out.
This has gone well, and we'll talk again before too long.
(01:01:03):
Come and hang out in the Tuesdayspace.
Wait, Gonzalo's coming up. Hold on.
We'll come up and say hello realquick, but we're not going to
have a whole additional conversation.
Gonzalo, you have one minute. Are you here?
Yeah, yeah, one minute. So, yeah, what I just wanted to
(01:01:28):
say to, to Julianne was to yeah,like would echo a little bit
what you were saying to focus onone thing and also to think
about what, what your ultimate goal is, right?
My, my ultimate goal is to make money off my stories.
Like to, to make, to be able to make a living off of those
(01:01:48):
stories that I write. And I initially came into the
space wanting to talk about the craft of building stories.
And while I do still do that, that's no longer my main focus,
right? My focus now is to slowly build
an audience that's interested innot in not in being taught how
to write stories, but in, in, in, in consuming stories because
(01:02:11):
that's, that's where I want to go.
And I'm focusing on the one thing.
I had like 3 or 4 stories I was working on like in the last
couple years, but then this yearI decided to go all in on just
one. And that's made me advance
further than I've ever advanced on anyone project.
So that's just what I wanted to say.
I don't want to take too much more time.
That's what I wanted to say to, to Julianne there to to help her
(01:02:33):
along a little bit. Yeah, I agree with you and it is
good to see you producing chapters and getting them out.
I feel like that's a huge push for you to to get something out
the door. Exactly.
And that's something that Julianne might, might be, you
know, be able to use as advice too.
(01:02:54):
Like I, I'm doing, I mean, it's different for everyone, but I'm
doing it chapter by chapter and through sub stack and I tell
people on Twitter about the sub stack.
So I slowly get people in there and, and only, I only get the
people who actually want to readthe story, right?
And I don't have to think about this daunting task of writing
the whole book, right? I'm just thinking about the next
(01:03:15):
chapter. And before I was thinking about
this daunting task of getting the manga done.
And I can't do like, I tried to do the illustrations myself last
year and, and it wasn't quite there.
Like my skill level isn't quite there.
So then I thought, well, I can just I can start with the book
and that's kind of it's more of a a minimum viable product than
(01:03:35):
than the manga. So I'm, you know, working on
that and I'm but it's all focused towards the one thing,
right? So that's something that's
helped me a lot. Yeah, for sure.
Well, you know, thanks for hanging out.
We do this every two weeks. We'll be back in two weeks to do
this again. As it is for today, I'm going to
(01:03:56):
close up shop and come and hang out in the Film 3 space.
It is linked above. Check out some of the other
links or go to my timeline if you're looking For more
information. Writer's block will be on
Tuesday. We'll be talking about negative
(01:04:17):
terms, the opposite of tropes that we did with Gonzalo this
week. Hey, as it is, enjoy the rest of
your day and we will talk again before too long.
Yeah, it's been 2 weeks since wedid this.
Can you believe it? I'll hit all of the news for
this week. Thursday Film 3 Space.
We are interviewing Fabian from Glyph.
We talking about their platform and what it allows you to do for
AI creations and also creating infrastructure for AI creations.
(00:28):
Cool platform. If you haven't played with it,
this month's audiobook release is The King in Yellow The Mask
by Robert W Chambers. It's available on all of your
favorite platforms. Do please check it out if you
have not already. Also, the article for the month
(00:49):
for writers on how to get started if you are inexperienced
is available. A couple of tips and tricks to
get off the blank page. It's available on Sub Stack, no
charge and check that out. Subscribe and get it dropped to
your inbox every single month. Also, the session from 2 weeks
(01:16):
ago of this space, Writing, Publishing and Authorship is now
available on podcast platforms wherever you should like to
listen. That's Apple Podcasts and
Spotify and Pandora and Audible.Gosh, you know, the list goes
(01:38):
on. There's Pocket Casts.
There's this weird stuff that pops up in the stats every once
in a while. You can't even keep track all
that stuff occasionally. Also, pre-order for next month's
ebook and audiobook has begun. Love, death and explosives.
(01:59):
Thomas Pynchon's polypsychology.It's a nice medium length essay
on Thomas Pynchon's work and postmodernism.
You know, all sorts of stuff. We got Neil coming up.
Hey, you are up on stage. We're hanging out.
(02:20):
How are you? What are you doing?
Are you ready for Gen. 48 this weekend?
I don't even know what Gen. 48 is.
Yeah, no, I I will not be participating in Gen. 48.
I haven't signed up. What's the thing?
A left? What's that?
A left is the new thing. Yeah, what it's just better is
(02:47):
that. It's not.
That's not how I would contextualize it.
I would say it is more or less aplatform for in painting and for
being able to swap elements morenatively within a video clip.
(03:08):
That's how I would frame it. So it's not a, it's not a full
model, it's just a feature set. What's up, guns?
If you want to come up, raise your hand.
Do they have to know what? Like can I just create something
on some other platform and then just submit it?
(03:29):
You are allowed to use I think, don't quote me on this.
I think it's like 70 to 80% of the material that you put into
the contest needs to be made on runway.
Will they know that? Yeah, that's the next question.
I suppose I mean they they can look at your account on the back
(03:54):
end and tell if you made such and such clips over the course
of that 48 hours, if that's whatyou're asking.
I mean, that's a very easy thingto answer for them.
Everything doesn't need to be made.
Yeah, well, definitely. But everything doesn't need to
be made on the platform. But it does.
It is a very high percentage of the material needs to be
(04:17):
generated on the platform and I would assume within that 48 hour
window. Michael, Why is being a
successful author so challenging?
You would have to ask somebody else, 'cause I am not a
successful author. What's that?
You're breaking up on me a little bit and also my answer
was you would have to ask somebody else because I am not a
(04:38):
successful author. Is it is it harder than kind of
the other kind of art and air quotes mediums?
You know, whether that be, you know, I, I would consider, you
know, poetry as a different medium, you know, images, video.
I'm sure I'm I'm leaving some other categories out.
(05:02):
Writing seems extremely time consuming, so I think that.
They're very fast writers. I am not one of them.
Here's what I will say, though. As somebody who has done music
and film and books, I will say this.
(05:25):
In terms of pursuing a successful music career in any
sort of elevated sense, that is by and large in 2025, the most
difficult one. Because that industry has been
(05:52):
very buttoned up for a very, very long time in a way that I
don't think a lot of people understand in terms of like the
legal aspects and the networkingand and all sorts of stuff.
I cannot complain about music. I came out ahead on music.
(06:13):
I made money in music, but I didall kinds of different stuff.
If I was trying to pursue music in the last decade, I would
focus purely on being a solo acoustic act and making
recordings very basic, maybe putting them out only on band
(06:39):
camp and booking like regional and and doing like a mix of
original and cover material. That worked, that made money,
and I taught lessons and I did ahandful of other things.
That form of things is stable. Trying to push up beyond that
(07:04):
without real management or assistance.
That's when things start to get really messy.
Now on the film side of things, super interesting place to me
and perhaps to you as well. It takes a lot of heavy lifting.
(07:26):
It is the most complex production of of of all those
three things that I mentioned, books, music and and film.
It takes the most kind of like dotting the IS and crossing the
T's across the board. But in terms of like what you
have to do to make it in that ifyou're doing a big production,
man, it can be outrageously expensive.
(07:48):
However, my documentary that's out, you know, broke broke into
profitability on the day one it was released.
You know, because I did it all myself and it cost me no money
to make. That said, like getting
(08:09):
distribution is tough. It is a long Rd. in that way.
To dig up and understand and sort out does take a lot of
diligence in terms of the technical requirements.
The broader you try and get distribution, the the more there
(08:29):
are. I've been lucky to to get three
things distributed over the lastX number of years.
That's astounding to me to stilleven today, you know, it blows
my mind. I would love to work on more
stuff that gets distribution in the future.
That is definitely my intent fornext year.
(08:50):
Now in terms of books, again, all of my books are in profit,
both books and film, totally profitable music wise.
I mean, I have friends that are still technically, you know,
they owe money to record labels.I don't.
(09:11):
I made money off the music playing out and and doing all
kinds of stuff. But some of the worst
investments I made were making records and, and not necessarily
the recording part because I wasable to manage some of that.
But the like getting CDs pressedwas outrageously expensive back
(09:32):
in the day. And it still is that side of
things. It gosh, I mean, it was just so
cost inhibitive. And vinyl is the same way.
If you don't already have an audience, you know that I have,
I have copies of CDs that I pressed years ago and have never
(09:54):
done anything with just sitting on them, lots of them.
So that side of things is very tough.
I have no DVDs of movies sittingaround.
I've never made them. You know, I assume there is a
way of of doing that. Amazon pulled down their digital
(10:15):
manufacturing hub so you could go to Amazon and get CDs made
and DVDs made and a handful of other things.
Now the print on demand offeringthey have is exclusively books,
as far as I'm aware. That aspect of things has been
(10:35):
great. Now there is a lot going on in
terms of the discussion in regards to books and Amazon and
print on demand and Audible and exclusivity of those platforms
and going wide and distributing on other platforms and
competitively. When I started doing that stuff
(10:57):
in 2019, I was very happy to keep it simple.
Now that I've been doing it for X number of years and I have a
catalog and I'm I'm learning more about what is working with
my audience and what is maybe seasonally attractive to
different audiences or differentsectors of my audience.
There's things I'm thinking about over the next, you know,
(11:19):
year or two that I would like toimplement and test over time.
That's not to say that everything I've done has worked.
Some things haven't. Some things I've done just
'cause I wanted to do them. Sometimes things sneak up and
(11:39):
surprisingly managed to be like significantly more successful
than other projects. Tartaria being amongst those
Anunnaki kind of beginning to dip its toes into thinking about
that conversation. I suppose you might say that
said like have been and you knowthis like was super lucky to
(12:04):
have sponsorship from entertainment to make that video
initially that got turned into an e-book that I would have been
able to pursue distribution for and things like that.
So all that stuff kind of stackson top of itself and you learn
additional lessons and you see kind of what works.
That said, books cost me no money to make.
(12:27):
You could make them really expensive if you want to get
like some other narrator. I do that myself an an editor.
I have beta readers, alpha readers, beta readers, and beta
listeners checking the work. Does that mean it's perfect?
Almost certainly no. But then again, I listen to
(12:48):
professional audiobook productions and read
professional book productions, and they're also not perfect.
So I'm seeing and hearing this stuff out there.
I'm doing the best I can. That said, all of my releases
are profitable and because of keeping the cost as low as
(13:10):
possible and trying to, you know, find what hits and
allowing things to be a slow burn someday.
You know, it really surprises mewhen I started gathering up data
early last year, like just how much the branding material has
(13:30):
moved. I also thought the National Park
stuff was like vastly underperforming compared to how
much work I put into it. That's not totally the case,
actually. It turns out luckily.
Now getting into fiction, I can tell you, you know, new lessons
(13:51):
from that is like find and writewithin genres and topics that
have an audience around already.You know, my audience, which has
been which for the first four years of writing was non fiction
real hard to transition them over to my fiction work.
My not a lot of overlap. What's up, Neil?
(14:17):
Do you ever feel it like you're put into a box because of that?
So you've had success with a certain audience and a certain
genre, so now you've got to continue to play in that box.
I don't ever feel that way. No, OK.
I don't. There's things I want to double
test and see if like is this, was that experiment replicable?
(14:41):
And if it turns out that it is, then awesome.
If it turns out that it isn't, well then I'm going to do
another test and see what happens.
I can tell you, having done non fiction exclusively for a
handful of years and then getting into fiction, fiction
(15:04):
has a much bigger audience at least willing to try stuff.
And also the price points that I'm putting out my fiction at
are just vastly lower than what I was able to do non fiction at
because of the pictorial elements and stuff.
Can you explain that more? Why is there a big price
difference? Yeah.
So when I did the Chicago 1893 book and when I did the the the
(15:33):
first couple of national parks book and putting them out on
Amazon, I wanted the best paper to be able to hold the color ink
and give people a really great experience with those books.
So it means that the print cost per book goes up significantly
compared to exclusively editorial.
(15:55):
When you're just printing words,you can print it on cheap paper
and you don't have to be concerned with color printing.
So you're able to manufacture books that are much cheaper in
cost and price. Those are two different things.
So the cost of the print and theprice at retail.
That said, you know, every experiment I've done, I've
(16:19):
learned more and more and have gotten to be able to like hold
this stuff and look at this stuff and understand how it, it,
it works better and better. What's the markup on that?
Kind of depends on the the factors that you choose.
So I. Mean 20 percent, 40%.
(16:40):
Again, it really matters it it depends on the paper, the print
color or black and white. There are cover quality things
that are a factor to page count.So like, you know, you can try
(17:01):
and make a really long book, butthen you have to like raise your
price a lot because the per pagecost to print it goes up with
every page. You know, over a certain amount,
it might not be viable for you to sell that book because you're
going to have to put the list price at like 30 bucks or
(17:24):
something. And that's like not, you know,
for an indie author, people giving you a shot, it's very
tough to convince them to spend that amount of money on
something particularly like fiction or whatever.
Like people are willing to spend, you know, low dollar
(17:46):
amounts like 10 bucks on new fiction for a paperback.
You know, not, not too bad. They're willing to spend less
money for ebooks, say 299. And if you are pricing your
ebook at 299 and you're below 10megabytes on Amazon, well then
you can make 70% of the sale. That is pretty good in the grand
(18:14):
scheme of things. So like that's just one example,
but it goes down, you know a lotfrom that.
If for a $0.99 ebook, the rate the, the royalty rate is like
35% on Amazon. So you're making like $0.35 a
(18:34):
copy. Now with that said, that might
not be vastly different than thetraditional publishing world
because of all these different costs.
Maybe they give you an advance, which at this point is almost
unheard of. Other things that come in to
(18:55):
cost, say an agent. An agent might a lit agent might
take 10 or 15% of you know, whatever you negotiate with a
publisher. You know other costs that go in
there. You know, if you're doing
marketing, paid marketing, a lotof traditional publishers aren't
(19:16):
doing marketing for you unless you are an established name that
they know are going to move X number of units.
You know, plain and simple, there in 2024, there were like
four books in fiction or whatever, or actually a total
that moved 1,000,000 copies. OK, that's outrageous.
(19:44):
And it going down from there like the top X number of books
or whatever. Then I saw this list not too
long ago. You know, it, it starts dropping
down a lot. They're just the average book.
And this is across the board. Indie or traditional publishing
(20:08):
is moving 100 to 150 copies. OK.
Like, it's not a lot. It's very low.
That said, like I have a couple that have broken through that
and you know, that's the stuff that I've had the longest out.
And they'll continue to build onthat.
(20:31):
That said, there's newer stuff that I've got that's like in
that range and preparing to to go beyond that so that you know,
that's cool. It's hard to, I would say, know
(20:51):
necessarily how something's going to go.
If you've got if you got time and you've got the network, then
you can push stuff. If I had a choice and I do have
a choice, but if I could make the choice, I suppose I might
add that in. I would probably spend the
(21:14):
majority of my time doing video because it's easily the best
return. But hey, you have to write a
video too to. Explain that to me because where
are you generating revenue off of videos?
Amazon and Filmsy for Anunnaki. Yeah, that's what two and two
(21:38):
years I've seen from you. No.
Yeah, but those are the only twothat I've actually pursued for
distro. Oh, no, yeah, no, I'm it's, it's
it's not a sign against you. Yeah.
The the two that you've made or was that I've seen you fake.
Yeah, those have been, yeah. It's it's hard dude, like to be
(22:01):
able to get your stuff ready to submit and push it through.
There was one other one that I submitted to Amazon that was
rejected, like when we did the the contest for with Chris that
he did with the cameras up contest.
(22:25):
I pushed that one through and that was rejected probably for a
number of reasons. It didn't have any dialogue.
It was incredibly short. That said, there's other stuff
that I could potentially packageand maybe gather up and try and
do as like a, maybe a, a series or something like that.
(22:47):
But again, the amount of time topush that stuff is high.
And also the likelihood in termsof like SEO for it being found
now or, or is tough. I could be pushing eyeballs at
that. But if I'm going to spend my
time, I want to push eyeballs atstuff that I know moves like the
(23:08):
Chicago 1893 project, my National Park stuff, the
branding stuff, Tartaria, you know, there's an audience out
there for that. The Anunnaki thing, there's
there's an audience out there for that.
Those are the ones that I have found to be the most viable and
valuable to to spend the time on.
(23:30):
So you're slowly hoping that that 12 mile long ship actually
is the Anunnaki. That is, your sails will be
through the roof. The what is the what do you mean
the 12 mile long ship? Oh, astronomers.
And there's back and forth on. This.
Oh, good, Good call. Yeah, that'd be hilarious.
Yeah. Yeah.
(23:51):
You know, that's the thing, likepeople like weird conspiratorial
type of stuff. Mysteries of the universe and
the, the, the agnostic. So I don't mind making the stuff
I like making and I like playingaround with the imagery and
writing it and all the tools andgoing through some of the
(24:14):
exercises to make them multimedia experiences.
That's cool to me. That said, yes, I want them to
do well and make money and stuff, but like, I also just
like creating this stuff. I'm going to make something, you
know, do. You ever put pictures in your
e-books? Yes, in fact the Tartaria ebook
(24:36):
has pictures. The Anunnaki ebook has pictures.
So as do the National Parks ones, as does the Chicago 18931,
as do the branding books they have pictures on.
What's your next story? What's your next subject?
The next one is Love, Death and explosives, Thomas Pensions,
polypsychology. That's going to come out next
(24:57):
month. And then I've got a paperback
I'll put out in November. I've I've got another National
Park stand alone release that I'll put out in October.
And then I've got one more fiction short story, audio drama
I'll do in December. So that's everything slated for
(25:20):
this year. And then I'm going to reposition
a little bit because I'm not going to do an audio book a
month next year. I can guarantee you that.
It's just too strenuous. I do want to get back into video
stuff. And also I know what I'm going
(25:41):
to produce next year in terms ofbooks and audio books.
But as it is right now, it's gonna be a much reduced schedule
in that sense. Like I'll probably end up
putting out like 3, maybe four or five ebooks, audio books next
(26:04):
year, depending on like how things go essentially.
But yeah, there's there's three things I've got kind of like in
mind that I can that I can manufacture for next year.
So that's that's what I've got. You find it's easy working with
(26:26):
another person on a certain project?
Or is it too difficult? I mean, I was in a band, you
know, for a long time and we didoriginal music.
So I don't mind working with people on creative stuff so long
as like everybody kind of has a strong point and making that
(26:46):
like they're real kind of focal part of things and, you know,
meeting the deadlines and meeting their obligations.
Yeah. So I don't, I don't really mind
about that. That doesn't, doesn't really
bother me. I, I don't mind working with
people. That said, I, I like to
(27:09):
typically like have projects where I'm collaborating, but
then I like to have stuff where I'm doing it kind of solo on my
own as well, just because it's like a good balance.
And like, if you're waiting on something to hit a deadline with
a group project, you can always still work on your stuff.
(27:29):
Yeah, but I don't know. What's that I?
Like getting I like getting feedback from other people
actually working alongside them.It's tough.
Yeah, I've never. It's from a stylistic
standpoint. Oh, sure.
(27:49):
Well, I mean in terms of visual style, like you're great at that
and like better than me for sure.
Like not even that doesn't even need to be said, but you know,
in in that sense, you know, obviously like the stuff that
that we've worked together on, like the your visual knowledge
and capability, your, your strengths there.
(28:14):
I just, you know, I'm happy to defer to you and just give the
feedback on it just to kind of like help the, I guess the
creation process or the curationprocess move forward.
You know, that's the way I, I think of it like it.
I'm a, I'm generally a slow writer.
(28:35):
I would say I'm a ineffective visual artist.
I mean, I can do photography andlike I can use the, I can use
the the the image models and stuff to, to make things.
But in terms of them being art, you know, or artistic integrity
(29:00):
on that side of things, like, you know, I have none.
I don't claim to, yeah. Me either.
Whatever. Yeah, and my wife got a Kindle
recently. I don't know what drove this,
but she's an absolute passionatereader right now and I cannot
get that thing off her eyeballs.Tell her to get my books.
(29:23):
I will. Are you hoping that she gets
sued by Netflix for this? Love, death and explosives.
I don't think I will be because there's nothing there that is
necessarily like, you know, there's not enough there.
You know what I mean? I.
(29:43):
Don't know that skull looks a lot like the skull that I see on
before each episode. I mean, a skull looks like a
skull, you know, like it's goingto be tough.
I did definitely like make them look different enough.
(30:04):
I mean, and not be oriented around that.
And also like it's not a brand. It's just a title with some
imagery and like, it's fine if. You say so.
Yeah, there's. There's no bad press though, so.
Hey, if if they come after me, gosh, you know.
(30:25):
Be awesome. Wait, they don't even have a
skull in their thing in their logo?
No, like, you know, like before each episode it does like the
the where my thing is that BlackMirror that does that.
I don't know it. It has like the four little
quadrants with the icons. Yeah, no, I definitely, I
(30:46):
definitely leaned on their theiraesthetic, but it it isn't the
same thing, you know what I mean?
Like it's completely different. They have like a weird, their
death is just an X, it's not a skull.
And then they have a robot thingand I don't have a robot thing.
I have a bomb. So like, no, I don't, I don't
(31:07):
think so. I think like they have a really
hard time making the argument that there's like infringement
there when like the icons are different.
It's not arranged the same way. I use a plus sign.
Like, who cares? It's it's fine.
You know, it's not the same font.
It's not the same colours. Like, yeah.
(31:30):
What, what are what are two significant changes that you've
seen over the past few years in terms of publishing?
People becoming very vocal about, I guess like I think the
dominance of like hyper liberal culture kind of controlling that
(31:55):
vertical and pushing out other voices that don't toe that line.
I think that's like a major change that's occurring right
now this year. And while it was like certainly
something that was getting talked about over the last
couple of years, it's really kind of pushed to the forefront.
(32:22):
I would say also like the prevalence of audiobooks and how
necessary it is to basically be a part.
I, I actually did a webinar earlier today with an audiobook
distributor. A woman was talking about audio
books and like, you know, doing a cost breakdown of some of that
(32:44):
stuff. And like, obviously I do my own
narration. Whereas like if you have
somebody narrate your book, it can cost you thousands of
dollars, which basically, like, I mean, if you're going to put
out a book from top to bottom, when I look at some of these
(33:04):
platforms talking about it, they're basically outlining 5 to
$10,000 worth of cost to put outone book.
And as I said before, the average book, trad or indie is
selling 100 to 150 copies. Go ahead and do the math on what
(33:24):
you need to price your book at. If you are incurring costs of,
you know, 5 to $10,000, you know, they're losing their ass
on that stuff. And indie people that get
suckered into some of the predatory schemes that are out
(33:47):
there in the indie world, like Ihave to be cognizant of that
stuff. Like I said, I've always done
this stuff. I've been in media for a long
time. So like, yes, some things I've
done have been bad. I improve them over time.
It's OK to change your cover. It's OK to make edits on a
(34:12):
manuscript and resubmit that to KDP.
All those features are there if you catch something or you want
to change graphics out or you want to add a section, like it's
perfectly fine. The Chicago 1893 book has three
editions, the 1st edition, Thoseare collector's items.
Now, you know, it's fine. Those, those would be the kind
(34:36):
of things I would say. So like, I think that we're
going to see like a really big ideological shift in traditional
publishing, not, not this year, probably not next year, but over
the next couple of years, we're going to see probably that and
more broadly, media shifting a little, a little away from like
(34:59):
very radical positions. And then audio books.
I would say that I, I don't wantto say that it's going to go up
more. I would say that like we're kind
of peeking on that where we're hitting like critical mass to
the point where it's like you must have an audio book out to
be competitive in your publishing endeavour.
(35:22):
I think that's kind of where we're at.
I would say the next thing to bethinking about and obviously you
and I talk about this and talkedabout this earlier and think
this way is to have like a multifaceted approach to what you're
doing. Maybe you're maybe you've got
imagery, maybe you've got editorial, maybe you've got
(35:43):
audio. Well, you know, put them all
together and then you can make video and now that's an
additional product. So I think that like I think
that more of these books are going to be really thinking
about how do we package or couple a video product along
with this editorial or this audio book.
(36:06):
And that's something that, you know, happily, I've been
thinking about for a long time and been doing the documentary
that I put out for Chicago 1893 came out one year after the
book. So it came out in 2020.
I've been doing video collections for the National
Park stuff just as long my branding book that also has a
(36:28):
course that's available and I'llbe doing Volume 3.
The fiction stuff I've been doing, those have obviously
video components as well. So that's something like being
multivariate, multimedia, whatever.
(36:48):
However you would like to phraseit, that I think is not in those
two points that you asked about,but the thing to think about in
the future. How many characters is love,
death and explosives? The words or letters?
I don't know. Did you count them?
No, I didn't. Hallmark 9 10111213141516171819
(37:14):
plus the the plus sign, so that's 20 and then you've got
three spaces, so 23 characters. I could be wrong, but yeah.
No, in the book. In the book.
Oh. How many characters?
I mean 10 thousand 50,000 words.How?
Many characters. Oh, oh, oh, wait, you want to
(37:37):
know how many characters are in it?
Let's see, I don't even know. 40,000 a little over 40,000
characters right now there, it'sjust under 7000 words, so it's
not incredibly long. When's that releasing?
(37:57):
September 1st. Good.
Why I? Tried the whole podcast like
book to podcast thing. It's it's doable.
It's super messy. I thought it would be easier.
Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'll do the yeah, yeah.
(38:19):
I thought it would be easier. OK, I will do the recording of
the audio book thing on this probably next week because this
week is going to be tough and I've still got it out to a
couple of beta readers who I'm waiting for last minute feedback
on. I have like a little bit more to
(38:40):
write. I might even try and wrap that
up today. And then I'm going to do layout
on Monday for this so that I cansubmit it.
And it'll be of, you know, I have to get it in within a
certain amount of time for pre-orders.
And then I'll switch gears over to the audiobook production so I
(39:02):
can make sure that that's out inSeptember as well.
But yeah. Does this story lend itself lend
itself to video? This is non fiction, so this is
actually like an assessment of the writers of Thomas Pynchon's
Canon and like his place within literature and stuff.
(39:26):
Yeah, OK. This isn't, this isn't fiction.
It's not a short story. Yeah.
So this is kind of like academicin a very loose sense.
Any. Questions do you have for me,
Michael? Do you want to read it?
Yeah. OK.
Trying to stay on topic here with your space.
Yeah, writing just seems Yeah, it's it's probably my just lens.
(39:49):
It just seems so time consuming to create a.
You know, good enough. Well, I think that you can do
small stuff to kind of stretch out.
You can do blogs, you know, where you know, I'll put out a
(40:13):
blog once a month on Substack that's only, you know, anywhere
between 502,000 words and I havea month to do it.
You know, that's pretty reasonable.
Now the. Other side of that is doing
books where I'm, you know, not just like rapid fire, I'm doing
(40:36):
like legit research that does take a long time.
You know, it this, I've this piece I've been working on, I've
been doing since like April and it's only like I said, it's
under 7000 words. So it's not incredibly long.
I am a slow writer, but also this is a highly detailed
(41:03):
editorial. I would say it's like, like I
said, it's it's like probably postgraduate level collegiate
reading if you were wanting to assess it in that way.
(41:26):
So it's not, it's not, it's not a book made out of cardboard.
I'm it's not even going to be a book, it's just going to be an
ebook. It's not long enough, I don't
think, for print. Maybe it will be, I don't know,
I get to see once I start layingit out, but I don't intend to do
(41:49):
a paperback out of this. Maybe in the future if I revisit
this in maybe a year or two. So Thomas Pension is releasing a
book in October, which is why I've bumped this up to a more
pressing release because I want to get it out before he puts out
his book. And you know, if I come back to
(42:13):
it in a year and I have more to say, which is totally viable,
then I'll write more and I will re release it.
And if it can become a proper paperback, then I'll do that at
that time. But you know, that's that's a
whole other can of worms. I got to just get it out the
door in its current state. First have.
(42:35):
You ever talked to him? No, no one talks to him.
That dude is more reclusive thanme.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Well, you're writing a book about him.
I like him. You should be.
You should be able to. Lots of people have written
books about him. Yeah, no, but you're Michael.
You should be able to do the theepilogue or or something, I
(42:58):
don't know. He doesn't care about me.
That's that's. That's what you think?
Well, I feel confident in that position.
We can, we can ask Julianne, youknow, she came up the stage.
What are you thinking about? What do you have comments on,
questions on what would you liketo promote, What are you doing
(43:21):
today? How are you?
Hey, so I guess you're talking about like having not just the
book, having all these other different things connected to
it. Like one thing I was thinking of
doing is like with my fantasy novel having like like a
metaverse experience attached toit.
A. Lot of work.
Yeah, I guess it. I guess it depends.
(43:42):
I mean, some things could be simpler somewhere complicated.
I guess I'll just see how the cookie crumbles.
I mean, I can just tell you, just write it first, Julianne,
I'm going to tell you right now.Get that thing out the door.
Once you start dealing with like3D graphics and environments and
extended reality, it's a lot of work.
(44:05):
There's no simple parts about itand like, you can make something
that's almost like unpopulated and very experienced more or
less like a desert, but nobody'sgoing to want to touch it
(44:25):
because it it doesn't have anything for them to do.
I put out a an Instagram lens for the Chicago 1893 project a
couple of years ago and it was basically just a one to one
scale replica of one of the buildings that was on the
grounds in 1893. And like this is again, it was a
(44:48):
building that was like 90 feet tall, 60 feet long on each side.
So you could pull this thing up in your phone and walk around
it. You had to be outside in a field
to walk around it. It it got I think somewhere
around 30,000 uses that. I consider that to be a great
(45:11):
win. Like the fact that 30,000 people
open that and walked around thatbuilding or even just looked at
it for a minute or whatever is awesome to me.
And I can tell you the work thatwent into doing that was
extensive and creating a more dynamic metaverse experience is
(45:38):
it's not going to be linear, it's going to be exponential in
the complexity of of creating and launching it.
So I did draft like a building in the central land, but The
thing is they updated the SDK tosomething else and migrated and
so now I have I've been dealing with that so I'm trying to not
(45:59):
lose all my work. Right.
That's another thing is these platforms, the technology
infrastructural and front end constantly is updating and
changing. I don't think you can actually
boot up the, the, the Chicago 1893 experience anymore.
I don't think it's there anymore.
I know that I can't update it anymore because they
(46:21):
discontinued the piece of software that was used to do it,
which was Spark AR. You know, luckily just happened
to be at the right place at the right time, had the assets, had
the capability to compute all ofthe hardware to be able to
manufacture and, and launch the thing and did it.
(46:42):
I have video footage of it and available all over the place.
And I think there's pictures in the new 3rd, 3rd edition of the
book and stuff. It was cool.
And you know, I would do all that stuff again, but that's not
a hot, that's not a hot sector right now.
(47:04):
Maybe in the future it will return to being a hot sector,
but right now it isn't. And you know, as much as I like
my VR helmet, write your book. Just write your book and get
your book done and get your bookout.
Don't worry about all the other peripheral stuff.
Just get your book out. Yeah, I do tend to get my eyes
(47:27):
on different things. You do, which is OK, but you
know, just just launch, just getsomething out the door.
You can Polish it up more over time.
You can build on the experience if it's worth it, if there's an
audience for that, that want more or willing to, to, to buy
(47:50):
more or participate in more, do that then.
But don't, don't overcomplicate your mission by adding on all
these stretch goals just to launch.
Pointless, totally not worth your time.
Just finish your book, get your book out, see how that's
received. You know, work on promoting.
(48:10):
And here's the thing I didn't have, again, like I'm not a
successful author, but I didn't have any real traction with all
of my books until I had a few books out.
So you know, I would be able to launch a book and you know, it
(48:36):
would be received and I would have, I would have a little bit
of buzz around that that releaseand then it would taper off.
Now basically, you know, every day, regardless of whether or
(48:59):
not I'm putting out a book and again, I'm putting out one audio
book or possibly ebook bundle a month this year, every day
something is going on with my books in terms of listenership,
readership. And same, same with the, the
video work, it's being watched, you know, it's being purchased
(49:19):
and rented. And like, it's because there's a
wealth of material out there that people are able to find the
projects. They don't care about me.
I, I'm gonna tell you that rightnow.
I do not matter in the grand scheme of my media catalog.
(49:41):
People like the stuff. I am inconsequential, you know,
so, you know, just put your workout there, Let people, I mean,
I, I guess there's some people who might be following me from 1
medium to another one project toanother.
(50:02):
I know there are, you know, and we, we do love them for that.
But in the grand scheme of things, it's a lot more people
that I do not know, have never heard of, will not meet, have no
information about that are buying these books, listening to
these books that are renting thefilms on Amazon and stuff.
(50:23):
And that is perfectly fine and OK.
They do not have to like or careabout me in any real sense or
way beyond that. They are happy to just engage
with that stuff and go on about their life.
Yeah, another set back was that my e-mail marketing platform,
they decided to terminate me andthey didn't give it like a good
(50:46):
enough reason why, I mean as AI,but they think it's just bad
luck. So I'm just restarting on
another, you know, marketing platform.
But that was. What are you?
What are you doing with the marketing platform?
I mean, well, I mean I wasn't using right word just just just
to send emails. OK, why don't you just use sub
stack? The one I was using it was it's
(51:08):
like free under certain subscribe.
Like MailChimp or whatever. Yeah.
And so then then that Mailer Lite, then then they I don't
know why they terminated me, butso, so that's a set back because
because I had like a long welcome sequence and that takes
a while to do. So I did.
I have started. Yeah, your drip campaign.
Yeah, I have started doing it on.
(51:29):
But what are you selling on there?
What are you, Julianne? What are you selling on that?
Is when you sign up, you get like a productivity list and
then there's a a welcome sequence and.
No, no. What are you selling?
There are some affiliate links for.
OK, yeah. And I'm going to tell you this
right now. Like man, write your book, all
(51:54):
this other stuff. I don't, I don't like you don't
have an answer for me. Even what you were selling like
an affiliate link to somebody else's product is what you were
going to start an an e-mail liston and you were using like you
were trying to build an e-mail list for that man that.
Well, it's more, the whole thingis more like a warm up thing and
giving like information and likethe the affiliate link.
(52:17):
It's not like a big part of it. I think it's only in like.
But it's the only part where youwere going to make any money.
I guess like they're like, if you want to say right away, yes.
Yes, right away making money yes, 100%.
That is what I am concerned withand that's what I'm concerned
with for you, Julian, because we've known each other for a few
(52:37):
years. I, I like the experiments.
I, I totally do. But you know what I like more
than experiments? That the reason why you don't
see other people doing these experiments is 'cause they don't
usually pan out in anything. Do stuff you see other people
(52:58):
doing. But I asked AI about all my
ideas. It actually would.
What would I like the best? Was the discord idea because I
could like make money quickly onthat one.
No, you can't. AI is full of shit.
First off, it's going to just tell you.
It's going to be very encouraging.
(53:20):
It's not going to give you a brilliant idea because it is
only it it it's only reflecting on what your prompt was as the
Oracle. It's not going to give you some
like mystery thing that nobody'sever found, man.
I'm telling you, Julian, write your book, write it, get that
(53:41):
done. Just finish it.
I mean, I mean, like I've been doing this space for how long
and you've been talking about the fantasy book, Finish it,
Just write it. Just do that.
All this other stuff like doing a discord or doing affiliate
marketing links for with a, a, a, an e-mail list, like I don't,
I don't, I don't know why you'redoing it.
(54:03):
I do not understand why you are doing these things like at all.
Yeah, I guess I'm like, like yousaid, experimenting and well,
here's the thing, I do have likeI have a regular job and then
and then I had like on the side.I feel like, I mean, I feel like
I like I really look to do wouldbe like just building websites,
(54:24):
but I don't want to do that. I want to do something that has
like passion in it on the side too.
So like the creative writing stuff, that's like more the
thing. Yeah, do it.
Finish it. Yeah, building websites sucks,
man. I did it for a number of years.
It's fine, but it's exhausting, especially now.
It's like the Internet sucks. The Internet and the web, it's
(54:46):
just totally, just gag me already.
It just is the worst. But yeah, you know, put out a
book, Julianne. That's why we're here.
That's where we're talking aboutwriting and publishing and
authorship, not about how do youmaximize affiliate linking
through your e-mail list. God.
(55:11):
Well, I did notice that because I see other people doing it, but
I, I, I didn't realize that it seems like you kind of have to,
it seems like it may be the bestaffiliate marketers.
They already have something elsegoing on for them.
And this is just like a, a side they put out there and they make
money. So it might be fun just to do it
as a beginner, but I realize it's not like the most lucrative
thing all the time. It's not fun at all.
(55:32):
It's not fun in any way. It's just maximizing for
fractions of pennies, man. And you have to have a massive
audience that is like you have to basically look, affiliate
marketing has been trumped by influencer marketing at this
point. If you don't have a massive
audience to move eyeballs and buy something right now, then it
(55:53):
it kind of is ineffective. You can't build up affiliate
marketing for pennies or tiny percentages of a sale or
something. And like you have to, you either
are able to capitalize on that with a, a Instagram post or a
massive e-mail list of 10,000 people on day one or you're,
(56:17):
you're, you can't, you know, it's like, don't, don't spin
your wheels on that. Go write a book, man.
And I'm not telling you you're going to make a bunch of money
off of books. You're not but.
I think a weird thing about it is like, I think just maybe just
the from like a beginner's mindset, like, oh, just making
my first few bucks. I'd probably, it's probably kind
of weird. I I don't know, maybe like make
(56:39):
a few few few bucks on like on your side versus your career
job. That's like, oh, wow, but that
would probably get old pretty fast when it's like only a few
bucks. But I think I'm just have weird
be like brand new thing about it.
I don't know. I don't know.
It's not a brand new thing though, because you've been
talking about that stuff for a long time.
I feel like I, I mean, I've, like I've said, Julian, I've
(57:01):
known you for like what, 2 yearsat this point?
Yeah, I guess I mean like personal life, I guess I'm
trying to like just figure I'm like Ikigai and things like
that. So it does get, I mean, I know
it's more of a scenic view than like to.
Don't get sucked up into the nonsense like start up crypto,
(57:25):
like hustle culture nonsense. Who cares about that?
That's sucks and it's boring. And also that was that was 1015
years ago when that stuff was worthwhile.
That's over now. Like that's totally done.
They've sealed up all the opportunity.
(57:46):
It's it's closed. You have to be a complete lying
shill to breakthrough on anything and that's not you.
Yeah. At any rate, write your book,
man, Julianne, write a book. So it is drafted and then my mom
read it so now I've been like editing it again.
(58:07):
So just. Put it out.
Well, the next step I was going to have like a professional look
it over. You can get beta readers, that
would be a thing. That was for the Discord idea
that had something to do with like that, but.
You don't need Discord to have beta readers.
You don't need to main, you don't need to create and manage
(58:29):
and maintain a Discord just for beta readers is what my point
is. Like the all these side
missions, these are just distractions.
I'm going to be honest with you.They're, they're just stopping
you from, you know, they're, they're just like little like
alleyways you're walking down that aren't actually taking you
in the direction you want to getto the destination.
(58:51):
That that could be true. I'm just hitting you with my
observation over the course of like 2 years of listening to to
you talking because we used to hang out on the on what's his
name space in the mornings. That was God.
That was like, oh. Glassy.
Yeah, on glassy space. That's where we met in.
A space recently, Yeah, those were nice.
(59:11):
Yeah, those were cool. But even by then, even when he
was doing that stuff, that whole, that whole genre was
already cashed at that point in time.
And like you were talking about these same exact things then.
And that was like two or three years ago.
And I'm just saying, you know, I'm merely saying that if it was
(59:32):
going to do something, I think you would have found some kind
of sequence of growth with it orsuccess with it.
Just write your book, put on a book, man, and you'll have more
fun with that. That'll be way more exciting
than dicking around with affiliate marketing in Discord.
Yeah, because I got my, what is it?
(59:54):
I got my brand new phone in, I guess it was during the
pandemic, my old one, I couldn'tget spaces on.
So then. So so then I got spaces, was
able to go on Spaces and then I kind of introduced me to the
like the money Twitter people community.
So that kind of like. Get away from those people.
Yeah, that got that, got me likeall into that.
(01:00:16):
And then I got into Web 3, whichis has been fun, a little crazy,
but fun. So yeah, I guess.
Yeah, I know it's you know, we've been like could do things
faster and better, but it's justfiguring things out you.
Don't have to do things faster. You just have to do a thing just
the one thing and like finish it, you know, not get not be so
(01:00:40):
divergent and like testing out trying to chase little rabbits.
You know this is not worth it for you.
But any rate, yeah, I usually only hang out in here for an
hour. Julian, we're 5 minutes over.
So as it is for today, I do appreciate you hanging out.
This has gone well, and we'll talk again before too long.
(01:01:03):
Come and hang out in the Tuesdayspace.
Wait, Gonzalo's coming up. Hold on.
We'll come up and say hello realquick, but we're not going to
have a whole additional conversation.
Gonzalo, you have one minute. Are you here?
Yeah, yeah, one minute. So, yeah, what I just wanted to
(01:01:28):
say to, to Julianne was to yeah,like would echo a little bit
what you were saying to focus onone thing and also to think
about what, what your ultimate goal is, right?
My, my ultimate goal is to make money off my stories.
Like to, to make, to be able to make a living off of those
(01:01:48):
stories that I write. And I initially came into the
space wanting to talk about the craft of building stories.
And while I do still do that, that's no longer my main focus,
right? My focus now is to slowly build
an audience that's interested innot in not in being taught how
to write stories, but in, in, in, in consuming stories because
(01:02:11):
that's, that's where I want to go.
And I'm focusing on the one thing.
I had like 3 or 4 stories I was working on like in the last
couple years, but then this yearI decided to go all in on just
one. And that's made me advance
further than I've ever advanced on anyone project.
So that's just what I wanted to say.
I don't want to take too much more time.
That's what I wanted to say to, to Julianne there to to help her
(01:02:33):
along a little bit. Yeah, I agree with you and it is
good to see you producing chapters and getting them out.
I feel like that's a huge push for you to to get something out
the door. Exactly.
And that's something that Julianne might, might be, you
know, be able to use as advice too.
(01:02:54):
Like I, I'm doing, I mean, it's different for everyone, but I'm
doing it chapter by chapter and through sub stack and I tell
people on Twitter about the sub stack.
So I slowly get people in there and, and only, I only get the
people who actually want to readthe story, right?
And I don't have to think about this daunting task of writing
the whole book, right? I'm just thinking about the next
(01:03:15):
chapter. And before I was thinking about
this daunting task of getting the manga done.
And I can't do like, I tried to do the illustrations myself last
year and, and it wasn't quite there.
Like my skill level isn't quite there.
So then I thought, well, I can just I can start with the book
and that's kind of it's more of a a minimum viable product than
(01:03:35):
than the manga. So I'm, you know, working on
that and I'm but it's all focused towards the one thing,
right? So that's something that's
helped me a lot. Yeah, for sure.
Well, you know, thanks for hanging out.
We do this every two weeks. We'll be back in two weeks to do
this again. As it is for today, I'm going to
(01:03:56):
close up shop and come and hang out in the Film 3 space.
It is linked above. Check out some of the other
links or go to my timeline if you're looking For more
information. Writer's block will be on
Tuesday. We'll be talking about negative
(01:04:17):
terms, the opposite of tropes that we did with Gonzalo this
week. Hey, as it is, enjoy the rest of
your day and we will talk again before too long.
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