Rewriting The Author/Publisher Model with J.D. Barker

0:01Light that spark fire nation, a JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Goal Digger Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down how to rewrite the author-publisher model. To drop these value bombs, I brought J.D. Barker into EO Fire Studios. J.D. is a New York Times and international bestselling author of numerous novels, including the 4MK Trilogy. His latest novel, Behind a Closed Door, releases in May of 2024. He is currently collaborating with James Patterson. His novels have been translated into two dozen languages and optioned for both film and television.

0:42In today's foundation, we'll be talking about being a book doctor, a ghost writer. We'll talk about indie publishing, traditional publishing, hybrid publishing, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to JD and our sponsors. Success Story, hosted by my friend Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. In a recent episode, Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show, founder and CEO of Lately.ai, to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content.

1:19Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Yahoo Finance makes it easy to get financial news, data, and insights fast. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor. yahoofinance.com, the number one financial destination, yahoofinance.com. That's yahoofinance.com. JD, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. First of all, thanks for having me. In this world and probably pretty much any career, you can't take no as an answer. I've heard no so many times over and over and over again.

2:01But it just takes that one yes, right? In order to get there. Fire Nation, you're going to get there. Get there by just saying, you know what? I'm going to make this happen. Consistently adding value, seeking out that yes, but willing to accept that no. And we're talking about rewriting the author-publisher model. Now, you're a New York Times bestselling author, but it wasn't always that way, JD. You actually started your writing career as a book doctor and a ghost writer. I've heard of a ghost writer, but I've never heard of a book doctor. So can you share what these two things are? This was my second career.

2:37I went to college, I got a degree in finance, and I worked in the corporate world. But I went at home, I would run home and kind of write. That was what kept me sane. Working as a book doctor, I basically took a book, let's say an agent gets a book that they absolutely love. They think it's sellable, but it needs a little bit of work. They go back to the author, and the author just can't do it. And a A lot of times it's, you know, the book is too long. They've got to take out 40 ,000 words or this character is terrible or you need to combine this. You need to do that. And particularly with first time authors, they're a little too close to the project and they're not able to do it.

3:08So I was a hired gun. They'd bring me in, tell me exactly what they felt was wrong with the book. And I do a quick rewrite on it that eventually over time that that turned into a career. I mean, I basically did that while I was working in the corporate world for 20 some years. And I really got a handle on what publishers were looking for, what they wanted to see in a manuscript and editors as well. Because, you know, like when they talk to an author, if you sell your book to a publisher, they tend to sugarcoat everything. So they'll get you on the phone. They'll tell you how great your book is.

3:36And then, you know, they'll tell you, you know, this is perfect. This is great. This is great. But you need to do this little thing right here. And, you know, then they give you five more reasons why your book is the best one ever. Then they end that phone call. But, you know, with me, like I was on the payroll. So they didn't sugarcoat anything. They would flat out tell me what was wrong with the book. And I think 20 years of hearing that, I really got to learn what they were looking for and what they wanted. And eventually I learned to incorporate that into my own writing. Now you indie published your very first novel and then you went on to sell a quarter million copies, over 250 ,000.

4:09I mean, that's insane. What was your path to success there? You know, honestly, I've got another guy up here in New England to thank, Stephen King. With that first book, I had to explain where the wife buys a journal. It was a horror novel. And just to get the book done, I wrote that she walked into Needful Things and bought it there, which is the store from Stephen King's novel. Fully expected to have to change that because you can't do that sort of thing without a bunch of lawyers pounding on your door. But King was friendly enough to give me permission to go ahead and use the reference. And I got to keep it in the book.

4:40And honestly, I think that's what really sparked sales. Publishers Weekly wrote a story about it. When that came out, libraries heard that he had done this. They picked up the book. Bookstores heard about it. They picked up the book, then word of mouth just started to spread and they caught fire. Now, what a cool break. And by the way, let's be honest, Stephen King's not just from New England. He's from my home state of Maine. So I want to give him even additional credit for being a great Mainer, which by the way, is the way life should be. Now, those sales numbers obviously put you on the radar for the more quote unquote traditional publishers.

5:14I mean, your next book sold for advances topping seven figures, you know, something that people only dream about when they start writing. So what were some of the key differences that you noticed between traditional publishing model in the indie publishing approach that you initially took? Honestly, I loved indie publishing because it gave me so much freedom. I got to design on the cover. I got every marketing decision was solely mine. I absolutely love that. And when you go the traditional route, basically all those decisions are taken away from you. And they tend to, they really want to hit it out of the park with a book.

5:47Like all their marketing efforts, everything they do, it's all geared towards publication week. You know, that book comes out, they needed to sell like bananas that first week, hit the New York Times list, hit this list, hit that list. And then after that, two or three weeks out, they don't necessarily care about it anymore. It just kind of flies by the wayside and falls and disappears from their radar and they move on. Indie publishers tend to operate a little differently. They tend to put a lot of time and effort into all of their books. They focus heavily on the backlist and they use the sales from those backlist titles to really float their boat, basically give them the notoriety that they need to sell that next one.

6:21So they basically concentrate on all of them. But what I basically noticed is when a decision has to be made, if you come up with an idea, some crazy outside of the box idea you want to try and do to market a book, if you're an indie author, you can just kind of pull the trigger and go with it. But a traditional publisher, there's conferences, there's meetings, there's phone calls, there's a lot of people that have to sign off on it. It's almost like if you picture boats in a harbor, an indie author is kind of like a little speedboat just zipping around. And a traditional publisher is like the large cruise ship just trying to make a little bit of a turn.

6:51You know, you can just you can do a lot more as an indie publisher. Now, I think a lot of people that are listening are like, OK, he went the indie route. He went their traditional route. There's obviously some pros and cons. I mean, you're just talking about obviously a lot of pros with the indie approach. But after seeing the differences between the two, So what did you do next? I really started trying to take the best pieces of both worlds. With my next couple of books, after I went the traditional route, I ended up doing a hybrid approach. I basically told my agent, okay, you can sell all the foreign territories, but I'm going to keep English rights for myself.

7:24So I basically formed my own publishing company and published the books in English. And then my agent sold in Germany and France and Italy and Spanish and all these different languages and countries to the normal publishers that she would have done under any other normal circumstance. But what that allowed me to do is it gave me the flexibility to basically get that book out anywhere I wanted it to go. A year after the book sold, we would look at the list. And if there's a particular country where it didn't sell yet to a traditional publisher, I hired my own translators and I put it out myself through my own press.

7:56and the economics of that worked out very well. As an indie author, you tend to make around 70 cents on the dollar. With a traditional publication deal, you get somewhere between 10 and 20 cents on the dollar. So even though they throw a nice big advance check at you at the beginning, you've got to pay that advance check off and you're doing it with a much smaller piece of the pie. So in the end, it makes a lot of sense to kind of mix it up. The traditional markets, I love working with those publishers just because they can get me in places that I can't really get to on my own. but you know those bridges are getting easier and easier to cross as an indie author there's very few places you can't publish anymore on your own.

8:33Fire Nation I think it's really interesting to hear from somebody who's done all three they went the indie approach then they went to the traditional approach and then of course JD's like you know what I like some of both but not all of one so let's do this hybrid and maybe you know now that I can actually kind of control my own destiny a little bit more, I can kind of push what I think is best. And then of course he was sharing some of those details, which was really cool. And I want to talk more about this when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Personalized support has quickly become an expectation from customers everywhere.

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10:50For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor, yahoofinance.com. The number one financial destination, yahoofinance.com. That's yahoofinance.com. JD, we're back and I want to dive into your latest novel, Behind a Closed Door. So the film rights have actually sold, I mean, even before publication. Plus, there was a one-of-a-kind business relationship that developed. Tell us more about that. Yeah, so my agent took the book out to the traditional publishers and started shopping it. And we immediately started getting phone calls from the people out in Hollywood.

11:29We could, you know, Netflix, HBO, all these big producers. Everybody wanted this book. So we ended up selling the film rights. But at the same time, I started getting phone calls from friends of mine that worked in the publishing industry. A friend called me from Penguin Random House and she said, listen, we're about to offer on your book. When that comes in, you need to say no. And I asked her why. And she said because Penguin Random House is about to lay off a lot of people. You don't want to get caught in the middle of that. The editor that wants your book is on that list. I got a similar phone call from HarperCollins.

11:59And the industry has been going through a big shakeup of late, over the last 10, 15 years in particular. But Amazon has just really tranched them. Indie Publishing has just taken off. They're trying to figure out how to navigate that. But it made me worried because if a book gets picked up by a big publisher and you lose your editor, your book could end up in limbo forever. So I started conversations with Simon & Schuster. And ultimately, I worked out a deal where they took on my publishing company, my imprint, Hampton Creek Press, as a print and distribution partner. So essentially, I'm my own publisher.

12:30I get to put out whatever books I want whenever I want to put them out through Simon & Schuster's backbone. They handle all my print, my sales and my distribution, which is kind of a win win for both of us because, you know, I still have to take on a lot of risk there. I have to pay for the marketing. I have to pay for the print runs. So all of that burden is off their back. They don't have to roll the dice anymore. But it allows me to collect a larger piece of the pie because I'm acting as not only the publisher, but also the author. So I'm basically tapping in on both sides of that. But it gets me to a lot of places that as an indie author I wouldn't normally get into.

13:04You know, so, you know, the local drugstore, the grocery stores, airport bookstores. So I honestly see this as possibly being the next logical step for indie publishers that are doing well. Because in all honesty, if you've got an indie publisher that's making seven figures a year selling books on their own, they don't necessarily need a big advance check from a large publisher anymore. They're not looking at Penguin Random House. They're able to do it on their own. But with a deal like this, you know, it kind of makes sense for both parties because there are still those places that they can't get.

13:32and a deal like this allows them to get through those doors. So we'll see, but I've got a feeling in a couple of years, this type of deal might be the norm. That's really interesting because back in 2021 was actually the last time that I published a traditional route, which was with HarperCollins. And I will say when I finished that experience, I was like, man, it really feels like this traditional model's on the way out. Just because of a few experiences I won't get into now, but I have shared before and on prior episodes, so my audience has heard about it. And it just doesn't surprise me when I hear somebody like you who's been massively successful with these book sales and New York Times and film rights and all this other jazz that you're seeing that firsthand now here in 2024 and beyond.

14:16So on that note, what the heck is the future of publishing? I think you're going to see more hybrid models like this take off. I mean, honestly, the one trigger for me, the one thing that really frightened me, I got a marketing PowerPoint presentation from somebody for one of the publishers for this particular book when they were trying to sign it. And it was literally the same PowerPoint I had seen for a previous book four or five years earlier. It was almost like they did a find and replace. And that kind of sums up what they've been doing. You know, a lot of their marketing tactics, they're still targeting the same things that they did years and years ago rather than looking at what the future is.

14:48From a book review standpoint, just to give you an example, I can get a book review, let's say, in a traditional newspaper. And that's fantastic to get into a national newspaper. But if that review lands in somebody's inbox, they click on that link and they immediately get thrown to a paywall. They've got to subscribe to that newspaper if they want to actually read that review. If you get a review from a blogger or an influencer, somebody on TikTok, somebody on Facebook, Instagram or whatever, they review the book. They put it out on all the social media platforms. They hype the hell out of it.

15:16And they help you get the word out on that title. And honestly, I see them selling more copies at this point than some of the traditional media. So I think the entire marketplace needs to get shaken up a little bit. They need to realize what's actually happening and try and embrace some of that and learn to incorporate it. So you didn't mention Amazon as one of these disruptors. Can you get a little more specific about what you're seeing them do to really disrupt this industry? They make things easy. You know, honestly, people are lazy. You know, like you can you can buy a book right now on your phone.

15:45You hear about it right now on your podcast. They hear about behind a closed door. They can pick up their phone. They can click on a link. They can buy that book all within 10, 20 seconds, and they're done. As long as you can simplify a process like that, it's going to be very difficult for anybody to overcome it. And not only that, because of the volume that they do, they can undercut on pricing. You can buy that hardcover book through Amazon for$18,$19, and if you walk into a larger bookstore, you're going to pay$30,$32. dollars. You know, somehow, you know, these brick and mortar stores need to find a way to get around that.

16:17You know, from a marketing standpoint, they see every, you know, every search that we do on their website. They know what books we're buying, what we're browsing and not buying. They have all of that data and they can use that to put the titles that they feel, you know, would resonate with us in front of us. You know, so in a way they're doing us a favor. But, you know, that's a tough, tough nut to crack if you're, you know, Barnes and Noble, if you're somebody on the outside looking in. Now, not too long ago, there were three channels on television, maybe 10. And there was maybe 10 to 30 movies coming out per year, give or take.

16:51And now every single time I turn on Netflix, or by the way, one of the other streamings that I'm signed up to, which are a ton, Apple, which has been fantastic. I'm really impressed with Apple streaming, Hulu, max i mean you i can keep going on and on i'm just like how is any actor out of work right now because it just seems like there's so much new content being produced all the time and it's just like unbelievable opportunities here and now like you're talking like you release a book and netflix is contacting you all this stuff i mean how does that work exactly do you feel like this is kind of a golden age right now for this type of opportunity it definitely is and i've got eight different projects in what I call Hollywood hell.

17:31They've all been picked up and they're at some stage. This one's got a director. This one's got a producer. This one has a show writer, but they need a director. This one, a star just signed on. This one, a star just signed off. Nothing's actually been filmed yet. So from an author's standpoint, I collect options checks, which is fantastic, but I haven't actually seen anything hit the screen. A friend of mine told me once, watch the credits at the end of a movie. Watch all those names scroll by for five, six, ten minutes, or however long it takes. Every single person on that list had to be there in order for that project to actually get to the finish line, to get to the screen.

18:03That really humbles you when you realize just how much work is actually involved in that process. Now, they are seriously learning to streamline for the reasons you just mentioned. There's a lot more avenues, a lot more places where they can get that content out there. So they're learning to film faster. They're learning to film smarter. You know, so I think, and they're combing different places. I've got friends that have had books out on NetGalley, which is basically a preview site for new books that have gotten contacted from producers. So they are looking everywhere. So in years past where you needed an agent to walk it through a door and give a pitch, I think those times are over.

18:37They're looking at sales trends. They're looking at what's selling today online, what people are talking about. They're looking at social media. And those are guiding factors in a lot of these decisions. Now, you did bring up Stephen King earlier. So I had to ask because this is one thing that I always loved about him was he would make a cameo appearance. appearance in his movies? Like you'd always going to be on the lookout in a Stephen King movie for Stephen King, who's like, you know, he's a very, very minor, small role, but he's there. And it's like, oh, that was Stephen King. That's so cool.

19:04Are you interested in doing that? I would absolutely do that. You know, back in the day, back when I was in college, I was down in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. And at one point they thought that was going to be the next Hollywood. So they were filming a lot of things down there. And I was an extra on True Lies, on 21 Jump Street, Cape Fear, like all these different movies that they filmed down there. And it's fun today to go back and watch them and point and for that 1.3 seconds on the screen, show my daughter, hey, that's your dad. And then it flies by. And as a fan, we love to watch that. So if they allow me to do it, I would absolutely do it.

19:36Let's end with a bang. What advice would you give to aspiring authors trying to navigate the changing landscape of the publishing industry today? Man, I think we're right back where we started. Just don't take no for an answer. You're going to get a lot of agents that are going to say no. You're going to have editors that are going to tell you no. Just keep going and going and going. Look at what is selling. Look at what's not selling. But listen to the advice. If somebody does tell you no, see if you can get a reason out of them. See if you can find out why they told you no and use that advice to try and tweak whatever it is you've got out there to hopefully get it in a place where that next phone call is going to be a yes.

20:12JD, if Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, wanted to learn more about you, wanted to consume more of your content. What is your call to action for our listeners today? Easiest place to find me is jdbarker.com. My books are pretty much anywhere. If you walk into a bookstore and ask, I'm sure they've got one on the shelf for you. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JD and JLD, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type JD in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

20:44Behind a closed door is JD's latest novel. So check that out. And JD, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and JD for sponsoring today's episode and to Fire Nation. What can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about.

21:20This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs. And you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. success story hosted by my friend scott d clary is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals success story features q a sessions with successful business leaders keynote presentations and conversation on sales marketing business startups and entrepreneurship in a recent episode scott brings kate bradley on the show founder and ceo of lately.ai to discuss the best ways to use ai to create content listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts yahoo finance makes it easy to get financial news, data, and insights fast.

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