Sandy Forster is the author of the international bestseller How to Be Wildly Wealthy Fast. Not only is she a published author, but she has built a successful business around her book. When I recently caught up with Sandy, one of the key takeaways from the interview was how she got really clear on her ideal reader and who she wanted to help. Sandy admitted that she had some limiting beliefs about money earlier in her life, just after she got divorced, but she found a way to work through those bel...
Dec 06, 2021•32 min
The Final Flight is James Blatch's first book, and during our chat, I asked him how he's planning on selling copies because it's easier to sell books when you have a back catalog. So what should a new author do when they're about to release their first book? James talks about using advertising to sell copies of his book, so I asked him if advertising could help me sell the parenting memoir that I've written? James also talks about the different businesses that he runs aside from Self Publishing ...
Nov 29, 2021•33 min
Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and the author of Doing Content Right . Steph has a fascinating take on how to launch a book. In fact, she has an altogether different approach to most authors. As her book is about creating content for businesses, she promoted it first on Twitter, where she first validated the idea with her audience. In this interview, she talks about how she did that before she launched the book on Product Hunt. It's the first time I've heard of an author launching the...
Nov 22, 2021•36 min
Ann Kroeker is a writing coach, published author, and professional speaker. She works with clients who want to find agents and publish books the traditional way and also helps her clients figure out if self-publishing is the correct route for them. In this interview, we talk about some of the merits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. One of the biggest challenges of self-publishing is you have to market and promote the book yourself. For that, you need a platform, and Ann helps he...
Nov 15, 2021•35 min
Alex Strathdee is the founder of Advanced Amazon Ads as well as a best-selling Amazon author. I've used Amazon ads since 2016 to sell non-fiction books. Back when I started using Amazon ads, it was straightforward to get them working. Over the years, Amazon ads have become far more competitive. It's impossible to get the same return for the same budget, and the platform has changed. I wanted to talk to somebody who could talk me through what type of Amazon ad campaigns are working and how to use...
Nov 11, 2021•35 min
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Allen Klein. He's spent his career writing spirituality and personal development books. To date, he's written over 31 books, including The Healing Power of Humor, and his most recent title is The Awe Factor which spiritualityandpractice.com dubbed one of the best spiritual books of 2020. I wanted to understand what goes into a good spirituality book and how authors can take a simple idea like awe and turn it into a book. Allen explains how he draws on s...
Nov 08, 2021•30 min
Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, author, and creative coach. He also hosts his own podcast, The 21st Century Creative. In this podcast episode, Mark explains how he worked with Brian Clark of Copyblogger and how the copywriting lessons he learned have stayed with him ever since. We also talked about how the pandemic has impacted creatives. Mark describes some of the steps he's taking to break out of his self-imposed "introvert's paradise," which he set up during lockdown. Mark also talk...
Nov 04, 2021•38 min
James Morgan-Jones found his love of writing at around 12 years of age. He's now the author of The Glasswater Quintet, and in this episode he talks about his approach to writing a book series and how the first book in the series came about when he was studying for his MA. James is also a poet and a playwright and I was fascinated to hear about how his poetry, screenplays, and his background as an actor have informed how he writes his books. In this episode, we discuss: Tips for writing dialogue ...
Nov 01, 2021•31 min
Caitlin Berve recently published a collection of modern fairy tales called When Magic Calls . She's also written two other anthologies and has another one in the works. While she's not writing, Caitlin runs her own writing business and coaches other writers on how they can improve their books and their craft. In addition to all that, she also edits memoir and fiction. I recently had the chance to catch up with Caitlin and was fascinated to hear how she balances both her writing business and crea...
Oct 28, 2021•30 min
Charlene Wang is a product manager at Google. In other words, she's got a hectic, demanding day job, and yet she found time to write and publish her new book, Model Breakers. Charlene also runs a popular newsletter on Substack called LivingOS. Last year, Charlene set herself a goal of writing 200 articles in 200 days, and so far, she's exceeded that goal. It's fantastic to hear about a writer who's built a side hustle while working a day job. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us work from hom...
Oct 25, 2021•32 min
My guest this week is retired clinical psychologist Pam Munter. Pam's written four books and had more than 150 personal essays published over the years. Her latest book is Fading Fame: Women of a Certain Age in Hollywood , a collection of ten short stories and two plays about the troubled lives of strong and talented women who survived #MeToo. Pam also writes a lot of non-fiction and memoirs. In our interview, she talks about her approach to writing short stories, plays, and personal essays and ...
Oct 21, 2021•33 min
In this episode, I catch up with Brian Finney to understand how he transitioned from writing non-fiction to writing fiction and how he manages his day. Many writers work on the side while working a demanding day job. Brian has gone the other way. He’s now a professor emeritus at California State University, which means he doesn’t lecture at the university, so he has time to write his psychological thrillers during the week. I was interested in how somebody would approach having a massive chunk o...
Oct 18, 2021•26 min
Many writers like to work within one genre or niche. They write thriller books or police procedurals, or mystery books. Other writers find working within one genre or niche confining, and they like to try different types of writing to see where it takes them. In this episode, I recently had the chance to catch up with Jenn Ashton, and she’s done just that. She’s published poetry, children’s books, journalism, historical research, technical manuals, and she’s also an accomplished visual artist. I...
Oct 14, 2021•31 min
This week, I got to catch up with somebody I've wanted to talk to for a long time. David Farland is the author of over 50 books, including The Runelords series. He's worked with top fantasy and science fiction authors like Brandon Sanderson and Stephenie Meyer, and he's also written Million Dollar Outlines. In this interview, we talk about Robert Heinlein's Rules for Writers. Several years ago, I came across these rules after being frustrated writing and rewriting the same short stories repeated...
Oct 11, 2021•30 min
In this episode, I chat with therapist Charley Wininger. He's the author of the new book, Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA . Writing about the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic substances is pretty controversial, depending on where you live in the world. It's a topic that I'd like to write about, but I'm not quite there yet, so I was fascinated to hear from an author who's not afraid to write about something controversial. Charley started writing in his mid-60s. He's now ...
Oct 07, 2021•30 min
Meredith Heller is the author of Write a Poem, Save Your Life: A Guide for Teens, Teachers, and Writers of All Ages . It's an instructional book for anybody who wants to write or teach writing poetry. If you want to learn more about writing poetry, it's a title I recommend. In this episode, Meredith told me how she combines her career as a working poet with that of a massage therapist and teacher. Meredith explains how having a job can inform your craft and can give you source material for your ...
Oct 04, 2021•30 min
Colin Dayan is the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. She’s written extensively about Haiti and Guantanamo Bay and has written not one but two memoirs. Colin chatted to me about her memoirs and how, if you spend a lot of time engaged in one type of writing to pay the bills as Colin did with academic writing and research, you should still go ahead and try on a completely different form of writing. After all, who knows where you’ll end up in 10 or 15 years, an...
Sep 30, 2021•31 min
Terry McDougall is an executive and career coach and the author of the new book, Winning the Game of Work. In this episode of the podcast, I spoke to Terry about her fascinating idea of seeing work as a type of game. She considers her book as part of her calling card, and she had some fantastic insights into how the book is potentially helping her find more clients for her coaching practice. If you have an interesting work story and you want to go out on your own as a consultant or coach, then w...
Sep 27, 2021•31 min
Recently I caught up with podcaster, blogger, and author Amy Isaman. Amy taught creative writing for years until she finally answered her calling and wrote her first book in her 40's. She's written both mystery books and historical fiction, and she believes that writers should try writing in different genres. After all, readers don't confine themselves to one genre. She puts a case forward for writers to flex their creative muscles and pick a genre they've not written in before, whether that's a...
Sep 23, 2021•31 min
My guest in this episode is Roger Reuff. He developed the concept of the story having a soul. He wrote a book about it and has a course of the same name at soulofyourstory.com. Roger is multi-talented and has written several books and screenplays, one of which made into onto big screen, The Big Kahuna starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. Roger starts our interview with an overview of who he is and how he came up with his idea for finding the soul of a story. In this episode we discuss: What w...
Sep 20, 2021•35 min
My guest this week is the author of the Sky Fall series of books, Joseph Bendoski. Joseph's background is in screenwriting which he eventually left behind as he found the conventions of that particular genre too restrictive. When he switched to writing novels, he found it a more freeing format. He was initially undecided whether to write fiction or non-fiction. He made his decision after looking at the book sales for Malcolm Gladwell and George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin...
Sep 16, 2021•32 min
Writing can be a lonely business. Sitting alone for several hours, just you and your words. This is when a writing community or collaboration can be of real benefit. In this episode, I chat with Niki Hardy from Hope Writers and the author of Breathe Again. How to Live Well When Life Falls Apart. Niki talks to me about how she found the encouragement that she needed from Hope Writers. She believes that without their support, her book would never have been published. In this episode we discuss: Wh...
Sep 13, 2021•29 min
Will building your personal brand help you to sell more books and courses or find you more clients as a writer? Personal branding is something that content creators should consider. I learned the hard way that building a brand isn't about spending hundreds of dollars on a fancy logo but is more about associating yourself with a specific topic or creating a name for yourself within a niche. In this episode, I chat with Pamela Wilson, who you may know from Copyblogger and her own business, Big Bra...
Sep 10, 2021•34 min
Simon King is the author of over 30 books across five different series, including the Sam Rader series, the non-fiction Prison Days series, and the MAX series. Before he became an author, Simon worked in a maximum-security prison in Australia, and he only published his first book in 2018. In this episode, Simon explains how he went from working a demanding day job, working nights and shifts, to publishing up to 12 books a year over three years. Simon also believes that it’s essential to set a cl...
Sep 06, 2021•28 min
Could you write a memoir? I used to think that you couldn’t write a memoir until you were old and at the end of your life. Your memoir would be one big book that would describe everything that happened from when you were born until the present moment. But, you can write a memoir about a particular theme, topic, or a single event in your life. Marion Roach Smith is a memoir coach, and she runs a course in the art of memoir writing. In this episode, we talk about what makes a good memoir and how y...
Sep 02, 2021•33 min
Cary Bergeron is the founder of the book promotion service Crave Books. In this episode, we get into what it takes to sell a book today and how a book promotion service can get you in front of more readers. Cary talks about three fantastic insights if you’re getting ready to publish your first book: Does it have a good cover? Does it have reviews? Does it have a good description? It would help if you got all three to convince somebody on Amazon, Kobo, or Google, or wherever they’re buying your b...
Aug 26, 2021•26 min
If you're working as a freelance writer and want to earn a full-time wage, I recommend copywriting. Copywriting is essentially writing words that sell products and services. It's a great discipline to help you figure out how to condense your ideas into articles, e-mails, and stories that you will publish online. In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Aly Goulet. She specializes in the B2B and SaaS industries. She talks about the importance of side projects and how and why she is building a ...
Aug 19, 2021•32 min
This episode of the podcast has a very special guest. Bernard Huang is the co-founder of the popular content tool Clearscope. In our conversation, Bernard explains how Clearscope works and how it can help you grow your website and help you find more readers for your non-fiction articles. You'll also find some practical tips on building a niche website, learning about content optimization tools, and increasing traffic to your website. Bernard also tells the fascinating story behind how he founded...
Aug 12, 2021•44 min
In 2016, Dorit published the award-winning memoir, Accidental Soldier about her time in service with the Israeli Defense Forces. Here, Dorit talks about how she balances doing something with clear commercial intent with doing something creative, like writing memoirs about her time in active service. If you find time to do both every day, then you will advance your career, you’ll get paid, and you’ll also improve at your craft. Who doesn’t want those things? I kicked off the interview by asking D...
Aug 05, 2021•32 min
Social media is an excellent way of finding readers and finding clients if you’re a freelance writer. And, if you create content for social media platforms like Quora, you can build up a library of content that you can use and refer to over time. But, how exactly should you spend time on social media, what tools should you use, and how can you do it? Neal Schaffer has the answer to these questions and more. He is an expert in influencer marketing and has written more than five books, including h...
Jul 29, 2021•25 min
