Writing Historical Fiction And Non-Fiction With Emily E K Murdoch

Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration, and information on writing craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint, and lots more at thecreativepen.com. And that's pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 775 of the podcast and it is Friday the 11th of October 2024 as I record this.

In today's show, I'm talking to Emily E.K. Murdoch about writing historical fiction and non-fiction, traditional publishing and indie, multiple streams of income, book marketing, personal branding and more. So that's coming up in the interview section.

In writing and publishing things, on the self-publishing advice blog this week, which is run by the Alliance of Independent Authors, there's an article on planning for retirement, which quotes me amongst others. The article goes through why it's important to plan ahead and why your books may not be the future income you expect them to be. As Tom Evans says in the article, my book royalties keep me in beer, but that's about it. The article says thinking ahead means embracing a mindset shift.

Rather than hoping that future book sales will cover retirement or unexpected costs, authors need to take control of their finances now. Whether it's contributing to a pension, investing, or setting aside money each month, taking small consistent steps can create financial security. And with that security comes freedom, the freedom to focus on writing and creating, knowing your financial future is secure.

The article lists the various tax efficient structures for the US and the UK, which here are the SIP. personal pension and the ISA, a bit like the American IRA. And there are tips from authors from a number of different countries, as well as what to do about healthcare if you're a freelancer in the USA.

So I'll link to that in the show notes. That's on selfpublishingadvice.org. And I have my list of money books. If this is something you want to investigate, thecreativepen.com forward slash money books. There's also another very good article on seven red flags in serialised fiction contracts from John Doppler on the Self-Publishing Advice blog.

Serialised fiction platforms like Radish and Dream have become popular with indie authors looking to share their stories one chapter at a time. Writers release their work in instalments, keeping readers hooked and coming back for more. But many authors jump in without fully understanding the contracts. And I think this article is important whether or not you're doing serialised fiction. I think every single one of these clauses is good to go and read about.

So the seven, obviously I'm not going to go through them all, but the dodgy clauses that some of the sites are using include waiving moral rights, sweeping rights grab clauses. payments based on net profits. Now, I have heard of publishing companies doing this other than the serialized sites. Please, please check your contract. As John says in the article,

When publishers base your payment on net profits, they can reduce your earnings to zero by deducting things that are typically their responsibility. Expenses such as marketing, technical infrastructure, data transfer fees, labour costs. production costs and operational costs are normally borne by the publisher as the cost of running their business. Shifting those burdens to the author is an exploitative practice. contracts before you sign them, preferably.

He also mentions lack of transparency, non-disparagement clauses, excessive use of right of first refusal, termination fees and more. So definitely check that out at self-publishing advice to org links in the show. Donates.

Also, another follow up to the interview with Mark Leslie Lefebvre when we talked about selling in person. So Mark had talked about needing a physical square device. And then I mentioned last week that you can use Zettel tap to pay on mobile so you don't need a device. And Talena emailed to say Square also has an option to accept payment via your phone. No extra equipment needed. So there's literally no excuse for not doing in-person sales anymore.

Or at least you can't use the need for a physical payment device as an excuse. I have plenty of other excuses.

In AI things, very, very interesting this week. The Authors Guild in the USA has announced a partnership with Created by Humans to empower authors in the AI era. The press release says... Generative AI is here to stay. Yes, this is the Authors Guild saying this. We urgently need to give control back to authors and publishers, and licensing is the means to accomplish that going forward, said Mary Raisenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild.

Created by Humans Platform provides authors who are interested in engaging with AI platforms a way to do so on their own terms, ensuring they have a say in how their work is used and are fairly compensated for it. The platform will open for authors and publishers to register their choices in the fall of 2024, so I guess that's soon, and should be ready to offer licenses to AI companies in early 2025. And of course, I wrote about this in my 2020 book on AI, and I had in one of my chapters...

a proposal for data licensing for authors. And that is what I would really like. And when the draft to digital survey went out a few weeks ago, remember I said, This is what we need to do. And now this company are partnering with the Authors Guild, but you don't have to be part of the Authors Guild to join their waitlist. I have been there. I have...

Added myself to the waitlist at createdbyhumans.ai and I've had a look at their team. I've emailed them and I really hope I can get one of them on the show. I hope this gets off the ground because we need this revenue stream. I think many of these AI companies are very... happy to pay for licensing. We just need a model that works for everyone. Also news in the AI world this week as two Nobel prizes were awarded to AI researchers.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield for their foundational work in creating artificial neural networks, which are a key building block of modern machine learning and AI systems. And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was split into two, with one half going to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, both from Google DeepMind, for protein structure prediction.

essentially for AlphaFold, an AI system that can accurately predict the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. So why am I telling you about these scientific Nobel Prizes? Well, with all the drama around AI and writing, it's so important to lift your head out of the mudslinging that is going around in the author community and see the potential for the life-changing benefits of AI.

It is helping to do new science. This is transforming drug discovery and potentially your healthcare or that of someone you love. If you're anti-AI, just have a look at the amazing things going on. For example, check out Isomorphic Labs, which Google spun off to use AlphaFold3 for drug discovery.

You can also do some research on the incredible applications of AI in different fields. And I do mention this later in the interview, but you could use perplexity.ai, which is free and it cites sources. It's a kind of chat GPT meets old school. Google and I'm increasingly using it as part of my research and it also sends traffic to sites because you can click through and have a look so that is perplexity.ai

In personal news, as this goes out, the Kickstarter for Blood Vintage finishes up tomorrow, 15th of October, 2024. So if you want the signed hardback edition or you want to join me for a discovery writing webinar, and I think there's one. consulting session left as this goes out. Or if you just want to see how it's doing, head on over to jfpen.com forward slash blood vintage.

I also put a snippet from the interview with Natalie McLean on where the idea for blood vintage came from on the Creative Pen blog. So if you're interested in my book research into English biodynamic vineyards, have a look at that. And also... my research trip to Ely Cathedral is on books and travel.

dot page. I'll link to that in the show notes. But essentially, I still, I don't call it blogging, but I put my research trips on to booksandtravel.page with all my photos and all of that kind of thing. So that brings me on to the new things I'm doing. ever I'm like

most authors, let's face it. Well, like 99% of authors would rather be creating than marketing. And so I am just desperate to get into new things. So I have started on a short story based around C. Henge, which is this Timber Circle with an upturned tree stump in the middle creating this sort of platform amongst the roots which reach up to the sky and sort of questions are what was contained in the middle of that and what was it for and all that.

that and I saw some of those ancient timbers at an exhibition in the British Museum in 2022 and the British Museum has inspired so many of my books and stories and a few weeks back I visited Ely Cathedral which I mentioned it's over that side of the country. And I thought about flooding and the fens and the waterlogged countryside around there that was flooded.

and will it be again and a story idea came to me. So I'm a few thousand words into that draft. I love writing short stories because it helps get some of the ideas out of my head. And helps make room for more. I also want to do a print collection at some point of my short stories. And I think I need four or five more to do that. And at the moment, all my stories are in e-book and audio book. And I narrate quite a few of them. And I would narrate. one as well. So that will be out before Christmas.

I've also started on the second edition of How to Write Nonfiction after debating whether or not I wanted to do another edition. And I have a more detailed article coming for my patrons on the pros and cons and decision-making process around that. one of the reasons is to double down on being human and I want to narrate that audiobook because I did not narrate how to write non-fiction and I feel like I want to do a new edition with the memoir stuff in because I've written Pilgrimage since.

when the first edition came out in 2018. And since then, things have changed. So at the moment, I'm working on that as a Scrivener project. And I would like to have it out for the self-help boom of the end of the year. So it will probably be out. 27th. I want to say 27th of December. That's the kind of good time to have a self-help book out. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Author Johanna Frank.

from Kitchener, Canada, sent me a professional author photo of her in a graveyard, reclining against a grave. And I love it. And it is super gothic. And it's part of the promotion for her fantasy novel, Here Lies. And it made me remember that I am 50 next year and I definitely need to get a batch of professional photos next year. That's going to be one of my things I need to do.

PJ Parker sent gorgeous pictures of the sea and the beach saying relaxing in Puerto Vallarta before going into full-on publishing mode for the next thriller. Don said, I'm listening to the podcast at a place called Travamundi in northern Germany. And I stayed at this lovely hotel last night. And there's a photo of him in front of the hotel. I'm now on a train to Cologne, where I was at the cathedral. you can see Cologne Cathedral on booksandtravel.page as well.

And Mike has sent some lovely pictures of him at live author events. One particularly good picture dressed in a steampunk outfit. And he's also doing talks at the local library on self-publishing. And I love the steampunk vibe. And sometimes I want to write steampunk so that I can buy the gear and wear it because steampunk authors have the best gear.

Okay, so please leave a comment on the podcast show notes at thecreativepen.com or on the YouTube channel. Message me on x at thecreativepen or email me. Send me pictures of where you're listening and any comments on the show. Joanna at thecreativepen.com.

I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid because however you choose to publish, whether you want to go indie or you want a traditional deal, you need to make your book the best it can be. ProWritingAid is one of my absolute must use tools in my writing process. Firstly, to go through my first draft before printing and hand editing. And then again, after I've done the edits into Scrivener, because I always make more mistakes.

I send to Kristen, my human editor. So I use ProWritingAid for every book and every short story and fiction and nonfiction and it integrates with all kinds of story software. ProWritingA knows all the rules of editing and helps you apply them. And of course, you can choose not to make the changes as you like.

It helps with making your writing more active, finding repeated words, finding words and sentences you can improve and suggesting replacements, adding sensory detail, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation issues as well, of course. typos, spacing and more. It suggests improvements and of course I don't accept all the changes but it does help me find a lot of improvements to make.

ProWritingAid also now has a set of useful reports, including story strengths and weaknesses, areas for improvement and other analysis, using AI tools to help you improve your writing. So why use software? Why don't you just learn all the grammar and writing rules and make sure you apply them to your manuscript? Well, we all use tools to improve our process and we're often blind to our own writing issues. It helps to have another... pair of eyes, even if the eyes are software.

So won't your human editor do all this? Well, yes, they can do. But I'd rather pay my editor to fix the things that software can't. As brilliant as pro writing aid is, it cannot read the manuscript as a whole and comment on bigger issues like character. development, inconsistencies or plot holes, or the way through a manuscript that a reader goes. And so I use ProWritingAid as my essential editing tool before sending to my human editor.

Check out the free edition or get 15% off the premium edition by using my link, prowritingaid.com forward slash Joanna, prowritingaid.com forward slash Joanna, J-O-A-N-N-A. So this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing. But my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community at patreon.com forward slash the creative pen. Thanks to the eight new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years.

If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on creativity and AI, mindset and business, and my patron-only Q&A solo episodes and live office hours, which as I record this, is today. So hopefully that will be happening and the recording will be in the Patreon.

It is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous and you get access to everything, all the backless content and Q&As. So if you get value from the show and you want... more come on over and join us at patreon.com p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com forward slash the creative pen right let's get into the interview

Emily E.K. Murdoch is the USA Today bestselling author of over 100 historical romances across medieval, western and regency, and mixed between steamy and sweet. She's also the author of non-fiction history book, Regina, The Queens Who Could Have Been, under Emily Murdoch Perkins. So welcome to the show, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real joy to be here.

Oh, yes. So much to talk about. But first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Well, I am one of those authors who very much grew up knowing that I wanted to be a writer. It's a family legend that my end of year report at five years old includes the phrase, Emily keeps telling us she's going to be an author. So I very much started.

strong. But it was one of those things that was always going to be in the future. And I was chatting about my dreams, about wanting to be an author, wanting to write with a boyfriend as we were coming up to university graduation. And I said, look.

I will be an author one day. It's absolutely going to happen with, you know, all the confidence of a 21 year old. But obviously that is something I'll do when I'm older. I'll have to do a proper job first and maybe in my 40s, 50s, 60s when I've had a career, that's what I'll do. And he looked at me and was like, I don't understand why you've got to wait. I don't see why you can't write a book right now. And reader, I married him.

I also published for the first time two years later and I was able to quit my job and retire, in big square quotes, into full-time creativity before I turned 30. Ooh! everyone's like okay okay so first up It's excellent that you married such a supportive person. And I know some people listening will be like, oh my goodness, they're jealous because I think that's quite rare for someone to say that. But let's get into this hundred books. So give us an idea how many years ago that was.

And how you then progressed? My first book came out in 2013, so that's 11 years ago. It was written... and finished the year before then. And I thought, I'll be smart about this. I'll take it to a publisher who really understands historical romance, which was the novel. And so I actually submitted to Harlequin, which is part of HarperCollins. And I'm going to be honest, I didn't understand how slow traditional publishing was. I waited six months for a reply, which to me was an age.

And eventually I got tired and I withdrew it and I took it elsewhere. I do wonder sometimes what might have been if I'd stuck it out. I do actually now publish, ironically, with Harlequin HarperCollins. So I've kind of come full circle in that way. Yeah, 11 years. 11 years and I went full time after eight. So it was very much an overnight success with an eight year slow burn.

And I guess, so tell us how you're writing so fast. I feel like a lot of romance authors, the books are shorter, aren't they? So that is one aspect. Tell us about that. Some of my historical romances are novellas. They're 30,000 to 40,000 words, so they are on the shorter end. One of my historical romance series is at least over 100,000 to 110,000 per book.

So there's a real spread in terms of how long I write. There are certain things you can teach about being a fast author. It's something that I do teach and I do mentor and advise other authors on. But there is something, I think, innate. I don't want people to ever feel like they should be forcing themselves to write faster. Having said that, I write 10,000 words a day, every working day. So that enables me to build up quite a backlog.

And it means that I can rapid release whatever that looks like for you. Some of my rapid releases have been a book every three months. I've done a book every month. I did a series once, which was 12 Christmas novellas based on the kind of 12 days of Christmas.

song and I released a novella a week for 12 weeks October November December the lead up to Christmas one year so yeah there's a real range there I think this is so interesting because when you first said to your now husband I'll write it one day he said do it now you didn't just write one book because I feel like that's the other part of it is if somebody wants to be a writer

isn't just one book is it so did you meet other people along the way who were like how are you doing this like shouldn't you just write one book for 10 years there are certainly people who maybe are new to publishing or don't know publishing at all and have this kind of Patrick Rothfuss, George R.R. Martin, oh, it takes a decade to write a good book.

And that's true sometimes. Sometimes really great books come out of a decade of working and reworking and editing and putting it down and picking it up again. Really good books can also be written really fast. And that has been a challenge for me in my craft because I can write very fast. And then I hate editing. And so it's very easy for me to be tempted to go, well, it's written. I mean, it's written.

My editor can worry about fixing it. And actually over the last, I would say five years, I've really tried to work on my editing myself, my own words, because actually there is that. 10 20 30 improvement that i can bring before it even goes to another set of eyes and actually that's when things slow down for me the writing itself is very fast but the editing is where that refinement and that polishing comes as much as i loathe it

And I'm quite open about the fact that I really struggle. It's just self-criticism, which is not something many creatives enjoy. That's so interesting. I think... there's people who love first draft like you and people who love editing like me I actually I feel like my first draft is not fun I love the research I love the ideas I love kind of noodling around and then And I guess because I'm a discovery writer, I find it...

quite difficult to do the first draft and then I love love editing and I feel like my self-edit is where a lot of the work is done so I think that there are two types of people in in that kind of writing I completely agree and I do wonder whether if we mapped plotters versus pantsers across people who love first drafts and people who love edits I think there'll be a strong correlation because I love plotting I'm a deep plotter I plot very heavily before I write

So when I write, I write very fast, partly because I know exactly where I'm going. I even have dialogue snippets, descriptions, every scene is out. All I'm doing is following the pegs in a line along a road and I know exactly where I'm going. So when it comes to edits, it feels like I'm second guessing all the previous work I've put in. But I've got lots and lots of author friends who, like yourself, are discovery writers, they're pantsing.

And for them, the edits are where they spot all the clues that their subconscious lay down for them that they didn't notice at the time. And so that is really joyful for them. So I do wonder if there's a correlation there.

I think you're probably right. I also think that people who do plot... are more consistent with like the 10 000 words a day or whatever because you know what you're going to write whereas some days i might write that well i don't ever really write that much but i'll sit down and i find if i kind of like okay i have a feeling for this scene it might happen

and then some days it it won't so I think um I guess to people listening is it really doesn't matter how your process works um yeah it's the finished book you wouldn't be able to tell like how someone constructed it basically but I do want to ask

Yeah, I do just want to ask on your research. So I feel like I love research. And one of the things that slows me down in inverted commas is the amount of research I do. So for example, Spear of Destiny, I just had to go to Austria and Germany.

and yeah exactly and i have to do these research trips because that's the only way i can write now you're a medieval historian with degrees in history and english as well as medieval studies and you've done lots of cool stuff especially for someone like me who geeks out on ancient manuscripts and gothic cathedrals so tell us a bit more about some of the interesting research you've done and how you weave that into your fiction

Well, I have to say up front, I have the benefit of being born and raised in Canterbury, which has a fantastic cathedral. It's a Roman founded medieval city, walls, it's got a river going through it, cathedral in the middle. I then went to York and did both of my degrees, which is a Roman-based, medieval, walled river going through it, minster in the middle.

And I've lived near Bath for the last five years, which again is Roman. So I have a type in terms of where I like to live. Being British does help. And I know that sounds very flippant. I've got lots and lots of American friends, lots of Australian friends who are authors. who are very envious of my ability to just hop on a train and be in the place that I want to write about. But in a very dull way, and I think this might give hope to more of our kind of international listeners.

So much is digitised now that actually, although I do go to somewhere and kind of absorb the atmosphere, most of what I do is digital records trawling when I'm looking for something in particular, which...

It's not nearly as exciting as saying, well, I'm just going to have to go to the British Library for a week. Oh, no. But actually, it is a lot more productive. And it means I can usually check things within an hour or two rather than waiting for a week in my calendar where I can head off to London. I guess, but you write historical fiction. I mean, how much are you doing research before writing? This is going to sound terrible. And I want everyone to take this with a huge grain of salt.

Now, not very much. Because I'm like 70, 80, 90 books in. So when you're writing... In the same time period, over and over and over and over again, when you've already studied history at university for four years, when you absorb yourself in that time period through my casual reading, I'm the sort of person that relaxes by reading. academic texts or popular history. I do find that I end up needing to do a huge amount of research now. Now, 10 years ago, very different story. There was a lot of...

To be honest, starting on Wikipedia, I know there's going to be a lot of people flinching at that. It is not what it was 20 years ago. And actually, the references and the citations at the bottom are where you want to go. ignore most of the actual article. If you find something that you want to know a lot about, there will be a list of sources, primary sources, secondary sources at the bottom. Go there and befriend your local librarian. If you're close to a university, befriend them.

those librarians because they have resources beyond what I could have imagined just walking into, for example, Bristol University Library. I got to handle primary sources. It was just amazing. So I don't know if that answers your question. No, I think it does. And just that walking into a library, I wrote quite a lot in the London Library and I call it the serendipity of the stacks.

When you actually are in a physical library as opposed to digitally, because you stumble across things that you may never have found otherwise. But I also think now, just in terms of online research, I've been using perplexity.

A lot. I don't know if you use perplexity. That's a new one to me. Okay, so it's perplexity.ai and it is essentially, it's what a lot of researchers now use instead of... google and other sources because it uses the chat gpt the best one but then it also does citations so everything is so yeah it's really really good so there's a tip for everyone try perplexity.ai it does have a free tier

So that's actually what I've been using now. I use that for like lots of things. As you well know, Joanna, there is a wide spread of people's comfort with AI in general. But I think hearing about something that cites where the information is coming from, I think is going to put a lot of fears to rest for people who want to use that sort of tool. Because that would always worry me, that I would be using something that I would be not knowing where it came from.

Yeah, well, it's like Google powered by... a lot of AI, so you can ask a lot more nuanced questions. But I encourage people to give it a try. It's more like Google than anything else, basically. It's not a generative tool where you use it in any other way. But let's get into your latest book.

think we say here we say Regina right but Americans say Regina Regina Regina I say both either's fine I don't get worried about it Okay, but the word means queen, and the subtitle is The Queens Who Could Have Been, which considers what queens England would have had if firstborn daughters, not firstborn sons, had inherited the throne. So this is nonfiction. Why...

I've always wanted to write nonfiction. It was one of the things when I realised that actually I wasn't a place where I could write full time that I wanted to add. to my bow, mostly because I am that person who corners someone at a party and is like, but honestly, Henry II, so underrated.

And here's 14 reasons why. I'm that person that wants to kind of dive into these stories and tell them because there's so much of history that we don't know or isn't popular or isn't taught. You can't teach everything in a school curriculum. There simply isn't time. And so I realised quite quickly on going full time that my non-fiction niche is that untold stories through history. And I find...

The British monarchy, fascinating. It's almost fantasy. You know, you have this chosen one, the idea that for someone, a child, their life is mapped out for them as the heir to the throne. And when Elizabeth II died and Charles immediately came to the throne... I kept watching Princess Anne on screen, on the TV, being involved in all of these memorials and celebrations of her mother's life. And I thought, gosh, her life didn't have that blueprint, that purpose, that direction.

But she has still grown up with all of the same restrictions. And I started to wonder what sort of woman would we had on the throne if we didn't have Richard III or Henry VIII, if we had women inheriting and not... Men. All these women's stories that I don't know, and I'm a public historian who's done four years of university and has continued keeping history as part of my life. It was challenging, I will be honest.

trying to research and understand who these women were because for many of them we don't have anything you know in the early chapters i have to say to the reader i don't have birth dates death dates i don't have marriage dates i don't really have any evidence of what they did where they went or who they spoke to

there is enough sprinkled through the records that we might not expect like we'll see lists of Christmas gifts or bills for jewellery and I think one of the challenges when I came to writing the book itself was making the decision If there isn't enough information about the woman herself, but we know loads about the men in her life...

How do we tell that story about a woman, but unfortunately through the eyes of the men who knew her? It's been completely different to fiction. With fiction, I can get away with quite a lot, even within historical romance. but writing non-fiction has been completely different. Yeah, very different process. But I imagine that your fiction abilities helped because you've written romances with female perspectives for so long around different historical periods.

You have put your mind in the mind of a woman of the period. So I would expect that you are able to sort of cast your mind into this and that you had a lot of knowledge about the time period. You just seem very well placed to write this. Oh, well, thank you. That's very kind of a Joanna. I think one of the joys about it is that I believe very much... You know, I don't have a PhD. I'm a public historian. I'm not an academic historian. So I'm not undergoing fresh new research. I'm...

finding the tales that academics have already found, but have stayed within the academic community, a very niche, small subset of academics, and kind of bringing those out for people to hear about. And so there is an opportunity in the book to... say, well, I don't actually know. But based on context, based on my research, based on what people think, this is what could have been. And that's the joy of this speculative element. I'm quite open. Now I end each section by saying, okay, so...

Now we know this factual information about this princess, let's speculate. What do we think she would have been like as a queen? And having that openness in the book of like, well, we don't know everything. And it's okay not to look perfect or have all the answers. It's okay to say, we don't know these things. So let's guess. And there's some joy in that from me as an author. And I'm hoping that readers will find that as well.

Yes, and in that way, it being speculative, you're publishing this with a traditional publisher, the History Press. So it does seem like a slightly odd book, given that, as you say, you're essentially... proposing what could have happened so how did that deal come about especially as I don't know some of the views of romance authors might prevent a serious press thinking of you that way I guess it was interesting

I have a word for the year every year to inspire myself and direct myself and build some momentum. And the year that I sold this book on proposal, 2022. The word of the year was diversification. Now, I know, Joanna, that you may have heard of this. Yes, I may have done. Regular listeners may be going, hmm, a sense of deja vu here. I think it was really important. And I knew that...

adding traditional publishing to my strings was important. I've self-published, I've worked with the dependent presses, I've offered editing services, but I thought non-fiction and trad go very well together and this might be the right time to pursue it. And I pitched a completely different nonfiction book idea to agents. I was...

Really fortunate to secure a wonderful agent at a very prestigious agency in London. And in our first meeting, which I was very excited about over Zoom, she said, I absolutely love your vision. This book. will not be done in time we've got to can your idea um and so for context my idea was to do a history of coronations, of English and British coronations, in the lead up to Charles. And I thought, we've got nine months. How long could it possibly take?

A self-published person who, if I decide to put up a manuscript, it's up within three days, maximum. I knew traditional publishing timelines were long, but I had no idea how long. So she said, look. I really believe in you as an author. What other ideas do you have? And the story for Regina Regina was one of those. So it came about in a bit of a backwards way.

She was very good, my agent, at explaining that because it's 80% history, 20% speculative, there are going to be presses and imprints that... don't want to touch this. Ironically, there was an imprint at Penguin who absolutely loved the idea, but said, look, we'll never get this through sales because the editorial team loved it. But they were like, we know that sales won't touch this because it's not pure history. And that is what we're meant to do.

Thankfully, so far, touching all the wood, the fact that I still write and proudly write and publish romance has never come up as a problem. I'm sure there may have been some snootiness behind the scenes of imprints who didn't offer on Regina, but... It's their loss. Publishing is indebted to romance, not just because it is one of the most popular genres that people read. It pays the bills. It's the most popular genre to pay everyone. I read once 80% of publishing.

is earning their money from romance. So, I mean, I think romance is fantastic and that is a hill I will very much die on. But I never hid that I wrote romance. I was very open about the pen name that I use for romance. And I never hid that I was going to continue writing. I shared all the publication dates and all the commitments with my other publishers, Dragonblade, Harlequin, Papa Collins.

And I was very careful to remove any mention of exclusivity, of first refusal. I wanted to keep that freedom for myself. Right. So it ended up being a one book deal, did it? It ended up being a one-book deal as per my request because I don't want to be tied into something.

that I haven't tested myself. And that can sound very flippant. And I'm sure if someone had offered me a five book nonfiction deal for millions of pounds, we would have had a conversation. But for me, my autonomy as a creative... is what enables me to pay the bills and love doing what I'm doing. I can't imagine anything worse than...

trying to write a book that I don't believe in or I'm not excited about because readers are not stupid. They're going to tell very quickly that this is something that has been churned out to fulfil a contract. You see that in the music industry.

People have three great albums and then a fourth terrible one. Everyone goes, well, this feels like it's been rushed out and it's because they've got a four album contract and they're desperate to get out of it. So they just put out whatever they have. And I never wanted to feel like I was put in the position. where I was desperate to get out of a contract.

Hmm. And then obviously you mentioned the speed of things. You said 2022, it's towards the end of 2024 as we are recording this. So how, I guess, what are the, if people listening are like, I really want a traditional deal, it's something. thing i am currently have i have a book on submission so what are the sort of pros and cons that you've that you feel about the whole situation i think we have to differentiate fiction from non-fiction because

As a general rule, and we are talking generalisations here, there will always be someone who does think a bit different. But as a general rule, fiction in the traditional world, you write the book completely and then you try to sell it. And so the sales process can be a bit shorter because they know exactly what they're buying into. And the editorial process can be shorter because it's a refinement of an existing book.

For nonfiction, you sell on proposal. So you write almost kind of a business case for the book. What's the market? What's the audience? Why should you be writing it? What do you bring to the table? an outline of the chapters in the book and then a sample chapter, maybe two or three. But when you sell it, you then have to go away and write it. And so that adds a huge element to the timeline because that could take you...

six months. It could take you a year. I've seen some people who sign a nonfiction contract and then five years later, the book comes out because it took them two and a half years to write. So I think a big con... for traditional publishing in general is if you need to see the fruit of your labour and you need to start earning money quickly, trad is maybe not for you. At least for now, there's nothing stopping you coming to it later.

But I think a big positive for me is that it gives me access to spaces that I haven't had access to before as an independent. Part of that is snobbery. I had a feature published in the Daily Mirror. as of recording a few days ago, they would never have even considered that if I wasn't attached to a traditional publishing house. And unfortunately, that is just the truth. I don't like it.

But that is the truth. They wouldn't have considered it. I will be in bricks and mortar all over the country. None of my romance books are in bricks and mortar across the country. So it's those little things where you have to weigh up. what you want to get out of it, which sounds very mercenary. And I say to my publishers all the time, I am an artiste. I will spend forever crafting the perfect book. But once it's done, it's a product and I want to sell it and make both of us lots of money.

And I'm not ashamed about that. There is a time for art and beauty and craft. And then there is a time to say, but can I pay my mortgage if I sell this book?

No, that's exactly right. And I do think the definition of success, what am I actually looking to achieve? And like you said, you're accessing a different... audience that's how I feel as well it's like there's yeah it's just another group of people you might never reach as an indie I think it also gives you opportunities well like you mentioned the media thing but also just different things come up I mean you may end up now being a speaker at

history conferences or something because you have a non-fiction book. Absolutely. I mean, this makes me sound far more exciting and dramatic than it is. I'm filming some TV next week for a subscription online service. It's not going to be on the channel. a full documentary it's a short but it's half an hour with myself and two other historians discussing my book no one would have me on tv to just for half an hour to discuss a historical romance sadly long may that

become suddenly realized, but it just wouldn't happen. With nonfiction, with traditional, that is a possibility now. And that's really exciting because as you say... I'm going to access different readers. And there's absolutely nothing to prevent those new readers from going to my back catalogue and reading historical romance. And I'm bringing a lot of historical romance with me to read the nonfiction.

Yes, well, let's talk about that then, because what may stop them is that the book is coming out under another name.

So you're Emily Murdoch Perkins for the nonfiction. And I went on the Amazon page. And of course, this is your only book. So someone may come along and go, oh, she's only written one book and not having a clue. So were you able to, well, first of all, did you choose that?

Secondly, were you able to list your other name and things in the back? So in a previous life, a long time ago now, it feels like I was the chief brand officer for a health tech company. And before that, I was an associate director for a PR company. Branding is something that I'm very comfortable in. And I really wanted to make it clear to readers that they were getting a different kind of book. It's different content, but it's also a different tone. It's very much still me.

but it is different. And so that was a decision that I suggested and I actually fought for with my agent and my publishers. From my perspective, the pros are... It really helps with separation in the writing process, especially. It helps my positioning as I'm sitting at the keyboard because I write in a slightly different tone, as I say. But it also does help my agent and my editor and my publisher sales teams.

As we've already discussed, not everyone reads romance, so a lot of people have unpleasant views about it. And what they didn't want and what I didn't want was for that new audience to be put off. by the idea that actually she only writes smut, as I've had said to my face. But, you know... Not that there's anything wrong with that, by the way. I mean, I love a bit of smut. I read it, I write it. There's absolutely no problem with it. But it is unpleasant.

to have it thrown in your face as if it's the worst thing you can do. Of course, a con is, you know, you are trying to manage two pen names. Now, I've taken the decision... to be very open about both of my pen names, my newsletter list, I think it's about 10,000 people now, all my socials, my website. I'm openly saying I'm writing this here and I'm writing this here. You will enjoy both.

And I've kept my social media the same. So I'm piggybacking off the work and investment of the last 11 years on social, on the website. Amazon is the difference because the algorithms, as we all know, are constant shifting and nonsensical at times. And I wanted to make it easy for Amazon to distill. Actually, my also bought some, my comps or my comparative titles for nonfiction are different.

And so I have taken a slightly different strategy. And to be quite honest, it would be a challenge to maintain two sets of social media for two pen names. I don't have the capacity to do it. Some people do, and that's amazing. I don't and I'd rather do some things well than try to do everything poorly.

Yes, I totally agree with you. I very much value having two names and as JF Penn writing my fiction and also some nonfiction. But I feel like mentally, as you say, you become a different person with a different name, which really helps. positioning and also I agree with you on the branding and the marketing I think it helps in a lot of ways I do have different kind of social media but again I it's not like I hide it I mean similar to you the names are still recognizable so I think

that's fine but certainly people should know i mean i think also your non-fiction book is very very different audience potentially to your romance and my audience is also very different if you're writing if you were writing i don't know something that wasn't

maybe you wrote a historical thriller that I don't think you would need another name right no and this is the thing I've got a historical I've got a more pure historical fiction book with my agent right now so if anyone's listening and you are an editor at any publishing house

please do get in touch but I don't see a reason to change that it's historical it's fiction it fits very neatly under the Emily E.K. Murdoch Emily Murdoch branding but with nonfiction because it is that whole category separate I just thought it was better to have a relatively clean break but again as you say I'm not hiding it it's still my name it's just a slightly different configuration of my name

Yeah, absolutely. So then what was also interesting is you have a blurb from Julia Quinn of Bridgerton fame and everyone's like, oh, and it's saying a fantastic feminist to dance through history. And I was looking at this going, oh. Julia. And I'm sure Julia gets a ton of people asking her to blurb. Many authors want a big name author on their cover. And many people listening will be like, how do you get a blurb from a famous person? So how did you do that?

Isn't it absolutely wild? I couldn't believe it where the email came through. Honestly... I wonder if Julia does get a ton of people asking her to blurb. Oh, because she's too famous. She's too famous. So I read, and this was about five months ago, I read an interview with Cher, the singer. who we absolutely love. And she agreed to cameo in an animated film a few years ago. And everyone was astonished that Cher would do this.

And she was asked about it and she said, and I'm quoting exactly here, quote, I've been famous for a million years and no one has ever asked me to do a voiceover, end quote. She was so famous that no one ever asked. So I... I just emailed. I went to her website and it had her agent's email for publicity requests. And so I just sent him the exact same email that I'd sent a few others. And I'll outline that as best I can remember. So it was a one line about what my book was about.

I said that I would love to send them a PDF copy of the book. And if, big if, if they were happy to blurb it, I would need those comments by this date. But if they didn't want to, it's absolutely fine. No pressure at all.

And that was literally it. And I think that sometimes people are quite literal with their blurb requests. I would imagine that if people are asking Julia Quinn of Bridgerton fame... its historical romance authors I can imagine that she might be inundated with them and then how do you pick one if you say one yes to one of them do you feel obliged to say yes to everyone but I think because my request was a little different

because it was non-fiction, not essentially her category, I think it stood out. So I would say if you're out there and thinking, oh gosh, I would love to have a famous name attached to my book, I would see what names are adjacent to you and maybe try them.

No, I think that's great. I also think that julia quinn presumably does a lot of research and your book she may be reading your book for research and could have gone oh that's a good idea that's a good idea i did have a moment of panic because i of course i write about

the regency era because they have princesses and i thought oh my gosh did she read that i wouldn't have done that well i just think you know we got to remember that famous authors are just like us they just got famous and julia i presume loves reading history and she was probably like oh yeah this is right up my alley and therefore that was a good fit and I think this is the most important thing like I get pitched every single day multiple times and most of them are

Completely inappropriate pitches. I mean, you pitched me and it was completely appropriate. And that's the thing when you're the person on the other end, whether this is appropriate or not. So the job of the person pitching really should be, am I pitching the right person with the right project? Do your research. And in today's modern age, when people are...

Sharing slash oversharing. There's almost no excuse not to do your research. Most people, even if they're quite private personally, they ensure that their professional brand is quite clear. For example, I really wanted to ask Alison Weir to blurb. Regina I absolutely love Alison I actually met her at the very beginning of my author journey she will not remember but she was such an inspiration she is such an inspiration because she writes non-fiction and she writes historical fiction

And I went into a website and there was a little note on our contact page saying, I'm inundated. I'm not accepting any more blurbs. And so I didn't send an email. Someone might say, oh, well, you could have just tried. No, I don't want to annoy someone who has been really clear about their boundary, their expectations, their ability right now. And actually...

I might ask her to blur the book in the future when she does have the capacity. But if I had gone against her wishes and emailed her anyway... I can pretty much guarantee you my email would be blocked and it would be ignored the next time I ask. So there's a way to research and it's not difficult. It's all online. Yeah. And in fact, on my contact page, it says I do not accept guest post submissions. And every day I get like two or three guest posts. I'm cringing.

I'm like, seriously, I just delete it. I don't reply anymore. And so I think you're right. And also just again, Julia Quinn is a normal person, like we're normal people and people have lives going on. It's not all about you. It's not it's they have their life.

life so be accepting when people either don't reply or you just get a no it just might be the wrong time so i really love that and sometimes you get a yes that becomes a no so i also asked the authors of lady jane to blurb you wrote the amazing book at which the tv series was made of and they said absolutely we'd love to do that and then the show got cancelled and you know what they had other more important things to do

And I just sent her a note being like, you know what, focus on yourselves, focus on what's next. And we are all people, as you say, people have a lot going on and life always comes first.

Yeah, absolutely. So then I did want to ask you about marketing because obviously you've spent like a decade or so marketing romance on Amazon, presumably mainly, and that is completely different to what you're now doing. So tell us what, how are you doing things?

differently for non-fiction and also what's the split between you and the publisher I knew early on that I would be spread way too thin if I tried to manage completely different strategies and completely different tactics for all the things that I want to continue doing for... historical romance. And I knew that years ago. I knew that when I started thinking I would like to do more things, I would like to diversify. So I have been very conscious in making myself

The brand. Emily is the brand. So whether I'm writing historical romance as Emily E.K. Murdoch or historical non-fiction as Emily Murdoch Perkins... I am passionate. I'm curious. I love history. I love unusual facts. I love sharing photos of churches or old buildings. I love sharing photos of the food I'm cooking. Emily loves cheese, long country walks, no matter what she's writing. So that has been a really crucial foundation that I put in place quite a few years ago so that when this happened.

I had a foundation that I could stand on without trying to juggle about a bazillion things. Having said that, having a traditional publisher means I now have... graham who's fantastic thank you graham who is the pr and promotions and marketing manager at the history press and i get an email from him at least twice a week with ideas of pitches that he's done I'm speaking to this person I'm speaking to that person

As an indie, I pitched broadsheets and I pitched newspapers. I got absolutely nowhere. And that was someone whose, at the time, full-time job was pitching for clients to broadsheets and newspapers. And I got loads of coverage for them. But... Things are different now. And as I said, I had a feature published for the Daily Mirror. It's a UK national newspaper with something like 800,000 copies printed every day. 32 million adults individually visit the website every month.

And they paid me to write it. So there are higher profile opportunities with trad, but that is based on that foundational brand of Emily, the passionate historian who loves saying, did you know? And that enables me to then leverage the opportunities that the publishers are working to bring to me. Does that make sense? Yeah. Did you know? Did you know that I almost started another podcast called Did You Know?

Joanna, should we do it together? Oh, don't say that. That literally went into my head. We'll talk about this offline and see what the listeners think. Right. So it's so great you have Graham. I think that's really interesting. I think a lot of...

of authors who get traditional publishing deals don't seem to get so much active PR but I guess sometimes they do get it but it's only in a short period around launch and then that person obviously moves on to another author now as we speak you're in that kind of period aren't you that kind of launch period oh so much we can unpack here when i was speaking to different imprints and different publishers about regina before we'd sold it

It was really important to me, not that I got a ton of money in advance, because I didn't, but actually how important I was going to be valued by the publishers. I am moving into a new category, nonfiction. I don't have any experience in nonfiction. I don't have pure nonfiction readers that I can bring to the table.

And so I knew that if I was essentially a midlist author for that imprint, someone who, yeah, we'll publish the book, but we're not going to make a song and dance out about it. We're not going to push you forward for PR and promotions. We're not going to do a big marketing campaign. I knew that book would not succeed. I needed a partnership with the publisher. And so I chose the History Press because they are smaller. They are independent. They print here in the UK. And they said to me,

you are going to be one of our most important titles for Autumn Winter and we are going to put a lot behind it. And so that gave me a lot of confidence. And I think a lot of openness between us because it means that, you know, I had a call with my commissioning editor yesterday. And most of the call was, right, what do I want the history press to be doing? And what does history press want me to be doing? And we can be quite open about that, because we said way at the beginning...

We are going to really push this, but it requires a lot of input from both sides. Yeah, I think that's great. And thinking of a partnership. And again, you're very experienced. You've been doing this a while and you have different expectations than someone who, you know, maybe it's their first book and they don't really know the business of things. And like you said, your aim is to make everyone more money.

make money but also the point is for a publisher to look at you and see money because they're a business and yeah you know that's that's what they want and i think that's a real mindset shift that authors who are also business people have and authors who potentially are not.

don't have and I guess yeah so just on the future of that do you see yourself writing more of these historical non-fiction books or is this more of an experiment This is an experiment that is going so well so far that my second nonfiction book proposal is currently being shopped by my agent.

And I can't say any more than that because discussions are going, insert business talk here. But yeah, it's something that I've enjoyed and that is important to me. I spend all day writing, creating, networking. promoting this is my job i spend more time here than with my significant other if i'm not going to enjoy it i don't really want to do it again but also that the response from readers has been so positive Pre-order numbers look very positive.

It's definitely something that I would like to do again. I am able because I write full time and I'm conscious that a lot of people aren't at that stage or don't want to be at that stage. That's not something they're aiming for. And I think it's also important to state I am child free by choice and I have no caring responsibilities. And that is on purpose. So I have a lot of capacity.

But I don't want to spend that capacity on something I don't enjoy. And I've really loved exploring a different type of craft, a different type of audience, a different type of marketing, a different type of research. I have been challenged. Not all of it has been. wonderful, but it's something that I could see myself doing alongside my fiction for a really long time.

Hmm, that's great. And then we're almost out of time, but I did just want to ask about something you've mentioned several times is diversification. And obviously your business is actually more than just books. So tell us about your multiple streams of income. Well, I very much followed the advice of someone called Joanna Penn, who really understands the author mindset. So I have multiple streams of income. Some of them are very big and some of them are very small.

or actually that can just tick over and be passive in their own way. So I'm wide with half of my self-published books. I mean KU for the other half. I teach my own courses. So I have a course called You Can Write More Words, which is designed specifically to help people either write more words in the same amount of time or compress how much time you need to write the same number of words. And I'm more than happy to offer a 75% off coupon for your listeners.

I teach through other organisations. I have three classes a year come out through the Regency Academe. I teach a masterclass once a year or so, so I'm doing one this November with the History Quill. I have Patreon, where I'm writing a Patreon-exclusive historical romance. which is one chapter a week. I offer developmental editing, line editing. I pre-read. It's a lot, but it's not all of these things all of the time.

And I think that's really important. Some things I'll set and forget. You know, some books I wrote a decade ago. Some teaching I set up the course and then it's self-service. And I only take on multiple streams of income that I enjoy, which now I say that aloud has also been a theme of this chat. Because if I don't enjoy it, chances are that I won't do it well. And I only want to be putting out work into the world and working with people.

Being a good person to work with, someone that people want to work with and creating brilliant books that people love to read and reread. That's really, really important to me. Fantastic. You did offer a coupon. Does that have a code? It has a code. I will make the code Joanna, all caps, and I'll make sure I get a link for the show notes.

Great. We'll put that in the show notes because I'm sure some people will be interested in that. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Please do read Regina. I would love for people to read and enjoy it. You can get it anywhere that books are sold. You can find me at Emily E.K. Murdoch. That's Murdoch ending C-H. That's all the socials and it's also my website.

website, emilyekmurdoch.com. And if you want to get in touch with me, any editing support, my courses, any collaborations, I love hearing from other authors and other creatives. That's emily at emilyekmurdoch.com. Fantastic well thanks so much for your time Emily that was great. My absolute pleasure thank you for having me.

So I hope you found the discussion with Emily interesting and that she gave you some new perspectives around the business of being an author and diversifying income streams across publishers as well as genre and different services. As ever, I love to hear your thoughts about the interview or about anything I talk about in the introduction.

Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes at thecreativepen.com or on the YouTube channel. Message me on X at The Creative Pen or email me Joanna at thecreativepen.com. Send me pictures of where you're listening. Next Monday, I'm talking about growing an author business with Rachel McLean, who was recently named as one of the top 10 most read authors on Kindle Unlimited in the UK over the last 10 years. And we talk about why she's...

going wide and direct and expanding out from those beginnings. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes at thecreativepen.com forward slash podcast. And you can get your free author blueprint at thecreativepen.com forward slash blueprint.

If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at The Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook at JF Pen Author. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.