Managing Multiple Projects And The Art of the Long-Term Author Career with Kevin J. Anderson

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 the creativepen. 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 849 of the podcast and it is Saturday the 7th of February 2026 as I record this. In today's show I'm talking with Kevin J. Anderson about managing multiple creative projects without burning out building multiple streams of income financial buffers and adapting when life disrupts your plans. as well as why realistic expectations and continuously reinventing yourself are essential for longevity in the author career. So that's coming up in the interview section. In writing and publishing, some really interesting news this week. Draft to digital announced a new partnership with bookshop. org or which is available in the US and the UK and helps indie bookstores by allowing readers to choose the physical bookstore they'd like to support. And then when they purchase a book at bookshop. org, the reader's preferred bookstore receives the profit. If a reader doesn't choose a store, their purchase still contributes to a profit sharing pool that helps all bookshop. org bookstores. It has generated over $44 million for indie bookstores. So has this really great independent bookstore ethic. Now in 2025 it started to integrate ebooks from big five publishers and its main product is print books and now it is bringing Drafter to Digital's catalog to bookshop. org. We're going to help indie authors and indie bookstores support each other at scale. On their blog post at drafterto digital, Andy Hunter, the founder and CEO of bookshop. org or says, "Our mission has always been to help local bookstores thrive in the digital age. Partnering with Drafter Digital means self-published authors, an essential and rapidly growing part of the publishing landscape, can now work with indie bookstores and they can support each other. So, if you already use draft to digital, you just go log in and there will be a popup where you can say yes, I opt in for all my books or you can obviously do it individually. But I just clicked add all my ebooks to bookshop. org. Now, obviously, you can only do this if you are wide with ebooks and so those not in Kindle Unlimited or exclusive to Amazon. And I'm going to come back to bookshop. org or in a minute as it links to this next announcement which has two parts. So Spotify announced page match this week. It's very cool. If you're reading a print book and then you want to listen to the audio book on Spotify, just take a picture of the page and if the audio book is in the Spotify catalog, it will find the right place so you can keep listening. And then once you've listened for a while, it can also help you find the page in the print book back from the audio book. It's really quite cool. I've seen a demo and I think it's going to be it feels like another way that will integrate. I mean for ages obviously if you read on the Kindle and you have the Audible audio book and you have whisper sync so your audio book matches your ebook exactly that already works between ebooks and audio books but this is between print books and audiobooks which I think is actually really cool and then the second part of this announcement because essentially Spotify wants to integrate more with print books to help facilitate this Spotify also announced a partnership with bookshop. org. I think they've had a really big week. Bookshop. org. So essentially in the press release on Spotify, they say page match opens up meaningful new opportunities for authors and publishers. When readers of a physical book between begin listening to its audio book on Spotify, authors and publishers can earn across formats. We are partnering to integrate purchase links to physical books directly into the Spotify experience in the US and UK. So basically, if you're in an audio book on Spotify, there will presumably soon be a link where you can buy the physical book on bookshop. org. Owen Smith, Spotify's global head of audiobooks, said, "We believe the future of reading or listening needs to be flexible and fit more seamlessly into people's lives. " Since launching audio books in premium, we've seen that when

books are easier to discover and enjoy, demand grows, making Spotify a real growth engine for the publishing industry and changing how people find their next great read. So this is really good I think because I use Spotify for my audiobook listening and I also use it for podcasts and I quite often well I mainly only listen to non-fiction on audio. I read ebooks for fiction but for non-fiction I'll listen to some chapters on audio and I will often buy a print book for things where I want to go back and reread or get notes that kind of thing. So I think this is genius. Now, what depending on how you read and listen, you might not be so excited, but I actually think this is brilliant. So, let's come back to bookshop. org. You may or may not have had a look at it before. If you're in the US or UK, then you can use it. I'm sure you can actually access it from other countries, but it's essentially US UK only. One of my issues with it and why I haven't really pushed it is because they have had limited availability of indie author books in the UK and there was a point when some of my books were available there but then they disappeared and I know other indie authors whose books are not there now. So I was like, okay, they they've clearly chosen that they want to curate this in a certain way. And they did indeed focus mainly on more literary works and things that UK bookshops are more interested in. But I wonder if this is related to the growth of things like romanty where a lot of indie authors have sort of taken that market and readers are buying those books in huge numbers and obviously the Tik Tok integration and all that. So Bookshop, I think, has changed their attitude. They clearly have changed their attitude. These two partnerships indicate that they want to grow and I think that is to be applauded. I love it. I want more opportunities for people to buy and read books in whatever way they want. And obviously what this is a sort of anti- Amazon step as well like for readers who want to buy books, want to buy ebooks and print books but don't want to go to Amazon and may not want to buy from the author's particular store, then this is a good option. So yes, what I discovered in this and I want to refer you to the self-publishing with ally podcast where Ross interviews the CEOs of draft to digital and bookshop. org USA because I have learned there is a reason why my books now my print books are it turns out on bookshop. org or in the USA, but because I'm here in the UK, whenever I went to that URL, it redirects to the UK store and my books are not available in the UK store. So, I didn't even check the US. I just assumed this was one big database and they were either in they were in both or nothing. But turns out my books are in the US, not in the UK. So I would suggest that if you publish print books already through Ingram through draft digital either one of those your print books may well be on bookshop. org in the USA already but check in the UK which is uk. bookshop. org and see. So on the interview that does on self-publishing with Ally, it is all revealed around 20 minutes in, they go into why some many in fact indie authors are missing from the UK store. It is because you have to have at least 30% discount. Now I have 40% discount, so I have that. But you also have to enable returns on your books. and many indie authors don't enable returns but it's time to revisit that. So also makes the point that there is an issue with gardener data here in the UK but it does sound like they want to make this work. So basically right now if your books aren't in the bookshop. org UK store then you will need to update your settings and then hopefully we'll be getting this sorted. But it's funny, I've just not bothered following this up for years essentially because I was like, well, I don't really think that they're supporting indie authors, but now they are. I'm determined to make this work. So, coming back to returns, many years ago when I started on Ingram Spark, there was a discussion of whether to use returns or not. Now, if you want, if you're working with bookstores regularly, then using returns is good. But what Ingram means is that you can be out of pocket. So essentially if you enable returns and someone orders a box of books like maybe they order 50 books and then they return the 50 books you have to pay for all those books anyway but you also have to pay the shipping if you choose the particular option where they get returned. You can choose to just destroy the books and then you don't pay shipping. So years ago I was like when I first did this I was

definitely not going to get into trouble with shipping. So Ingram essentially means you can be out of pocket whereas Amazon KDP print you can only make money. They will not let you sell books that don't make money. So I want you to read the help on Ingram Spark or Draft Digital Print or whatever service you use on returns. But this is the reason I think a lot of us are not on the UKbookshop. org. You if you only use KDP Print with expanded distribution, I don't believe you will be on bookshop. org either since they don't allow discounting or returns and the whole point of the store was to provide an alternative to Amazon. So I have now used Claude Co-workers. I have 149 records on Ingram Spark. That's 40 50 books with paperback, large print and hardback in many cases, different box sets, different variations on a theme. But to update that many records is a lot of work. So, I used Claude Co-work this week. I was so excited. I was like, I am not clicking. There's probably between 7 to 15 clicks for every single one. But I also knew I needed to revisit my discounting percentages and also my pricing because over the years, as the prices have gone up, my profit margin has gone down. And so, the older books particularly that are over 3 or 4 years old really needed updating. So, I've used Claude Co-work to update all of those records and I did a long article for my patrons. So, on my Patreon today, if you are a patron, that is going out today, uh, explaining how I used Claude Co-work to update all those records. And with the release of Opus 4. 6 this week, it's becoming a super useful way to get work done, especially the repetitive clicking work that I do not want to do with my human arm. [gasps] But yes, coming back to bookshop. org, the integration with draft digital, the integration with Spotify, this is just a fantastic new opportunity for us. So I really would recommend that you check bookshop. org in the US and the UK one, uk. bookshop. org, and see if you need to make any changes in order to get your books there so that readers can find them and integrate them. And I think this demonstrates that indie authors are being taken more seriously as a way to make money and sell books. So very exciting. And yes, go and have a listen to the episode on the Self-Publishing with Ally podcast to hear more about it. And of course, even if you're not in the US or the UK, you can still sell on those stores. So I would definitely go and check whether your books are there, too. Also in other announcements, 11 Labs is consolidating their audiobook tools into a dedicated workspace called 11 audio books tailored to authors and publishers. Basically, everything's moving to a new audiobooks tab on the 11 Labs creative platform. All your existing projects and books will transfer automatically if you already use it. There is a clearer free versus paid structure. There are built-in distribution partners. Spotify is one of them and there is deeply integrated distribution with 11 reader and essentially 11 labs is focusing on audiobooks as a specific use case with a dedicated area. So yeah, I think that is again more evidence of more opportunity for audio and again this goes into Spotify and then can then integrate with print books. I love this. I just love an integrated ecosystem where a reader can buy books in multiple formats. Okay, so coming to the end of this section, I also wanted to mention a Kickstarter. Dean Wesley Smith and Christine Katherine Rush have a Kickstarter for new editions and backlist books for authors. Now Dean and Chris are mentors of mine over the years. They have many decades of experience in the publishing industry. You know Kevin J. Anderson's on today. They are in Kevin's cohort of authors who've been around for like 40 plus years in publishing. They have traditional success. They have indie success and share all kinds of tips in these books. Now, the ba very basic bundle in the Kickstarter includes updated editions of Writing into the Dark, which is Dean's discovery writing method, which is great. I think if you are a discovery writer or you're interested in discovery writing that is great. Sometimes known as pancing but you know I don't like to use that term. The magic bakery also fantastic book which is how copyright is a magic pie which you can just keep slicing in different ways. And also the book advanced stages of a fiction writer. I think that is a must readad for fiction authors who are in the sort of I don't really know what I know and what I need

to know. I found that book extremely useful a few years back when I was like, I know I can write fiction, but I know I need to get better. How do I get better? So, that may help situate you. There are more books in that campaign. Lots and lots of things. It's actually a very interesting campaign for just seeing how you could do a Kickstarter for backless books. So, it's only available for a few more days after this goes out. So, go on to Kickstarter or link in the show notes. Dean Wesley Smith. If you search Dean Wesley Smith on Kickstarter, you'll find it. But yeah, fantastic books in there. Links in the show notes as ever. In personal news, I am just heavily immersed in the masters. It's my main focus right now as my philosophy essay is due in a few weeks on is death a good thing. It's so interesting reading philosophy and thinking about it. It's extremely dense and I can't do it for more than like a couple of hours at a time, but very interesting. Bones of the Deep is still with my editor Kristen and I have had comments back from a couple of beta readers. So, I'm really I'm genuinely very happy with it. The things that the beta readers picked up as experts in sailing and oceanography are things that no normal reader is going to pick up anyway. But I'm still going to make some of those changes. Minor changes thankfully nothing major. And I know people have different views on beta readers, but personally I only ever use them for expertise in a particular area or a particular physical location, for example, or particular culture or just an expert read is what I use beta readers for. So, I'm really pleased about that. You can read more about Bones of the Deep and see pictures of me from 1999 when I did the tall ship crossing that inspired the book at jfpen. com/bones. And then in terms of the timing for Bones of the Deep, I think it will be April. I just have a few things I need to figure out first before I am certain on the timing, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be April. Once I get the book back from Kristen, I will start on obviously the last bits and then the proofread and then the book design and all of that. So, it is on its way and you can find out more there at jfpen. com/bones. So, thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Tyne says, "I appreciated your thoughts on your own work and the interview on researching like an academic and sent some photos from Washington State, a particularly lovely one in the mist with mossy trees. " Thanks, Tyne. Victoria says, "I'm catching up on your podcast while I sit watching the ocean blow in the wind down in Devon. " And Devon is in the UK if you didn't know. Listening to the interview with Jennifer Probes on a long-term career, I started out feeling quite dispirited as a writer who has published quite a few books and doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, but your podcasts have made me feel better in many ways. I'm reminded that it's a long game, a game of patience, and sometimes a game you win in a kind of sideways manner. Thank you for the uplift. And yes, Victoria, winning in a sideways manner. I was talking to someone the other day and I was saying, look, I think the biggest reason to write is because it benefits you in a personal growth kind of way. The whole rest of writing, the selling, the marketing, whether or not readers like it, reviews, all of that kind of stuff, that is all secondary really. I mean, we write because we find meaning in writing and winning. Like with Bones of the Deep, I don't know what's going to happen to it next. I mean, sensibly, it was not a book I should have written because it's not in a series. It's hard to market. It's a bit strange really. It's muroke. It's a thriller. It's set on a tall ship. It's And yet, I just wanted to tell this story. And there is a deeper theme in it about taking remains from indigenous cultures and the ethics around that. And that's what I was doing in my degree. And so basically, I think I've already had the benefit of Bones of the Deep and it's not even out yet. It's not even finished publishing. I will really enjoy doing the Kickstarter. I'll enjoy sharing the book with all of you who are interested. But I have had the benefit of that book already, I think, because in finishing it, in writing it down, in getting it out of my head and figuring out some things and yeah, I don't know. I feel like that's the game we win in a kind of sideways manner. So, I really like that phrasing. Thank you, Victoria. And Theresa sent a photo of a Russian Orthodox cemetery in Unaska in Alaska with Orthodox crosses in a very snowy landscape. And I can truly say I will never visit that one. So, it was lovely to see that picture.

just looked really very wintry and very Russian Orthodox. So, please leave a comment on the podcast show notes at the creativepen. com or on the YouTube channel. You can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery, crypt or churchyard. Joanna@thecreatpen. com. I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by Coobo Writing Life, the self-publishing platform built for authors by authors. Another awesome place to publish your wide ebooks and audio books. And it is much wider than just the US and UK. In fact, your stories deserve a global stage. With Coobo Writing Life, international distribution is simple and seamless. Publish your ebooks and make them available in over 190 countries ensuring readers can find your work whether they're across the street or across the globe. And I have personally sold 100 in 180 countries through coobo. So that is exciting and I think that is why I was confused about bookshop. org because in my experience with publishing platforms you only you upload once and it appears in all markets. So yes, so that is true. On Coobo, you can just click yes to all markets. You can also, if you have licensed in some markets, you can deselect those and publish everywhere else. The KWL dashboard helps you track international sales and pinpoint where your books are making the biggest impact. Break down borders and build a truly global readership with Cooitriting Life at the creativepen. com/kwl. That's the creativepen. com/kwl. And yes, my books are there and my audio books, too. This type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription, and editing, but my time in creating this show is sponsored by my community at patreon. com/thecreativepen. Thanks to the 19 new patrons who've joined over the last 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 and articles covering topics on writing, craft, author, business, and AI tutorials. This week, I shared the recording in video and audio format of our live office hours. So, if you prefer to listen, I do try and do everything in audio as well as video, unless it's really a video tutorial. And as I mentioned, there's an article out today on using Claude Co-work to update Ingram Spark records and a lot more detail on returns and why I make certain decisions and all that. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So, if you get value from the show and you want more, then come on over and join us at patreon. com p a treo n. com/thecreativepen. Right, let's get into the interview. Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-awward-winning and internationally best-selling author of over 190 books across different genres with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University as well as a publisher at Wordfire Press, an editor, a rock album lyricist, and he's co-written June books and worked on the recent June movies and TV show. Welcome back to the show, Kevin. — Well, thanks, Joanna. I always love being on the show. — And we're probably on like 200 books and like 50 million copies in print. I mean, how hard is it to keep up with all that? Well, I mean, it was one of those where we actually did have to do a list because my wife was like, "We really should know the exact number. " And I said, "Well, who can keep track because that one went out of print and that's an omnibus, so does it count as something else? " And yeah, well, she counted them, but that was a while ago and I didn't keep track. So, it was — I'm busy and I like to write. That's how I've had a long-term career. It's cuz I don't hate what I'm doing. I I've got the best job in the world. I love it. [snorts] — Yeah. So, that is where I wanted to start. So, you've been on the show multiple times. People can go back and have a listen to some of the other things we've talked about, but I did want to talk to you today about this managing multiple priorities. So, you are director of publishing at Western Colorado University. I am currently doing a full-time master's degree as well as writing a novel, doing this podcast, my Patreon, all the admin of running a business, and I feel like I'm busy. And then I look at what you do and I'm like, this is crazy. And the people listening are all so busy. We're all busy, right? But I feel like if you It can't just be writing and one job. You do so much. So, how do you manage your time, juggle priorities, your calendar, and all that? — I do it brilliantly. Is that the answer you want? I do it brilliantly. It

is all different things. And I like to keep um here here's the opposite of that. If I were just working on one project at a time, like, okay, I'm going to start a new novel today and I got nothing else on my plate. Well, that would take me however long to do the research and the plotting. I'm a full-on plotter outliner. So, it would take me all the while to do, say, it's a medieval fantasy set during the Crusades. Well, then I'd have to spend months reading about the Crusades and researching them and maybe doing some travel and then get to the point where I know the characters enough that I can outline the book and then I start writing editing the book which is a part that I hate. I love doing the writing. I hate doing the editing and then you edit a whole bunch and to me there are parts of that are like going to the dentist. I don't like it and other parts of it is fun. And so by having numerous different projects at different stages, all of which require different skill sets or different levels of say intensity, I can be constantly switching from one to another and basically be working at 100% capacity on everything all the time. And I love doing this. So, I'll be maybe writing a presentation, which is what I was doing before we got on this call this morning cuz I'm giving the a new keynote presentation at Superstars, which is in a couple of weeks. And that's another thing that was on our list. I helped run Superstars. I founded that 15 years ago, and it's been going on. So, I'll be giving that talk. And we just started classes for my publishing grad students last week. So, I'm running those classes. And we just had to which meant I had to write all of the classes before they started. And I did that and I've got a Kickstarter that will launch in about in a month. I'm getting the cover art for that new book and I've got to write up the Kickstarter campaign and I have to write the book. I like to have the book at least drafted before I run a Kickstarter for it. So, I'm working on that. And a Kickstarter pre-launch page should be up a month before the Kickstarter launches. And the Kickstarter has to launch in early March. So, that means early February I have to get the pre-launch page up. So there's all these one thing it's dominoes. One thing has to go before the next thing can go. And I just during the semester break between fall semester and we had about a month off and I had a book for Blackstone Publishing and Weird Tales Presents that I had to write and I had plotted it and I thought if I don't get this written during the break, I'm going to get distracted and I won't finish it. So, I just buckled down and I wrote the 80,000word book during the month of break. This is it's like Little House on the Prairie with dinosaurs. It's an Amish community that wants to go to simpler times. And so, they go back to the place to scene era where they're setting up farms and the brontosaurus gets into the corn field all the time. And so, — that sounds — that's fun. And so with the grad students that I have every week we do all kinds of lectures and just to reassure people I am not at all an academic. I could not stand my like fufu English classes where you had to write papers analyzing this and that. My grad program is all hands-on pragmatic. You actually learn how to be a publisher when you go through it. Like you learn how to design covers. lay things out. You learn how to edit. to learn how to do fonts. And so anyway, one of the things that I do among the lectures every week or every other week, I just give them something that I call the real world updates. Like, okay, this is the stuff that I, Kevin, am working on in my real world career because the academic career isn't like the real world. So, I just go listing about, oh, I designed these covers this week, and I wrote the draft of this Dinosaur Homestead book, and then I did two comic scripts, and then I had to edit we just released my third rock album that's based on my fantasy trilogy, and I have to write a keynote speech for superstars, and I was on Joanna Penn's podcast, and here's what I'm doing. And sometimes it's a little scary because I read it and I go, "Holy crap, I did a lot of stuff this week. " But on that, do you so I manage everything on Google calendar. Do you have systems for managing all this? Because you also have external publishers. You have actual dates when things actually have to happen. Do you manage that yourself or does Rebecca, your wife and business partner, do that or how do you manage your calendar? — Well, Rebecca does most of the business stuff like when like right now we have to do a bunch of taxes stuff because it's the new year and things. She does that and I'm kind of do the social interaction and the creating and the writing and stuff. But my assistant Marie Whitaker, she's a big project

management person and she's got all these apps on how to do project managing and all these sorts of things. And she tried to teach me on how to use these apps. And I just went, but it takes so much time and organization to fill the damn things out. So, I just it's all in my head. I just sort of know what I have to do and I just put it together and work on it and I just sort of know this thing happens next and this thing happens next. And I guess one of the ways is when I was in college, I put myself through the university by being a waiter and a bartender. And as bartender, you have to juggle a million different things at once. This guy wants a beer and that lady wants a martini and that person needs to pay and this person's dinner is up on the hot uh shelf, so you got to deliver it before it gets cold. And it's like I learned how to do millions of things and keep them all organized. And that's the way it worked. And I've kept that as a skill all the way through. And it has done me good. I think — I think though there must be there is a difference between people's brains, right? So I'm pretty chaotic in terms of my creative process. I'm not a plotter like you. I I'm pretty chaotic basically, but I come across — I know I've met you. Yes. — But I'm also extremely organized and I plan everything. And that's part of I think being an introvert and part of dealing with the anxiety of the world is having a plan or a schedule. So I think the first thing to say to people listening is they don't have to be like you and me. It it's kind of a personal thing. But I guess one thing that is that goes beyond both of us is earlier you said you basically work at 100% capacity. So let's say there's somebody listening and they're like well I'm at 100% capacity too. And it might be kids, it might be day job as well as writing and all that. And then something happens, right? You mentioned the real world. I seem to remember that you broke your leg or something. — Yes. — And the world comes crashing down through all your plans, whether they're written or in your head. So, how do you deal with a buffer of something happens or you're sick or Rebecca's sick or, you know, the cat needs to go to the vet or do you just real life? How do you deal with that? — Well, that really does cause problems. We had in fact just recently. So, I'm always working at Well, let's be realistic. I like 95% of Kevin capacity. Well, my wife who does all I mean, she does some of the stuff here around the house and she does the business things. She just went through 15 days of like the worst crippling migraine string that she's had in 30 years. — So, she was like curled up in a fetal position on the bed for 15 days and she couldn't do any of her normal I mean even unloading the dishwasher and stuff like that. And so if I'm at 95% capacity and suddenly I have to pick up an extra 50%. that causes real problems. And so I drink lots of coffee and I get less sleep and you try to bring in some help. I mean, we have Rebecca has an assistant and the assistant has a 20-year-old daughter who came in to help us do some of the dishes and laundry and like housework stuff. You mentioned before, it was a year ago. I always go out hiking and mountain climbing and that's where I write. I dictate. I have a digital recorder that I go off and that that's how I'm so productive. I go out I walk in the forest and I come home with 5,000 words done in a couple of hours and I always do that. That's how I write. Well, I was out on a mountain and I fell off the mountain and I broke my ankle and had to limp a mile back to my car and that sort of put a damper on me hiking and I had a book that I had to write and I couldn't go walking while I was dictating it. And it has been a very long time since I had to sit at a keyboard and create chapters that way. — And my brain doesn't really work like that. it works in an audio. I speak this stuff instead. So, I ended up training myself because I had a big boot on my foot. I would sit on the back porch and I would we have a nice view. I look out at the mountains here in Colorado and I would put my foot up on another chair and I'd sit in the lawn chair and I'd kind of close my eyes and I would dictate my chapters that way. It was not as effective, but it was plan B and that's how I got it done. I did want to mention something

because when I'm telling the students this every week that and this is what I did and here's the million different things. One of the students just yesterday made a comment that she summarized what I'm doing. And it kind of crystallized things for me that she said that to get so much done requires, and I'm quoting now, a balance of planning, sprinting, and being flexible while also making incremental forward progress to keep everything moving together. So, there's like short-term projects like fires and emergencies that have to be done, and you got to keep moving forward on the novel, which is a long-term project, but that short story is due in a week, so I've got to spend some time doing that one. And I've got to uh like I said, this Kickstarter is coming up, so I have to put in the order for the uh for the cover art because the cover art needs to be done so I can put it on the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter. And it is a balance of the long-term projects and the short-term projects. And I'm a workaholic, I guess. And you are, too. — You totally are. — Yes. — I get that you're a workaholic, but as you said before, you enjoy it, too. And so you enjoy doing all these things. It's just sometimes life just gets in the way as you said. But one of the other things that I think is interesting, so sometimes like physical stuff gets in the way. But in your many decades now of the or successful author business, there's also the business side and you've had massive success with some of your books and I'm sure that some of them have just kind of shriveled into nothing and there have been good years and bad years. And so how do we as a people who want a long-term career, how do we think about making sure we have a buffer in the business for bad years and then making the most of good years? Well, that's one thing is to realize is that if you're having a great year, you might not always have a great year. And that's kind of like the rockstar mentality that I've got a big hit now, so I'm always going to have a big hit. So, I buy mansions and jets, and then of course the next album flops. So, when you do have a good year, you plan for the long term that you set money aside, you build up plan B, and you do other things. And I have long been a big advocate for making sure that you have multiple income streams. That you don't just write romantic epic fantasies and that's all you do. That might be what makes your money now, but the reading tastes could change next year. They might want something entirely different. So you got to while one thing is really riding high, make sure that you're planting a bunch of other stuff because that might be the thing that goes really well the next year. I made my big stuff back in the early 90s was when I started writing for Star Wars and XFiles and that's when I had my New York Times bestselling. I had 11 New York Times bestsellers in one year and I was selling like millions of copies. Now, to be honest, when you have a Star Wars bestseller, you know, George Lucas keeps almost all of that. You don't keep that much of it, but the little bits add up when you're selling millions of copies. And it opened a lot of doors for me. So, I kept writing my own books, and I built up my own fans who liked the Star Wars books, and they read some of my other things. If you were a best-selling trad author, you could keep writing the same kind of book and they would keep throwing big advances at you and it was great. And then that whole world changed and they stopped paying those big advances and paperback mass market paperback books just kind of went away. And a lot of people probably remember that there was a time for almost every movie that came out, every big you could go into the store and buy a paperback book of it that whether it was an Avengers movie or a Star Trek movie or whatever, there was a paperback book. And I did a bunch of those and that was really good work. you they would pay me like $15,000 to take the script and turn it into a book and it was done in three weeks. And but they don't do that anymore. And I remember I was on a panel at some point like what would you tell your younger self? What advice would you give your younger self? And I remember when I was in the '9s, I was writing I was turning down all kinds of stuff because I had too many book projects and I was never going to quit writing and I was a best-selling author, so I had it made. Well, never ever assume you have it made because the world changes under you. They might not like what you're doing or publishing goes in a completely different direction. And so I always try to keep my radar up and look at new things coming up and I still write some novels for trad publishers. This

Dinosaur Homestead one is for Blackstone and Weird Tales. They're a trad publisher. I still publish all kinds of stuff as an indie for my uh from Wordfire Press. I'm reissuing a bunch of my trad books that I got the rights back and now they're getting brand new life as I'll run a Kickstarter and go on it. One of my favorite series is Dan Shambble Zombie PI. It's like the Adams family meets the Naked Gun. It it's very funny. It's a private detective who solves crimes with monsters and mummies and werewolves and things. And I sold the first one to a trad publisher. And actually, they bought three. And I said, "Okay, these are fast. They're fun. They're like 65,000 words. You laugh all the way through it. And you want the next one right away. So, let's get these out like every 6 months, which is like lightning speed for Trad Publishing. " and they just didn't think that was a good idea. They brought them out a year and a half apart and it just was impossible to build up momentum that way and they wanted to drop the series after the third book and I just I begged them like please give it one more chance and so they bought one more book for half as much money and they brought it out again a year and a half later and oh and also so that was a trade paperback at $15 and the ebook was Joanna can you guess what Their ebook was priced at — $15. And they said, "Gee, your ebook sales are disappointing. " And I said, "Well, no duh. " And I mean, I'm jumping around. I'm going like, "But you should have brought these out six months apart. You should have had the ebook like the first one at $4 and the other. " I mean, — but you're still working with traditional publishers, Kevin. — Uh, I'm still working with them on some and I still do. I'm a hybrid. I I'm there are some projects that I feel are better served as trad books like the big Dune books and stuff that I want those all over the place and they can cash in on the movie momentum and stuff. But I got the rights back to the Dan Shamble stuff and the fans kept wanting me to do more and so I published a couple of story collections and they did fine but not like I was making way more money writing Dune books and things and then they wanted a new novel. So, I read, okay, I did a new novel, which I just published uh at Wordfire, but again, it did okay, but it wasn't great. And I thought, well, I better just focus on writing these big ticket things. But I really liked writing Dan Chamble. And um somebody suggested, well, if they if the fans want it so much, why don't you run a Kickstarter? And I had never run a Kickstarter before, and I thought um I kind of had this wrong attitude. that I thought Kickstarters were for. I'm a starving author. Please give me money. And that's not it at all. It's like a hey, if you're a fan, why don't you join the VIP club and you get the books faster than anybody else. And so I'm I ran a Kickstarter for my first Dan Shamble book and it made three times what the Trad publisher was paying me and I went, "Oh, I kind of like this model. " And so I have since done like four other Dan Shamble novels through Kickstarters, made way more money that way. and we just sold we can't give any details yet but we have just sold it. It will be a TV show. There's a European studio that is developing it as a TV show and I'm writing the pilot and I will be the executive producer and so there I kept that zombie detective alive because I loved it so much and now and it's going to be all over the place years later I guess. And I mean just in terms of given I've been in this now I guess 2008 really was when I got into indie and over the time I've been doing this I've seen people rise and then disappear like a lot of people have disappeared and it's there are reasons you know burn out or maybe they just they were just done but in terms of the people that you've seen like the characteristics I guess of people who don't make it versus people who do make it for years. And we're not saying that everyone should be a writer for decades at all. Some people do just have, you know, maybe one or two books. But what do you think are the characteristics of those people who do make it long-term? — Well, I think it's realistic expectations. And like my, again, this was Trad, but my first book I sold for $4,000. And I thought, well, that's just $4,000, but we're going to sell book club rights. foreign rights and it's going to be optioned for movies, and the $4,000 will be like, that's just the start. And I was planning on all this extra money coming from it. And it didn't even earn its $4,000 advance back. And nothing else happened with it. And well, it has

because I've since reissued it myself. and pushed it and made more money that way. But it's a slow burn. I mean, you build your career that you start building your fan base and then your next one will sell maybe better than the first one did and then you keep writing it and then you make connections and then you get more readers and you learn how to expand your stuff better. It it's a you got to prepare for the long haul. And I would suggest that if you publish your very first book on KU, don't quit your day job the next day. Not everybody can or should be a full-time writer. I mean, it it's something that you don't like we here in America need to have something that pays our health insurance and things. And that is one of the big reasons why I'm running this graduate program at Western Colorado University because in as a university professor I get wonderful healthcare and I'm teaching something that I love and I'm frankly doing a very good job at it because our graduates like something like 60% of them are now working as writers or publishers or working in the publishing world. So that's another thing. And I guess what I do when I'm working on it is I kind of always say yes to the stuff that's coming in. If an opportunity come, hey, would you like a graphic novel on this? And I go, "Yeah, I'd love to do that. " And could you write a short story for this anthology? Sure, I'd love to do that. And I always say yes. And I get overloaded sometimes. But I learned my lesson. Well, actually, it was quite a few years ago where I was really busy. I had all kinds of book deadlines and I was turning down books that they were offering me. Again, this was TRA. They were book contracts that had big advances on them. And anthology editors were asking me and I was really busy. And I just went and everybody was nagging me, Kevin, you work too hard. And my wife Rebecca was saying, so I'm I thought I had it made. I had all these bestsellers. everything was going on. And so I thought, all right, I've got a lot of books under contract. I'll just take a sabbatical. I'll say no for a year. I'll just I'll catch up. I'll finish all these things that I've got. I'll just kind of take a breather and and finish things. So for that year, anybody who asked me like, "Hey, do you want to do this book project? " "Well, I'd love to, but I'm just saying no. And would you do this short story for an anthology? " "Well, I'd love to, but uh not right now. Thanks. " and I just kind of put them off. So, I had a year where I could catch up and catch my breath and finish the stuff. And after that, I went, "Okay, I'm back in the game again. Let's just let's start taking these book offers. " And nothing, just crickets. And I went, "Well, okay. Well, you were always asking before, where are all these book deals that you kept offering me? " "Oh, we gave them to somebody else. " But this is really difficult though because on the one hand well first of all it's difficult because I wanted to take a bit of a break so I'm doing this full-time masters and you're also teaching people in a mast's program and so I have had to say no to a lot of things in order to do this course and I imagine the people on your course would have to do the same thing and there's a lot of rewards but they're different re rewards and it kind of represents almost a midlife life pivot for many of us. So, how do we balance that then? The stepping away with what might lead us into something new. And I mean, obviously, this is a big deal. I presume most of the people on your course, they're older like me. People have to give stuff up to do this kind of thing. So, how do we manage saying yes and saying no? — Well, I mean, I hate to say this, but you just have to drink more coffee and work harder for that time. Yes, you can say no to some things. My thing was I kind of shut the door and I just said I'm just going to take a break and I'm going to relax. And I could have pushed my capacity and taken some things so that I wasn't like completely off the game board. But one of the things I talk about is to avoid burnout if you want to long-term career. And if you're working at 120% of your capacity, then you're going to burn out. And I actually I want to mention something. I'm I Johnny B. Truent just has a new book out called The Artisan Author. I think you've had him on the show. Have you? — Yeah, absolutely. — Yeah. And one of the things and he says a whole bunch of the stuff in there that I've been saying for a long time. And he he's analyzing like these rapid release authors that are a book every 3 weeks and they're writing every 3 weeks, every four weeks, and that's their business model. And I'm just like, you can't do that for any length of time. I mean, it

just I'm a prolific writer. I can't write that fast. And it's just it that's a recipe for burnout, I think. But because I love everything that I'm doing and even with this graduate program that I'm teaching, I love teaching it. I mean, I'm talking about stuff subjects that I love cuz I'm I love publishing. I love writing. I love art cover design. I love marketing. I love setting up your newsletters. I mean this isn't like taking an engineering course for me. This is something that I really love doing and quite honestly it comes across with the students like they're all fired up too because they see how much I love doing it and they one of the things one of the projects that they do we get a grant from Draft to Digital every year for $5,000 so that we do an anthology an original anthology that we pay professional rates for it. And so they put out their call for submissions. This year it was uh into the deep dark woods and we commissioned a couple stories for it, but otherwise it was open to submissions. And because we're paying professional rates, they get a lot of submissions. I have 12 students in the program right now. They got 998 stories in that they had to read. — Wow. — And they were broken up into teams so they could go through it. But that just overwhelming was just they had to read that whatever that turns out to be 50 stories a week that come in and then they write the rejections and then they argue over which ones they're going to accept and then they write send the contracts and then they edit them and they really love it. And I guess that's the most important thing about a long-term career is that you got to have an attitude that you love what you're doing. And if you don't love this, please find a more stable career because this is not something you would recommend for the faint of heart. And — yeah. — Indeed. And I guess one of the other considerations even if we love it, the industry can shift. And obviously you mentioned the '9s there. Things were very different in the '90s in many ways especially well let's say pre- internet times and when tradub was really the only way forwards but you mentioned the rapid release the sort of book every month let's say we're now entering a time where AI is bringing positives and negatives in the same way that the internet brought positives and negatives. We're not going to talk about using it, but what is definitely happening is a change in the industry. And for example, people can do a book a day if they want to generate books that is now possible. There are translations, you know, our KDP dashboard in America, you have a button now to translate everything into Spanish. If you want, you can do another button that makes it an audio book. So, we're definitely entering a time of challenge. But if you look back over your career, there have been many times of challenge. So is this time different or do you face the same challenges every time things shift? — Oh, it's always different and I've always had to like take a breath and step back and then reinvent myself and come back as something else. And one of the things with a long-term career is you can't have a long-term career being the hot new thing. And you can start out that way, like this is the brand new author and he gets a big boost as the best first novel or something like that, but that doesn't work for 20 years. I mean, you've got to do something else. If you're the sexy young actress, well, you don't have a 50-year career as these sexy young actress. And one of the ones I I'm loving right now is Linda Hamilton who was the sexy young actress in Terminator and then a little more mature in the TV show Beauty and the Beast where she was this huge star. And then she's just come back now. I think she's in her mid50s. She's in Stranger Things and she was in Resident Alien and she's now this tough military lady who's getting parts all over the place. She's reinvented herself. And so I'm I like to say that I for my career, I've crashed and burned and resurrected myself that you might as well call me the doctor because I've just come back in so many different ways. But you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but if you want to stay around, no matter how old of a dog you are, you got to learn new tricks and you got to keep learning trying new things. And I started doing indie publishing probably around the time you did, 2009, something like that. And it was I was in one of these great positions where I was a trad author and I had a dozen books that I wrote that were all out of print and I got the rights back to it because back then they let books go out of print and they gave

the rights back without a fight. And so I suddenly found myself with like 12 titles that I could just put up. And I went, "Oh, okay. Let's try this. " And I was kind of blown away that first novel that they paid me $4,000 for that never even earned back. Well, I just put it up on Kindle and within one year I made more than $4,000. And I went, I like this. I got to figure this out. And that's how I launched Wordfire Press. And then I learned how to do everything. I mean, back in those days, you could do pretty clunky job and people would still buy it. — And I learned how to do better. Yeah. I learned how to do it better. And then I learned how to market it. And uh then I Well, I mean that time it was just ebooks. And then I learned how to do print on demand books. And then I learned how to do box sets and different kinds of marketing. And I dove head first into my newsletter to build my the fan base cuz I had Star Wars stuff and XFiles stuff and later it was the Dune stuff. I had this huge fan base, but I wanted that fan base to read the Kevin Anderson books, the Dan Shamble books and everything. And the only way to get that is if you give them a personal touch to say, you know, hey buddy, if you liked that one, here's try this one. And the way to do that is you have to have access to them. And so I started doing social media stuff like before most people were doing social media stuff. I killed it on MySpace. I can tell you that. And I had a newsletter that we literally printed on paper and we stuck mailing labels on it. Went out to 1,200 people that we put in the mailbox. And — and now you're doing that again with Kickstarter, I guess. But I guess for people listening, what are you learning now? How are you reinventing yourself now in this new phase we are entering? I guess the new thing that I'm doing now is ex expanding my Kickstarters into more. So last year, the biggest Kickstarter that I've ever had I ran last year and it was this epic fantasy trilogy that I had tried published. I got the rights back and they had only published it in trade paperback. And so instead of yes, I reissued the books and nice new hard covers, but I also upped the game to do these fancy bespoke editions with leather embossed covers and end papers and tipped in ribbons and slip cases and all kinds of stuff and building that. And I did three rock albums as companions to it and just building that kind of a fan base that will support that. And then I started a Patreon last year, which isn't as big as yours. I wish my Patreon would get bigger, but I'm pushing it and I'm still working on that. And it's trying new things because if I had really devoted myself and continued to keep my MySpace page up to date, I would be wasting my time. You have to figure out new things. and and part of me is disappointed because I really liked in the '9s where they just kept throwing book contracts at me in big advances and I wrote the book and send it in and they did all the work but that went away and I didn't want to go away. So I had to learn how to do it different. And one of the after a good extended career, one of the things you do is you pay it forward. And I mentored a lot of writers and that evolved into me creating this master's program in publishing. And I can gush about it cuz it to my knowledge it is the only master's degree that really focuses on indie publishing and new model publishing instead of just teaching you how to get a job as an assistant editor in Manhattan for one of the big five publishers. — And it's certainly a lot more practical than my masters in death. — Well, that's an acquired taste, I think. But yeah, when they hired me to do this and I, as I said earlier, I'm not an academic. And I said, if I'm going to teach this, it it's a one-year program. They get done with it in one year. It's all online except for one week in person in the summer. And they're going to learn how to do things. They're not going to get esoteric, you know, analyzing this poem for something. And when they graduate from this program, they walk out with this anthology that they edited that their name is on it. And the other project that they do is they reissue a really fancy fine edition of some classic work, whether it's HG Wells or Jules Vern or something. They choose a book that they want to bring back and they do it all from start to finish and they come out of it rather than it's not just theoretical learning. they know how to do things and surprise I've been around in the business a long time so I know like everybody who works

in the business and I the heads of publishing houses and the head of drafted digital or audible and we've got Blackstone Audio coming on in a couple weeks we got the head of Kickstarter coming on as guest speakers so I like I have all kinds of guest speakers I think I'm coming on you're coming on as a guest speaker and it's just like they really get plugged in and I'm in my seventh cohort now and I just love doing it and the students love it and we've got a pretty high success rate. So, so there there's your plug. We are open for applications now. It starts in July and so my own website is wordfire. com and there's a section on there on the graduate program if anybody wants to take a look at it. But again, everybody needs to have a master's degree to be an indie publisher. But there is something to be said for having all of this stuff kind of put into an organized fashion so that you learn how to do all the things and it also gives you a resource and a support system so that they come out of it with knowing a whole lot of people. — Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time Kevin. That was great. — Thanks. Thanks for it's a great show. So, I hope you found the interview with Kevin interesting. And I always love talking to author entrepreneurs who've been around longer than I have. And Kevin has survived in this business at least two and a half decades more than me. So, respect Kevin. I also appreciate that he has a very different brain to mine and you might have got that impression. And we work very differently. So, if you work differently to Kevin, don't get hung up on how much he juggles things, but focus more on how his journey might inspire yours, as it does for me. Anyone who makes it long-term in this industry is doing well, I think. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment on the podcast show notes at the creativepen. com or on the YouTube channel or email me joanna@thecreativepen. com and send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday, I'm talking to Lara Bianca Piltchure about audacious artistry, reclaiming your creative identity, and thriving in a saturated world. 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 thecreatpen. com/mpodcast. And you can get your free author blueprint at thecreativepen. com/bloopprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X @ the creative pen or on Instagram and Facebook @ jfpen aauuthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.