From Writer to Publishing Business: Biba Pearce on Indie Publishing, Making Books Pay and AI - ep 37

[00:00:15] Hi everyone, welcome to Talking Tech With Creatives. A podcast where we talk about the intersection of creativity, technology, culture, name it, any of the mix that goes into technology. We're here to discuss it. Thank you so much for listening consistently every time that I post you listen. I really appreciate that.

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[00:00:59] I have an exciting time for us today, especially for authors. I've got an author today who is incredible. Her name is Biba Pearce and she is a powerhouse when it comes to writing, when it comes to publishing, when it comes to the business and the writing. She's just a powerhouse.

[00:01:23] And I've been wanting to have her on the podcast forever and we finally made it. Biba, welcome to Talking Tech With Creative Podcasts. Thank you so much for coming. I'm so happy that we finally got you here. Yes, eventually. Thank you so much for having me on Stella. Pleasure to be here.

[00:01:44] Thank you so much. Listen well, because this is going to be very interesting, especially for those of you who are writers, who are authors, who might or might not want to know about the business of publishing or the business of marketing. And even if you don't want to know about publishing, you would want to know about marketing. Right away, Biba, I want people to know about your background. Give us your origin story. How did you start?

[00:02:12] Thanks, Stella. I started like most writers, I think, reading everything that I could get my hands on as a child. I loved genre fiction right from the get go. Romance, crime, fantasy. And when I grew up, I did a couple of writing courses and it was during those courses that I realized that I love this process and this is something that I want to do one day.

[00:02:38] So it took a while to get to that point. But I kept learning and writing and practicing and doing courses and building my craft. And it was only eventually when COVID hit and I wasn't working anymore that I was able to concentrate full time on being an author. So eventually I got my opportunity. Fantastic. So I'm going to dig, I'm going to go dig deeper.

[00:03:08] Dig deeper. I'm going to dig deeper. So I detect an accent. So let's start from there. Tell us about growing up. I know South African. Tell us about, I'm sure you write across thrillers, crime, thriller series and romance. So you've got quite a large spectrum of experience when it comes to writing. And I know that didn't come from nowhere. That came from somewhere.

[00:03:36] Yes, you did read. But what are the influences? I want to get that. I want to get it. Just understand what those influences are. I think growing up in Africa is a very novel experience. There's a lot of contradictions. It's not black and white. It's a very kind of gray area and there's a lot of positives and there's a lot of negatives. It's stunningly beautiful. It's wild. It can be dangerous.

[00:04:02] So all of these things have influenced my self-conscience over the years and I think come out in my writing. I've also traveled a lot because South Africa is quite far away from the rest of the world. When we do travel, we tend to travel quite far and we go to places perhaps who are a little bit more intrepid than most people who have everything at their fingertips are. I have a curiosity about the rest of the world.

[00:04:28] So when I travel, I tend to observe and I learn and I take notes and everything that I've seen or experienced over the years somehow ends up filtering into the writing process. And I'm sure this is the same for a lot of writers. It's just what makes you the writer that you are. All of your experiences.

[00:04:50] South Africa is, when I started writing, was fairly not so advanced, I should say, in the publishing field. Self-publishing wasn't a thing at all. Agents were few and far between. We didn't have access to the courses and the information that we have nowadays. I was quite stifled with what I could actually do. And it was only when I moved to London in my 20s that that world suddenly opened up to me

[00:05:18] and I could access all of this other information, courses and knowledge and travel a lot more than I had been already. So at the back of your mind, when you were growing up, did you know that you wanted to write? Did you know from the word go or you were just experimenting? So were you good at literature? Were you good in English? What were those things? I was good at English at school. It was probably my strongest subject. No surprises. And I loved it. I think that was the difference.

[00:05:48] I actually enjoyed it as a school subject much more than all of the others. But I didn't know at that point that I wanted to be a writer because growing up, it wasn't really a career option that we thought about that much. I was more concerned with going to get a proper job, making money than raising my child. And so it wasn't really on my radar as a career until I got a lot older.

[00:06:16] And I realized that I was spending a lot of time in my other jobs and after work writing. And slowly I was trying to write more and work less. So I was prepared to make that sacrifice and take that financial cut because that was where my passion lay. But again, I wasn't prepared to give up working entirely at that point because how would I support myself?

[00:06:45] So then again, it was only when COVID hit and I had already self-published a couple of novels. I made the switch to full-time and I thought I had been following a lot of people online, indie authors who were now doing it for themselves because the Kindle had become a thing. And there were groups springing up on social media to follow and learn from. And I was seeing all of these people doing it. And I thought if they can do it, what's stopping me?

[00:07:14] I used to work in tech. I had a really good knowledge of websites and platforms. And I thought I have the skill set that I can transfer to the publishing environment, particularly the indie publishing environment. So what I did was I tried to do more and more of that and then make it my full-time job. So you said that you had actually self-published some books from you, self-published some books.

[00:07:43] So that means that you didn't, was it like, did you try to publish traditionally or, and then, or did you just intentionally decide to self-publish? You mean what came first? What came first? I'm just here. Yeah. So when the Kindle came out and the, the first indie authors were making an appearance, I decided to experiment and try to see if I could do that. And I had a novel that I'd written.

[00:08:13] It was a romantic suspense novel. Probably wasn't very good, but I, it was an experiment. I thought, let me see if I can get it onto the KDP platform, which is the Kindle direct publishing platform and do the product page and just see how this whole process works. So I managed to do that. It didn't do much at all, to be honest, but surprised I didn't really know what I was doing at that point. I didn't have any, I wasn't aware of promotion or advertising or

[00:08:41] networking community, anything like that. So it was just an experiment, but I think the, the, the fact is I did it and I learned from that process. And so when I had time again, a couple of years later, I'd written another book. Then I did it a little bit more seriously and a little bit more effectively. And it was probably a slow drip process, but as the years went by and I was working full time, I was still learning on the side.

[00:09:09] And so when the opportunity came around with lockdown, I felt ready. I felt like I had enough knowledge now to do this for myself properly. So what year did you do that first publishing? I'm just curious. Yeah, that was a long time ago. It must've been 20, no, 2006. Yeah. The reason why I'm asking is that I follow Joanna Penn. I'm a real Joanna, you know, creative player. Yeah, Joanna's amazing.

[00:09:36] I follow the group 20 books to 20, 20 books to 50K, right? Yeah. So I follow all those groups. Like everybody thinks differently. You were able to decide that you could make this into something that would take over your full time job and you made the leap. I just want, I want to know how you made that transition. So it was because I was seeing other people do it, Stella.

[00:10:01] In these groups, these Facebook groups, 20 books, like you say, they were people who were making five, six figures a year. Some people were making it a month. People who had fewer books than I'd written, you know, people who were much earlier on in their journey than I was. People who had far fewer skills, technologically speaking, than I had. So I think it was a bit of FOMO.

[00:10:30] I was sitting there working in a day job that I didn't want to be in, browsing through these groups thinking, what are these guys doing that I'm not doing? How can they be getting it right? And I'm not getting it right. And I just started paying attention. And I think it's just self-belief at the end of the day, when you sit down and you think there's nothing stopping me from doing this. I have all the skills it takes to do this. I just have to do it. Yeah. So that's what's got you going.

[00:10:58] So when did you know, because me, I'm a super cautious person. When did you know that you could successfully, because for example, like everybody, I think you had the confidence in the fact that you could write rapidly. You could write quickly. Yeah, I can type quite fast. So I had a... No, not only typing. Not only typing. The creativity. The idea that you could take something and reproduce. Remember the rapid release that they had at that time? I don't know.

[00:11:29] We'll come back and talk about rapid release later, where people would maybe write maybe three books and then release it, knowing that the first book would sell the subsequent books. Yeah. Was that the kind of thing that you followed, the process that you followed? Yeah. No, not really. When I first started, it was very sporadic. I hadn't really cottoned on to that yet. But when I started taking it seriously by then, obviously I knew about rapid releasing.

[00:11:58] And there's nothing like deadlines to make you finish a book. I could type really fast. And I'm an outliner. Yeah. Which is a way to follow. Quick, quick, quick. Yeah. Yeah. And I read a couple of authoring books that helped me fine tune my outlining process. What books? What are readers to know? Or I'll write it down somewhere. Do you remember some of the books that you read?

[00:12:23] Well, yeah, the first one was an article on, it was called The Snow, The Snowflake Method. Yeah. Snowflake Method. Yeah. And so I started off one line, then two lines, then a paragraph, then a couple of paragraphs until I'd fleshed out most of the plot. I was putting in research notes as well. This is all longhand now.

[00:12:49] And I was slowly building a document with everything in it that I needed for when I started writing. And then I read Save the Cat, which helped me jump from having a sprawling notebook full of notes to an actual three or four-act structure with the beats that I needed to hit. So once I understood that, it replaced that snowflake method that I was using and became something of a hybrid.

[00:13:18] And then after that, I was sitting with the Save the Cat outline and breaking it down into chapters. So I was saying that this chapter needs to have this beat in, this is what I need to have in this beat, this one. And I try very hard to not put anything into my story that doesn't need to be there. So I think as a result, they end up being quite fast-paced, whether they're crime novels, whether they're romance or romantic suspense.

[00:13:49] I tend to cut out everything that doesn't actually drive the story forward. Because if, as a reader myself, I get bored if an author is going on too long about something that I'm not particularly interested in, or I don't think it's going to drive the story forward at all. It will bore you. So yeah, and I think maybe because I'm easily bored, I don't tend to do that. Everything that I put into my story either does something for the plot or enhances the character in some way or the motivation.

[00:14:18] It's never wasted. Or it's going to be a clue later on in like a mystery twist or something. So let's talk about location. So I'm moving away. I'll come back to the business because for me, this is talking tech with creatives. So I'm going to come back to the business side of it, which is when we talk about the business side of it, we're talking about the technology part of it as well. You were, like you said, you were fortunate to understand technology. So it was just easy for you to say, okay, I know technology. I know I'm a creative writer.

[00:14:48] Put the two together. One, bam. You've got something going. And then the boldness to do it. Because not everybody has that boldness to say, okay, I can step away from a stable job into this, but you said you were following people who were doing the same thing and probably maybe one or two people that would have shown you the method of how. Yeah, I was paying very close attention. And of course, like I said, lockdown happened. So it gave me the perfect opportunity.

[00:15:13] Had that not happened and had I not lost my job, can't in all honesty say I would be where I am today because I may not have taken the leap. If I'd still had my job through COVID, I might not have tried to do this full time what I'm doing. So I think it was a mixture of things. It was what I knew. It was the skills I had. It was what I wanted to do. But it was also the opportunity that presented itself. Fantastic.

[00:15:40] So I know now that you're a mix of kind of hybrid author. Can you talk us through that? I've seen a few publishers there. Jofie Books, Liquid Mind Media, Independent Press. So can you talk us through your mix, what it means to have that kind of mix? A mixed hybrid model. Hybrid model that you've got. I think it's, I love being a hybrid author because I feel like it's a safety net of sorts.

[00:16:07] It prevents me having all my eggs in one publishing basket. Obviously the self-publishing came first, but perhaps not that successfully. Then I got the deal with Jofie Books. And through that process, particularly the editing and the publishing process, I learned a huge amount. Honestly, like a huge amount. What did you learn? I learned how to self-edit basically.

[00:16:31] I learned about different editing passes, structural, developmental, line editing, proofreading. I learned about a schedule when the cover design was coming out, when the promotions were going up, all of that stuff I didn't really know about before. And I'd read a lot about it, but it's different to seeing it in practice when it's being applied to your own books. These were professionals doing it. Jofie were great to work with.

[00:17:00] I had a fantastic editor. There was a good back and forth. And I took everything I learned from there into my own publishing label when I started it. So they really helped me to do what I'm doing now. Liquid Mind Media as well was an opportunity that presented itself. Where is that? Liquid Mind Media? They're based where? They're based? Liquid Mind Media is based in the US. It's the publishing label of LT Ryan.

[00:17:29] Oh, okay. He's a really successful crime writer in the US. And this is his own imprint. Okay. And they're now, I would say an indie publisher, but they publish a lot of other authors now. They have their own imprint and they have their own authors on their books. Yeah. Okay. So Liquid Mind Media and then you've got your own press, Smotley Press. So what made you decide to have your own press as well?

[00:17:59] So after learning so much from all of these different publishers and still self-publishing all of my romances myself, but they were under a pen name, I wanted the credibility of a label, an imprint. It was just more professional. And like I said, now I knew what that world was like and I wanted to apply to myself that level of professionalism. So I started Mortlake Press.

[00:18:28] And now everything that I write, that I retain the rights to, I publish under my own imprint. That's fantastic. That is fantastic. So of course, that's it. So if anybody wants to learn about how to set up a press and all the business process, they can come to you. No, seriously. If you were offering that, if you were offering that, because I know for me, because of my technical background. Yeah, of course. I wish I was like you, Biba.

[00:18:57] I wish I wrote faster. You do a lot of other things, Stella. I do a lot of other things. If I did all of the amazing things you do, I wouldn't be so prolific either. I know. I wish I was writing faster because the technical bits and all the business bits fascinate me. I love things like that. I love it, you know. Yeah, exactly. But I'm not as fast. So if you want to learn how to set up your own imprint and all that, and you want to consult Biba, go ahead.

[00:19:29] Let me see. So I was saying that at what point did you see your writing? Because a lot of people say this, but deep inside, we all want to make money from our writing. But we know that it's being said. It's said. And let's test this with you. Yeah. It's said that you can't make money from writing. True or false? I mean, it's a difficult question, Stella, because there's so many different angles to this. And there's so many different ways to write.

[00:19:59] So I would say if you're writing one book a year, that's going to be a lot harder to make money from than if you're writing more. If you're traditionally published, that's a different royalty model than if you're self-published. If you're selling direct, it's another model again. So, you know, then there's Kindle Unlimited, where you get the page reads from subscribers.

[00:20:28] And that can make up a big chunk of your royalties. But if you're wide, then you're going to forfeit that. So there's so many different ways to write and to publish books now that that's why being hybrid works works so well for me, because I can do all of it for whichever series fits that best.

[00:20:50] But if one's aim is to make money from their writing, I would think that a more rapid release schedule in Kindle Unlimited with a long-running series is probably the best way to go. So which one from your... So are you saying that rapid release on KDP works better for you because you're a hybrid author? Or which one works for you? Yeah.

[00:21:20] Well, for me personally, if one's talking about the financial goals of supporting oneself through writing, I think that's the best, the most feasible path to take to make the most money. Of course, direct publishing as well is now becoming more and more of a thing as you don't have to pay anybody. You keep whatever royalties you sell. But then, of course, there's marketing and advertising behind that as well. So that comes with its own set of challenges.

[00:21:50] For me personally, though, I do a lot of different things. So I have some series that are exclusive to Amazon and INKU. These are mostly my long-running series because the page reads really help me sustain a cash flow because I need that to... And is this your one or is it through Jofi? Because I know that's... Well, yeah. Sorry. Jofi's publishing model is that. They are Kindle first.

[00:22:20] So they're digital and they're Kindle Unlimited. So that is how they operate. I do that with my romance series where I have nine books in a series because I find that with the read-through, that pays off for me. So what we're talking about now for anybody listening is back catalog. Yeah. You were able to produce a series, a solid nine book series. It's on KU.

[00:22:49] That pays some money. Yeah. Then you can... Then you have different offshoots. So what I... So what we're saying is that over time, you were consistent with your writing. Over time, you could then start gaining from all the different areas. And that's what you're gaining now. All that hard work. Because I know you work very hard when it comes to your... To writing, especially writing. We're going to come to that writing multiple books a year. Yeah. So it pays off in the end. Yeah.

[00:23:18] It takes time to build up that amount of series. And some... I have some series. I have a series that is wide as well. I have books that I sell on my website directly. And I have books that are with Liquid Mind Media that are co-authored. And there's obviously a royalty split there. So I have a lot of different... I diversify quite a lot. But again, like you said, that's after years of writing and having multiple series in which I can do that.

[00:23:48] That's fantastic. So now the crime thriller and romance markets. Romance sells. It still sells. Different types of romance. Yeah. But people are saying, oh, it's a crowded market. How do you think authors can stand out without losing their own voice? Because people write for different reasons. Some people say, I just write because I want to write. I, for me, I write because I'm compelled to write. But I want to sell as well. It's a passion for you. It's a passion, but no, I don't want passion anymore.

[00:24:18] Of course you do. I don't want passion anymore. You have to pay. So I'm now working on towards like looking at monetization and different business models for me as well. So passion can't put food on your table. So let's talk about it. Yeah, exactly. Passion doesn't pay the bills. So the people listening to this, we're talking about people who want to make this into a business. If you want to make it into a passion, you can listen to the writing part of things. But we're talking about the business part of things now. So people are saying that the market is crowded.

[00:24:48] How do you think authors can stand out without losing their own voice in this overcrowded, sloppy? My last guest said slopification. Slopification, yeah. Let's not forget. Slopification and slopification. Slopification. Exactly. And he's a filmmaker. He's a filmmaker. Yeah. Yeah. Let me let you talk. It is a very crowded marketplace. A lot more people are publishing.

[00:25:14] And then, of course, we can't forget the influx of AI books that has hit the market as well, that we all love to hate. But I think, like you said, how does an author get to stand out, get their voice heard? I think that the author's voice is the thing that is going to make them stand out. The author's voice. Because that is something that is specific to that person.

[00:25:40] Like we were talking about with our experiences and our travels and everything that we absorb over the years. Like that all goes into my books. And that's something that I only have. Your unique way of thinking about it. It's unique to me. And that's going to affect my characters. It's going to affect what I put into my plots. It's going to affect how they're resolved. And it's going to affect how my characters get a happily ever after. Everything, basically.

[00:26:10] And so that is my unique selling proposition. And I think once readers get to know and like your style of writing and they like your voice, that is something that they're going to come back for. It's your way of telling a story. So it's the storytelling that they're going to come back for. And yeah. And so I think building a readership based on the way that you tell your stories, you have to make sure that you're putting a great book out there.

[00:26:38] So that's the first step, isn't it? We have to write great books because it's the great books that are always going to rise to the top of the pile in a crowded marketplace. And it's the good books that are going to make the readers come back for the next one and the next one in the series. So I think if you know that you can write a good book that people want to read, then it's your voice that's going to make you stand out. And I don't think that AI is able to do that, at least not yet. It's very generic.

[00:27:09] It's very generic. It might, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens. It might be able to develop. Well, yeah. It might in time be able to write good books, even great books, maybe even books that are better than beginner or novice authors because it's drawing from such a big pool of information. And we will probably get to a time where there's a place for AI books on the shelves. But again, I think there's going to be a lot of slop.

[00:27:36] It's going to be because the AI book is only as good as the people who are prompting it. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot of slop. And again, it's going to be the better ones that rise to the top of the pile, along with the authors that have made sure that they're writing good books. Yeah. Okay. Since we've brought AI to the mix, let's dive in. So let's dive in because we have this split. We have, I, I'm in the middle.

[00:28:06] I work in technology. Yeah. I work as a technical writer with my organization that is tech first. Yes. It's no compromise. And personally, I like AI to do heavy lifting for me. So anything that will advance what I need to do, because I've got a technology background, I'm on it. I might be slow to jump on, but I will be on it because anything that saves me money, I will use it as a machine that will push me forward.

[00:28:33] Then you have a school where you have authors who are using AI. Yes. The authors that are using AI, generative AI to write and they are prompting. That's what you were saying. There were authors who know their craft and they are using AI to prompt the writing and they consider themselves author. Yeah. They're author as far as they're concerned, they're authors. And I've seen some of those platforms where people are making quite a lot of money

[00:29:02] because they know what they're doing. That is their prerogative. That is how they want to do their writing. They want AI. They don't want AI. They want AI to do the language and all the other bits. They prompt it and it will do that for them. You have another school of authors who hate AI with a passion.

[00:29:23] And I understand the hatred from the idea of how AI started, which is stealing, taking, forcing, taking all of those contents that they did not pay for to train the model. That is, I don't know, gangster behavior. But that's what the technology companies did. And I can imagine creatives are not happy about that. And it's across the sector. It's across arts.

[00:29:52] It's across because the person I spoke to, the filmmaker, is the same thing. But he too is doing the same thing. And I was able to put a clip on how if you're starting out, this is what you need to do. He said it. You can't fight what's going on out there. Yeah. So we have all that school of thought. So you have people like me who use AI in the background to do heavy lifting for my process, my business process. And then on one part, I'm doing my writing and I'm quite slow at the process of my writing and everything. Yeah.

[00:30:22] So what do we see the future as? Because now we have, and I'm going to keep talking, we have publishing companies who are using AI in their process. Yeah. Whether they like it or not, they're doing that. But we also have, I can't remember what I read because I read everything that is going on out there. I think, I can't remember if it's a publishing company. Which one have agreed to put AI books on their shelf? Barnes & Noble.

[00:30:51] Barnes & Noble. Who have said that they will start thinking about, they would not turn down AI. They're not against it. What do you think about this divide? Because there's a divide going on at the moment. What is your suggestion for how to proceed? Yeah. And yeah. But, and I think there's a, there's now a shift now because I remember when we started out where the, some authors will not touch AI with a badge pole.

[00:31:21] But I was quite surprised to start hearing people saying, oh, I use it for this. Or I use it for that. Or I use it for, so people are using it, the ones that I use it for, you know, some of their research, some processes. Of course, if you are using it for research, you have to be a subject matter expert. So that if it's researching for you, you have to go and double check it and make sure that you know what. Yeah. Yeah. You have to double check. So I'll say my bit. What is your own thinking on this now?

[00:31:48] I'm going to try and be as fair and as diplomatic as possible here because I too have a tech background. I'm an early adopter of technology. I love technology. I was the first person to have a computer in my family and amongst my friends. I was the first person to start programming. I was the first person to build websites amongst everybody I knew. So when AI came along, of course, I was excited by this prospect.

[00:32:17] I see it as a really exciting development in the technology landscape. I think that the effect it has on businesses, particularly small businesses, is astronomical. It now raises a lot of barriers that we were previously dealing with. It gives us extra tools to use. It makes our life simpler in a lot of ways. It helps us analyze data better, optimize results better.

[00:32:46] Be an assistant if we need an assistant. It does, like you said, a lot of the heavy lifting for companies such as my own and other indie authors to use and embrace if they are of that mindset. Now, I know a lot of authors aren't for obvious reasons. In fact, I was one of those authors who I'm part of the Anthropic Civil Case.

[00:33:12] The publisher I was with at the time with some romances realized that my books had been used to train AI. So they put in a claim. Personally, I had to go and confirm that, yes, those were my books. Yes, I do. For you, like you said as well, for the heavy lifting, for the research.

[00:33:33] If I need to know what a landscape in South Colorado looks like, then it's going to be my, the place I'm going to go to find out about that because I've never been to South Colorado. Yes, you have to fact check everything in crime and romance. I think it's less important than if I was writing literary or historical fiction, but I still fact check things because that's the first thing a reader is going to notice if you get it wrong. But it is a tool, isn't it?

[00:34:00] I will never let it write my novels for me because I feel very strongly about my personal voice and I know that readers like the way that I write. My readers do. And that's what they're coming back for. So I'm not going to shortchange them by getting a robot to do the work for me, right?

[00:34:19] But I'm definitely going to be using it in other areas of my business to help me free up time to do more writing, to help me embrace my creativity in terms of research and learning new skills, in terms of optimization so that I can reach more readers.

[00:34:38] So now we're talking things like website optimization, translations, audiobooks, things that previously were either too expensive or I didn't have access to. From my perspective, I embrace it. But at the same time, I'm very much aware that there are publishers who are using it.

[00:35:03] There are bookstores that will probably be putting books by AI on their shelves and it is going to be in competition with the books that I'm putting out there.

[00:35:17] But given that this is happening and there's nothing you or I can do about it, I think that it's better to focus on creating a good product ourselves and to building our own readership, our own community and providing a product that our readers want to come back for. Yeah. Because we can't really, we can't stop it. I'm going to tease two things out. The first thing is looking at the ethics.

[00:35:46] So obviously we're talking about, I think the ethical. So training something on a model is quite fine if you came and said, I'm going to train, take your work and I'm going to use it and we're going to train this model. So you have permission. So it was just the ethic. It was just that aspect of it that was wrong. Yeah. Because the models have to be trained quite all right.

[00:36:13] But yeah, permission for God's sake and let people have that. Which they didn't do. Which they did not do, which was quite wrong. Exactly. And the second thing is the fact that, yes, it's going to change in the future. The way all of it, in fact, the, I think it's ALCS, the author licensing. What was it? Author licensing. What's the full list? ALCS. Oh yeah. The ALCS. Yeah. Yeah. The site here. Yeah.

[00:36:41] Anyway, they, I think is that how the authors guild or the ALCS have now, what they want to strike now is an agreement with the technology company to pay. So there's going to be an agreement with between, so it's going to be the publisher, the author licensing agency, the publisher, the author. So the author has to give permission. If the author wants, are happy for their book to be trained, then there's going to be a split of whatever the, I don't know whether the author will be getting it directly.

[00:37:10] Whatever the licensing, the technology company is paying will go to either the publisher or the author. But that's the model they want to go to. So what they're saying is that we don't want you to just take what you like because they know that they can reverse this. Yeah. It's asking permission. Do you want your work to be trained? If you want your work to be trained, then you're going to get a certain amount of money for your work being trained by companies. Yeah. I think that's probably fair. Yeah.

[00:37:39] So, but the thing that it's not a worry per se, because it's not a worry. How, let's talk about how we let people know how they navigate the future, how the future proof themselves. How do you navigate a future where you know that you have a competition and the competition is a machine that people might, that written by a machine that people might read or not read depending on. Yeah.

[00:38:08] I have an idea, but I want to, because you're far ahead of me in this. What is your advice to those navigating this or just about to navigate this landscape? I think it boils down to why a person wants to write. Like you said, there's lots of different reasons why people write. Some people, it's a passion or they feel like they've got a story in them and it's something they just want to get out there. It's going to be a once off or once a year thing.

[00:38:37] And they do it more for themselves than as a sustainable career. That's a very different thing to an indie publisher like me who relies on the income. So I've made it my career and I'm concerned with optimizing my business in the best way that I can, regardless of what tools I use. That just makes logical sense for me.

[00:39:05] So somebody who is happy just to write their book and to get it out there and fulfill their dream of writing a book or writing one series or a book a year, then I'm not so sure that AI is really going to affect them that much because at the end of the day, they're going to earn what they're going to earn. They're not doing it for the money is what I'm saying.

[00:39:32] So yes, it'll be in competition. But again, the people that they want it to reach can read it if they're not in it for the money. So I'm not sure that's going to be a major affecting factor for them. But for people who are self-publishing and trying to make a living through it, it is going to have an impact.

[00:39:57] So if, for example, you are very anti-AI and I respect everybody's decision on AI, they must do what sits best with them. Then they might struggle a little bit with the future being what it's going to be or what we think it's going to be in terms of sales, because the marketplace is becoming more flooded. It's becoming flooded by a lot more authors.

[00:40:25] It's becoming flooded by authors using generative AI to write books. But for people who are running companies to publish their books, AI is going to be an advantage for them over the people who are not using it, because for exactly the reasons that we've already discussed. It helps streamline processes. It helps free up time. It helps analyze data.

[00:40:54] It helps you produce a better product at less cost, because you can pick which aspects you want to spend your limited budget on. You don't need to pay a cover designer and three different editors and a marketer and all of those things. You can choose. You don't have to pay translators and audiobook narrators. You can choose. You can do some with AI.

[00:41:23] My romance series, I've done, I'm talking about translations now. I've paid human translations to do the first few books in the series, because I'm always going to try and give a human translator the job first or human narrator. But the reality of it is, Stella, and I'm sure you can appreciate this, to get a book translated or to get an audiobook narrated,

[00:41:50] it's going to cost you about, for a good job, $3,000, $4,000 per book. I've got a nine-book series. So how on earth am I going to make that money back through audiobook sales or sales in a foreign market? If I go onto one of the AI platforms like ScribeShadow or Eleven Labs and I pay $100 a month, I can get the entire catalog done in six months.

[00:42:17] And then, of course, the profit I'm going to make is much more than it would have been otherwise. And that, again, depends on you as an author and how you view what you do and what your policy on AI is. I, again, I seem to be very much hybrid everything. So I'm trying to give humans the work, but I can't afford to give them all the work. So I'm hoping to get readers into a series.

[00:42:43] And then once they're into the series, they might be more forgiving that I've used AI for books, six, seven, and eight, for example. Yeah, to be honest with you, it's improving month by month. And in terms of we've been doing some testing in terms, now we're talking techs,

[00:43:06] in terms of our testing and reviews online, the AI translations have been getting four or five star reviews. Wow. As same as the human ones. We're not seeing any dip in sales or dip in reviews or quality issues with it. But we are doing it very thoroughly and we're doing a lot of passes. So we're checking and we're checking and we're checking again.

[00:43:33] We were getting a human proofreader to proofread them. But then when we put those books up, then we got quality issues. How come? Because I think everybody has their own slant with translations. They're going to put some of themselves into it. Okay. And it's going to take the style that it's been translated in and they're going to put their angle on it.

[00:44:02] And the combination just didn't work. We came to the decision that it either had to be one or the other. Okay. So even though we do many passes, we're still doing AI passes with different platforms, different language models to check. When we turn out a final product, we're pretty sure we've gone through four or five, sometimes even six passes on that book. And it's still substantially cheaper than paying one human translator. Unfortunately. Yeah.

[00:44:31] So I have two questions, actually. So question number one is what do you think now? Because obviously the business model is changing for those people, for the translators, for the editors, even for the illustrators. For all those people where machine will put out generic kind of work.

[00:44:51] So should people specialize in an area and niche down so that where they might, their skill might be more needed? What is the advice? Because that's what I hear all the time. Actually editors. A lot of editors are now saying that, oh, their jobs have been taken away. But you know, the funniest thing is I just had a long call with another editor who is creating his own website. Who I've worked with for a long time.

[00:45:18] Who said there's even money, lots of money in developmental edits. Yeah. And he's, that is an editor. And he's scaling up his business. And then there's people who are saying, oh, money's been taken away from me. So I don't know. I think you just have to understand the market and see which direction you have to follow. It's true. But what advice on that? What's your, what do you say? The impact on different industries is varied and it's different for each.

[00:45:47] Editors, yes, AI can do edits for your books for you. But it also still needs to be prompted. It needs to be told what it's looking for. It needs style sheets to be created. It needs to understand your style and the way that it needs to edit. So that all needs human input. So I think to answer your question, roles are changing, but they're not necessarily disappearing.

[00:46:17] They're just changing. So I know a graphic designer and he is busier than ever. Why? Because he's using AI now. He's doing things he never had the possibility of doing before. His clients are asking for more and more things that can only be done with AI. But he's the one that has to do it. He's the one that has the knowledge and he's the one that has the foundation skills.

[00:46:42] So he can prompt and he can fine tune and he can tweak and he can package. And he can send out a much better product to his clients than he was doing before. So again, that's an example of how he hasn't lost his job. He's just changed his job. He's adapted. And the same goes for narrators like Eleven Labs, for example. They actually pay narrators royalties to use their voices.

[00:47:11] So again, the roles are changing. Instead of a narrator doing everything themselves and spending hours and hours in the studio, hours and hours in editing, they can now license their voice to an AI platform. Their voice can be used in the narration and they're still making money from it.

[00:47:35] And in terms of the man hours worked, say 50 people use their voice in 24 hours. They're going to make far more money than they would if they were just trying to do one project in that amount of time. So again, it's not that easy really. Like all of these things need research and you need to look into it a lot more.

[00:48:01] But all I'm saying is that I don't necessarily think it's the end of creative jobs. I just think that those jobs need to change to embrace AI and to maybe absorb it a little bit into what they do and change because otherwise they might do their jobs. Yeah. You know, the funniest thing is that you have the purists and I understand that,

[00:48:28] especially the narrators who are some of the well-established ones that are like people want them. And it's their unique voice, their unique personality, the thing that they bring in to you, the storytelling that makes people want them. So I don't think, I think those people will rise to the surface. And it's almost like we're talking about artisanal things now where you're almost like an artisan, where somebody will say, I'll pay for this because this is a unique, this is the way this person is. Yeah, exactly.

[00:48:57] They're going to be carrying error, aren't they? Yeah. And then the people that are generic, this is what we're saying. Now, if somebody said, if your job can be replicated by a machine, it's gone. And if you, so make yourself look for something that cannot be replicated by a machine. And I was talking to my filmmaker, this is still, this is the previous, this is episode that you're, of course, by the time we air this, it's episode 33, because this is, this will be way in advance of that.

[00:49:24] And he's worked with quite a few celebrities, including David Beckham. And I made a flippant remark and I said, oh, I said, oh, maybe they will clone David Beckham. And then he said, but if you clone him, then nobody will want him anymore. It's going to be a cheap version of him. He said the idea of him is, is, but I'll say that maybe they will clone him for advertisements and all that. I said, no, but maybe they will license his clone. And he said, but if he does that, then nobody will want to pay as much for him anymore.

[00:49:52] They are paying so much for him because it's David Beckham. Yeah. And that is true as well, Stella. It's absolutely true as well. And human narrators might become a rarity and people will strive to have them. We just don't know, do we? Yeah. What are your views on that? What do you, what do you think about that? The two schools of thought and where the lines are going to merge and blur in the middle. I'm a techie. I'm a techie.

[00:50:22] I love technology. I've always loved technology. Yeah. I love artisan as well. I love things that are original. I love things that are, when people tell me that, oh, we went and I'm writing a series and it's all set in this luxury hotel. And because I want to explore this artisanal, my love of things that are unique, that people will pay anything for. Absolutely. Including food. Yeah. So I love all those kinds of originality.

[00:50:49] So I feel for me in the world to come that there's going to be a premium money paid for original way. You being the original self. So, but you just have, I cannot advise anybody that is a narrator that this is what you need to do. I can't advise you, but let me put it this way. I try to narrate a story. I'm laughing at myself now. I try to narrate a story, a short story, because I've got this series set in Lagos and it's all short stories. And I try to narrate it myself.

[00:51:17] And there were two voices and I was able to do the main narrator. Not that it was even that good, but it was okay anyway. And the second narrator just sounded so silly. The assistant sounded so silly that I, the narrator, was even annoyed at my voice. I said, well, I know that this. But at the same time, I didn't want to use AI voices. So I've got an actor. Okay. I've got a friend's daughter who is an actor. Yeah. So I told her, I said, come and listen to this. And she listened to her. She was so diplomatic.

[00:51:46] And she said, oh, let's go to a studio and I'll be the second voice. So we're going to go to a studio and narrate the story in the studio. Oh, excellent. That's exciting. So I still want to do it. I don't know if I'll do the second one like that, but let's do the first story. Yeah. Yeah. So she'll be the second. She'll be the assistant. So it'll be two more. That's amazing. But I still want that original voice. Yeah. When I would do that for books, the story two or story three, I'm not sure. I cannot assure anybody. Yeah. No.

[00:52:14] So that's why I'm both school of thoughts where, you know, am I to, am I not in the future? I'm not sure, but I still like the idea of the original voice. Then, so I want to pivot a little bit now. My second question, which is the markets, the translation markets. So which are the markets that you actually feel that sell out there? Are we talking about, are we talking about translations? Translation. Yeah. The only books that I've translated are the ones I have the rights to. Yeah.

[00:52:43] And I have launched them in Germany, France, Italy and Spain so far. And Germany is by far the biggest market and the most responsive market. For me, that's with my romances. I haven't released any crime novels in foreign markets yet. So I can't really speak from that perspective. Why is that? Because they're all with publishers.

[00:53:13] Oh. The only crime. So it's your romance that you're really. It's my romance that's under my own label and one crime series, the Shrapnelson series. But that's a two book series. Which one is that D? Shrapnelson series. Oh, the Shrapnelson. Yeah, the new one. The one set in. Yeah. The homeless. I can't remember. She's a homeless detective and it's set on the streets of London. Yeah. Homeless. Yeah, she's homeless. Yeah.

[00:53:39] So those are the only ones I have the translation rights to. And I haven't done anything with Shrap. So it's mostly the romances that I've rolled out. Can I say something? So your translation rights are with the publishers? Yeah. But they haven't translated the book. So when you're going into those markets, you went to the German market. Because I heard about German taxis and whatnot. They bought their own system. How were you able to set up in those?

[00:54:08] Let's use the German example. How were you able to set up in the German market? You mean in terms of... Because I hear that there's a process or a system that you have to use to set up in Germany. Press, your tax. Well, it's been on Amazon. Did you just set it on Amazon? No, it's just the KDP, the Kindle Barrier publishing platform. And you just, instead of choosing English, you choose German.

[00:54:36] It's a drop down and it's that simple. So you're going through Amazon and that's it? KDP, yeah. There are other platforms, but most of them are not for IndiePub. Most of them require an agent and a publisher and they're more traditional selling platforms. So the ones that are accessible to us, the biggest one is Amazon. And that's pretty seamless process.

[00:55:05] It's just like we would publish normally on Amazon. So there's no barriers to entry there. Obviously, the manuscript just needs to be properly translated. And then, of course, you need to translate all of your keywords and other metadata that goes into publishing on KDP. And there are some quirky specifics to each market that's worth knowing about. But it's easy enough to do with some research.

[00:55:30] If you're thinking about translating, say, into the German market to look at what's involved, they require a, I think it's called an impressum, which is they need to know the details of the author, your address, and so on. And it needs to be in the book itself. That's what I heard, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there's just a few things like that. I think there's also price point rules where you can't sell your books in Germany for different prices.

[00:55:59] They have to be one price throughout all platforms that you sell them on. So there are some rules that are specific to each market. So it's just worth looking into those. Before you jump in. Yeah, before you jump in. But the actual process itself is fairly straightforward. Okay. I want to ask you about the different formats, e-books, audio books, and all that. So tell me about, are you going to do any of those pretty books?

[00:56:29] The special edition. Are you going to do a Kickstarter? Kickstarter. I think you should think about doing a Kickstarter. Would you? I would do a Kickstarter, but it takes so much planning because I haven't done it before. I just need time to do that. And with my current writing schedule, I don't know if I have that much time to dedicate to creating everything else that comes with it. But yes, it is definitely something that I want to do.

[00:56:57] And I think next year will probably be the year for that. Because I'm working on a dark romance series and I want to bring out a special edition and I want to make it exclusive to Kickstarter first. Fantastic. You talked about your writing. Could you tell us how many books you have? I know you put out quite a bit. So let me cover my face in shame while you do it. How many books on average do you put out a month? I know. Sorry, a year. Sorry. I'm saying a year.

[00:57:27] I put out about, I write about five a year, five or six a year. So I average one book every two months. In a good year, sometimes things come up and you can't. But for the most part, that's what I aim to do. I don't publish all of them necessarily in one year because some series I like to build up first before I start releasing.

[00:57:54] Not so much to rapid release, but more because I find that if one's going to be spending money on advertising, it pays to have a couple of books out in the series first so that you can get the read through. Because it's very unlikely with advertising costs that one's going to break even on book one. A book. So tell us about advertising a little bit. Not a lot.

[00:58:22] If you want to know a whole load of, you go and listen to Creative Pen. But tell us a little bit about it. Creative Pen by Joanna Penn. She does a lot on marketing. She's got back issues. Yeah, she's incredible. She's living on. So if you want to know all about that, you can go and listen to the Creative Pen. And I'll put that in below. I'll put that in the notes. Tell us about advertisements, how you do your advertisements. Are we talking paid ads here? Are we talking?

[00:58:50] Paid ads or any kind of marketing. Yeah. So, well, I don't do a lot of paid ads, to be honest. I wait until I have three books out in a series before I even consider doing advertising paid ads. And then it's probably just low-level Amazon ads and one or two Facebook ads.

[00:59:11] Again, I tend to do the Facebook ads around special occasions or promotions or book launches rather than constantly. I find that just works better for me and for my books. So, yeah. But I've always got some ads running always to the first book in a series. And I'm relying on read-through. So I'm trying to drive traffic to the first book in every series.

[00:59:39] And then hoping readers will fall in love with my characters, with my stories, and then want to read on. So that's my approach to advertising. Yeah. I want to talk about the formats. And then we talk about, you mentioned, which of course I've forgotten about a little bit. But I'm going to bring, I'm trying to bring the person here on to talk about it. So first of all, let's talk about the formats. So e-books, audio books, prints, which ones?

[01:00:07] What's your thinking about all of those different formats? How do they work? E-books are the thing that I prioritize. Obviously, because I'm in Kindle Unlimited with a lot of my series, it's the e-books that are going to get the most read-through. So those are my primary formats. I sell paperbacks on Amazon under my own label and all of my publishers also. Audio books is usually a little bit later to the party.

[01:00:36] Personally, I haven't, not for my crime series, my publishers have the audio book rights. And so they outsource that to media companies who perform the audios. And they get put out when they get put out. I don't really have any control over that. With my romances, I'm experimenting with 11 Labs audio. But so far, I haven't released any. I'm not sure the technology's there yet.

[01:01:06] I would love to pay human narrators for those books. But again, it's a nine-book series. So I'm obviously limited to what I can spend on it. So we'll see in time whether it gets to a point where I'm comfortable using it on my website or for sale wide. But at the moment, I haven't decided on that yet. Yeah. Yeah. I just remember that. You write short stories as well? Not very many. I don't write short stories. No.

[01:01:35] The only short stories I write are the ones I use for as reader magnets. Okay. All right. Okay. So. That's more your. That's in your repertoire. I like short stories, but. You're the short story queen. I'm like, oh, short story queen. I wish. I wish. It's just a way to try and write without having to write three series at the same time, which I'm not very good at doing.

[01:02:04] You are good at doing it. It's so difficult. So I can only handle two series and then the rest are short stories. Yeah. I do series jump quite a lot. I wanted to ask about. I think we've talked about the thing. We think you using your tools are thinking partners, brainstorming. You're using AI for that. You're using cloud code work, aren't you? And cloud code. Have you started using cloud code, by the way?

[01:02:29] I have done some tasks with cloud code, actually, but I'm very new to it. I'm not. I'm still experimenting with agentic AI. So very low level stuff until I get used to it. I'm very cautious about what I give it access to and which workflows I want it to help me with.

[01:02:49] Most of the AI I use is still generative AI, where I'm asking it to do a task like research or to brainstorm character development or something with me. So those are very single-minded tasks. It's not multitasking for me or changing anything on my system, on my platforms, anything to do with my readers, anything like that.

[01:03:15] I think you can tell already I'm a big believer in having a unique voice. And I'm very careful because I don't want that to change, that core voice to change.

[01:03:28] So everything that I use it for, even agentically speaking, will be workflows like data analysis and things where it's going to explain to me maybe opportunities or optimizations that I otherwise wouldn't have spotted.

[01:04:16] Yeah. So what's GU again? It's optimization in the new search environment. So I think for anyone listening who doesn't know what that is, the way that we search now is completely different to how we used to search.

[01:04:40] We used to type in a keyword or search command and get a series of options with websites that we could then select and choose. And those websites were delivered to us, the search results, according to how they were ranked with their keywords and relevancy and so on.

[01:05:01] But now with Google Gemini and other forms of search happening that are AI driven, AI is giving us the answer straight away. We don't have to go and click through numerous websites to find it. It's pulling that information itself. It's taking out a step. So it's looking at all the results and it's formulating its own response based on them.

[01:05:28] And so for us to be able to get exposure with those kind of search results, we have to make sure that our websites and our product pages are not only optimally designed for the reader or for keywords,

[01:05:50] but also in a structure in which those AI bots are going to be able to trawl through and retrieve the information. And that is a huge topic and one that I'm sure you're going to cover in a lot more detail on this podcast. I don't know what to cover and talk about. And a lot of things that I actually don't know yet, but it just in terms of the basics and structure,

[01:06:19] I have tried to implement on my website some changes relative to that. Fantastic. Well done. So what's, well, I think Google is funny enough. I heard, I think it was yesterday that Google or read, you read all these things from different sources. Yeah.

[01:06:38] Google have been, don't quote me on this, but I think Google was taking, not taking to court, but taking to task or to court because someone has taken the information from the summarization. Let's say Gemini summarization. Okay. Yeah. And they had used that as their source of information for whatever. Yeah.

[01:06:59] Don't quote me, go and find out more about this because I think I'm not saying it exactly as it happened, but they now Google, now they're coming, the person, whoever it is, they're coming back to say that it was wrong information. Oh, incorrect. And Google said they are not liable. They said Gemini is not liable, but the court had ruled that they are liable. That's the interesting thing. Yes, I read that as long as AI had brought that information because Google was saying that they pulled the information from different sources.

[01:07:28] So they're not liable. But the court is now saying that Google puts that work out there, the way they've done it, then the AI or whatever, and the person that owns the AI is liable. It's an interesting argument. I'm not going to say what's right or wrong because I don't know. But all I think is that if you were going to search something online, you would make sure you checked it before you used it as a truth source.

[01:07:54] You know, like old school way, you'd research something and you'd double check it and you'd make sure before you put it into your document or your thesis or your legal case or whatever it was that you were working on. And I think the same stands. You can't just take it at face value because it is going to pull information from what's there. That's what it does.

[01:08:16] So if you understand that, then it might be easier to retrieve that information, but you've still got to check it. Yeah. But what's this to say? We're looking at the technicality now. Technicality. Yes, that person has their responsible. But the technicality and the law is saying that as long as Google had that on their platform, as long as AI was able to pull that information, Google is liable. So that's what I read. Yeah.

[01:08:46] Like I said. Oh, that's so the loyalty. As fresh as yesterday, I was like, what? Maybe by next week, people will start talking about it. But I read it and I thought, ooh, that is a bit strange there. Yeah, it's interesting. Oh, yeah. It's interesting. Go ahead and check. Yeah, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how that resolves, Stella. You can feed back to us so we know the outcome. Anyway, so now one last question.

[01:09:12] I'm going to let you go because I mean, I've had you captive for a long time. When you look at the future of authorship, publishing, genre fiction, what excites you and what worries you? Oh, goodness. I love what I do. I love writing books. I love jumping genres. You get mood readers. I'm like a mood writer. I'll write a crime novel and then it'll be very dark and quite disturbing.

[01:09:40] And then I'll need a palette cleanser. So I'll write a romance. It helps me, it drives the character motivations and the happily ever after. And then once I've done that, I might feel like something a little bit more psychological or gripping and switch again. And because I have series spread over all of these genres, I can decide what it is I want to write next. And exciting. Yeah, so that's exciting. And what worries me, a lot worries me.

[01:10:12] Particularly what we were talking about with AI and books flooding the market, the way the landscape is changing, the competition that we're going to face. All of these things are a worry, obviously, but all I can do and all I have control over is to try and learn like I've always done and use it to the best of my ability so that I can maintain a career that I love. Absolutely. I think that's all any of us can do.

[01:10:42] Thank you so much. You've given a lot and I'm so happy. I've been wanting to pin you down for a long time and I'm happy I did. Thank you, Stella. We have a technical problem. My mic is not working, so my voice might not be as loud as normal because my mic decided not to work. So I'm using the mic on my computer. But we got this interview done. So where do you want people to reach out to you? What's the best way for them to find you, Biba?

[01:11:09] Probably my website, bbapierce.com. If anyone does have a question, I have a form on my website. They can contact me there or I'm on social media as well. So you can contact me anyway if you want to. What's your handle on social media? It's Biba Pearce mostly, at Biba Pearce. Yeah. Thank you, Biba. Really loved having you. Thanks for having me on, Stella. It's been wonderful chatting.

[01:11:37] It feels like we're sitting in a coffee shop and having our usual chats about all things tech and AI. So that was Biba Pearce. It was fantastic talking to her about her publishing and her writing process and how she's been able to use technology in her business and all the AI tools.

[01:12:03] I have some ideas about the next set of guests that are coming and I'll let you know as I go along. We're exploring. We're going to be exploring immersive experience in terms of tourism. I want to look at that again. I want to look at technology and when it comes to reading and technology. And you know something? Why don't you contact me? And I'm on Instagram.

[01:12:32] Stella Oni underscore official. Or you can email me. Stella at StellaOnidewriter.com. Or DM me. I'm on X as S-only the writer. Wherever, whichever platform works for you. Reach out and tell me what you want to listen to. What you would like to listen to on this podcast. That's something that will be good to hear from you. And also subscribe, follow, listen.

[01:13:00] Anything that will allow me to continue to do this and offer value. I'm really keen for you to support me that way. I'm planning to do a free masterclass. I've got the topic. I'll share that topic with you next time. Once I've prepared more, prepared it more. And I'm planning, I've got a toolkit that I'd like to share with you. I'm preparing that as well. It's going to be free toolkits that I'll be sharing with you.

[01:13:27] So take care and have a nice morning, afternoon, evening. Bye.