The Ochelli Effect 8-26-2024 Albert Lanier

show many times betteran journalists. We've had him do commentary on a wide variety of topics, sometimes things that are in the news, sometimes that are things of historical interest, media analysis. Even it's been interesting, I mean, unsolved mysteries, dead singers. Okay, we've gone into the wide world or the wild world of independent writing and how that works. Even a little discussion about Telsea Gabbard now and then,

which she's come up in the news recently. And boy, we could talk to him today about the interesting changes and currents out there in the potus race. Right. We could ask him what he thinks of RFK, and we could ask him what he thinks about a guy putting a dead bear in Central Park? Is it Central Park? One of the Parks anyway a dead bear and ten years later telling Roseanne that story. What does he think about the media and the way that those things get treated.

We could go over all that, but we're not going to tonight. Instead, we're gonna talk to mister Lanier about his craft about writing. We've certainly discussed that a bit over time, because look, the tools of the trade have changed. There's a million substacks in the naked Internet, and he's got a couple of them. He has a YouTube channel as well. Okay, and just in case I forget to mention it later, if you go to writer Albert Lanier, that's the name of the channel, or if you take

a look, it's at Albert Lanier. Okay, at writer Albert Lanier, excuse me, thirty four thirty four. I'll give you the links in the show notes to all this stuff, and also put him in the chat room so you can follow mister Lanier's work, or at least this part of

his work, because again, independent writer. He's written for magazines, newspapers mostly you know, stuff in Hawaii where he's from, which, you know, I kind of wish I'd been able to talk to him about some of the Hawaiian stories that maybe have been going on stuff that was happening closer to home for him recently. But I haven't been able to get him lately, and then I am able to get him on this topic. So let's talk about writing and maybe how it's changed, how it's still the same.

Is it still an art form? Are there any real writers left out there? Is my question, just like are there any real journalists anymore? It's getting strange, folks, it really is. Not only is the information strange in the information age, but the people that are delivering the information are getting strange in my opinion. But then again, that's just me and Elon Musk, who owns a whole platform

for social media and information distribution. He had technical difficulties getting himself together to talk to Donald Trump, but RFK Junior had no problem getting together with Donald Trump to talk about things. Why am I bringing all this up?

I don't even know. Let's talk about real things, okay, and some real brass tacks when it comes to what is it like to sort of a transposition, right to transition from the digital world into the new digital world and the age of all of this writing being shared everywhere and again, if you go to his YouTube channel, he gives you some instructional ideas about writing, describe some things that he's done in the past, etc. And other things. Plus oh podcast on substack right which you can find.

And he's got a couple of substacks out there, but the one that I want you to follow is at Albert Lanier One believe it or not, and that it'll pop up the week. The week, oh excuse me, this is the week that is is another one, but at Albert Lanier One substack has the podcast. From what I understand. But then again, if you find Albert Lanier on a bunch of things, even the stuff that I've referenced in the past, I would advise you to read it. It's

worth a read. And I also notice a couple of people that have subscribed to my stuff subscribe to his stuff over here, over there, et cetera as well they should Anyways, mister Lanier, I know that introduction sounded strange, but you are a veteran journalist who is now in a completely new environment with new tools, etc. So you know what is what is new, what is the same, what is old? But first, how are you doing tonight?

I'll get into that, hopefully in about a minute or two kind of the differences, but I think you've kind of articulated part of what's occurred. If I have to bring up a motif or a or anything about being a writer, for me, it has been not simply change,

but also transformation. So it's a different experience. If I had to describe my career as a writer overall, the first twenty two years writing for publications, and I call it publications, writing writing for newspapers, writing for magazine for twenty two years as a freelance writer and as a journalist, and then the past seven or eight years has been online only, so it's been writing digitally, so I'm writing

for my own outlets. I wrote a blog on medium dot com for about over four years, and then I recently been on substack. I set up my original substack, that is the Week that is in twenty twenty one, and I kind of wrote an article, and then I kind of had other things crop up and I was taken away from that. And then I came back to it unexpectedly last year and I wrote a few articles there, and then this year I started a brand new substack

called Final Cut, which is all about the movies. And I've been here talking about my return to writing about movies. So it's to describe the thirty years that I've had as a writer. The first twenty two years I've been writing for publications and the second I've been writing for the online world digitally. And what I realized recently is that these are two very different experiences. These are two

very different aspects, and I think the difference. One of the differences is in twenty twenty four, I cannot do what I did in nineteen ninety four. When I started in the nineties, there was such a thing. The Internet didn't exist. As the portal, as the as sort of the business center for writing for writers of many types

and for writing it for other things. There really was no Internet, certainly not an internet as we know it in nineteen ninety four, right, And so in nineteen ninety four, when I was writing for newspapers and magazines, local newspapers, local magazines in honolug Way, I had to go and get on my at a word processor at the time, and my word processor in take twenty minutes for that to print my piece out and then stick it in a Manila envelope and meal it out. I can't do

that in twenty twenty four. The way that I write things in twenty twenty four is I take out my phone that I'm talking into right now, I go to my email. Well, actually yeah, I'll go to my email I and then I go to substack because I write on substack primarily. And I write my piece and go over my piece and then upload that, and then I have to start the process of sending that to Facebook and all the other platforms, and then I have to do videos on YouTube. Writer Albert Lanier being one of

them on YouTube. Well, actually it is the one that's it and so doing the promo video for that. In fact, I just did yesterday. I just did a promo video on YouTube and a promo video on TikTok for my thirtieth anniversary article on Final Cut on Substack, which is called the discreete and Subtle Charm of Film Going. So it's really about watching movies. It's a smuggled, circuitous way of writing about film because my Final Cut is about movies.

And I couldn't write a piece about being a writer for thirty years when I'm doing a you know, a substack about movies. So I really kind of did it circuitously and you know, smuggled it into writing about movies. But that's what's different is I now go to a side I write everything myself. Now here's something that people probably don't understand. We're living in an era now, I would say when you talk about changes, and I think

it was a nice way to introduce it. The changes are now because of the growth of things like AI. I don't know about chat, GPP, per se, but AI artificial intelligence. Now people like me and writers we have competitions, and the competition is no longer humans, it's artificial. It's robotic possibly.

instead of putting it in the Manila envelope. And there's still an editor, et cetera. But now there is this lack of a sort of clearing house. Not only do you lack the editor because now you're your own editor, but you also lack the clearing house, which was helpful although it did control some of what you could write. You know, your editor didn't want to print certain portions of what you wanted to put out whatever, you wouldn't get it out there. You had to argue with them,

et cetera. But you know, so you gained that freedom, but you also gained the freedom of not having this singular place where people were already going all the time. You have to build that following yourself. So now it's as if there's a million magazines instead of you know, the leading ones at the newsstand, it's now there's you know, instead of just a couple of leading newspapers in your area, there's a million of them online, and there's apps that

feed these things to people, et cetera, et cetera. So now you do your own promotion, and even the guy who does the best promotion might not gain the audience that he could have gained with with somebody that has a pre existing following. Right, so you're in a position where you're way more independent. You can do whatever you want. I mean, some publications might have not given you the job of reviewing movies, but you could give yourself that job. Now,

can you get people to come and read it? And oh, by the way, can you figure out a way to monetize this? There's one hundred ways to do that. You know. You could do the buy me a coffee method, right, which is, you know what if you kick in a little bit or you support me on Patreon, And different writers have had different levels of success or lack thereof by doing that. Some of them have even decided, Look,

I'm not going to publish a book anymore. I'll publish my book online as a blog or as a multi part series coming through Patreon, and the people that want this can buy it as it's being written even and they can purchase it by being a supporter, and you can continue to be monetized that way. Now I know nothing about your monetization. If you made even a penny, you know, since going out and writing post retirement, I don't know, but I would say that, well, go ahead.

or people who want to be writers or anything. The number one question that I've been asked is not how do I get published, or how do I perfect a good pro style for a novel, or how do I get a style that will get me get my ideas for freelance articles accepted by magazine editors. It's how do you get paid.

I've been a freelance writer. And to quote someone like Harlan Ellison, I don't take a piss without getting paid, you know, you know, to quote Harlan again from the documentary let me see, God, I can't remember the documentary something about dreams. I apologize for that quotes, but it was a documentary about Harlan Nelson. I know it is on YouTube and you can watch the video there called pay the Writer. Just as a suggestion to people, I don't want to just promote my stuff.

But it's interesting because he existed in a time where yeah, you could demand to get paid.

even put out as a piece of marketable content. And again, just like you as a writer, you can sell it yourself in a way limits what is available as far as you know, the big money and being paid easily, but it also expands your ability to get seen and heard by others. And Ellison, again, this is a creative writer, not a guy who's doing information or journalism or anything like that. And he's one of the best known names

but there are a million guys out there. As a matter of fact, there are people creating Star Trek stuff that is like they're like fan videos at this point where they've created further Adventures of Star Trek authorized.

now confronted with this problem. Right. We had the recent strike where they talked about this where you know, scripts could literally be turned out, you know, by these AIS, right, and then we also have you know, these news organizations.

There's been discussions about maybe they're turning out articles. There are entire say, academic papers being turned out which are effectively book lengthd pieces on history, totally turned out by AI because they're being fed a bit of information and now the writer almost being taken out of the equation.

It seems like no matter what kind of writer you are, you're not only faced with this sort of atomized industry where indeed you have the ability to go out and do a lot of things for yourself, but you no longer have the establishment areas that supported the writers very well. But on top of that, you have competition from the

non human competitor which can now take over. Like I guarantee you you can go to chat GPT no offense to you and have them write in one of these movie reviews, right, and you can just give it the movie and tell it write me a movie review that is whatever you want. You want it to be positive, negative, in depth. You tell it what to do and it'll spit out something based on what it can you know, source right, and it'll turn around and probably spit out

a review for you in ten seconds. And you know, I'm not saying that it's going to be better or anything else like that, but.

for you know, fifty years. There are guys out there doing Twilight Zone reviews and original series Star Trek reviews and stuff like that. And in the movie section, there are people out there doing more obscure like obscure horror movie reviews, believe it or not, and that niche from the human which you're never gonna get, you know, the the really textured stuff from these sort of niche projects. Some of them have some of the most devoted followers.

Like I said, there are guys, probably twenty guys on YouTube alone that just do retro reviews of like Star Trek. You know, they're just now getting to Deep Space nine, which was done in the nineties, right, and they're doing retro reviews.

on the way on the ladder down. But the point is that even with the artificial stuff that is going to be generated here, uh, there is still room for real creativity, even in things that you know, you might think have already been gone over, that somebody's already done.

It's a weird area. So as a writer, I'm just wondering, you know, what it is you see there, because obviously, you know, you could do you could do one hundred different things as a writer, and with somebody who honed certain skills as a journalist, who owned certain skills as a movie reviewer. There's a lot of different ways for

you to go right. But like I said, I think people fail to understand how there is a great deal more freedom and an app parallel running alongside of that is that there is you know, on the one hand, there's more of an opportunity. Anybody in the world can be seen by the world. True, but while they get seen or heard is yet another question. It seems to me like, you know, even if you can successfully do something and do it well and put it out there, it used to be if you can get it out

there and it's well done, it will succeed. Used to be kind of like the idea here, and that was in the music business, that was in the filmmaking business. That was in you know, if I create a TV show and I film a pilot, I can sell the pilot, et cetera, et cetera, or I can sell a script.

But no longer is that the case. You could do something very well, put it together, get it out there, and if you don't catch the right traction or you don't get the right attention, it might fall into obscurity or it could be caught on even if it's not that great. I see some stuff doing extremely well that doesn't deserve to Okay, let's be honest.

it celebrating my anniversary this month. Was the Facebook page for a society professional journalist for freelancing, and I'm on there and they asked me to do a post about the differences between nineteen ninety four and two thousand and four, twenty twenty four, and because I've kind of chimed in and I've written some things there and so I did that post and that was nice. And so what I note about the difference is I think I've said a

little of this earlier. But in the nineties it was about the work I was a freelance writer, and I was a freelance journalist, and I was a local and regional freelancer. And back then it was about as it had been for a long time. It was about the writing. It was about the work you produced articles writing for magazines. I'll take that as an example. I wrote magazine pieces. My job was to write the pieces, you know, and to break it down simplest way not to break it down.

It is about the story. So you have to get the story, do the interviews and the research and get the facts. Then you write the story, and then you send the story, and then you wait for the story to get published so that you could get the check while you're onto the next story. So it's all about the story. You get the story, you write the story, you set the story, and wait for the jack and you're on the next story. Now the story isn't unimportant.

It is important, but it's no longer. The story isn't the end like it was in the nineties and the early two thousands, at least in my experience, it's the beginning. So when I write something, it's a start, it's not the end. Because when I was writing for magazines, since I use that as an example, no magazine that I wrote for ever said to me, oh great, yeah you're done,

it's going to get printed. We need you to go to bookstores so that you consider it a table and signed copies of your article and talk about your article to the people at the story. That didn't happen. You didn't promote magazine articles that way. Certainly didn't promote newspaper stories that ways. Can go and promote books. I know, I know they still have signings bookstores sometimes that they're still bookstores. But see that didn't happen for me as

a magazine writer. Well certainly not newspaper journalists. Well, I have to go into the mode and market. So if people ask me, hey did you, oh you wrote this article, where can I find it? I tell them what magazine or what newspaper you have to promote and market? It wasn't your job. Your job was to write. You're a journalist. You're a writer. Your job is to write the article. Right.

and TikTok. You know that one piece that I wrote will take two or three days to promote, not entire entire days, but spread out right. And I do that to keep myself safe so I won't go nuts or or I won't get exhausted because you have to go and promote and market. And so when you talk about the differences, it used to be about from my perspective as a freelance writer, it was about the work. I know it's different for authors too, because of the growth

of self publishing. It's not you know, when you could get a book published, even if it's a small publisher, you know you didn't have to do all the cartwheels, and you didn't have to do all the tightrope walking, and you didn't have to do all the all the of spinning around in order to get this book out. When you self publish a book, now you're in charge of that cover. You're in charge of how many copies you're going to print out. You're in you know, you've

got to make sure that that it did. You've got to make sure that you're out there promoting that. I mean, you could hire people to promote it, but you've got to have the money. So it's going to cost you money to print it. It's going to cost you money to promote it. Positive cost you money to get someone to edit it. You know, it's going to cost you money. And you still have to work.

I realized the old days are vanishing. Now I've got to get out there and do it, and it takes more effort, It takes more, it takes a greater amount of work to do that well, there's another difference is thirty years that I've seen. That's part of the difference.

the storefront. If it's about a place, right, they have a file photo of the street. They have a file phot of the individual. Maybe it was taken last year that you're writing about. They might already have the visual aspects. Now today you have to take your visual aspects and package it in with your writing and spread that around so that it catches people's eyes. Look, if you put things up on Instagram and you don't have a photo to go with it, you know it's going to get

less attention. So a visual image is helpful. Even if it's a cartoon that goes along with it. It doesn't matter if you have a visual image to go along with it, that's part of your marketing now too. That used to have nothing to do with you as a writer. Usually there was actually a job called photojournalism, you know, where there were people that that's what they did. They got pictures of the news of it. They got pictures

of the newsworthy people. Now in the nineties we saw the explosion of the paparazzi and the people that were constantly following people around and they would get, you know, the rare photo of somebody kind of you know, had a character, or maybe they caught somebody was drunk somewhere and they got them on video, or they got them on you know, in a photograph, et cetera, et cetera,

and they were constantly hounding people. Now that was a change, but it used to be the guys like that would try and get these photos and they might sell some of them to some publications. Again as a freelancer, they might sell them to be file photos for an article to be determined later. They might sell stuff again if it was a news event, maybe they got pictures from the scene as it happened, whether it was a car wreck or it was you know, a house burned down,

it didn't matter. They might have gotten the event as it was occurring, captured part of it, wore correspondence. There were people like that that literally went out into the battlefield along with soldiers and took pictures of, you know, stuff that was happening. He'd like say, in Vietnam, we saw stuff from the battlefield. You know, wild thing. That whole job is pretty much gone. Now people have their own,

you know, their own phones with them. You as a journalist, you as a writer of any kind, you're called upon, why don't you add in the photos? And you need them to actually distribute your stuff. So this whole thing is a completely different animal from what you started with in the nineties. Or am I am I wrong? I mean, the only thing that's true is no good writing.

things I missed is not having all the responsibility. Right nowadays, I have all the responsibility because of subtext, and also with my blog. When I wrote my blog, that's when I learned about it. Again, I think you could just focus on the work. You know, your job was to write articles. And again I kind of miss not having

to do everything else. And I think what prepared me really for this world occasionally enough, was, you know, coming back here to Wai and writing on the island of Muloti for the Muloti Dispatch, where I had to do a whole bunch of things because there's only a couple of us running that small town newspaper, you know, having to take photos, having to take the reader of that camera and put it a chip and put it on the reader, upload the photo, write the captions, write captions

and items about other stories, write your own stories right, and also on the small paper. I also on Sundays we were there looking at the mastaff. We were looking as writers looking at this and looking to see there any mistakes. So we're copy editing as well. That was my experience when I was what thirty eight, and I

had a long time ago which I never had. I think that helped prepare me for this world that we see with substack and blogs and websites and all this as I'm not lost in the weeds now, and I realized, oh, that really prepared me because it allowed my mind to be flexible and react because these are jobs I never had. When you write for newspapers of any sort, you do not write headlines. I don't know if people understand that you're the writer. Your job is not to write headlines.

You may write a title and send it in, but that's not your job. I have to write headlines for everything that I do and everything else. You're doing jobs that as a journalist and as a writer, you didn't do before. I don't know if there are guys. I'm sure there are guys who have done the things I've done in my past as a freelance journalist, as a writer for newspapers and magazine and are are doing stuff

online now, and you know, you have to adjust. And I think having worked at that small newspaper on another island helped me adjust when I look back on it, because I had to do all these other things and I'm going, now I go and I do substack and it's kind of like a variation of that. Well, that's what's easier because the technology is all there.

mainly where I was interested. I found that, you know, at one time, radio used to have to carry their own tape recorders. I found that, you know, TV guys in the early days of TV, a lot of times it was, yeah, a little team of guys because the cameras were so heavy. But if they sent out a remote group, you did a lot of that work yourself. You had to prepare and bring this stuff in and bring it to them raw, and you knew how to

do a bunch of other things. Now, as the mediums progressed, and as newspapers got bigger and you got away from the very local, small operations, then there were a whole lot of jobs. There was a guy he might have just been writing headlines and doing some editing. He might have been a copy editor and a headline creator. Then there was a guy they called the editor, and he was the editor in chief, and he was the guy who was supposed to oversee everything, you know, And there

were various jobs. But as this stuff shrank, it almost went full circle. Even when I looked at TV recently, the local Fox affiliate, I actually got in an interaction with some of the local TV affiliates, right, and they sent out reporters that you would see on TV, you know, the remote reporter. They didn't come out with a team. They came out in their own car. They set up a little stand and had either a phone or a tablet with them, and boy, they were filming their own footage.

They would film their own interviews, whip out a microphone and talk to people on the scene, take their stuff, run back to the station themselves, okay, and that thing would be on the air two hours later. And I'm looking at it going you know, it seems like it all went full circle to where there was a whole lot of jobs and there was you know, ten guys doing a job at one point. Whether it was a

newspaper or a broadcast outlet, it doesn't matter. And as the digital came in, as the internet age came in, all of that stuff where it expanded into all these different specialty jobs in the news business, in the information business, in the newspaper business, in all of it, all of those jobs shrank in order to compete with the fact that online you were now responsible for everything yourself, so they didn't need the huge overhead to create ten times

the material. So everything went full circle. You started out having to do everything yourself, then you got a team. Then as the business changed, the team went away. Now you're back to doing it all yourself. And it seems to me like almost all of it except the huge, huge corporate groups. You know, CNN doesn't just send out one guy.

it unless I needed a job or something. I thought a well, hip pocket, I'll have that as a hip pocket, professionally hit pocket job. And the goal was really to I don't know, take two or three years or five years, I don't know how many, but do a few years at a job, save some money, and then quit and start writing manuscripts and try to get novels published. And because I didn't really think I would be a working writer in my twenties, I was never an idealist. I

was a pragmatist, very pregnant. And what happened was I became a working writer in my twenties because I was working in radio. I was a board up because I had done radio in college, the news at a college radio station another campus, and I was playing all these rockneys at Beetlestone stores. And I'm looking for another job in radio because I left that job. I'm looking for another job in radio, and this idea of freelance came to me. I don't know where it came from. It's

like an unsolved mystery. I still don't know. And that's what got me to start writing to be a writer. I wasn't looking to be a writer at the time. I thought I would be a writer closer to thirty, or try to be. And I try to get a novel published, and I try to get a short stories done, and maybe you know, some other kinds of writing. Those primarily what I wanted to do. So I never really expected to be a freelance writer or a journalist. I

wasn't looking to be a journalist, frank thing. I study literature. I didn't want to deal with journalism. So life never quite goes the way you intended to go, really works the way you thicket's going to work. And that was the way for me, and that was what happened to me. As a writer, right, you know, I was intending to be a novelist, a short story writer. I ended up being a journalist and a freelance under Well.

a local newspaper, you know, as a backup. Oh no, you won't work in radio as a board op maybe, But would you be able to do that and do any writing? Probably not, not with the way the radio business is. I mean, seriously, none of those mediums exist the way they did. They still exist, but none of those job descriptions are like that. It's all so different.

it's harder for journalists too, because you're not protected. Like I had no idea what people thought about me the twenty two year that was a freelance journalist. I had no clue. I didn't know because you didn't have the interactivity of the Internet the way that you do now that I have no clue what anyone would say unless they came up to me at an eventae that I read your article and I liked it or I didn't like it.

back on this, how do you feel about it? You know, what is it that you'd like to say? And also again I want to point guys that you can go and check out his substack and his YouTube channel. Uh, you're gonna have stuff coming up. I'm sure that's gonna not necessarily talk about this, but also you have the the final Cut, right, which is gonna You're gonna continue with the movie reviews and all of that. And I heard you.

For me, the twentieth anniversary actually meant more to me personally because at one point I was wiped out financially, which I don't really talk about, but I went through financial hard times and when the twentieth anniversary came, that really meant something to me that that personally is the most gratifying because Strangely, the tenth anniversary that I had, I didn't celebrate. I just because I quit the business for like four months. Because I never intended to be

a freelancer. Like I mentioned before, I was going to be a novelist, short story writer, and I felt I became a freelancer because I needed to work. I was looking for radio gigs and again got the idea and needed work. I said, Okay, I'll try this freelance stuff. And I went basically overnight, kind of overnight, from being an out of work radio guide to being a working freelance writer. There was that fairly quick a transition, kind of sudden, and you know, it's like not leaving a

slot machine that pays off. You know. I just kept working and working and working. One of the things I tell anybody in terms of being any kind of a writer, I don't care what kind of writer you are, screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, journalist, whatever work is important. You have to work, you have to be able. It's funny because I was doing this. I think I mentioned that in one post on this group that I was on on Facebook.

But another aspect that I talk about, which I guess is controversial to some is like I mentioned before, I get the question I've got asked is how do you get paid? You have to be able to sustain yourself financially. If you're going to be a professional writer, full time writer, even a part time writer, you have to get paid.

And this offends a lot of people. They don't like hearing this because they think that there is some kind of purest idealized atmosphere, like it's pure oxygen or something like there is some kind of completely sure way of looking at writing and money is you know, money ruins that or it isn't necessary for you an alternative paid.

it works. Like a lot of people figure that because the guy like Joe Rogan is making a ton of money with the Joe Rogan experience, Okay, uh, that podcasting is easy to make money at Okay, it's just easy to do Uh, and there are people out there that see that. There are some online writers who have a lot of support, and they do get paid pretty well. Some of them are paid, you know, for their books and whatnot, and they get good book contracts and so

on and so forth. And a lot of people think, after looking at the one successful guy, that that's the way that industry works. There's a lot of people that think, oh, well, he's got a website with me, he's got a website, he's got this, he's got that, he must be doing just fine financially. I'm not. It doesn't work that way. You don't automatically show up and go here's my podcaster card, now pay me. You have to build your own way of getting paid creating any kind of content anywhere.

a website and I have this. No, that is not paying. Anybody can have a website. Anybody could start a podcast. You know. Anybody can start a podcast pretty much. There are plenty of free platforms. Anybody can.

people you see on TV. Uh, you know, used to it used to be if you saw him on TV, they were usually doing pretty well. Uh. Not always the case, but a whole lot more of the case than it is today in this age. Just because you exist out there in content land doesn't mean that you're getting paid. It doesn't mean that you're getting a living wage or you know, the guy who's working at McDonald's is getting

paid better than you. In most cases, even when a lot of people think you're doing well, you know, even when you have sponsors, people go, oh, well you have a sponsor or whatever. A lot of people are getting paid on commissions. You know they're not even getting so you know they're getting pennies. So purview or let me.

you're getting a good loyalty rate. If you're dealing with the track publisher, tragical publisher, small, big, whatever, you've got a decent royalty rate, it's selling well, and maybe you've gotten an advance so and not every not every published author gets an advance these days, so you get it. If you're getting an advance, plus you have a royalty, and royalty is okay, and your books are selling, you're able to survive. That's what you have to understand.

for everything that you write. And that may not be something people want to hear, but you can't lose money on every writing project that you're doing because if you're spending more money, if there's money that needs to be spent on it, then you are making it. You're in the red and not the black, and it won't be sustainable. You have to find a way to make money off of everything that you're writing. And that's one of the pieces of advice that I have. And one of the

things I also say is never write for free. Always write for a fee. No one should be writing for free in this day and age. I'm sorry, I know there are people who don't agree that people don't like this. If you want to be a foal, a part time writer, professional writer, or any kind of writer, you should be getting paid for everything that you're writing that's getting published.

podcast or you as a writer or whatever. Like in other words, if I had a PR guy that I hired for you and got you to go on you know, the bigger talk shows all right, and got you out in front of larger audiences all the time, like I made you a presence one of the talking heads that shows up because I'm a PR guy who's constantly getting you into that. Or I hire a PR guy to do that and I make Albert Lanier a household name. Then that means what you write is now more valuable.

You create a podcast, it's more valuable because you have the advantage of all of that publicity. And guys like Joe Rogan started with that. They started with somebody pushing them, and he also got in at the right time, before this flood of like everybody and their mother can start a podcast kind of situation. He got in at the right time and he was also backed. But many of the authors who got those better book contracts got them

because their name was constantly out there. They were being invited to the round tables, they were sitting on the Sunday shows, they were doing c SPAN, whatever it was, depending on their particular you know, Niche again, right, they might have been on the View, They might have been on many radio shows, pretty much doing a tour of all the clear channel radio shows. You know, they got on the Howard Stern Show and made a couple outrageous statements.

They sat down with Joe Rogan and smoked a joint, whatever it is. Right, they got out there and they were constantly being pushed. They also have social media managers who you know, again, if you can afford to pay a few people, you can start off with a running start in any content creation. There's cheaper ways to do it, and there's a spectrum of ways to do this. Obviously, you know, for a couple hundred bucks for a couple thousand bucks for many thousands of dollars. If it's invested

in it is still standard that way. There is still something to be said for having a group of people that take care of your promotion while you take care of your craft. You know, is it the actor's craft that gets them a lot of stuff? No, it's the fact that somebody's taking care that people don't forget about this guy, that they turn him into a household name or woman, right, that they keep their face out there, they keep their name out there, they keep them out

there as a commodity. They make sure that articles are printed about them, etc. Et cetera. All of these things go on, and if you have the ability to invest in it, you can get a return if it's invested properly. But for the majority of us that are diy okay, really do it yourself, because we don't have a budget to hire pr people, to hire a publicist, et cetera. This is what you're going to get. And there is a huge population of people out there doing it themselves.

So you know, there you go. That is something that didn't used to exist in the ecosystem as well. And I think it's interesting because you've actually gotten to see it all in a way, you know, the sort of height of the standardized corporate man.

not what I want to write about. It's what I want to write about that I can sell to an editor and publisher and a magazine so that I can write it and get paid. That's what it's about. Now. With the blog, it was a whole different world. For the first time, I'm writing things I want to write about,

and so it's very different, you know. And with substack it's the same thing, except it's different because it's a digital newsletter as opposed to a blog, to different forms really, but today it's all about what I'm interested in and what I like and what I'm intrigued with. And in the past it was about what I was hired to write because I often wrote an assignment and what I was looking to write what I could sell in terms of writing, and I didn't have any problem with that

because that was the job. You know. I used to define myself as a freelancer. Again, another controversial aspect for some people. They liked this. I used to call myself a hit man. I used to call myself a mercenary. I used to call myself a soldier of fortune. You know, that makes me sound like I'm one of the members of the A team to an extent, or what have you. But that's how I used to define myself as a freelancer. You know, I'm writing to get paid. I'm writing to

make money. And one of the things that I tell anyone these days is professionals get paid. Amateurs get napped. Again, you don't need to make a lot of money. So I tell people. One of the things I tell people, the advice I give it recently is you have to get paid if you're going to be a writer.

it is. A twenty something years there as a freelance journalist, but then another eight doing it online and in this new reality which has even changed during the time from when you started to now, you know, from twenty fourteen to today, it's a different thing. And you know doing these radio shows and podcasts, you've done that for a bit too, which is something you wouldn't have even bothered to do in the nineties most likely.

and so I might as well stick with this. And that's what I've done. Every year. I do a few podcasts and talk shows every year. I've done that since two thousand and nine. And even though I retired, actually there's more of a reason for me to do a show like this, that's the thought. I thought I would have less reason new So with the blog, I realized you've got to promote, which hadn't really done on shows.

And then with substack, I realized, you know, the stuff that you write when you get on a podcast or radio show or any kind of show you're listening. You have an audience that's listening, right, and you've got to reach that audience and try to get them to read your stuff. So now you're at a point where you have to get people to read your stuff. You have to get people to actually take a look at what

you've written. It's not enough for you to write them write it because with a magazine or newspaper or anything else, they had a built in audience, right, and the audience would.

I advise you check it out. I've given you the links in the live chatroom at ochelli dot com, but also it'll be in the show notes with the podcast for those of you who don't hear the show live or bother with the website, and you're just getting it off your feed, which is all other things. Some people just get stuff off of their feed, right anyway, Another discussion with veteran journalist Albert Lanier and always happy to have you along. Thank you for doing this with me tonight, sir, well.

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