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Cozy mystery author Amanda Lee writes under two pen names and produces two books a month. Join indie best seller Mark Dawson, and first-time author James Blatch, as they shine a light on the secrets of self-publishing success. She shares with James her tips about writing consistently, prolifically and keeping the writing fresh even after nearly 200 books. PATREON: Self Publishing Formula Show’s Patreon page Speaker 1: On this edition of the Self-Publishing Show. Amanda Lee: Back in my day, I covered a lot of crime, and a lot of court cases, and there was this guy who killed his wife and dismembered her.

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And I was actually in his garage with her dismembered torso, and didn’t know it. James Blatch: Hello yes, welcome, it is the Self-Publishing Show with James Blatch, and on the other end of the line-Mark Dawson: I-James Blatch: Oh, sorry. James Blatch: You getting a little bit, what do they call it, demob happy, because you’re off out, aren’t you?

As we record this on Thursday the 17th, in a week’s time pretty much I’ll be, well the day after, I’ll be heading off to Gatwick with two excited children, and an excited wife, and flying to Disney. Mark Dawson: Well, yeah, Freya’s seen the first one. Mark Dawson: Uncle James, God, sounds very-James Blatch: Sounds a little bit creepy, doesn’t it.

She needs Uncle James to come round, and instruct her in the ways of the Force. Now we should say, we have just decided that we are going to have a joint live podcast show and free drinks event at Vegas. Mark Dawson: That we have a podcast recording in Vegas. James Blatch: After we did the live one, I said, “We should do this in Vegas.”Mark Dawson: And the same way that you suggested Book Lab? But you can’t claim everything we ever do as secretly your idea. Although a lot of people of course listening to this who are working 9 to 5 jobs and dreaming of being in a position where their writing pays for a living do love the idea of going to Starbucks every day, and being recognized, and sitting down and writing for living. James Blatch: No Book Lab, I do take the mickey out of you, was your idea. James Blatch: There’s definitely got to be some payback.

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Because I like to hang out with my friends, and I don’t want to be the person holed up in their room writing. But my philosophy is, why did I work so hard to get six months ahead if I can’t take a little time here or there off. But it was interesting and I didn’t get many questions. Mark Dawson: We should get Ricardo Fayet and David Gaughran. Because when I travel, I try to set it up so that’s a week I take off, if I can help it. And I certainly cleave towards the first of those two possible outcomes. And then at the end of it, three of the English teachers came up to me and said, “I’ve finished a novel. It was a couple of years ago in this environment that people were telling you and me, sometimes on Facebook messaging, “Oh it’s all over. And often that particular age group, that kind of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, if it’s school rather than college, they’d often sit there, slumped, looking bored as anything. Well they probably didn’t tell their parents about it, because children just say, “Fine,” when you ask them how school was. Whosever’s idea it was, we’re going to be doing this in Vegas on the Wednesday night. It’s going to be slightly chaotic I think, everybody drinking and watching us chat. But it went so well at NINC, we thought we would do this again. The i Pad is just easier, and lighter, and you can pretty much do everything I need to do. Or you could look at it the other way and go, that’s quite worrying, because when all the people who are reading on Kindles move on, who will take up the slack? I had a couple of nice Tweets from teachers who were there and found it interesting, had perhaps been heading towards the agent and traditional publisher route, and didn’t know what was possible. She launched a new pen name, and she did it anonymously, because there wasn’t much crossover with her existing audience, and she launched it successfully, and made money from it. You got in at the beginning.” That doesn’t seem to be the case. James Blatch: As maybe I’ll find out when we talk about my book next week. I would just say about teenagers not asking questions, I’ve done quite a lot of school talks over the years at the BBC, and then the BBFC, and you probably did them as well at the BBFC. James Blatch: But then afterwards, quite a few of them come up to you, quite lively, and they chat to you and say, “That was really good.” And you just think, well, you could have given me a little bit of facial feedback during the session. James Blatch: And they probably went home and told their…

So it’s at Sam’s Town Gambling and Brothel, or whatever it is. We are going to be setting up there, you’ll get a free drink, and you can get to take part in our show. And we should also say, we are heading towards, rapidly towards, our two hundredth episode. ” And kind of the lead child answer is, well there’s no such thing as plumber’s block, or truck driver’s block. But now I do the 9,000 words a day writing, and then I edit 9,000 words a day too. I’ve even started just traveling with the i Pad, because you know how it’s a pain with your laptop and whatnot, you got to get it out for security and whatnot. I asked them at the start, how many people read on a device? Which is not necessarily what you’d expect given that it’s a digital generation. Think of how much further we’ve got to go in terms of the audience that we can tap. It would probably be what, 30%/70% in terms of the digital/print split at the moment. And again, mentioning Lindsay Buroker, who I interviewed yesterday. I was quite happy just to blather on for 45 minutes. Support the show at Patreon.com/selfpublishingshow. And join us next week for more help and inspiration, so that you can make your mark as a successful indie author. So get your words into the world, and join the revolution with the Self-Publishing Show. The balcony that overlooks the strange, animatronic goings-on in the bar in the middle. And one of them asked me, “How do you deal with writer’s block? Because I used to actually write 12,000 to 15,000 words a day, and then have to spend a whole three to five days editing. And then I just transfer it from the i Cloud Drive into Word when I’m done for the day. I write even slightly faster, not a huge amount, but I write pretty fast on my i Pad. It was interesting, there was about 250 children there, and I was interviewed by the English teacher. Mark Dawson: Anecdotally, it is well known that children, and teenagers, still prefer to read in print. You can either look at it and think, well that’s great. Mark Dawson: Don’t assume that what we know, listeners to this podcast, and watchers on the You Tube channel, what is we know is not representative of what most people know. Well from an SPF perspective, we should probably be looking to buy a Caribbean island quite soon, because there’s a huge amount of authors who don’t know anything about what we do. And also, I think that works for authors too, in the sense that the readership is still growing. There’s a lot more readers out there who’ve never heard of me before, have no idea who I am. James Blatch: Really exciting, huge area for growth. We have a interview next week with Jeff Wheeler, which is going to be a good one. And all that remains for me to say, is it’s a goodbye from him-Mark Dawson: And a goodbye from me. Join our thriving Facebook group at selfpublishingshow.com/Facebook.   James Blatch: I think they call it a gambling hall. And if you get there after the day’s events, if you’re going to 20Books Vegas this year, head off to the balcony area. As I said, I did a talk yesterday, just for kids, in Salisbury. But that was like a depressing couple of days editing for me. When I’m at Starbucks, I write on my i Pad, because it’s just easier to carry around. I don’t write in Scrivener, I’ve actually never really bonded with the software. I write in Word on my laptop, and then I write in Pages on my i Pad. Honestly, I think it made me faster, because for some reason my fingers just fly over that sucker. because I’ve just rewritten a scene that means that a scene four scenes ago needs to be rewritten. So the editing will be moved until I’m done in the pool, before I go to bed. It’s not scalable, but it won’t be a bad afternoon to work for her. I was talking to sixth formers, so sixteen, seventeen year olds. And it was mostly about how I publish, and independent publishing, and digital marketing, and all of that kind of stuff. Speaker 1: Get show notes, the podcast archive, and free resources to boost your writing career at  

Mark Dawson: Casino, I think, is the word you’re looking for. So we’re going to do that, probably at six o’clock will be the broadcast time, the time we start the show. Which I found a little bit difficult at the beginning. And no such thing as writer’s block, and stuff like that. And what was really actually slowing me down was the editing, because I zone out and I can’t stand it. I used to write completely through, and then spend several days editing. The minute I come in, they’re like, “Amanda, venti green tea.” So I sit there for two hours and do those two chapters, and I usually write one chapter before I leave. I make the note of it, and then the changes don’t come in until I’m editing, because it just streamlines the process more to keep going forward with the change I’ve made, versus going back and losing a bunch of time, maybe days, trying to edit in the chapters I’ve already read. But I’m exactly at that point now, where I’m wondering how… In Michigan, we take advantage of that pool as much as we possibly can. Amanda Lee: I don’t think I can talk most of my other cozy authors… although they’re quite different genres, in that sort of level of selling, are doing that. She’s getting to the stage now where she likes to read herself. And obviously this author has probably sold sixty books, which, that’s not bad. Apart from this podcast episode, which will get broadcast. So I think she’s done a really good job of taking the discipline of putting your bum on the seat and getting words down, but also turn that into longer form story telling. I’m hyper efficient, so it’s better for me to focus on one thing and go through it. James Blatch: When you sit down, you write your 9,000 words, obviously you know what book you’re working on. Amanda Lee: No I sit down and say, “I’m going to write three chapters.” And my chapters tend to be between 2,800 and 3,200 words, and that pretty much equals out to 9,000. If I were to be at 8,975, I’m not adding an extra 25 words in a new chapter. My natural writing thing is 2,800 to 3,200 words a chapter. So I’m there for two hours, which is two full venti green teas, and they know me. ”If I make a plot change, I don’t go back and change what I’ve already written. I’m at sort of that stage myself now, just the end of my first novel, I should say, not anything like the numbers you’ve got. But there are times when I’m in the middle of a book, and all of a sudden it’s like, oh this is such a better idea. But then I just turn back around, and wait until the editing process, because I always have the notebook sitting next to me when I’m working on it. But there’s a production line of course, in terms of the publishing process. And that must also have the same level of intensity. I remember being in California at the time the Scott Peterson murders happened. Although in the summer that’ll switch, because I’ll spend three hours in the pool every day that I possibly can. Amanda Lee: Oh see now, my little group does NINC Sunday to Sunday. Amanda Lee: We spend Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday getting massages, getting drunk, hanging out on the beach. James Blatch: You need to be at Galaxy’s Edge doing those things on the Monday and Tuesday. James Blatch: I’m going to introduce you to a couple. Looking forward to seeing you in the autumn, and thank you so much for joining us. And I think Amanda, and her, and quite a few people in that… And then Freya was up late last night and early this morning reading that book, which she picked herself, which is great.

So you develop a talent for telling stories in short, few words, not more words. Well we’re going to have a chat with you off the back of the interview with Amanda. Amanda Lee: I don’t know if people would think I’m that organized. I have a little notebook that I just write stuff down in. I have a list, and I write down the words of each novel, and I cross them off and just go. I have found that if I try to jump from novel to novel, it doesn’t go as well for me. And then when I’m at Starbucks, I usually do two chapters a day at Starbucks. So for the people watching on You Tube, they can see that. But what Amanda’s showing us is a notepad with some-Amanda Lee: I outline each chapter by hand. I know where I have to be by the end of the chapter, and then just let it go. In case when I’m going back editing, all of a sudden it’s like, “Where did this come from? And I think probably the efficient thing is to get to the end of the book, get to the end of the draft, and then go back and do those changes. Amanda Lee: Yeah, I used to go back, but I really don’t now. And most of the time, I stick fairly close to my outline. I was at 150 at a certain point last year, so I’ve got to be getting close to 200. James Blatch: And that’s the other thing about what you’re doing here, is you’re sitting down and writing every day. Like just the right photograph of the young girl or something, looking wide eyed and innocent, just something sparks the imagination. Who was the guy who dressed up like the clown, and killed all the guys? Then I go play Pokemon for an hour, and then I go home and do my editing, and I’m usually completely done, and I take my time editing, I’m usually completely done by three, and can do whatever I want. I think the Monday or Tuesday we’re going to be in Star Wars land. Michael Anderle and others in the industry will tell you that, and in fact Lindsay repeated this yesterday, that the number one way of marketing your previous books is to write your next book. And they all bought books, and Freya brought back these books, and the author had signed them, “Happy birthday,” because it’s Freya’s birthday that day as well. You say four episodes’ time, but this is going to be 197. I’m Amanda Lee.” And I’m like, “Oh right, hello.”She’s very forthright. She used to be a reporter, news reporter, and that’s how she explains her huge word counts. She’s kind of taken that discipline that she learned when she was a news reporter, and has brought that across to her new business as a writer. I think that can work both ways, having been a journalist. If you work for a newspaper, you always want more words, and the editor’s always saying, “No, we’re cutting that, cutting that.”Column inches disappear as the week goes on. So do stick around for this great interview with Amanda, and then Mark and I’ll be back for a chat. I know the one I start on Tuesday comes out in November. Amanda Lee: Yeah, it takes me about an hour to write 3,000 words. So I have my phone open, and every five minutes I’m spinning the staff. And then I kind of let it get there however it wants. And then usually if I have a better idea, I actually hand write it in the margins and whatnot, so if I have need to go back, I can see where I made this jump. The second I can put something up for pre-order, I put it on pre-order, so I’m probably… Amanda Lee: For Lily Harper Hart, it’s 60,000 words a book. Lee, it’s about between 90 and 95,000 is where I’ve pretty much settled. But I do those while binge watching something on Netflix generally. I’ve been in news rooms, and sometimes you know exactly what it is. James Blatch: And everyone was gripped by it, and I was on holiday at the time thinking, “Why is everyone following every ounce of this story? ”Amanda Lee: Well it’s because she was very pregnant and due to give birth any day. I think it’s different when the suspect is attractive too. He’s not my personal cup of tea, but apparently back in the ’70s, women everywhere were swooning all over him. But generally a normal week is, I get my 9,000 writing in, and I usually have it done by noon, or one in the afternoon. I’m going to take some inspiration from that amount of… That’s a lot of stress that I don’t necessarily think is good for the creative process. James Blatch: Right, well let’s double down on that. By the time we meet in NINC, I’m going to have a better average for you, Amanda. I haven’t figured it out yet, because my fall is pretty full of travel with NINC, and Salem, and-James Blatch: Well you need to get on a flight a day earlier. James Blatch: I think the NINC starts on something like the Wednesday. And Lindsay puts it really down to having a big, loyal audience who are there waiting for your next book. And to go back to what you said, they had a children’s author go in and speak to the girls of Freya’s age. James Blatch: I think we did three or four at the beginning, but yeah, more or less four years. And I remember the first night actually I was called over by someone, and she said, “Oh hi Mark. You can’t really moan to an editor that you haven’t filed your story because you didn’t get the words in. James Blatch: Yeah, great to hear from her, which we’ll do in a moment. I’ve been publishing since 2011, so I’ve been at it a while. This is the regular you, sitting down every week, writing. So the book I’m writing right now, I believe comes out in October or November, I would have to look at my schedule, it’s one of those two. Amanda Lee: It depends on if I’m writing at home, or if I’m writing at Starbucks, because I do a lot of writing at Starbucks, because I play Pokemon, and I like to spin the staff while I’m writing. I write down the beats where each chapter has to get. Each one of them publishes at least one book a month. I have series plotted out that I will not be able to get to for years. I have a VA who does things that I don’t want to do, like proofing my audio, and she also does some other proofreading for me. But it’s a very interesting area to me, and I’m sure to you as well, as to why some crime stories take off, and others don’t. So he dressed up like a clown, and killed all those young boys. Because what if you make all this money on a certain trend, and then what happens when that trend dries up? So I’m not quite getting as much done this week as I do on a normal week. This week it was like eight things piled in all at once. Well look Amanda, I want to say thank you so much indeed for joining us, and sharing some of those insights with us. Or even 5,000 words a day, and stick to it, and have that steadiness versus 1,000 words here, 1,000 words here, then all of a sudden you’ve got to get 15,000 words in one day. And by the way, in NINC, just before, we are going to the new Star Wars park, so I expect to see you there. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get to the new Star Wars park. Actually I did an interview yesterday, as we’re standing here, with Lindsay Buroker, who also sells a shed load of books. Fan service I think is a thing, if it’s not quite the thing you’re thinking of. And also the other part of it, it’s a really good thing for your soul I think, for you as a person to do, to go in, in the real world, talk to people. There’s a Salisbury Literary Festival on at the moment, and my daughter’s school is part of that.

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But she is extremely prolific, and I hadn’t met her before, until we went to NINC. Probably one of the top selling authors in the world, I would have thought, in terms of actual revenue generated. James Blatch: I can’t believe you can spare the time, because we are going to be talking about productivity, and your figures have blown me away, when I see the level of writing and word count. Amanda Lee: I write cozy mysteries, and some of them skew toward urban fantasy. I always wrote on deadline, but I was not writing books. So it really wasn’t that good of a choice, and by the time self-publishing came around, I was looking for a change anyway, and it just kind of happened at the right time. And you were a prolific reader beforehand, were you? Although I usually skew slightly higher than that, because it’s not really a full four weeks. And this is not you racing towards a deadline, because a lot of people can suddenly churn out 15,000 words in a day if they need to. James Blatch: I mean not only are you putting the hours in, but you write fast. And you get more sales on audio through the Whispersync. So it’s worth paying her to sit there for the nine hours to make sure they get Whispersynced, because I’m working really hard, I’m building up my audio. And the sled took off on him down a hill at one point, and it’s the middle of the night, and he’s having to chase the sled full of his wife’s body parts, down a hill. So I actually used him as the inspiration, and people who live around here are always like, “Oh my God, that’s Stephen Grant! Amanda Lee: I still follow the news pretty closely. You have to be really careful with any sexual violence in a cozy as well. I understand that’s not why people are reading the book. I would rather have my backlist be more solid, if not going through the roof. Sometimes that’s not always possible, because I get 30 to 50 messages a day. I can just point them towards my website, because a lot of times they’re just looking for the reading order list. I had to go to my grandfather’s memorial, my mom’s coming Saturday, and I’ve got to get this house in order, and then I had this, and I had a massage, and then my pool opens Monday. I write somewhere between 25 and 30,000 words a month. But I almost think it’s better if you go down to 9,000, but you can stick to it. So very interesting hearing from somebody who’s getting pretty much everything right. And of course there’s another author, he sells a few books, who you might know, who does the same thing. Children’s authors are an exception to that, who often say that going into schools is very helpful for them. James Blatch: Yes, but I would say the other way of saying it is two episodes’ time, because you’ve got 198 and 199 between this, and then it’s that episode. James Blatch: But anyway-Mark Dawson: You say po-TAY-to-James Blatch: So people know-Mark Dawson: … We are talking to somebody who is a prolific author, a prolific marketer, and most of all, a prolific seller of books. Now I’m saying that without having read any of her books, which I know is indefensible. But the journalism field has really taken a lot of hits. Sometimes I add a little more depending, but I really hit 45,000 words a week, which if you go the standard four weeks, that’s 180,000 a month. because I just don’t have 9 to 15 hours, depending on the length of the book, to sit down and listen to my own words read back to me. And you can’t have too many deviations, or Amazon won’t Whispersync them. And I was actually in his garage with her dismembered torso, and didn’t know it at the time. Amanda Lee: However, the part of his story after he was caught was, he took her body in his children’s sled, and it was because it was snowing out, and threw the body parts around a local park. Amanda Lee: Like you can never have a school shooting in a cozy. You can make a lot of money from them right now, but then it’ll be like the Billionaire Biker or the sadomasochistic dude, eventually they run their course. Amanda Lee: I have a very active reader group and I try to keep up on my messages and emails as much as possible. Are you in danger of having a Comic Con event after you? James Blatch: Yes, you don’t want to be the person being-Amanda Lee: I like writers’ conferences, because I like hanging out with other writers, like NINC is my absolute favorite. So that was a very rough year, but I’m not sad I did it, because it worked out well for me. Usually I don’t have anything get in the way, but this week I had a bunch of stuff pile up. Just having a day of 15,000 is great when you’ve got to get that stuff done. And over the last couple of years I’ve certainly sensed, I have no personal experience of this, that people are thinking that now, certainly when you put a lot of time and effort and travel and expenses into it, it’s not really paying back in the same way as a good session at a computer, and sort of digital marketing is doing. Mark Dawson: That’s if I can put up with you for long enough. Today Mark, we are talking to a big beast in the world of self-publishing. So she writes kind of I think cozy, witchy, mystery type books. Amanda Lee: I started writing novels when I was a kid and whatnot, but back when I went to college, it wasn’t feasible really to make a living writing novels, unless you somehow really lucked into it. And we thought at the time, journalism would be a nice fit. Amanda Lee: Well I tend to do 9,000 words a day, five days a week. I really only do the one massive editing pass on my book. I have line editor and three proofreaders who handle the proofreading for me. Amanda Lee: I don’t know that everyone does it, but the big thing for me is that a lot of people like to Whispersync their books. James Blatch: It sounds like that’s what’s happening here. Lee pretty much debuts in the top 100 now, and actually the Lily Harper Hart stuff has started debuting in the top 100 too. And there was this guy here named Stephen Grant who killed his wife, and dismembered her. James Blatch: I think this is a really interesting discussion for people who are constantly looking for ideas, and how to get those sparks. He reads newspapers, goes back over old stories, and tries to find those little quirky things that have happened to put into his own thrillers. like those Supernatural Academies are hitting really hard right now. James Blatch: So you have your own little community there. If I go to a Comic Con, it’s because I want to stalk people. A lot of it is other cozy authors, like Annabel Chase, and Bella Falls, and Linsey Hall, and we all just were in New Orleans together in March. And then a couple of us, like Leighann Dobbs, and Pamela Kelley, and Bella Falls, and I are going to be in Salem, Massachusetts this year for the run up to Halloween. Amanda Lee: We had to book our hotel rooms in the haunted hotel a full year in advance, because it’s so hard to get in there. Well you might not get out alive, so I hope it was worth it. So it does save time, and then I don’t have to go back and double check all this stuff. When I was still a reporter, I was working 80 hours a week, 40 as a reporter and 40 doing this, for more than a year, because once you get off the journalism train now, there’s no getting back in. I wanted to make sure they money was going to hold, before I actually quit. Amanda Lee: You have to work up to it, until it’s your normal. That’s kind of a standard year for me is four novels. And not my unique situation, but my novel situation. James Blatch: I think other people are quite interested. Now this is interesting for me, because these live, real world things, events…Not that long ago, they were quite a big deal for people, these blog tours, and appearances and so on. That is the scheduled release date for the 200th episode. We did record an episode a couple of days ago, so not surprisingly there’s just one new Patreon supporter, and that is Diddy Miller. Thank you Diddy very much indeed for going to Patreon.com/selfpublishingshow, and becoming a supporter of this here podcast. And in, I would say, well a smaller genre than I write in, certainly. So let’s move on then to the substance of this discussion is your productivity. It’s a little under experienced for me, because I haven’t done anything like this. And I had absolutely horrible covers when I started, because I didn’t know what I was doing. I get the occasional attrition and whatnot, but for the most part, my fans read pretty much everything I write. James Blatch: And just to finish on the marketing side of it, did you start with a mailing list? A female astronaut who decided to murder her-Amanda Lee: Oh the one who wore the diaper? Amanda Lee: Back in my days I covered a lot of crime, and a lot of court cases. Over the long haul, I think a lot of people can hit… They totally entertained themselves for the entire day. Well look, Amanda, it’s been really interesting talking to you, particularly about the ideas. The only tips I can give is, one thing I do that I think saves a lot, is when I am… When I am done with a book in a series, I immediately do the outline for the next book, and I make note of where it is in the timeline for the year. And this is where they’re at in their relationship. I always finish the chapter, because when you start the next day, I don’t have to remember where I was in that chapter, reread it, go through it again, get caught in that editing loop. When you’ve come up to a bit you’re looking forward to writing, because then for those of us who have to sort of find the time during the day, it’s a much easier process to go to, to open it up and start writing, rather than stop when you’re-Amanda Lee: This is my full time job, so I do treat it like a job, and I get stuff done. Well I tell you what, in the next episode, I’m going to update you on my novel situation. James Blatch: Okay look, let’s talk about your school visit. James Blatch: Let me just welcome our Patreon supporter. I’ve just been fiddling in the background, and getting some of your books up, and having a look. And I think ENT might have actually been around then. And I really didn’t even attempt to start advertising, I don’t think, until 2014. The witch books took off, and then they dragged everything else with it. Although honestly, I lucked out because I started at a time when it was easier to get visibility, and I built a very big readership back before everything was flooded, and they’ve stuck with me. One thing, I wonder if you remember this as well, that there was an astronaut. And she wore her astronaut diaper, so she didn’t have to stop on route. Other people who can write to trend and stay on top of it, more props to them, but I write what’s true to my brand, and stick to it. And I’m a Star Wars fanatic, so they put up Star Wars memes. The other thing, I never stop in the middle of a chapter. James Blatch: I heard another tip the other day, which is when you do stop, stop when you’re enjoying it. Which was kind of a fluke because at the time, I just decided I wanted to turn my family to witches, and all my family are witches in there, and they think it’s funny. There were like, what was it, that Kindle Fire daily, I think. And every time I release a new book in the series, it bumps up the backlist. You don’t really go the serial killer route in cozy mysteries. Amanda Lee: That’s a little too dark for the readership. Amanda Lee: I’m actually fascinated with serial killers. Sometimes they’re quite horrible little details that just stick in your mind. She drove a long way, I think down the east coast, down to Florida, to murder her love rival. So they put up bacon memes, because I always have a running joke about bacon in one of my books. Amanda Lee: I didn’t hit it until my fourth book, which was my first witch book. But back then you could get away with making mistakes and rebound. But right now, it’s still working that my new releases work as advertising. James Blatch: That genre has exploded, these real life, the documentaries, The Staircase on Netflix, of course the Avery story from somewhere in the Midwest. We always say to each other, “I’ve just watched another brilliant series.” And they’ve exploded with Ted Bundy of course, a big film in the UK at the moment, about him. They have a four part series on Netflix on Ted Bundy which I watched. So I just have a constant notebook that I’m jotting ideas down, and when it comes time-James Blatch: I think this is the reporter in you, because I used to be a news reporter as well, and I always remember little details.

And I will actually have a series idea pop up-James Blatch: As a result of the illustration? James Blatch: That’s how I use Photoshop is reaching for You Tube. Okay, well you mentioned marketing there, and let’s talk about marketing then. I mean right from the beginning, in was it, 2011 I think you said you started? James Blatch: Which is a pretty good time to start in self-publishing. As for marketing today, I mostly rely on new releases as my marketing boost. Every once in a while, I get a bug up my butt, and will go do Book Bub ads. And occasionally I’ll do a Facebook ad, but mostly it’s AMS ads, and I only spend about 5,000 a month on them. At a certain point, I might have to, because as we all know the market’s constantly in flux. I’m like, “Oh, I’m doing a witch festival set on my island.” So I get a lot of inspiration from television, which is weird. But if something interesting happens, and da da da, which sparks in your memory, what if it was just like this character, but this happened? I have a publishing account with Shutterstock and basically it’s like adult coloring. And sometimes I will see something I really like, and buy it, and then just fiddle with it for months, like when I’m watching TV. So a lot of times, if I don’t have anything going on, I will go watch a 20 minute tutorial on something I don’t know how to do on Photoshop, and let them teach me. For me it’s all about the profit margin, so I just don’t overdo the advertising. You saw those documentaries about the Fyre Festival.