Episode #20 – Book Bundles (and plush toys) with Joseph Lallo
http://rockingselfpublishing.com
An interview with Joseph Lallo, author of The Book of Deacon series
Simon Whistler: Hello and welcome to the interview section of the show. Today it is my pleasure to have
with me Joseph Lallo who first published in January 2010. He is most known for “The Book of Deacon”
series, he mostly writes fantasy and does a bit of sci-fi on the side as an addition to his main works in
fantasy. Joseph, welcome to the show it’s great to have you!
Joseph Lallo: Hey, it’s great to be here!
Simon: So, just by way of introduction I like to start these shows by you telling us a bit about “The Book
of Deacon” series.
Joseph: Well, “The Book of Deacon” is an epic fantasy. It started off as a trilogy, I would say a fairly
standard as epic fantasies go. It’s the journey of a character that sort of grows into her role and either
formation of a team to face the challenges ahead and then once the trilogy finished up and I started to
hear from people I started to expand it on both ends with some follow up, at least one follow up story
and then most recently a prequel to it.
Simon: Ah cool, so three main books, so three full length novels and then you wrote a fourth novel after
that.
Joseph: I wrote a fourth, it was supposed to be a short story but then it had been more or less a full
length novel, let’s say novelette.
Simon: Right, the fans demand and the fans get.
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Simon: So tell me, you wrote these three books, then came the fourth book and then you wrote a
prequel. So, how contained was the arc in the three stories?
Joseph: It’s pretty much self-contained, you begin a story with no knowledge of anything, it’s the first
book is “The Book and Deacon” and namesake for the series. The whole adventure is contained within
the trilogy, there are I want to say threads that you could use to follow on but most of the questions are
answered and most of the trials are surpassed in the trilogy. So, when I followed it up it was a much
more distant like generation later sort of thing so that the follow up could be sort of self-contained as
well.
Simon: Self-contained so wraps up each?
Joseph: You shouldn’t finish the trilogy feeling like there are more questions to answer.
Simon: So, you first published this in January 2010 that was right back at the start of kind of selfpublishing becoming what it is today. I don’t think I entered Kindle until January 2011. I mean I wish I got
one at the beginning but I didn’t. So what was that like publishing back right at the beginning?
Joseph: Back at the beginning, it’s funny, you say 2011 is when you got yours because for the entire year
of 2010 I think I made $19. Self-publishing wasn’t the bonanza that it is now back in 2010 but basically it
was, self-publishing was well, I couldn’t get the interest of a real publisher so I guess I might as well do
this as rather than let sit on a shelf. It wasn’t even, like Amazon’s self-publishing is called KDP, Kindle
Direct Publishing, back then it was Digital Text Platform.
Simon: Wow, that’s less appealing. Digital Text Platform, sounds like it could be anything. Alright, so
yeah, I mean I think it’s 2011 and I was doing some post university travelling and I was going into book
shops around the world looking for English books and having a choice of 20 Dan Brown novels and that
was about it so I was thinking “God, I wish I had a Kindle for that year” and then getting one when I
came back to the UK in 2011, I still wanted, I still got it, it was awesome. So, sci-fi came off to fantasy for
you?
Joseph: Yes, it did. Again, because the fantasy again for a year it didn’t really do anything so I decided, I
said to my friends, well the fantasy didn’t do anything, the follow up short story sold very, very little
compared to even the low sales of the trilogy at that time.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: I was like, well seems like the fantasy is not working out and my friends were like “do sci-fi,” I
was like, okay. It turns out the person who had recommended sci-fi was trying to trick me into writing a
story about time-travel and I didn’t so he was disappointed. He should’ve been more specific in his
request.
Simon: Wow, you have supportive friends, they’ll sell any books for you and they’re like yeah, continue
writing. I get an answer from my friends, they’ll be like “stop man, go get a job, come on.” But you are
working at the same time as writing.
Joseph: I am working at the same time as writing for now at least.
Simon: Okay. So you’re planning on taking it to a solo venture?
Joseph: You know it seems like it’s a race to see whether or not I’m going to quit or whether the job is
going to go away because things were stuttering along in the day job.
Simon: That obviously wouldn’t even have been possible with your $19 in 2010 so what change for
2011, 2012 and obviously this year?
Joseph: 2011, in May of 2011, since I wasn’t really selling any copies I decided to make the first book
free. And I made it, you’re not allowed to make it free on Amazon but you can make it free on Smash
Words this is where I was also published. So I made free there and then I sort of ratted myself out to
Amazon to tell them oh, it’s available for less on Barnes and Noble. And they matched, and then a few
days later, a website called Pixel of Ink I think it was picked me up just as one of the free books and I got
25,000 downloads in a couple of weeks and then couple of weeks after that as people finish reading,
about I don’t know 10% of them bought the next book and then about 90% of those bought the third
one and I just started to get those money rolling out.
Simon: Beautiful! That’s nice! Go from like $19 to—
Joseph: I made, I want to say I made $1,900 that first month.
Simon: Wow! That’s cool! That’s like serious money.
Joseph: Yeah, it is.
Simon: About a hundred times more than the entire 2010.
Joseph: It’s true.
Simon: So, at this point, so this was May 2011 so you’ve done an entire year and made $90 then started
writing sci-fi, where was the sci-fi book at this point?
Joseph: The sci-fi, you know it was, I want to say I had just finished the sci-fi book, like I had just finished
it and I realized that again it didn’t sell right away either. So I was starting on the next one just figured
well series is probably a better idea. So I was probably writing the second sci-fi book when the fantasy
book started to take off and then I was in a middle of a sci-fi project when I realized fantasy might be my
thing.
Simon: It’s like it’s always coming down the pipe later and say well, I should do that now and then this.
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: That’s interesting. So you mentioned the protagonist in your Book of Deacon is female, it’s
unusual. She’s the lead character?
Joseph: She is the lead character for most of the trilogy.
Simon: You didn’t have a guy as the main character, it seems to be generally the author, obviously not
all the time but we choose a character of the same gender.
Joseph: Yeah, it’s funny the way that worked out too. The idea for this story, I mean the idea for—well,
yeah, when I was in grammar school I was thinking up stupid stories to tell and I came up with one that
was incredibly cliché not that this isn’t cliché but I came up with one that was either more cliché than
the one I ended up with and it was like oh yeah, these heroes and they were all guys, it was five of them.
And then as I got into high school, I was like I should probably, that was like, the whole story was like
descendants of epic warriors. And then I was like, well if I’m going to write a story about descendants I
should probably figure out who they descended from. So I started to come up with ideas for who they
came from and I decided since all the heroes in this story are going to be guys then I would try to do
primarily female cast for the descendants just to sort of have balance. And since I was in high school
coming with those ideas when I was in grammar school coming up with the first set of ideas, the new
ideas were better so I decided to set aside my first idea and the trilogy that I wrote was the one that was
the distant of the ancestors of the trilogy I intended to write.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: So that’s how I ended up with the female protagonist.
Simon: So writing’s obviously going back a long way for you, not to date yourself but when was this
happening?
Joseph: Oh man, yeah, I probably and I mean we’re talking about I first started thinking about stupid
stories when I was in second grade or so, so we’re talking in the 90s. Oh, let’s put it this way, I started
ripping off ideas from an NES game so it was sometime between 1985 and 1989 I suppose.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: I started stealing ideas and then yeah, so we’ll call the early to mid-90s I started writing the first
seeds of this.
Simon: So, and this was the seeds of “The Book of Deacon”, when did that start reforming as more than
just ideas ripped off from games but actually as a full-length novel?
Joseph: Probably, I would probably say that the actual words that would become this I started writing in
high school so we’re talking 1997 or so into 2001 is when the ideas were forming then I went to college
and I started typing it in late college, so 2005 or so.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: It was a very long and just silly—for the longest time it was just a background process in my
brain to do something instead of classwork.
Simon: It often seems that way for all authors who are putting out their first, it always takes them ages
to get the first one done and then after doing that one it becomes a whole lot easier to do second ones.
How many books have you written now altogether?
Joseph: Oh, I’ve got “The Book of Deacon” trilogy and then after that is “Jade” which is the short story
and then there’s a prequel I just wrote which is “The Rise of the Red Shadows” and that’s five and I got
two sci-fi books so that’s seven. There’s others in the pipeline, I don’t know if we’ll consider them books
yet until they eventually actually show up.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: But there’s at least two more full length books that are in some level of completion to get out
there.
Simon: So you’re writing more than one at the same time or just kind of switching them back and forth
between the two?
Joseph: What happen—I wrote one, I wrote a full length book a while ago shortly after the trilogy in fact
which was going to be that original trilogy I’d originally thought of and trying to use grammar school
ideas, it still didn’t really come out the way I wanted it to so I finished the book, decided it wasn’t any
good and then put it on a shelf. And then I wrote other stuff, so I still have that one sitting on a shelf
waiting to be fixed. And then there’s the NaNoWriMo project from last year which I wasn’t sure if I was
going to release and now I probably will.
Simon: So it’s the 24th of October right now, so NaNo is starting in what about a week? Are you doing it
this year or have you done enough of it?
Joseph: I am doing it.
Simon: Ah, you’re doing it.
Joseph: Yeah, I’m setting aside my current project which is another sci-fi book and I’m going to be doing
another NaNoWriMo project.
Simon: Okay, well what sort of genre? Do you know yet or is it totally to be made?
Joseph: I do know, I actually asked the fans. It’s funny, whenever I ask the fans there’s a few enthusiastic
fans who give me an answer right away and then nothing. Those fans who—I kind of want them to know
the fans who answer my questions have a disproportionate effect on my career. They get to decide a lot
of things, so I had asked if they were—I had given them a list and it was like are we going to write a story
about zombies? Or do I want to write—I didn’t want to do anything Book of Deacon or for sci-fi, I
haven’t named a sci-fi series. So I didn’t want to do any of my current stuff, something new and I was
like so zombies, do we want to do steam punk? Do we want to do urban fantasy? And steam punk,
urban fantasy and something I think I’d label it near future sci-fi. Those three were neck and neck for a
while and then I think write-ins put it over for steam punk so it’s going to be a steam punk novel.
Simon: Cool, so these are all things you’re about to write but all I know about your sci-fi novel now, the
one you’ve got out is that it’s not time travel, what is it?
Joseph: Oh yeah, it’s like the sci-fi stories are about a guy who used to be like a racing, well I want to say
racing pilot, it was hovercars, alright? It’s that kind of future.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: So he was a racer.
Simon: That’s a good sort of future.
Joseph: Yes, it’s my favorite future. There are hovercars and jetpacks, so the two things we were
expecting are in my future.
Simon: Good.
Joseph: It’s about 400 years in the future which is another thing I never actually say in the book but if
you pay attention you can see the clues and we’ve spread out across the galaxy, there’s no aliens so far
and this guy’s a former racer who got kicked out of racing because he fixed a race because he was in
debt with the mob and now the story starts off and he is a chauffeur and a courier and on the side he
delivers stuff interplanetary which is illegal but he does it because it gives him a chance to do his fancy
flying. And the first book is about somebody gives him a package to deliver which the big syndicate who
does all deliveries doesn’t him to deliver. We don’t know why and it caused the mystery. And he meets
a, basically a mad scientist along the way who it turns out is everyone’s favorite character.
Simon: Okay, and this is a standalone novel or its part of a series?
Joseph: It was a standalone novel. It started off I wasn’t really going to write a second one necessarily.
Simon: But the fans demand.
Joseph: Again, you know at that time I didn’t really have fans but I put like sort of a stinger at the end
that implied that there could be more and then I decided I was going to write another one again
because the mad scientist character and he’s got an AI that helps him out. The AI was a mistake, I did
not intend to write that character. It was going to be a one-time gag where it was like a doorbell that
actually was talking to people.
Simon: And then that grew into something else?
Joseph: Yeah, I kept on giving it better and better lines. I was like alright screw it, we’re going to do one
more story and it’s going to focus a lot more on this mad scientist and his AI. And now, actually in the
other room here I have a stuffed animal based on that AI’s character now.
Simon: I’ve got that is something I want to talk about a bit later in the interview so let’s leave that for
now because I do want to come back to stuffed animals. And just before, because something I saw you
were doing which I really want to make kind of the meat of this episode is talking about putting books
into book bundles. And so that’s just, before we get onto that just for a moment, tell me about, because
you did mention something about you were thinking of going traditional but it didn’t really work out.
Just give me the one minute story.
Joseph: Oh yeah, okay. Well yeah, what happened was I had written this, and we’re talking “The Book of
Deacon” as it was originally written, it was written long hand I didn’t know how to type at the time. So, I
had written probably 11 notebooks worth of story and when you see a pile of paper like that it seems
like a waste of time if you don’t do something with it so I looked it up and you’re supposed to get a
literary agent first. So I went to Editors and Predators and I’ve went to Agent List or whatever it is and
I’ve put together a list of about 50 literary agents who at the very least weren’t scammers and I started
sending two at a time, I’d be like here’s my story you know I did put together my query letter as best as I
could. I sent out two at a time, I’d wait until I get a reply or until six months went by and then that was
probably in 2008 I started doing that and then a year passed and I have gotten two dozen rejections.
Most of them were form letters and most of them haven’t even gotten the opportunity to read anything
I have written so I was like okay, I’m just being turned down just out of hand and I don’t deal with
rejection terribly well. I’m very good at self-deprecation so when I get an excuse to dislike myself more,
I’d jump on it. So I was like, you know this self-publishing—I mean the traditional publishing isn’t really
going to work out and that’s why I got into self-publishing because again the same friends who were
convincing me to write more stuff were like try self-publishing. Basically, anything that I have done that
seemed remotely visionary or risky was just that those guys convincing me to do it.
Simon: I like your friends.
Joseph: So do I!
Simon: That’s cool, thank you for telling us about that. It’s always interesting to see especially someone
who joined in like 2010, right in the early days, made $90 in the first year. Self-publishing probably didn’t
make the most brilliant first impression on you.
Joseph: No, no I was just like well, that’s the way it goes. And it was great because when I started
making money it was like I get a dollar twenty five, I’m like oh that’s enough to buy a bottle of soda and
then it starts rolling more I was like hey I could buy like an extra value meal now.
Simon: Yes!
Joseph: Yeah, I’m getting super excited! And then the big paychecks come along and I’m like I could buy
a used car, I could buy a car with this guys.
Simon: That’s pretty awesome. Alright, so as I said, I want to talk book bundles but then I have these
notes which I go through, in fact I sent you the notes before so you have an idea what’s coming up. Just
before we get on to book bundles I was reading your blog, I do a bit of preshow stalking and in fact I’ve
linked up to this blog post that I found particularly interesting. It’s about blog hop, I managed to
pronounce it, I thought I was going to stumble over my words for sure on that one but you read this
great blog post about blog hopping so if people go to RSPcast.com/bloghop that will take you direct to
Joseph’s blog post but for those who are wondering about that right now, what is a blog hop?
Joseph: You know, I didn’t know either. It turns out a blog hop or at least this blog hop is about a bunch
of people who will say interests or blogs that are related. They get together and they agree to do sort of
the same content at the same time and cross-link to each other so it’s like a big sharing of fans. And in
this particular blog hop it was myself and originally seven other authors and now it’s six because
somebody had a rights problem. Where we would get together and we were all agreeing to run a
simultaneous contest to give away all seven of our books to one lucky person and everyone was allowed
to enter everyone’s contest. So, we all talked about each other’s book, we all linked to each other’s
blogs and we all ran our own version of the contest to see who could win and if they wanted seven
attempts to win a book then they could go to all those other blogs and enter all their contests. And it
was just a good way to spread the fan base around.
Simon: And now I know we’ve done like 17 episodes or 18 episodes. I used to write at the beginning be
able to go back and say ah, this person mentioned to this about this but now I’m just going to say
someone, at some point, told me about how they shared their book. There were like six or seven of
them in a group and they had a mailing list and they would share their mailing list in this group and
promote each other’s works because they were in kind of the same genre. So all of these people that
you’ve done this blog hop with it seems to be a sort of similar concept to that?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Simon: As a sharing of fans.
Joseph: Sharing fans, yeah.
Simon: It’s all the same genre or it was a cross-genre? It’s similar to the bundles we’re about to talk
about, right?
Joseph: It’s a little bit of cross-genre, there’s some fantasy in there, there’s some sci-fi.
Simon: In terms of numbers, so when you join together you must have an idea somebody might be more
successful, somebody might just be starting out, how do you deal with that because I don’t know if I was
brand new I would think people who are very established would not really want to take me on their blog
hop because they’d be giving a whole lot more than I could give, how did you deal with that?
Joseph: Well the way this blog hop was organized it was someone named Tammy Salyer who’s in the
blog hop obviously. She and I, she’s one of my editors, and also a while back there was the Kindle book
review I think it was, ran a best books of 2012 contest and I put “Bypass Gemini” which was the first scifi book into it. And I made it to a final five but I lost to Hugh Howey, which is just like as soon as I saw
Hugh was in a contest, that I was going to lose. But I believe it was me and Tammy, we’re both in the top
five so it’s sort of how we—
Simon: Wow, congratulations!
Joseph: Yeah, that’s how we both sort of met each other and then since then basically for this, oh I
wrote a short story a while ago and I needed it edited really fast and I already had an editor but I knew
that Tammy was an editor and I thought she might be able to get to it faster so I let her edit that and she
did a great job. So that’s sort of how we got connected and then she, I presumed, she’s got her own
network of authors that she talks to so she started reaching out to us to see if we wanted to be in a
bundle and Moira Katson, another person in the bundle, I had spoken to her via email early on. When it
comes to like who is more successful and who is less successful I honestly couldn’t tell you how I
compare to the rest because it was more or less, you know we are all indie authors so I didn’t really care
where they were compared to me although subsequently I went and checked out their Twitters and I
was like all of these people have more followers. I’m doing bad on Twitter!
Simon: That’s interesting. I love this, the kind of community spirit of it doesn’t matter if they’re slightly
ahead me or slightly behind me we all help each other out because we’re indie authors, we band
together.
Joseph: Yeah, I mean I’m not losing anything in the deal. Even if I had 10,000 times the following that all
of these people had it doesn’t hurt for me to help them out even if I was way on top.
Simon: No, to send a message out to your fans saying, you might have a chance of getting a free book,
no one’s going to be upset it’s not a zero sum game.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Simon: That’s awesome, great attitude to have and logically also makes a huge amount of sense.
Joseph: That’s true.
Simon: So let’s talk about effectiveness of that, what was the result of that?
Joseph: I think today, that is to say the 24th probably is I think that was the last day of the blog hop so
tomorrow I’ll pick a winner, we’ll see how that goes. I haven’t seen a huge spike in sales or downloads
but didn’t expect to. If you were planning to give away a book, chances are pretty good people aren’t
going to go out and buy it. But the people who really wanted the book and didn’t end up winning might
go out and buy it afterwards. And I’ve actually got to check, it wasn’t an explosion but there was a lot
more chatter on Twitter and such about it so it definitely gave some exposure. I would do it again it
wasn’t a waste of time I feel.
Simon: That was my next question, so you will do it again?
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: And with the same people when you’ve written your book so or you’ll go out and find a new
group to do this with?
Joseph: I probably wouldn’t hunt down all of the same people just because that would sort of require us
to align reasonably well with our release schedule but I wouldn’t avoid the same people. Whoever
seems to make sense at the time.
Simon: So if someone’s thinking of doing this how would you recommend they start networking with
other authors to make it happen?
Joseph: Well, we kind of follow each other on Twitter so that’s handy and there’s—I’m not in a whole lot
of communities. GoodReads is another place where a lot of authors will congregate. I think the Kindle
boards as another place where you can sort of find yourself a thread where people are talking at this
sort of thing and throw your hat in the ring.
Simon: Yup, for all of those who are listening to this show and have listened to only this episode you will
hear Keyboards and GoodReads come up many times before.
Joseph: Yes, indeed.
Simon: I will link over to them in the show notes of course so anyone listening and if you are looking for
a fantastic community, KBoards go check it out. So I had actually got this blog hop and book bundles as a
separate section but it’s sort of linked. But still, I’d love you to give me a bit of detail, what exactly is a
book bundle?
Joseph: The book bundles, basically, usually it’s a theme of some kind where a group of authors with a
book to release not necessarily a new one but a group of authors with a book to release will sort of all
come together and make their books available as a two-tier bundle. One where you can name your
price, with some minimum just to cover credit card processing I think it’s usually one or two dollars is
the minimum and up to however much you want to pay I think we top it off at a $100. But yeah, it’s
name your own price and if you put in how much you want, you’re allowed to choose how much goes to
the authors or just how much goes to the site and there’s an option. Now it’s automatic to donate some
of the proceeds to charity. And then if you pay above a certain bonus you usually get a couple of extra
books.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: And the books are DRM free and they come in basically any format you can reasonably want. It’s
usually MOBI for Kindle and EPUB for everything else.
Simon: So a third-party site is bringing all this together?
Joseph: Third-part site, yeah. In the case, the bundles I’ve been in it’s mostly Story Bundle.
Simon: dot com?
Joseph: dot com, yup. [storybundle.com]
Simon: So, they approach you? You approach them? You pay them?
Joseph: The way it worked out for me initially, I was interested in doing bundles before bundles existed
or at least before book bundles existed.
Simon: Because there’s indie game bundles that I’m—
Joseph: Indie game bundles, yeah. There’s a HumbleBundle.Com.
Simon: Yes.
Joseph: And I think Humble Bundle might’ve just done their first music bundle and I wrote an email to
them and said “hey you guys should do book bundles.”
Simon: Ah, so these companies, they’re not related to each other?
Joseph: They are not, no. Story Bundle is separate from Humble Bundle.
Simon: They are closely named…
Joseph: Yeah, they’re quite similar. Well yeah similar, that’s a funny thing too, so I have written to them
I don’t know, three years ago, I was like “hey I got a book if you ever do a book bundle let me know I’ll
be glad to throw in my hat in the ring.” And they said, “yeah well circle around, we’re not planning to do
a book bundle, well circle around and let you know.” And then, a couple of months go by and one of the
same group friends is like hey, there’s this guy Jason Chen who he’s the guy who stole the iPhone 4. I
was like okay, because he’s starting a book bundle thing you should submit and I did and a couple
months after that I got an email back from him. He was like, hey your book is, I read the first 25% of your
book, and it’s definitely going to be in a bundle, it’s just a matter of when. Couple of months later after
that he’s like okay our first bundle is called the Big Bang Bundle, it’s a sci-fi bundle and your book is sci-fi,
because again it was the “Bypass Gemini” book I put into that one and so he was like “yeah, we want
you in!” And then the way it works is that, basically that was it! The first time I got into a bundle I had
submitted and then after that I knew the guy. He was always looking for somebody to curate bundles so
he would reach out to me, “oh we’re looking to do a fantasy but I know you have fantasy, do you think
your fantasy book is good enough for this?” I’m like, “yeah sure.” So after the initial submission, once I
sort of proved I was good enough I suppose then it became more of a negotiation where he’d be like,
“well yeah, we want to do a fantasy well” and I’ve got a fantasy book to put in. He ask whether I knew
any other authors and then it’s sort of, we reach out to people we know who we think are a good fit for
this…
Simon: So you knew this guy through a friend of a friend?
Joseph: Well, I didn’t know him, I don’t actually know how he found out about it but he was, I want to
say sort of a minor internet celebrity, he used to write for let’s say Gizmodo I think.
Simon: He stole an iPhone 4…?
Joseph: Yeah, that was, well I think it was an iPhone 4. It was a big scandal a while ago where when the
iPhone 4 was on its way out, he got his hands on one and was writing up about it. Somebody had sold
him I guess what was a stolen iPhone 4 and Apple made a big stink about it.
Simon: I vaguely remember this.
Joseph: Yeah, he’s that guy.
Simon: Ah, okay and now he started Story Bundle!
Joseph: He started Story Bundle! So, initially it was a submission and then it was what they call ‘curation’
where we sort of reach out and pick out books that we think are good enough.
Simon: Okay, so you’re involved in this at the core?
Joseph: I am now in his network of people which is nice.
Simon: Wow, that’s cool. So, in terms of this bundle, how many books are in there? Did you say already
or am I not taking notes on that?
Joseph: Ah, I didn’t, I think… It varies, usually it’s, I want to say, usually there’s going to be four to six
books in the main bundle and then usually two to four more books in the bonus. So, somewhere
between six and ten books per bundle and usually there are some repeat with the authors so say
somewhere between four to six authors per bundle.
Simon: Okay, and if I wanted to get involved in a story bundle, where do I go to apply or submit?
Joseph: If you go to StoryBundle.com I believe there’s a submissions link toward the bottom.
Simon: Okay, cool. And so basically, I’m just going to sum this all up because it seems—I’m sure it’s
simple but there seems to be a lot of information. StoryBundle.Com, authors come together and they
put their books into a bundle and then a reader can come to that site and then choose how much they
want to pay for said bundle. If they pay over an amount set by Story Bundle they get bonus books.
Joseph: That’s right.
Simon: Okay, it sounds cool. When’s the next bundle coming out? Are you involved in that?
Joseph: Right now I think they just, just a few days ago they started the thriller bundle. So he comes out
with a bundle about—the full length bundle lasts about three weeks, so that’s the other thing about
bundles that they’re limited time. So the full length bundle lasts about three weeks and he usually does
about a week of downtime and then puts out another one. It’s either a mini-bundle which I’ve also been
a part of in the past or another full-length bundle. So there’s always one coming along, right now it’s the
thriller bundle.
Simon: Okay, so in terms of finances there’s a three or a one dollar minimum donation.
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: Do you have an inside idea on the amount people are paying?
Joseph: You know they usually pay right around the bonus threshold so if our bonus is $10 then you’ll
see that, or I think actually I think our bonus was $8 less when i was in but you’ll see people paying like
the average will be around $8.50 so it’s nice to see that people aren’t lowballing all the time.
Simon: I’m guessing people are, I don’t know about this but they’ll pay the—you’ll get a bunch of people
who pay for the bonus threshold and then you get a bunch of people who are lowballing and then it
brings back to an $8.50 average.
Joseph: I would say yeah. I don’t have the stats right in front of me but we get a list of how many people
paid above and how many paid below the bonus threshold that it is and it really is, I want to say 80% of
the people are paying right at or slightly above the bonus. And so the thing is there’s a default setting
like if you just ignore the fact that you’re allowed to set your own price the default is usually one or two
dollars above the bonus. So there’s probably a lot of people who just go through and click buy and don’t
even notice that it’s a name your own price deal.
Simon: So it’s just simple, easy, done. It seems smart to set it slightly above the bonus then! So alright,
let’s talk about a bit more money. So the money that comes in after this bundle, how is it divided? Is it
you’ve got the share for the authors and its split equally among the people who have books involved?
Joseph: The way the money is split is they take off the charity and the processing and all that and then
the bundle site takes off the amount that the person who put in the money says they were supposed to
get and then you get the final bit that’s for the authors and it’s split by how many of the books, how
many of your books contributed to that amount of money. So someone went under the bonus and you
have four authors each with one book in the main bundle then it’s split 25% each but if there’s a bonus
and now one author has two books in the bundle and the others have one book then they split it so that
it’s two parts for that guy and one part for everyone else. So its split evenly based upon your
contributions.
Simon: Okay, have you had the extra book there or if it has always been just one book?
Joseph: I have always—no, except for the mini-bundle that I was just in, I’ve always had at least one
book in the bonus. And the first, I think the fantasy book I had two bonus books.
Simon: Okay. So I’d like to know sort of in comparison to selling on Amazon for example, which book did
you—just choose a book bundle as an example, I don’t mind which one that you choose but how is that
compared? What price was the book at Amazon for when it was involved in the bundle?
Joseph: We’ll lets go with the first, the Big Bang Bundle, the sci-fi one, because that one’s a little bit
more straightforward.
Simon: Sounds good.
Joseph: Both of the books I had in that bundle, I had both “Bypass Gemini” and its sequel “Unstable
Prototypes”, one of them was in the bundle, the other one was in the bonus and they were both selling
for exactly $2.99 on Amazon and when all is said and—which means whenever anyone buys one of
those books on Amazon I make about $2 and when all was said and done on the bundle I probably made
a little bit more than a dollar, so I was making half as much but I was still making money as those were
sales I wouldn’t have got otherwise and it didn’t hurt my other sales.
Simon: This is what I wanted to ask, it’s just extra readers, it’s not people who would have bought on
Amazon…
Joseph: It really is. In my observation, it certainly doesn’t have a negative impact on sales. I’ve seen a
very, very, very small boost in sales usually the month after as word of mouth spreads around. It’s a
temporary thing so they can’t go to the bundle and get it. The bundle’s usually short enough that they
can’t read through it and then while it’s still going tell a friend about it.
Simon: Okay, in terms of Story Bundle marketing, what do they do to kind of distribute or get the word
out about the bundle?
Joseph: Again, the guy who runs it, he has a lot of connections within the web journalism world. So early
on when it was new he was reaching out to Gizmodo and just all sorts, all of his friends in the biz. When
it was a new thing he’d talk about it and say "Oh, here’s a new thing - they’re using the Humble Bundle
method of selling, they’re going to be selling books in the Humble Bundle method,” and then he would
reach out with that. We did an AMA on Reddit, just anything we can, we all talk about it, we talked to
our blog friends so it’s an attempt to reach out to all of our contacts. He did some Facebook advertising
too so there’s probably some advertising involved as well.
Simon: I probably spent too much time on Reddit, but for those who don’t know, what’s an AMA?
Joseph: AMA is an Ask Me Anything, so in this case it was “I am a Story Bundle author, ask me anything.”
Simon: Okay, so he seems to have these connections, as you said he’s an internet celebrity in a way, and
he just went to put the word out and that just happened I suppose.
Joseph: Yeah, that was in the beginning and now Story Bundle is starting to get a foothold where people
are like oh, the new Story Bundle is out. So there’s a little bit of that now too which is nice.
Simon: Okay, that sounded you know, that’s the right sort of marketing to get the word out then.
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: So, bundles, we’ve been through my questions and we’ve actually covered things that I’ve
thought would come up and I felt they worked out very effectively, it seems a great idea because I think
maybe I’d heard of it, but I hadn’t really given it too much thought until I came across you and I read
about your doing the story bundles and thought that it would be fantastic to have you on, but I’ve heard
of the indie game bundles before that. Anything you’d particularly mention about bundles before we
move on?
Joseph: Well first off, I think that there’s a lot of people who are concerned about putting stuff in a
bundle because there is no DRM and I’ve never liked DRM so I never really cared about that and again I
haven’t seen a negative impact so it’s like one person bought a bundle and then gave it to everybody
they know.
Simon: Yeah.
Joseph: And the other thing is, what’s funny about the bundles is literally while the first bundle was
coming out for Story Bundle, Humble Bundle did their own book bundle and they were running at the
same time. And I was like, you could not waited a week but—
Simon: I guess they saw, okay someone has taken our idea. We were going to execute on it but someone
just did it faster than us. Have they gone anywhere with that?
Joseph: I think they’ve done two book bundles and again they had said to me many years ago that they
would circle back when they were going to do a book bundle and when the first one came out I wrote a
letter to them, I was like so did I just not make the cut or did you forget that I had mentioned this? And
they came back with oh, sorry about that we were really swamped, here’s a submission page. I was like,
“oh”.
Simon: Thanks so much! It’s like just “go to bundle.com/submission and we’ll take special care of you”.
Had they seen you go with the competition at that point?
Joseph: Maybe, you know I—
Simon: Maybe.
Joseph: It would be nice to think they’re like “oh that guy, we almost had him” but no, it’s probably just
like I was one of a thousand people who said they wanted their book in there. I can delude myself into
thinking that they missed out on me but really they probably just forgot about me…
Simon: So we’ve touched on pricing a little bit, just before we move on something I did want to circle
around to here is how does Amazon deal with bundles because they’re always price matching and that’s
how you do perma-free and stuff, how do they deal with the bundles? Do they have problems with that
or…
Joseph: I have not been yelled at by Amazon, I think the deal is it’s like you can’t buy my book
individually, like it’s a bundle, you can’t buy just my book so that price doesn’t apply to my book. Plus it’s
a variable price so they can’t really price match because this guy paid ten bucks for it or this guy paid
two bucks for it so I don’t think it’s on their radar.
Simon: Yeah it seems at least for now not something they are too worried about…
Joseph: If it really takes off I’ll probably get an email from Amazon saying, “you need to delist your
book,” but that’s the other thing, I never went exclusive with Amazon.
Simon: Yup.
Joseph: A lot of people did and it’s caused a lot of problems in trying to promote stuff so I’m glad I never
went into KDP Select.
Simon: A lot of people have talked about the death of KDP Select and how it just stopped working
entirely after some changes were made earlier.
Joseph: Yeah, they made some mistakes I think. They made some simultaneous changes that were selfdestructive.
Simon: Yup, and now the people are like, “no more, no more!” And they seem to lose out quite badly
there.
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: So in terms of pricing you’re pursuing a perma-free model, right? You have the first Book of
Deacon is for free and then—
Joseph: Yes, indeed.
Simon: So what about the prequel? How does that work?
Joseph: The prequel, the first book is free and I wrote the prequel to be a standalone. You could read it
without having read the rest. So it’s my standard $3, for a full length book I charge $3, the least that I
can charge while still getting the maximum royalty from Amazon. So it’s going to be $3 unless I end up
making it at the beginning of a little side series in which case it might drop to free but that’s not going to
be until there’s two or three books to follow it.
Simon: How long is the prequel?
Joseph: It’s actually I think the longest book I wrote. It’s somewhere in the order of—I was shooting for a
150,000 words just because each book in the trilogy is 150,000 words or so.
Simon: Oh okay, long books.
Joseph: Long books, yeah I think this one came perilously close to hitting 200,000 words until I started
chopping stuff out, so let’s say it’s 185,000 words.
Simon: In terms of, just read through numbers, can you see who finishes the series and then comes back
and reads the prequel?
Joseph: I don’t have a whole lot of stats on that, I can just tell you based on sales that it’s not a bunch.
The prequel is doing okay, it’s doing better than the sci-fi books actually but we’re looking at probably
about, I want to say 10% of the people in just terms of raw numbers that finished up the third book,
went back for the prequel.
Simon: I only ask this because someone previously, specific again I’m mentioning someone because it’s
been a few episodes now and I don’t remember who — they said writing the series and then—or they
wrote the first book and then they wrote a prequel so they could do perma-free, have you not thought
about making the prequel the free one and then leading people onto the full priced Book of Deacon, is
there a reason for not doing that?
Joseph: I don’t like to, and this is just personal, but I feel like once something has cost less making it cost
more again is kind of a bait and switch, like that’s just the way I feel. So, the fact that book one is free, I
don’t want to suddenly make it cost money again. Otherwise, I could see it makes the most sense to
make the entry point free because you can sort of get people interested in the series without having
to—you don’t want to make a book in the middle of the series free because they’d have to go back and
read the beginning to understand it. But the prequel would work as perma-free because there’s no
background that you need for it. It’s just that if I had never made “The Book of Deacon” free then this
prequel probably would’ve been the free one.
Simon: Yeah.
Joseph: That’s free already I don’t want to mess with it…
Simon: I understand that attitude, that’s fair enough. You don’t want to start making people pay for
something that was once free, people might complain or whatever.
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: So the prequel to a trilogy… it’s the fourth book right?
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: How about the read through numbers from the trilogy, do you know numbers?
Joseph: I used to be very, very into statistics. I’ve got things here labeled “conversion rates.” Book one to
book two… so the free one to the first non-free one - about 17% of the people carry through.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: And then from book two to book three about 90%.
Simon: Nice!
Joseph: So the trilogy, within the trilogy there’s a very strong carry over. And then only about a quarter
of the people who read the third book go on to “Jade”. Again, all three books of the trilogy have a little
bit of a cliffhanger and then—well I should say, the first two books of the trilogy have a little bit of a
cliffhanger so there’s this tremendous impetuous to continue reading in the trilogy and then it sort of
ties off the story in the third book so there’s no one who—I guess there’s not a lot of people who are
like “I don’t really care what happened in the next one, I don’t care anymore.”
Simon: I recently had an interview with Elle Casey who was saying she said she doesn’t do cliffhangers
but readers were saying there were cliffhangers and just how amazingly effective they were for getting
the person to read that next book…
Joseph: Yeah, I really I wouldn’t want to do—the trilogy wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy. Initially when I
wrote it, it was just going to be one book but then it ended up being 11 notebooks and that’s more than
one book! So that’s why there are cliffhangers, it’s because I wasn’t done telling the story. I didn’t trust
that somebody would read a 10,000 page book or whatever or how much it would end up being. So I
chopped it up and that’s why there’s cliffhangers. I don’t want to do a cliffhanger in a book when I can’t
write the next one right away. Otherwise, it might be two years before I get it out and they’re sitting
there hanging on a cliff hanger for two years.
Simon: Yeah, you don’t want that! So, thank you for sharing this, it’s been great to chat about this kind
of different marketing techniques because book hops or blog hops was something I hadn’t talked about
with a guest before or book bundles… Now, let’s talk about something completely unusual, plush toys!
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: I was on your blog and I see a—is it a dragon?
Joseph: There’s a dragon and there’s a funk, you’d have to go further back for the funk but the dragon is
the one that everyone was waiting for.
Simon: What’s the deal?
Joseph: In “The Book of Deacon” series, there’s a baby dragon who shows up right around the middle of
the first one named Myn and she ran away with the series. Everyone who I get email from are like, I love
Myn. So I knew that people really liked this character and I love art, I’m always commissioning stuff.
There’s a portion on my website called official artwork which is full of stuff I’ve commissioned from
people including the covers. So I got some art done of Myn, just like a sketch of Myn which was fantastic
and it’s my Facebook background now but people are like I want Myn, like can you make Myn? And I
looked on DeviantART to see if I could find somebody who does plush because it seemed like that’s what
they were after and it was just an odyssey trying to get one of those made because I don’t want to say
that artists are flaky but I do want to say it’s easy to find a flaky artist.
Simon: Very tactful.
Joseph: I would reach out to people who did some fantastic work and then say “hey, listen I’d like to
commission a plush” and then they either wouldn’t get back to me which is fine, they’re busy, or they
would get back to me and they would say okay, it’s going to cost this much and then months would go
by and then they’d say “oh sorry I can’t do it.”
Simon: Oh, that sucks.
Joseph: But eventually I found somebody who did a fantastic job. She’s Bubble Rhapsody Design or
something like that but she—
Simon: We’ll link over on the show notes. [http://bubble-rhapsody.deviantart.com/]
Joseph: Yeah. She’s excellent, she’s on DeviantART, she does Pokemon and whatnot. So I was like, yeah,
I want to know if you can make something for me, I want you to make a plush dragon and would you be
okay if people were interested enough, would you be okay with me mass producing it? She was like,
“absolutely!” So she made it, she sent it to me. I just got that one, just a few weeks ago it’s also in my
room and now I have to find someone who can make more than one of those…
Simon: Ah, so the demand is there, people still want it then?
Joseph: Yeah, people still want it. And that’s the tricky thing because unless you are making thousands
of something then it tends to be really expensive on a per piece basis and I know people aren’t going to
want to throw down fifty bucks for a stupid stuffed animal from my book so I’m trying to get closer to
$20.
Simon: How do you do that? You go just Googling or…?
Joseph: Yeah well, that’s what I’m doing. You search for a term, it’s “contract cut and sew” or something
like that, that’s the magic words that I found and those are places that you send them a design and
they’ll cut out and assemble a whole bunch of stuffed animals but they tend to have a multi-month
backup where it’s like “we can’t even consider making your thing for another six months.” And most, if
you really want it to be cheap, it’s going to be in China or anything like that which is fine. I don’t really
have a problem going international but the problem is once you go out there they’re like okay so, how
many thousand do you want?
Simon: It’s in thousand units, yeah…
Joseph: Like no, no, I don’t I could sell more than 200 of these and they’re like oh well, that’s about 1/10
of what we’re willing to make…
Simon: Yup, that’s the sample run.
Joseph: Yeah exactly.
Simon: So there’s no plush today on demand service?
Joseph: I wish there was, that’d be fantastic!
Simon: There’s a business.
Joseph: Yeah, plush on demand.
Simon: “We’ll take your character and turn it into a plush toy and ship it out.” Just one at a time, but I
guess that would cost… maybe hundreds of bucks.
Joseph: Yeah it would, it would definitely be. I mean the prototype costs about a $150 to make and I
would imagine that’s how much it would cost each time.
Simon: Wow, it’s the small little thing right?
Joseph: Yeah, it’s little like this one’s probably about six inches.
Simon: So, you could potentially send that to someone and say make many of these or—
Joseph: Yeah.
Simon: Okay, cool.
Joseph: That’s the idea it’s like, now that I have that I can say to her, okay, I found a company that’s
willing to assemble these, could you give me the designs, the patterns. And then they would take them
and make 50 of them for hopefully considerably less than that.
Simon: That’s pretty cool. It’s unusual to sell these kind of things, I mean yeah for like big major authors,
you can buy like a Harry Potter wand, but for indie authors making these kind of like, doing it yourself
and putting out physical items based on the books, it’s unusual, it’s cool, I like that.
Joseph: I like it too. Hopefully I can make it happen. I mean I’ve tried posters. Posters are a lot more
affordable. Posters, you can throw down a couple of thousand dollars and get a couple of thousand
posters!
Simon: Plenty of print shops…
Joseph: Yeah. But not a whole lot of contract cut and sew shops!
Simon: No, I guess just probably a thing to do with supply and demand.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah I would say. That’s the worst thing too, because I know I’m going to succeed in
getting like 200 of these made and then sell 2. My garage will be full of stuffed animals!
Simon: It’ll no longer be the garage full of book like it was ten years ago, it will be the garage full of
stuffed animals and then there’ll be plush toys in demand…
Joseph: Yeah!
Simon: And electronic plush toys somehow with the 3D printers.
Joseph: Yeah, 3D but you know I thought about that with this figurine I was like maybe I could do some
3D printing. I have a 3D printer.
Simon: You have a 3D printer?!
Joseph: I do have a 3D printer because I am a huge geek.
Simon: I saw it in a technology fair the other day, it was so cool and yeah then I realized how much it
cost.
Joseph: They’re not cheap and I got one back when they were a little bit newer than they are now so
they were considerably less cheap than back then.
Simon: What do you use it for?
Joseph: Not a whole lot! No, initially I got it and I was just designing like oh, there’s a missing knob from
my dresser let me 3D print a knob. I did 3D print the dragon, I 3D printed Myn, I made my own little 3D
model and made it. But I mean it’s not feasible to do large numbers like that.
Simon: Still I think that’s exceptionally cool that you own a 3D printer.
Joseph: It is cool and I still mess with it. I just moved and it’s sitting on my dresser and not hooked up to
anything right now.
Simon: Making incredibly expensive pieces for various pieces of furniture…
Joseph: Yeah, and it’s true and they don’t even look good. You could look in my room and you’d know
which one I made because it’s like made out of white plastic instead of whatever the other ones were.
Simon: Wow, we’re getting off-topic here a bit… I want a device where I can take one knob and have
some sort of scanning device that scans the knob and then just makes a copy of it like Star Trek… like
replicators.
Joseph: The replicator is what it’s called, they call it the “Makerbot Replicator.” They have one and they
just released—well they haven’t released yet, they just unveiled that they do have a 3D scanner that
they’re making now!
Simon: Oh, cool! Like I didn’t even know about that and I want it!
Joseph: So do I, I didn’t buy one of those yet. I’m not there yet!
Simon: I wonder where they got the name replicator from, right?
Joseph: Can’t imagine! That’s another thing, I made a Star Trek combadge, it’s one of the first things I
made.
Simon: Nice!
Joseph: I was like woo, look what I got?
Simon: I want them to make the real deal replicator that makes them functional, that’ll be cool.
Joseph: That would be excellent, probably a few years away from that though.
Simon: A few years.
Joseph: Just a few.
Simon: Alright, let’s get back on topic. You commissioned these through DeviantART, is that where you
went for your covers?
Joseph: Yeah, DeviantART. I made my own covers and they were not so good. This was back when I first
went free, I still had my own homemade covers and I made about $3,000 from my first burst before it
started to die down again.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: So I was like alright, I got $3,000, what am I going to do with it?
Simon: 3D printer!
Joseph: Yeah, actually it’s not what I spent it on but—
Simon: Just joking.
Joseph: It’s about how much it would have cost! So I was like, “my covers are crap, I want good covers!”
So I went and I was just digging around. A friend of a friend was an artist and I was just going to use him.
He’s a really good artist, I forget his name now I think it was by like “Ocular Nerve” but I couldn’t be
sure…
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: And again, I contacted him about it, he did not get back to me in any timely fashion. So I
searched “epic fantasy art” and hit enter on DeviantART and I ended up seeing a work that was very
similar to the climax of one of my books and it turns out it was the climax to one of the Tolkien novels
and therefore mine rip it off I suppose! But the artist was named Nick Delegeres and I was like wow, this
looks excellent! And then I didn’t do anything with it because it was like this guy’s a pro, I’m not going to
be able to afford a pro and my friends were like yeah, just send an email. So I did, and he was like yeah
sure. He told me he could do a full color high detail cover for about a thousand bucks. I was like, well I
have three books and I have $3,000!
Simon: Cool.
Joseph: Okay, let’s make three covers. And yeah so, he did and my sales tripled as soon as I put the new
covers up.
Simon: Cool.
Joseph: People judge a book by its cover.
Simon: They totally do. Especially now browsing on Amazon. I’ve mentioned it before because as a
reader it’s definitely the first thing I look at… then the title.
Joseph: It really is. Yeah, it’s true. And it’s like you have to—somebody asked me a while ago, how do
you make a good cover. I was like well first hint: It has to look good as a thumbnail!
Simon: Yes.
Joseph: Because that’s how people are looking at it.
Simon: Yeah, you only see the thumbnail unless you click on that preview.
Joseph: Yeah, so it’s like make sure you’ve got a thumbnail that is thumbnail pretty, even if it’s not
pretty full-size, you get a click when people see a good thumbnail.
Simon: And even if it’s just pixels as when it becomes bigger, by that point, I’ve already got your money!
Joseph: It’s true.
Simon: $3,000 on three covers and that’s all the money you had made from your book so far…
Joseph: That was all of the money I have made. I hit zero again after that.
Simon: How did that feel? I don’t know if I could do that, in fact I know I couldn’t do that. I’d just be like
“oh no.”
Joseph: Well again, I didn’t expect the books ever to go anywhere so it’s like when I got my first little
boost it was like well, you know what this is free money and I might as well have something cool.
Because again I really like art, so I was like let me just have something I like so I can look at it in like 50
years when I’ll be like, oh look remember when I had that made, isn’t that pretty?
Simon: Cool.
Joseph: So I was okay with it.
Simon: Seems good.
Joseph: It turned out to be a good investment.
Simon: Yeah for sure, tripled your sales and then go back and make more money. It’s like a business, you
put the money back in and see some returns and you saw good returns by any businesses standards
Joseph: I got lucky with that.
Simon: Lucky or a good investment, smart investment. And while you’re spending $3,000 on covers,
what’s happening with editing?
Joseph: The editing? Initially, and that’s the other thing, the trilogy didn’t have any editing at first. I read
it a few times and my friends read it a few times and they told me what stuff was wrong, I corrected it
and I put it out and then I started getting reviews and was like four star reviews, would have been five
but it’s atrociously edited. So, after I put the covers in and I started getting more money, I started
looking into editing and there’s lots of freelance editors out there and they can do some really good
work. So I found one that again didn’t seem scammy and I sent it out to her. So now, it used to be I put
my book out, waited until I earned enough money to get it edited and then edited it which is a silly way
to do things because the first batch of people get a book that’s got errors in it.
I want to say the prequel is the first one I released edited, like I got it edited and then put it out. But
that’s what I do now, I send my books out to a freelance editor to iron things out. It turns out, by the
way, there’s two ways to spell ‘prophecy’ and I was using the wrong one.
Simon: There are?
Joseph: Yeah, there’s prophecy with a C and prophesy with an S. The other one was a verb, the other
one’s a noun and I couldn’t tell you which one it is, that’s why I have an editor.
Simon: I always remember, I think you have it different in the U.S. but in the U.K. we have practice and
practise, the practice I believe is the noun with the C and then the practise with the S is the verb, I think.
So if it’s the same for prophecy then with the S it would be the verb, I think but I’m not sure!
Joseph: Sounds about right, I think you’re right on that one. I have a war with homophones because I
always choose the wrong one.
Simon: Okay.
Joseph: And recently it’s maybe a year ago, I had someone come in, oh yeah, the book was had a great
story but he spelled reign, as in horse rein instead of reign as in reign of a kingdom every time.
Simon: Then they can just do a “Ctrl-H” to find and replace in Word.
Joseph: Yeah, just find and replace, that’s what I do, I’ll go through.
Simon: Nice, I’ve also—my use of grammar, especially my use of commas when I write anything, anyone
who probably reads the posts on the website or the show notes knows I’m not very good at that whole
thing. So, I think in a previous show, for some reason two people emailed me saying, “are you an
editor?” And I had to go back and listen to the episode because it’s like when did I possibly even imply
that because I would be a disastrous editor.
Joseph: Yeah, same here. I have a comma problem, and also I would just capitalize a word sometimes.
Why did I capitalize ‘the’ in the middle of a sentence? So yeah, I need an editor because forget it, I could
read my own book 30 times and then someone else will read it and find 200 errors, I don’t know what
the deal is…
Simon: Interesting, and thanks for sharing all of this stuff. We’re on an hour now so we’ve covered a lot
and this has been cool, we’ve covered plush toys, book bundles, all that cool stuff. So, let’s wrap up and
tell us, what’s the next big thing for you?
Joseph: NaNoWriMo is coming up so I’m going to be writing that steam punk story and I don’t know how
far into it I’m allowed to be. Let’s also just say that there’s at least one more bundle in my future and it
may or may not be related to NaNoWriMo so we’ll see and I’m also writing a third sci-fi book, that got
set aside due to the NaNoWriMo thing.
Simon: Good stuff, good stuff. Okay, so where can people find you online? You have a website?
Joseph: I have a website, BookofDeacon.com.
Simon: Great, and social media?
Joseph: I am @JRLallo on Twitter and also I have a Facebook fan page although I couldn’t tell you what
the link is for that. You can find it via my website. [https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Book-ofDeacon/239647549418500]
Simon: We will find it and put it up in the show notes with of course a link over to your website, if you
want to see that picture of the plush toy as well, that’s where to go.
Joseph: Yes.
Simon: Joseph, it’s been a pleasure to have you on for a chat, thank you for joining me.
Joseph: Well, thank you for asking me.
Simon: Alright, have a great day!
Joseph: You too!
END OF TRANSCRIPT