Stepping Into the Artisan Age with Kevin Tumlinson

What makes a reader experience? How do you build a sustainable author career?

We're thrilled to have Kevin Tumlinson back on the show this week to talk about what he's coined "The Artisan Age." If you follow the podcast you know that we interviewed Kevin for our first episode of 2024, but we felt like we didn't have time to cover all the issues we wanted to talk about, including the rise of the reader experience and decline of the rapid release model. 

If you're a writer looking to build a long-term author career, this is truly a conversation you won't want to miss.

Kevin Tumlinson is an award-winning and bestselling author of hundreds of books crafted to thrill and inspire. He recently left  the role of CEO for BookSweeps, and is now helping to inspire writers as the industry seems to be shifting from a rapid release model to what Kevin has coined “The Artisan Age.” Kevin is known as the Voice of Indie Publishing for his work in podcasts, conferences, public speaking, and consulting for authors. Every day he helps and encourages hundreds of thousands of will-be and established authors around the globe.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boras, usa Today bestselling mystery thriller author.

Speaker 2: 0:44

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the Author Wheel. Today's episode might be my favorite of the season so far. Kevin Tomlinson joins us for a second interview, this time all about what he's coined as the artisan age. It's a transition from the fast-paced churn of the rapid release author model to a slower, more intentional, multifaceted and yes, more complex experience-based craft model for long-term author sustainability. Okay, I realize that was a mouthful, but honestly, this one touches a personal interest of mine and also kind of a core motivation for me, and I'll leave it there for now. But trust me, you don't want to miss this interview. So before we dive into that, greta, what's your news this week?

Speaker 1: 1:40

Well, I do want to say I love this interview with Kevin as well. It really gives you a lot to think about and a lot of direction. But yes, I will hush up on that because readers, or readers, listeners are probably going OK, stop talking, ladies, and let's get to the interview. So my big goal this week is just it's super, just get ready. We're taking a trip up the coast to Morro Bay this weekend and it's kind of been a long time in coming. So I'm very excited to just get away for four or five days and some R&R. We'll go wine tasting and walking on the beach, We'll go see the sea lions and all that kind of stuff. It's just going to be very fun.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Yeah, Central coast is so beautiful. It's one of my favorite favorite road trip weekends.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Yeah, I feel like it's kind of like going to the South of France or or you know, parts of Italy and it's right here, so close to us.

Speaker 1: 2:38

It's just, it's really lovely and just so I feel like a good, responsible citizen. I am going to take the fourth book in what was my seven deadlies to read while I'm gone, because books one through three have been turned in so I got to start on the next. But I'm just going to enjoy some reading. I'm not going to be like working, working. So what are you up to?

Speaker 2: 3:02

So for me, it is all about Kickstarter this week. As of about an hour before we're recording this intro, I actually hit the green launch button on the Kickstarter campaign, and so the wheels are turning. Yeah, it's really incredible how distracting a launch any launch, not just Kickstarter, but any book launch, um can really be, because I, you, I obsessively hit that refresh button and I have to tell myself to just walk away. I know so much easier said than done, um, but luckily I have plenty of other responsibilities and distractions. This week as well, I'm tackling, you know, a lot of the kind of ticky tack things that I've been putting off for weeks or even months. So you know things like moving our seven days course to the website instead of being an email, working on my direct sales website as well. So I've got some like administrative things to take care of. And then, of course, I'm also still working on Aetherburned and it's it's coming along nicely. I'm I'm gone back to the beginning and I'm kind of doing some first half edits to clean up some of the character motivations and staging, to make sure everybody's in the right place and it all makes sense all the way through before I head into act three. But I am still hoping to have a solid draft finished before heading out on vacation in June. Well, that's wonderful, yeah, yeah. So that's it for me for now, but don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Please post a review if you love it and share your favorite episode with a writer friend, because we don't advertise, so word of mouth is how we get the word out. That's it, anyway. That's it for now.

Speaker 2: 4:54

So let's dive into the artisan age with Kevin Tomlinson. We are so excited to have him back on the show. But if you follow the podcast, you know that we interviewed Kevin for our first episode of 2024. And it was such a great conversation and Kevin is such an interesting guy. We couldn't cover everything that we wanted to talk to him about in one show, so we brought him back on for part two. But a quick reminder in case you need his bio again Kevin Tomlinson is an award-winning and best-selling author of hundreds of books crafted to thrill and inspire. He recently left the role of CEO for BookSweeps and is now helping to inspire writers as the industry seems to be shifting from a rapid release model to what Kevin has coined the artisan age. Kevin is known as the voice of indie publishing, for his work in podcasts, conferences, public speaking and consulting for authors. Every day, he helps and encourages hundreds of thousands of will-be and established authors around the globe. Welcome, kevin, we're excited to have you here again.

Speaker 3: 5:59

I'm so happy to be back. Yay, Thank you for yeah, there was every reason to not bring me back and you guys brought me back.

Speaker 2: 6:08

No, there's every reason to bring you back. Yeah, quite the opposite.

Speaker 1: 6:13

We are so interested in all of the things that you've been doing. So, which brings me to the first question, because it was only a couple of months ago you were on, and there have been a lot of changes in your life since then.

Speaker 3: 6:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So why don't you share as much? As you want to share all the new things.

Speaker 3: 6:36

Not just changes in my life. I mean, there's changes happening in our, in our industry that are prompting, I don't know. There's a, there's a dynamic shift happening for sure. But yeah, and on a personal front, I mean, yeah, I, so I, as of a couple about a week or so ago, as of the recording of this episode, uh, I officially have stepped down as the ceo of book sweeps and and you guys can ask me whatever you want about that, it's all everything's on the up there.

Speaker 3: 7:07

But in addition to that, I also I've been doing the Author Nation podcast with Joe Solari, who's taken over the well, it's the State of the Nation from Author Nation, I think is the name of the Nation, from Author Nation, I think is the name of the podcast. But Joe Solari, as some may know, has taken over what was formerly the 20 Books to 50K conference in Vegas and has rebranded that as Author Nation and I think that is going to be like right on the leading edge of some of the evolution of this industry. So I'm kind of proud to be a part of that as well. But yeah, those are kind of the two biggies, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Yeah, Well, so the Author Nation conference. Actually, this was not on our list of topics today, but you know what we're going to talk about it.

Speaker 1: 8:05

We're just flowing with it today.

Speaker 2: 8:07

But I am very excited about the changes that are happening within that conference as well. I actually went to 20 Books in, I think, their second year and it was a great show, great conference, lots of great people. But it had a very set mindset of what it meant to be a professional author, indie author, and I feel like that's shifting. And I feel like you're right, author Nation, as the changeover for that conference has been shifting its mindset, it seems to be a little bit more open, a little bit more inclusive of all kinds of writers, whatever their goals, motivations, purposes, methodologies, productivity levels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3: 8:49

Yeah, I mean you, you mentioned when you were reading my bio and, by the way, she wrote the bio. So you mentioned that there's this shift happening from rapid release, what we call the rapid release, to what I'm calling the artisan age, and others have coined their own terms for this. It is a zeitgeist kind of thing happening right now in the business. It's what's prompting people like you know, joanna Penn and others, to kind of shift the way they're doing business. But that conference, the 20 Books conference, was really focused on the whole rapid release model and you know the 20 Books to 50K group. That's kind of part of the premise of that. You know, not to speak out of turn I mean I'm not officially connected with those guys or anything but in conversations I've had with Michael Angeli and others, that's kind of the direction there.

Speaker 3: 9:48

But what I'm seeing, what a lot of us are seeing, is the rapid release model is starting to kind of lose some of its luster as things like AI start to emerge. The AI-written books have really changed the channel for us and I don't see that stopping or going away anytime soon. But what it's done is opened an opportunity for a lot of us. A lot of us have felt for a time, for a long time, that uh, there's like this movement happening, that there's this transition and, um, there's a shift toward I hate to put it this way, because this isn't this, there's context missing here but it's a shift towards quality.

Speaker 2: 10:35

First, quality over quantity I'm going to interrupt you there for a second, because I don't even necessarily think it's quality of the story, but it's the quality of the experience for the reader that's the context right there.

Speaker 3: 10:47

That's, that's good context.

Speaker 2: 10:49

I'm stealing that from you uh, when I write about this next time, just give me a little credit for it.

Speaker 3: 10:53

That's all right, we're good, yeah, yeah that's exactly what it is, though it's the we are. We have, for a long while now, kind of given ourselves over to this idea that we have to one we have to write and release as quickly as possible, because that's how you make the money, and the money has always dictated everything we've done. I want to make it absolutely clear. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make a living from your writing, thank goodness, exactly See, I've grown very fond of eating and it's just, it's kind of a habit, but I I want to continue doing it.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Having a house over my head having, you know, being married, because if I think, if I didn't have an income, kara could do better, frankly. But I I've had for a long while sort of stirring in my soul because I am one of those. You know, to a degree I'm a rapid. I have been a rapid release writer, meaning my version of it was I was writing like a book a month. Sometimes I'd get crazy. I have a book out there that I wrote in one day oh my gosh that book Evergreen.

Speaker 3: 12:01

We should talk about that sometime.

Speaker 1: 12:03

How can we be friends? I wrote the first draft of a book called Evergreen.

Speaker 3: 12:08

60,000 words in an 18-hour window, oh my gosh. And now I edited before I released. But that was my experiment, right? But see, that was like for me at the time. It was sort of a claim to fame kind of thing. I was known as being a very fast and very skilled writer and I kept pushing myself Well, fast forward.

Speaker 3: 12:28

A little like after a decade of doing that sort of thing, you know, I reached a point where I was burnt out and just saturated and just I lost all love for this work, like I just I got to a point where my soul was hurting, you know, and there was a good couple of years there where I've barely published anything in the past couple of years because it just was hard to face that page. I've had things shift and happen in my life though that have rekindled that, and part of that is this artisan age idea, which is slow down, slow the pace, have a better experience with the writing, fall back in love with the writing, and so it is a quality thing to a degree, but it's also just sort of it's hard. It's the soul of this whole thing that got me into this in the first place, you know, when I first started writing, I wasn't concerned about whether or not I was going to knock a book out in 30 days, you know, in order to keep the money coming or any of that stuff. I was concerned about whether it was going to be a good book. And I think we're starting to see the entire industry is starting to kind of awaken to this.

Speaker 3: 13:41

And what's happened, what's going to happen as a consequence of this, is now we have to replace the idea of, you know, income based on the number of books we're releasing each year with you know. There's a gap here, right, like discoverability and income. There's a piece there that someone is going to figure out to help writers be able to pull back a little and deep, dive into the creativity and the heart of it and still make that living. That's where we are now. We're at that crossroads. We have to figure that piece out.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Yeah, it's. That whole idea is very interesting because, um, I was, you know, my first series is traditionally published and, um, my publisher said to me, um, a part of the contract was that she wanted a book like every eight to 10 months. Yeah, and I was like, whoa, eight to 10 months, that's really fast. So coming into this whole indie thing and hearing people like write a book a month, I'm like what are you crazy?

Speaker 3: 14:50

Is she still looking for authors?

Speaker 1: 14:53

Yeah, really. Yeah, actually she probably is, but yeah, it just was this slow. So to me I do think like, technically, people who've been writing a lot, they have a skill set and, yes, if somebody said, write these characters, write this scene, write this plot, most of us who've been writing for a trope that wouldn't normally be in that story, or those are the things that I think move something to a more artisan position, from just adequate not adequate is the wrong word, but you know what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 3: 15:45

That's you're hitting on. One of the concepts that I'm trying to kind of get out there is that what we've got right now is most of our business is centered around a formula. You know, we know, if we do, if we, you know, call it tropes, call it whatever you want. But we know, if we do, if we, you know, call it tropes, call it whatever you want. But we know, if we insert this character into this scenario, scenario in this genre, the outcome is going to be a book that is probably marketable, right, and that's not a terrible way to think of uh of things. But if you look around at the rest of the creative world and the what we called ip intellectual property, um, that's happening an awful lot everywhere right now and it's it's I, I think it's all based, it's coming out of fear, because look at uh film in particular, is is bad about this, um, and I'm gonna pick on disney and the marvel cinematic universe, right, I knew it, I I was going to take a sick example.

Speaker 3: 16:44

Well, because they've gotten to a point where they're afraid to do anything more original than what they did in the first 10 years, right, Like they're rehashing the same sorts of stories.

Speaker 3: 16:53

It's, you know, lukewarm sequels and terrible, you know, original. The original films aren't so original anymore. Publishers, the same way.

Speaker 3: 17:04

There's a reason why Clive Cussler has been in his grave for a few years now and still releasing books, Like there's authors who are no longer among the living, that have, you know, as prolific a career as they did before they died, and that's because the publishers, the big five in particular they're only going for the safe bets. They're only going for the safe bets and they're only going for the things that, like they only want to invest in bestsellers, as if there's a way to do that indefinitely and they're able to do it temporarily. But what I'm seeing is a translation of that happening in the indie author space, and part of this is being fueled by the rise of language learning models, the AI as we call it, our version of AI, and the whole, you know, rapid production of books. The value of rapid release has been dented, if not tarnished or even obliterated, by the fact that you know there's people out there publishing a thousand books a day generated by AI.

Speaker 1: 18:09

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:09

That's not an exaggeration, by the way. Yeah, Like when I left Draft2Digital, that was one of the problems that we were having to figure out and solve was what do we do about people who are uploading a thousand books a day?

Speaker 1: 18:21

Oh my gosh, I did talk to somebody at 20 Books. He wasn't writing a thousand books a day, but he said his AI wrote a book for him while he was driving to the conference, edited the book for him. While he was driving to the conference he had another IA AI. Excuse me, I can't even get the initials right. That's how much.

Speaker 3: 18:47

I like it.

Speaker 1: 18:49

And had another one create like 20 covers and then by the time he pulled into the parking lot at the hotel he picked a cover and hit publish.

Speaker 3: 19:00

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:01

I'm like, can I go and not talk to you anymore now?

Speaker 2: 19:07

And I think that's the thing, though right, it's a pendulum swing.

Speaker 2: 19:10

We had this race to the bottom where the initial rapid release followers or authors who did that, they had a skill in that they could write very quickly and their stories were good, right, like they, they I'm, you know, you, you included, I guess you know, at a book a month. I'm going to call that rapid release as well, but it's that doesn't take away at all necessarily from the quality of the book. But it became this race to the bottom where who could write the fastest, publish the cheapest, get it up there, get readers for volume rather than for price or quality. Like you know, talking to business, business metrics, you're looking for that nice little intersection between between price and volume, supply and demand. But now, with AI, that bottom is there is no bottom anymore, like there isn't. So how do we, as authors, I guess, tell readers the value of our books and the fact that you know we are putting more emotion, soul, yeah, thought depth, complexity, whatever, into these stories that were not ai, other than just saying this is not an ai written book like?

Speaker 3: 20:21

which, the way I'm planning to start putting you know, 100% human, written in my book description.

Speaker 1: 20:27

I love that. Yeah, I'm going to do that too.

Speaker 3: 20:32

The first thing I want to say here is as much as we I don't want to come down too hard on the rapid release model, because as much as we might ding it and say you know, quality suffers or something, that's not always the case first of all, no it's not, there's been some wonderfully good stories come out of that model and you know it is kind of it's a. Eventually you sort of train yourself to be a really good storyteller at a rapid clip that's. We borrowed a lot from the Pulp Fiction era.

Speaker 1: 21:03

That's what I was just going to say. The penny dreadfuls.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Right, and it's great practice as a writer If you can produce that many words that quickly. The faster you go, the more story you write, the better storyteller you become. It's great practice, right? So yeah, I'm not knocking the humans that do it.

Speaker 3: 21:18

Right, well, and even the AI. So the thing I want to make clear is, whether we like it or not, there is a market for those books, yeah right, if there wasn't, they wouldn't exist. And with the reader who is willing to like, they have this insatiable hunger for, you know, they don't care. They're the ones that are very forgiving of grammar and typos, things like that, and, frankly, the AIs are going to produce a lot cleaner work than the authors who were rapid releasing, so these readers are probably going to be satisfied. That's not my reader. That's the phrase that we all need to be, you know, keep right on our lips. That's not my reader necessarily. All need to be, you know, keep right on our lips. That's not my reader necessarily. I mean, those readers can read my stuff too, but that's not the, that's not the ideal reader that I'm aiming for.

Speaker 2: 22:09

Not your target audience.

Speaker 3: 22:10

Right, yeah, right, and so I think what we're going to find is well. First of all, if you'll notice, Amazon, Apple and others, they're not denying these books. They're not. They're not saying we won't take these books. In fact, Amazon is actually asking if you'll go ahead and identify that it is AI. The only reason I can think of to do that is there's two possibilities. One, they're going to ban AI altogether, and that's probably their back pocket, in case the government comes down on that or something. But two, and much more likely to me, is it's going to become its own separate category on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 22:49

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:49

So that if I just want to read as many sci-fi books as I possibly can, I can maybe pay one price and download as many AI you know narrated or generated books and narrated as I want or as I can handle.

Speaker 1: 23:03

So yeah, and that I think that would be great. Yeah, honestly, yeah, because there are a lot of people who are not going to want those books. Right, and there are people who are going to want them. But because one of my fears and maybe it's a misguided fear, but one of my fears in this is that often readers don't. They don't really know what it's like a reader, doesn't know who a publisher is. Right, they're not like some readers if they're librarians or they're something like that, but most people don't pick up a book and go oh it's great it was published by-.

Speaker 3: 23:41

Did you read the latest Random House book? Oh man, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Hachette has really been on it. They don't know, they like an author, that's what they know. So if they can't tell, because I've had people complain to me to say, you know, the whole indie community got jumped like thrown into one bundle because somebody would read indie books that were not professionally done, right, you know, they didn't use editors, they were full of, and so then the whole indie world got put into one big bundle and it was like, well, we don't read them, right, because those are not professional books. And I've had that said to me by readers, you know.

Speaker 3: 24:26

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Um. So my fear has been with this AI thing is that there are going to be some readers who are going to pick them up and not know that they're AI. They'll just think they're indie books and they're going to feel. What I've got to believe is in there, with a lot of these books, that it is missing a human component and they might not be able to put their finger on it, because grammar is okay, punctuation is okay, it's following, you know the story structure adequately, the piecings, because all those things a computer can do, yeah, but it's missing something. It's missing the salt in the recipe.

Speaker 3: 25:09

And I think that is what's going to slowly tune those readers to go look for, you know, something a little different, something a little better. The hard part for us is going to be the discoverability side of this right.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:26

But someone's going to figure that out and you know I'm working with some folks. I'm hoping I can maybe help figure that out. There's a lot of there's opportunity here. Just like anytime there's any sort of tectonic shift in the industry, it opens up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Some of these are the same problems we've always faced, but we've got new resources now and we've got new incentive to figure this out.

Speaker 3: 25:54

But I think what's going to happen is like I genuinely think that Amazon and others are going to differentiate AI content from human written content and what that's going to do is satisfy the reader who can't get enough.

Speaker 3: 26:09

You know, all my career I've had to deal with the reader who read my entire catalog in one weekend.

Speaker 3: 26:15

Yeah, and yeah, once more, um. But in the meantime, um, it's going to open up opportunities for the authors who are kind of taking their time, slowing their pace, and there is the potential that they'll build bigger, stronger audiences because of this, which means fewer books have to be, you know, released each year, because the goal here would be like sell more of a book instead of writing more books. We've always compensated for low sales by producing higher quality and higher content, and now we're kind of getting to an era where I think we'll have to figure it out, but I think we're getting to an era where we're going to flip that script, yeah, and we're going to start concentrating on you know, I know lots and lots of authors have confided in me that, like I didn't get into this business to write a book a month, I want to do my book a year and then go, you know, spend the rest of the year on my custom catamaran or my, you know, my imported castle, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:18

Yeah, well, it's, it's interesting. So I have this. I have this analogy or metaphor that I, that I've been sharing around a bit and I'll share it here too, is that I think the way I see the future of our industry is quite a bit like like, quite honestly, a cocktail, right? Because if you want to go have a drink, you can go to the grocery store and you can get the off the shelf pre-mixed margarita. You can take it home and you can watch a movie and eat chips and salsa while drinking your margarita. That's one kind of experience.

Speaker 2: 27:49

And then there's, on the full opposite end of the spectrum, right, there's the very bougie, you know craftsperson bar where you go in and the bartender's got the waxed mustache and he's going to just fix you up this perfect, handcrafted, all natural, all you know handmade syrups and all that stuff, and it's going to be this beautiful concoction that he's going to present to you. And it's about that experience of going to the bar and being with that bartender and being with that in that environment. And then there's the dive bar, and then there's the corner pub and then there's all these other things, right, everything in between. If you want to drink, you can choose your experience, and I think that's what readers are going to want to do and going to be able to start to self-sort into those kinds of experiences.

Speaker 3: 28:39

Experience is king. That's exactly the right idea, and I think what we're coming to is the dawn of an era where the piece we have to figure out is how do we signal to the reader the sort of experience that they will have, and do it in a reliable, you know, authentic way, because some readers are going to want that art and experience all the time and experience all the time they're going to want that. You know there's readers who love to read literary fiction, who would turn their nose up at genre fiction, right.

Speaker 3: 29:16

And then there's readers who only want to read genre fiction, and they thought of reading, like you know, I don't know a heartbreaking work, a staggering genius makes them want to gouge their brain out right. And so we have to recognize first who are we. This is what's brilliant about this, by the way. This is the thing that's really kind of resonating with me and the whole artisan age. You know, the artisan experience can can go from writing genre fiction to writing literary fiction. It can be anything in there, because it's all about the experience and equally all about our expression of ourselves as writers.

Speaker 3: 29:58

You know, I wrote genre fiction for most of my career and I have, as of the past couple of years, I've been shifting quite a bit towards something that's a bit more literary.

Speaker 3: 30:09

I'm probably still always going to write a little bit of genre stuff, but I'm discovering about myself that there's more to me than you know, dan Kotler, or you know any sci-fi stuff I've written. There's more to me than that, and I think writers are starting to kind of discover this about themselves, and I think we're finally entering an age where the indie author will have the opportunity to lean in on that and tailor these experiences that readers will then be able to kind of pick and choose the experience they want to have. I think it's coming. I wish it were already. You know I wish there was already a button to push, you know, to import my book into Vellum and push the artisan button. And you know I wish there was already a button to push, you know, to import my book into Vellum and push the artisan button and you know, spit it out, but it's not there yet.

Speaker 3: 30:57

But I absolutely believe we're closing in on that as a concept. That's where, by the way, the whole direct sales thing that's happening, that zeitgeist that's happening, that's born of this. Yeah, the idea that I'm producing a book that's going directly to the reader and I get to make more money for that. Well, there's still that discoverability problem, right. Like you know, Joanna Penn, I love her, Joe hi but you know she's got an audience Right and if she wants to sell direct, she doesn't have to work as hard's got an audience Right and if she wants to sell direct, she doesn't have to work as hard to get an audience. She just advertises to her existing audience. I can do the same, but what about the kid coming in who just wrote one book?

Speaker 1: 31:44

You know he can't sell direct. Well, I think there's right. There's a couple of things Also. Kickstarter is another one of those things that is in the same category. And again, people who have really big audience and a really big mailing list and a fan base sure they put up a Kickstarter book and bing bang an audience that skews older and they're like what the heck is this Kickstarter thing? I'm not putting my credit card on some other online thing. You know what I mean. They're just training people. There is a big. There are definitely hurdles that have to be jumped in this process.

Speaker 1: 32:30

And then the other one that struck me after I read your article was okay, how do I know if I can call myself artisan? Like you know, we tend to think that we're better than not everybody, but some people think they're better than they are and so it's like are we? I mean, I could very much see a very novice new writer whose books maybe are not quite the quality that they will be if they keep writing for 10 years thinking that they're all that in a bag of chips and trying to start some. I am an artisan. Come to my website.

Speaker 3: 33:09

I'm doing a.

Speaker 1: 33:10

Kickstarter and then being very discouraged because people are like, wait, what? Why am I paying money, extra money for your book? Like what? Yeah, yeah. So there's that hurdle too, as know thyself, and are you positioned yet to be able to make that leap into some of these things? So how give us your wisdom on this?

Speaker 2: 33:32

Well, I'm going to answer because I got things Okay, Megan.

Speaker 1: 33:35

Okay, megan, you go ahead. No, I was going to say, eventually I'm going to hear Kevin's yes, absolutely no.

Speaker 2: 33:40

So a couple of things I think. So, number one, on your point about the size of your audience. I think, if you look at it, though, the difference is is the number of people that you have to find that are willing to pay that premium. Um, that can be a much smaller audience. Yes, then yes the, if you're just going the, what I'll call the more traditional, but I don't mean that in traditional publishing sense, but more the traditional indie, sure, where, where you, you know you you publish ebooks.

Speaker 2: 34:15

First you do all the newsletter swaps, all the mailers, you know builders, all that stuff so that you can get thousands of potential readers to buy your $2.99 book. Instead you're saying, okay, I need 100 readers to buy my $25 book, or whatever the math works out. I can't do mental math. So, number one, I think the audience that you need to find to support your work is potentially a lot smaller. But also, I think once you know we have to learn patience right, and I think this is not necessarily a skill that works for the modern age right now, but I think that if you can be patient and understand that, yeah, you're not going to probably be a bestseller off your first book, but by book 10, you know you can find that audience or something like that Then I think we can learn that.

Speaker 3: 35:15

On the question of patience, let's talk about that for a second, because that's definitely something we all need. It's definitely something I don't have, and it's something that can only develop after you've been smacked around by the mackerel that is this business for a while. You know, when I first started, I was very by the way. I think this is where rapid release was born was the idea that I don't have time to put in two years, three years, 10 years in order to see a return on all this hard work I'm doing. I need my books to make money now, and so I think that that is one of the things. That's a piece that's at the heart of how rapid release evolved was. If I write the book and I can get it out for sale and just get a handful of people to buy it, I'm making money. So that's that's part of it. Handful of people to buy it, I'm making money, so that's that's part of it. The you know the idea of you know the skill like learning. You know how do you know you're good enough or how do you know that you've got artisan level skill. You may not know that and you may not have it. I think there's probably an advantage to a lot of writers, sort of acting as if this is what I did. I'm going to be frank with you. I came into this game and said you know what? I'm just going to behave as if I'm already a very successful professional in this work.

Speaker 3: 36:40

Now, when I started all this, the first things I concentrated on were you know, I did concentrate on editing, though not as much as I should have in those early days, but I concentrated on. You know I want concentrate on editing, though not as much as I should have in those early days, but I concentrated on. You know I want a professional looking cover. I want, you know, the formatting to look great. I want the book to be seamless when it, when it's sitting next to you know, something published by Random House or Hashhead or someone else. I want that book to look just like those books. The best compliment a good friend of mine ever gave me was this looks just like a real book. And that was it for me.

Speaker 3: 37:15

But I did the whole act as if Now, sales didn't reflect my attitude for a long while, but because I kept coming back to it, I didn't give up on it. I kept coming back saying, okay, I got a lot of feedback, a lot of negative reviews for that last book because I, you know, didn't edit, so I'd better edit more, or you know something like that. I used my experience to learn and grow and improve and eventually I hit what I believe is that artisan level, and I think that's going to happen for a lot of the young bucks, the newcomers, as they're kind of coming into this. If you can just, you know, find a standard and then make sure you're hitting that standard, you will eventually improve and you will eventually become that artisan writer that we're talking about writer that that we're talking about and I and I think I think kind of to to pivot off that a little bit too you were listening to your readers, right.

Speaker 2: 38:16

So so, yes, you acted as if and you tried to put out the most professional book you could. I think all of that should be standard practice for for new authors. Um, and then you listen to readers, because the readers are going to tell you whether or not they think your book is high quality, whether they're willing to to go back your Kickstarter for the hardcover or not.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Yeah you're gonna. You're gonna learn that from your audience. So the key is to start out, first of all, have the understanding that you're probably not going to knock it out of the park on book one, probably not book two or even book three. Right, you're, it's going to take time. So if you start with that attitude and then listen to the readers, you can. You can find your place and find that audience that you need.

Speaker 3: 39:05

And to your point as well about you know you don't need to sell as many copies, right? That's a huge advantage that the indie author scene has over traditional publishing, right? Don't just sweep that under the rug. If I sell, you know, I actually I'm writing something that's aimed at being a traditional book right now and it's there's a little bit of a war between a self-published author and a traditionally published author and there's a comment that she makes. The indie author makes at one point that you know, I could sell a third of the titles that you sold and buy a small island. You know, and I think that's a very good way to look at it Like, especially as we do, we start leaning in on things like direct sale.

Speaker 3: 39:55

I mean, if you think about direct sale, your overhead for that sale tends to only be the credit card processing fees or something. Right, 3% generally. Right, so you're making like a 90% royalty on that book. You know, where are you going to get that? Anywhere else? Nowhere, yeah, yeah, you know, on my traditional contracts I was earning maybe 3% on the high side for any books I sold, and that was only after I made back the advance. So you know, there's something there that we need to keep in mind as we enter the artisan age is it takes less to be successful. That's a concept we have a lot of trouble with. It takes less of our time, takes less of our energy. It takes fewer sales, like we can do less and maybe even be more successful.

Speaker 3: 40:51

And I think it's all kind of coming down to like, where's our focus going to be? What are we that aim to? Produce the most professional book, the most creative thing possible, do the most unique? Then me churning out a hundred more archaeological thrillers that are based on the formula that I've discovered? Uh, what if the next book has, maybe, elements of that stuff?

Speaker 3: 41:15

But I took, you know, an extra six months to a year to do something, to really dig in and do something extra creative with it. You know something that that no one else has done, or something that no one else is willing to even try? Yeah, and that's where, again, indie publishers have a big advantage over traditional that no one else has done or something that no one else is willing to even try. And that's where, again, indie publishers have a big advantage over traditional in that arena. Because if I go to a publisher Random House or otherwise say, hey, I'm going to do this crazy book that you know it's just going to be two people sitting at their mutual computers for the first two thirds of the book, I'm going to get a big fat. No, yeah, but I mean I say it would never sell.

Speaker 3: 41:53

But you know, the market has changed so much and there's so many, like it's relatable, right. Like if I've got two authors having a little bit of a feud over social media, you know, maybe three or four years ago that book wouldn't gain any traction. But at this point, like that's, we all went through three years of sitting in front of computers and that was our interaction with the world, right. So we're primed, like okay, I see how that relationship I've watched I forget how many indie films I watched over the course of the pandemic years that were effectively shot on Zoom yeah, I mean, we're ready for that kind of thing now. We can be experimental to that degree now.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Yeah, I also think that there's something to be said for creatives whatever they're doing whether it's art, painting, you know, like physical art or books, or music, or whatever they're doing to recognize that getting the skill level to where it needs to be, where people want to invest in you, that just takes time and repetition. So I do think that that's something that the rapid release did for authors. Yes, because if you write 50 books, you're doing well, going to be better, but you get to the 50th book, then you were in the first five, you know, I mean that repetition. It's like people who go to art school. You know they're painting over and over and over and over, paintings that nobody's ever expected to purchase, or musicians. You know, you know, you practice and practice and practice. Nobody's going to listen to your early practice, right, because it's bad I would argue even that that's where genius emerges.

Speaker 3: 43:41

like you know what you've got musicians in particular, you know they spend a lot of time just kind of falling in love with the instrument, with the. You know the process of it and they're so in love with it they're willing to take risks and experiment, and the risks are where genius emerges.

Speaker 1: 43:59

Mm-hmm yeah.

Speaker 3: 44:01

The rapid release model did encourage that. One thing I think has been missing in a lot of respects is you know, most of the time, if you have an industry like this, there's a sort of mentor-mentee relationship where you have someone you can turn to, who can guide you, and I think there's an opening there as well as we shift, you know, into this new model.

Speaker 3: 44:24

A lot of us who've been here for a while, who were successful, like I, spend a lot of my time talking to other authors.

Speaker 3: 44:32

You know, I mean that 100,000 author thing in my bio, that's true.

Speaker 3: 44:37

Over the course of a year, either through podcasts or, you know, public speaking and some of the one-on-one stuff, like thousands and thousands of authors pass by me and hear from me and that's how I'm trying to get back to, you know, this industry. That reared me and I think, as more of us kind of enter this artisan mindset, that's going to become something that's important to us, you know, is like how are we giving back and shaping this? Because the advantage of helping incoming authors reach that artisan level is it encourages readers to look for that level of quality and that level of skill and to find it. And because we're not rapid releasing, we're not lost in the wash. Right, yeah, we want to encourage as many writers as possible to come in and take their time and produce quality books so that readers become accustomed to that and start looking for us and they can fill the gap between my books. Right, yeah, I write a book and then a year later I write another one and they can fill in the void it's.

Speaker 1: 45:44

It's to me in a way, it's kind of like going full circle, that things come back again, because my dad was a publisher and an editor and I grew up I mean he was mostly magazines, but still, you know, he did edit some books and he was involved with that and when I first started writing fiction, he just could not. It was like well, your editor, your editor, is your mentor, you need an editor. It doesn't work like that anymore. Editors want your book edited so they don't have to do any work. Now I was lucky in my first few books I did have an editor who was also a college creative writing professor and so she did like mentor me. But that is rare in this day and age and that used to be the norm, like an editor would look for someone who had this cool story idea but was kind of rough around the edges and would help shape them and shape their career, and that is completely lost in traditional publishing.

Speaker 3: 46:45

But I think it's making a comeback.

Speaker 1: 46:47

Yeah, the full circle thing.

Speaker 3: 46:48

Yeah, I think part of the reason it was lost is because they started outsourcing that sort of thing to the agents, and so agents became the first reader and it became the gateway. Nothing against agents, I mean, I like my agent, hi, my agent Hi. But there's also the problem of that's one more layer between the writer and the people who are actually the decision makers, right, but I'm starting to see coincidentally, I've been in a conversation, I'm going in conversation, with somebody who is talking about this very thing, with somebody who is talking about this very thing they have a traditional-oriented publishing arm now and they want acquiring editors, they want people to go out and find and then nurture these writers in their way, like this is our kind of story, so here's how you do it, and they want these editors to guide these writers through that. When I heard that, I'm like that's, that's where we are, that's that's the artisan age in a kind of nutshell, is that we, we have come full circle because you know we got it's so hard and I'm fumbling a little, but I mean that it's so hard and I'm fumbling a little, but I mean it's so hard because it's we go through this in every aspect of culture where we get to a point where it's like, okay, we have this machine now that can do everything for us.

Speaker 3: 48:17

Let's talk about cured coffee. I can pop a pot into a cured coffee maker and I can get a cup of java right, but it's not. That's fine if I'm in a hurry and I don't have time to brew something, but it's never going to match the quality of like my French press. Or going to you know, an artisan coffee house where somebody's lovingly craft, you know fresh ground coffee and crafted this latte with like a picture of you know roosevelt or something on it. You know, I mean, I, I can't do that in a keurig yet, maybe someday.

Speaker 3: 48:52

But there's two different experiences, right, and there's two different reasons to pursue those experiences, and that's where I think that we are. I think the reader is going to start feeling this too. The reader always trails the writer on this kind of stuff for for a while. But, um, I'm already seeing like the viewing public is tired of the same direct. Yeah, they're, they're tired of it. And and maybe I'm wrong maybe the writer trails the reader in that respect, maybe maybe there's already a shift happening. I'm only just becoming aware of it. I'm kind of dense.

Speaker 1: 49:27

Well, I mean, no, you are not, but I think it could be a cumulative effect. You know, writers, we are also readers and we are also watchers. Right, and it's true. I mean, if I see one more stupid TV series, that I can predict absolutely everything that is going to happen. In the first five minutes of every episode, I can tell you who killed who, why they killed him and how they killed him, before they even introduce the killer. You know, and it's a come on, guys, we got to get a little bit more, and then things will come out that just have even the slightest bit of uniqueness to them, and everybody is talking about it with enthusiasm because it's like, well, this is different. You know, it might not even be great, it's just different, it's awesome.

Speaker 3: 50:18

Yeah, it's like we're hungry for something better. We're so hungry for it that it doesn't actually have to be better, it just has to be different.

Speaker 2: 50:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, on that note, we are coming up on time, so, once again, I think we're just going to have to have you back to the show.

Speaker 3: 50:40

Anytime, anytime. I'll try to make sure my Wi-Fi is in better shape Next time.

Speaker 2: 50:46

I think we can make it all work, so I think it'll come out great. But do you have any links you want to share Any places? Where can we find you All that good wrap up stuff?

Speaker 3: 50:56

You know, what would be good is if people would go to my Substack, which I haven't been promoting as much. But if you go to it's kevintumlinsonsubstackcom and, uh, you know, I have a link to that on my website as well, at kevin tumlinsoncom. But if you go there, like, there's a free subscription, there's also a paid subscription, uh. But that's where I'm starting to kind of I'm experimenting, that's where my artisan is showing, I'm showing my art yeah, yeah, it's a great sub stack.

Speaker 2: 51:26

I've subscribed, uh, so I you know you have a whole post on your artisan age concept and I'm that's really resonated with with me and with greta, so, um, so, thank you for sharing your artisan on sub stack.

Speaker 1: 51:42

It's fabulous no, I, I love this conversation because I'm just going to throw my two cents in before I let you throw your final two cents in. And I love it because I think a lot of us when I say us, I mean writers in general have been very afraid what you mentioned before. There's fear has been driving a lot of things with the AI and the people who are uploading hundreds, if not thousands, of books a day. It's a little terrifying. You need to feel like you're going to be replaced by a machine and you know, this conversation has definitely given me hope that we can forge a whole brave new artisan world. Guys, come on, let's do it together. So I definitely love this conversation. So your final thoughts, kevin, and I'll shut up my final thoughts.

Speaker 3: 52:41

Was I supposed to prepare something? I? I'm sorry, no, you just get to say goodbye. Well, first I want to thank both of you, because this is the second time I've been on the show. I've loved both times. This is a topic, this Artisan Age idea is something that I'm very passionate about, and mostly because this is good for readers, it's good for the writing community, and that's been a big part of my life and career is making sure that. You know I'm involved in the things. Somehow, somehow, I found myself yet again at this crossroads of an evolution in the writing world and I am really excited to see what comes next.

Speaker 1: 53:26

Great final thought. So for those of you who've been listening to this whole thing and maybe your brains are frying or circling or whatever they're doing we have a free course. This is one of the ways Megan and I give back to the writing community. And just hop on over to authorwheelcom and you'll see our free course and it's called Seven Days to Clarity and it's all about defining yourself as a writer, what you're trying to do, creating an author mission statement and then maybe even taking that mission statement and turning it into a tagline. So I really think it's very appropriate material after listening to this conversation. So go on over and grab it and until next time, keep your stories rolling.