Many of you dream of making a living as a writer. Well, today’s episode features just the guest you need to learn from. Jane Friedman has spent many years in the publishing industry and knows a thing or two about what it takes to build a solid business of being a writer.
Jane shares from her wealth of experience, and we get to talk shop about what it means to be emotionally resilient and set realistic expectations. We also discuss the nitty-gritty details of how to establish your writing business, like balancing income streams, integrating art, and avoiding the rabbit hole of social media toxicity.
Jane has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Bottom Line, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal.
If you’ve thought about pursuing a career as a writer, this episode covers the essentials for success. Listen in now!
Get to know Jane:
- Website
- Instagram @janefriedman
- Facebook @janefriedman
- Join the free newsletter, Electric Speed
Book recommendation:
- How to Say Goodbye, by Wendy MacNaughton
Follow me on:
- Instagram @stacyennis
- Facebook @stacyenniscreative
- YouTube @stacyennisauthor
To submit a question, email hello@stacyennis.com or join my email list http://stacyennis.com/join and fill out the form on the page.
The business of being a writer, with Jane Friedman | Episode 261 Transcript
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
Stacy: Welcome, welcome. I’m so excited this week to welcome back a guest that has been a very popular guest, very popular episode in the past, and that is for good reason, because our guest today is Jane Friedman. She is very well known in the publishing industry and a respected voice when it comes to all things publishing, which includes some of the things that we’re going to talk about today, the business of being a writer, which is the title of her second edition of her book. We’ll be talking about AI. We’ll be talking about all the things that you’re probably thinking about when it comes to your publishing journey, your writing journey. So let me formally introduce you to this week’s guest.
Stacy: Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years in the book publishing industry with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of the Bottom Line, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors. And her latest book is the Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition, which received a starred review from Library Journal. Jane, welcome.
Jane: Thank you so much, Stacy. It’s great to be back on.
Stacy: Yeah, I’m really excited for our conversation today. Pretty much anybody that dives into this industry comes across you at some point. So this is from new authors who are just dipping their toe into the water and starting to look into publishing and just their author journey to people that have been in the industry for a while. And I would love for you just to kind of set this conversation level, set it for our listeners, our viewers, a bit about you and your background and how you became this trusted voice in publishing.
Jane: I started working in publishing while I was still in college. I went to a university that had a BFA in creative writing. And so while I was pursuing that, I worked on the student publications. I interned with a local publishing company. I then interned with another publishing company in a nearby city who then hired me when I graduated. So my background, if I go back 25 years, is in literary publishing and traditional publishing, commercial publishing. But about 15 years ago I went full time freelance. So currently I’m writing and publishing a newsletter for writers about the business. And I landed on that topic because I found that from my days Working in the publishing business, the most interesting aspects to me were the business aspects.
Jane: And I found that I had a facility with that other people either didn’t like or they wanted to avoid. But I was just fascinated about the dynamics in the market and how companies were navigating that. I should add here that when I was working at a commercial publisher, it was during a very dynamic time. So it’s when social media came onto the scene, it’s when Amazon started gaining strength and power, it’s when the Kindle launched, ebooks came around and self publishing skyrocketed. So there was a lot of excitement, also a lot of fear and anxiety about those changes. And so, I mean, I think it’s a pretty exciting time to be in writing and publishing. And I think my career has just kind of followed my interests on the business side. And also a lot of it has to do with technology as well.
Stacy: Yeah, it’s interesting to me you started at this time that was really dynamic. But you have done such an amazing job of staying abreast of all of the changes of reporting on it. And that’s why people subscribe to your work and follow your work. Very. To me, it feels very. No nonsense. It’s like, okay, here’s what’s happening. Let’s take all the drama and the fear out of it. Let’s just tell the real thing, report on it. I find that incredibly useful. As a subscriber, we will be sure to link to your free unpaid newsletter in the show notes of today’s episode. Now, another thing I was thinking about all the things that have happened since you joined me.
Stacy: So we just talked about your long career in publishing, but you were last on this podcast a couple few years ago, and since then you’ve had the Release of the 2nd edition of your book, the Business of Being a Writer. And you just mentioned, as you were telling your backstory about how this interest in the business side, you know, that’s kind of. Sometimes it kind of feels a little bit at conflict with this idea of this literary career. And I very much felt that in my graduate degree I did professional writing and editing and I did all the creative classes I could within while still completing my professional degree. And I felt that very much too, that it was like an interest in. That was sometimes like, you know, people kind of hold their nose up at you.
Stacy: But I love how much you’ve embraced it and you create such a practical way for people to understand what it takes to really be a writer. I’d love for you to Give our listeners a breakdown of the book and how it can help them in their writing career.
Jane: So the book starts off with some foundational aspects of trying to have a full time writing career or trying to have a career that you feel is satisfying on a professional level, even if you’re not making money like a living wage at it. So, you know, I start with some of the psychological aspects which I left out of the first edition. And I just dove straight into the business end, like the deep end of the business in the first edition. I realized that was a bit of a mistake. So the first part of the book is titled Mindset Matters. And the longer I’ve been in the business, the more I realize that people’s mindset determines a lot about the outcome. Writing and publishing, there’s so much frustration and delay and rejection, and there’s no guarantee of anything happening, right?
Jane: So you have to deal with a lot of uncertainty and disappointment. And so I discuss what that looks like how you’re going to move through that. So after setting the stage there, I then move on to other aspects that people tend to get anxious about and they short circuit, I think, their careers before they’ve even had a chance to start. So the big issue is platform. I think addressing the elephant in the room because it has become more of a conversation point for agents and publishers for a lot of reasons. The market is a little bit more difficult in terms of getting discovered. There’s a lot of noise, there’s a lot of competition. And so I talk about how I see platform and I try to actually reduce the anxiety around this issue because I think there are a lot of.
Jane: There’s a lot of bad advice out there. It’s well meaning, but it’s not helping anyone as far as getting on social media, getting followers, doing certain obligations that writers don’t want to engage in because they feel like it detracts from the work. So I spend quite a bit of time looking at how you can create alignment between your work, who you are, what you want to accomplish in the world, how you want to engage with readers. So there’s not really one way to do it, but there is a wave, you know, for you personally to come to some sort of peace or harmony with what platform looks like in your career. Because it’s really, I think the bottom line on that for me is you shouldn’t be doing it for the agents or the editors or the publishers.
Jane: You should be doing it for your own career sustainability and being able to Reach your readers over the lifetime of your career rather than having to depend on some third party to reach your readers for you. And then the rest of the book goes into some nuts and bolts of the publishing industry working with traditional publishers. And then if you’re going to earn a living, you’re probably going to have to figure out a business model that’s beyond selling books. So it could be elements of memberships or subscriptions like newsletters, it could be grants, it could be freelancing. So I go over the various ways that writers have earned money really for more than 100 years, which has little to do with selling books.
Stacy: Yeah, I really appreciate the way that you broke the book down. I mean, even for somebody like me that’s been in this industry for a long time, I took so many nuggets out of it. And certainly for somebody that’s earlier stage or in those first few years of their writing career, I mean, I think anybody at any stage, but certainly if you’re newer stage, that would be such a gift to have all of this information at the beginning. Information I wish I’d had the very beginning. I love that you mention mindset. I think that’s such an important piece. It’s, you know, it’s kind of like finances. It seems like it should just be math, but a lot of it is emotion.
Stacy: And with any business, especially writing, which is so, I think such a vulnerable act, there’s a lot of that mindset piece to it. You, you talk a lot about, you know, in the book and kind of that setup about really needing to accept the business side of this and like kind of letting go of some of that romanticism around just living off your creative output, you know, going to a cabin in the woods and just like sending in your work and getting checks and you write. If you want to realize monetary gain, you have to be willing to treat, you say in parenthetical sum of your writing as a business. So why is it so important for writers to have this mindset?
Stacy: And you know, for those listening in the back of their head that are like, well, doesn’t that make my art less, I don’t know, artful? How do you balance those?
Jane: One of my favorite inspirations is Andy Warhol. His career and also Jim Henson’s career. And I believe I mentioned at least Jim Henson in the book, or I ought to have if I didn’t. I like these examples and there are more because I think they show how art and business can actually come together. And the friction between them is in Fact productive having just carte blanche to do whatever you want, write whatever you want, publish whatever you want, and just and it for all to be easy breezy. I actually don’t think that is suitable for good creative output. Most writers, if you study their careers, their best work came out of came from being under pressure doing things maybe they didn’t necessarily want to do. One of the big examples is Louisa May Alcott. She wrote Little Women for money.
Jane: A publisher told her, we really need a story like this. We see a market opening and maybe you could write it. And she’s like, all right. But anyway, I kind of got away from my inspiration people. So Andy Warhol is famous for saying that business is art. And I got the quote over here. So being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. And of course he really symbolizes kind of the mix of art and commerce in his career. He started off, for those who don’t know his career, he started off as a commercial illustrator. He went to art school, got into commercial illustration, made a lot of money. But he deeply wanted to be taken seriously by the artistic community. And he eventually got there, but on his own terms. So I think there’s always that tension.
Jane: And so I look for the creative ways to deal with that tension rather than seeing it as this burden or this yucky thing that you’d rather not have interfering with your life. Jim Henson, the other one, I didn’t realize anything about his career until I read a book that is called Make Art, Make Money which is essentially a self help book using Jim Henson’s career. And it’s by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. And it’s just a beautifully done book taking lessons from his life at how he used to the more profitable aspects of his career. Advertising to fund the things that just weren’t particularly compelling in the market, like Fraggle Rock. It was not a profitable venture, but he used other things that were successful to do some of the things that he loved that maybe wouldn’t sell as well.
Stacy: Oh, that was like a trip down memory lane with Fraggle Rock. I remember very well growing up. How does this show up in your own work? You know, this balance between your creative side and your business side. And maybe you could share a little bit about some of the habits or principles that you’ve applied to your own work that have enabled you to grow your newsletter, speak and write.
Jane: So the two strongest aspects of how I make money are classes and then the subscription newsletter. If I were just calling, if I were just able to say, this is how I want my business to run. I would. I would only do the subscription newsletter. I probably wouldn’t be doing. I wouldn’t be hosting other people’s classes. I’d probably still be teaching some of my own classes, but I don’t know that I would be running essentially an online education program. So for those who might not be aware, you know, about two to three times a month, sometimes more often, I host classes taught by other people. And it’s, you know, it’s very satisfying to see people take valuable lessons out of that.
Jane: You see people grateful to have access to this instruction at an affordable cost, because I keep the cost pretty low, $25 a class, so people can take multiple classes without feeling they’re, you know, really having to sacrifice some. Something out of their savings. But that’s not adding to my creative body of work. Like, if I want to add to my creative body of work, it’s not about producing another class, but it helps me run the business. It gives my husband, who joined my business, something to do that contributes because he’s responsible for the lion’s share of that work in terms of the production of the class. So it still serves my mission. It serves a purpose. It’s just not necessarily the creative work I would choose to do. If it’s, you know, if I.
Jane: Or I should put it this way, if I have more time on my hands, I’m not going to produce more classes.
Stacy: Yeah, I can understand that. And, and yeah, it’s also, to your earlier point, there’s some of these constraints in our life, I think, also make that creative time richer because you don’t have, you know, endless hours every day. You have a set bit of time where you really get to focus on your creative work. I’m curious, you know, for you, obviously, you write books, you produce your newsletter, which is very much a creative work. How do you create space in your day for that creative work while also making sure that you’re meeting all of your business objectives that you need to make?
Jane: So my week has a pretty set structure, and part of that’s the cadence of the newsletter and the cadence of the classes. So it’s. I’m not going to say that it’s rigid, but everything is scheduled out very far in advance. So I know what I’m doing in September in terms of the newsletter and the classes, it’s all set. So the newsletter comes out on Wednesdays, and that means that I reserve Mondays and Tuesdays for making sure that newsletter is ready to go on time. It goes out like clockwork at noon on Wednesday. So Monday is pretty much a writing day. Tuesday is an editing day because I have a copy editor who goes in and factors, checks and edits. Wednesday is usually class day, and then Thursday might be another class day where I’m teaching, depending on the week. Jane: And usually Friday is for getting things done that I didn’t have time for earlier in the week. So that’s how it falls out. There is sometimes if I’m working on a long term creative project like the book revision, sometimes that work gets pushed into the weekend because I just can’t make time during your usual workday to fit that in. There’s too many distractions, there’s too much email to deal with. And also just reporting that I do for the newsletter that just gets fit in wherever I can usually on Thursday and Friday. So I would say that’s, you know, I treat this like a job. So it has like, you know, it just has this, as I said, kind of this. I have these slots that get filled and. And I’m very deadline driven.
Jane: I know not all writers have these sorts of deadlines in their lives, but mine, very deadline driven.
Stacy: I am too. I feel like without a deadline, I’m kind of just floating around in space like, you know, trying to grasp at words. So I very much resonate with that. And it’s neat hearing some of the behind the scenes for you as well and how you structure your days and your weeks and that the Friday kind of ends up being an admin day. It’s like, I don’t know about you, but I end up with like lots of little sticky notes on my desk on Fridays that I end up cleaning up. Been trying to clear out for the weekend just to switch gears a little bit. Still on the same topic of a writing career, building a sustainable writing career. You talk about the spirit of generosity and I love that.
Stacy: When I came across that in your writing, I was like, I just love that you talk about that. And I love that as you’re helping authors, thinking about growing their platform and building relationships and all of these things that it’s very much. It’s not about, hey, look at me, what can you do for me? It’s how can I amplify others and lift up others and find ways to support other people. And I would love for you to share maybe a little bit about that approach and then perhaps some practical ways that people can be generous and support other writers.
Jane: You know, this is a topic I think about A lot like in my personal life, how I’ve ended up here and why. It’s a message that I think it is somewhat frequent in certain circles. It might go by the name literary citizenship, for example. But, you know, I often. This is going to be one of the cheesiest things I’ve said on a podcast, but I often think about the Christmas movie Miracle on 34th street, right, where, you know, someone is looking for a toy and Santa says, well, we don’t carry that, but go to our competitor across the street. And as a child, that really stuck with me. Like, it’s really vivid in my mind, that whole scene.
Jane: And when I was at Writer’s Digest in the early part of my career, it really rubbed me the wrong way that there was a edict that came down from the executives that said, okay, in Writer’s Digest magazine, in Writer’s Digest books, in every. In all of our materials, we will never mention our competitors, which happened to be like. At the time, it was like the Writer magazine and poets and writers. And I just thought, that’s stupid. I mean, come on, we’re not. People know those exist. If we’re supposed to be a resource for writers, pretending they don’t exist just makes us look like we’re, you know, stingy. And if people need us, we should have to, you know, they’ll need us, and we. We need to continue earning their attention. Anyway, so I just found. I don’t know.
Jane: I’m sure part of it is just innate. I don’t like that sort of mindset, and I don’t think it actually helps you in the end. But there’s another layer to this, which I think, especially when we talk about social media and building relationships and platform building, if you want other people to be interested in you need to be interesting. And usually you’re interesting because of what? Of the things you read, the things you appreciate, the things that you notice in the world. And so doing that usually means focusing on others rather than talking about yourself. And since most people seem to have an aversion to talking about themselves on social media, like self promotion and the marketing, like, everyone seems to be trying to get away from that. And I understand. Then focus on other people.
Jane: Like, this is your easiest mission, I think, is to talk about what you’ve read or what you’ve listened to or the stories you’re enjoying that have lifted you up in some way or informed you. And why wouldn’t you want to share that out with the world? So, you know, it’s. It’s about being. It extends to so many parts of life. Being a good conversation partner, being useful in the organizations that you’re a part of. I mean, people will gravitate toward you if they see you as a helpful person. So, you know, that’s always been my strategy with social media. And I don’t want to make it. I don’t want to oversimplify, but I do feel like a big reason that I’ve been successful is because I try to be of service. So give it a shot and see what happens.
Stacy: I think it’s, to me, it’s very much a posture of abundance and believing there’s enough. And you know that generous spirit will fuel everybody rather than needing to just grab it for yourself. And I think that if that’s just such a nice way for writers, aspiring authors, for anybody that’s entering this space to be mindful of, let me be generous, let me serve, let me help. I love it. You brought up social media, so this just popped into my mind because I’ve been kind of grappling with this myself a little bit. I don’t know about you, but just with all of AI, which we’ll talk about that later. But kind of just infiltrating social media, I have really lost interest in being on any of the platforms. I blocked them on my phone.
Stacy: I just, I kind of like don’t even want to open them. And I’m hearing this a lot from people right now. And I don’t know if this will be a wave or if it’s, you know, who knows exactly what’s going to happen here. But I’m curious if you’ve seen any new trends or any new patterns, any. Anything shifting in the way that people are growing their audiences, celebrating other people, connecting with readers, connecting with potential clients. Have you seen any changes in that space?
Jane: So what you’re describing, your behavior, the changes there, I think it applies to just about everyone that I’ve interacted with in the writing and publishing community. And I think more broadly, it’s not just our industry. And there’s so many reasons for that. I don’t think I even have to say what they are. So I do see that more writers and other people in the literary community are going into more like what I would call semi private spaces, so places where you have a little bit more confidence about the values of the people that you’re in the room with. So this could be like if you have a paid newsletter or some sort of membership program, it’s, you know, the people who are having the conversation are only those who are members or subscribers. It’s.
Jane: It looks like limiting comments to subscribers or to people who are paying. This actually just happened with a newsletter that I really enjoy called Tangle. They used to have an open commenting policy that even if you weren’t a subscriber, you could comment on their articles. And they recently changed that and of course, raised the level of discourse immediately. And, you know, no surprise there. So I think aside from the online piece of it and people going into more like, kind of gated areas where not everything can be that, like you’re. You’re less vulnerable to trolls or people driving by and taking a shot. I’m seeing more in person networking, in person, conference attending. You can see this with readers, too, because there’s been a growth in, like, cons and festivals of readers meeting their favorite authors in person and looking for that engagement.
Jane: I think also Substack has played some role in giving people, like a smaller community, a more private or secure community that feels a little less reliant on, you know, social algorithms. But, you know, to be honest, Substack is more social media site at this point than it is newsletter site. So it really depends on how you’re using it. But those are that. That’s what’s top of mind for me currently. Fortunately, I don’t think social media is a must to any to have a robust writing and publishing career. I mean, it makes it a little harder if you’re not willing to use at least one node, whether that’s Substack or something else that people find tolerable for themselves. But certainly my activity has dropped off significantly.
Jane: I would say even though I’m still posting articles in all the usual places, I’m engaging in conversation a lot less because people just aren’t as charitable as they used to be. And there are too many people looking to start a fight over nothing.
Stacy: Yeah, well. And I think, like, for most of our mental health, it’s a net positive, you know, being off of these spaces. So, you know, it’s one of those things. It’s like I don’t want to be on it, and I also don’t want to be on it. So I’m like, okay, I’m okay with this shift. You brought up trust, which is. Which is, I think, at the heart of my original question and leads us into a question that I wanted to ask you. And I think this also dovetails with this. This idea of longevity and consistency and continuing to show up over time.
Stacy: When I introduced you and asked my first question to you, I mentioned that your name is often one of the first that people find when they then they like get on whatever their LLM or on Google and they write how do I publish a book? Or how to become a writer. Your name often comes up and I think I’ll like diagnose this and then I’d love to hear your perspective. I think part of it is you’ve been so consistent. Like you’ve been around for a long time. You’ve been very consistent, you’ve been very generous, which we talked about. And I think also you’ve built trust with your readers. So the fact that you have your articles, sorry, your newsletters fact checked that you’re really diligent on looking at the real information and reporting on that.
Stacy: And I think that a lot of writers and authors, when they start writing for money or they launch a book, they get really disheartened in six or 12 months when they haven’t grown a platform, when they haven’t, you know, achieved certain goals. But really a lot of that success, I think is connected to the consistency, the longevity, the trust building. Do you feel like that has been. Am I missing something there? I’d love to hear your commentary on that in your own experience and maybe what you’ve seen with others as well.
Jane: Yeah, no, I’d say that’s exactly on target. A lot of my success is related. I mean, you’ve, we’ve talked about the generosity and service, but also the consistency of showing up repeatedly, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And it’s one of my great strengths that has given me a leg up. I have just been so consistent. I haven’t changed careers. You know, I have been in the same lane and it’s not boring to me. You know, I don’t. I see a lot of people who enter the writing and publishing space and they have a lot of initial enthusiasm, but for whatever reason they decide either I’m not making progress fast enough or they get distracted by the new shiny and then they’re off to the next thing.
Jane: So obviously I’ve been around for so long now that I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and there aren’t. And this includes authors, editors, publishers, agents, includes everyone in the ecosystem. There is a lot of movement and I find that the people who really do stick with it and actually have this innate interest, like they like the challenge of repeatedly showing up and doing the writing or doing the editing or doing the Agenting like there’s this internal motivation that keeps them consistent. They like the work for itself. There’s not some external reward that if, you know that they’re waiting for and if they miss it, miss their goal of I have to be successful by one or two years, then they’re out. I see a lot of people setting these arbitrary deadlines that don’t make a lot of sense to me.
Jane: It’s like if you’re really, if you love writing for the sake of writing, I don’t know that I would put a two year time cap on it. But I digress. I think the other thing that’s played a role here is again going back to my early days at Writer’s Digest, you realize very quickly in the writing and publishing community there are a lot of predators, people who will sell you a bill of goods and take your money. Unfortunately, some of these predators advertised in the magazine and we would get complaints and so as I was leaving that organization, I realized I just, I don’t want to be selling people something that I don’t feel good about or that I can’t back up.
Jane: I don’t want people giving me their money based on a dream that they don’t realize would allow me to take advantage of them. So I think this is one of the issues in publishing where agents and some publishers, they just, they can really, they wield a lot of power because they have the potential to offer something that the writer desperately wants. So this, you know, and that brings us like to the current day where there’s just a proliferation of scams right now. AI powered trying to hook writers on. Oh, look, I’m, I notice your brilliance. I see your work of genius. Let me help you bring your genius to the world. Just pay me, you know, $50 or $100 or whatever.
Stacy: And the book clubs, have you seen that trend I’ve gotten, I don’t even know how many book clubs. Oh, you’ve been selected. Just send us this money and everybody. 100 People will buy your book and yeah, just endless, I think.
Jane: Yeah. So I’m just very, I’m like, I, err, probably too far in the other direction. I want to lower your expectations, tell you all the things I cannot do for you. And if you’re comfortable with that.
Stacy: Okay, yeah, that’s such an honest approach. And I wish that more people had that posture when they went, you know, when they work with aspiring writers, aspiring authors, because I, to your point, for a lot of people, this is like a lifelong dream when they get into this field. And that makes them vulnerable to scammers and to people that are dishonest or, you know, publishers that maybe over pack the marketing side of a proposal or promise things that can’t be delivered or that like, don’t actually matter. You know, like they’re results that aren’t going to move the needle for them. So I, I love that you’re, you have that posture and I think that’s.
Stacy: Anybody that’s listening to this, that’s an aspiring author, look for those professionals that have that posture as well, that will be honest with you, that will tell you the real thing. I love that you mentioned AI. So I think this is a great opportunity for us to segue into AI. We cannot get out of this conversation without it. It’s everywhere. In fact, I was just. Earlier this year I was at the London Book Fair and it was, I think half of the programming was AI. I mean it was just inescapable. You wrote a really great piece on AI, which you, and you actually talk about AI a lot in your newsletters as well. I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. It’s incredibly informative. I’ve already shared it widely with a bunch of my folks.
Stacy: When it comes to AI, what is really most important for writers to understand about their own creative work and their business, their writing business?
Jane: I’ll start by saying I have a lot of humility around this topic. There is so much we do not know about the technology, where it’s going, how it’s going to be adopted by anyone in publishing. So it’s a uniquely confusing time. And I also want to say in three months, you know, who knows where we’re going to be. It’s just a very volatile area and there aren’t any norms or standards in publishing right now surrounding AI. There’s a lot of anger and fear, but I don’t think there are a lot of best practices. So the first thing I’ll say is that whatever training has been done on writers works. So these, you know, the big models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropics.
Jane: Claude, if you can realize that all of that training has happened and it’s in the past and whatever sins have been committed are going to get worked out in court. There are countless lawsuits underway. I mean, the big one which people have probably heard of is the anthropic lawsuit, Bartz vs. Anthropic. It’s a class action. And $1.5 billion is expected to be paid out to almost half a million writers. Well, for half a million titles. So the number of writers is less than that. Probably 100 to 200,000 writers and publishers. So there will be compensation. Now, some people don’t think it’s enough compensation and nothing will ever take resolve these sins.
Jane: But I feel like as long as you’re sitting on the anger, it’s going to be really hard to look at these tools and see what they might mean for you and your career going forward. I’m not saying you have to forgive and forget, but I don’t think it’s wise to keep pointing to the sin as a way to not grapple with what the technology means for you. The other thing to keep in mind from a legal point perspective is that so far the courts have determined that AI training on copyrighted work is fair use, which means they can do it without even paying you. That could change, but I think that is not well understood. So I just putting out the facts there on what the legal system has said so far.
Jane: So then when we get to the practical considerations, what does this mean for you and your career and your writing and publishing? I think for the short term future, publishers are mainly going to be focusing on using these tools for administrative purposes, forecasting, for analyzing all of the data they have at their fingertips that relate to how can we make our titles succeed in the marketplace. It could relate to metadata, to sales opportunities, better marketing, and so on. Right now, publishers have very little or no appetite for using AI to do editing work, to do design work, except in the most kind of rote, corrective types of processes. So that’s not something I would be getting anxious about as of today. There are some people who think, well, how long can it before publishers will replace writers with AI written books?
Jane: And I just, I honestly don’t see that happening. Except for maybe some branded authors who find that a better way to produce their books. Like I’m thinking here, everyone always likes to mention James Patterson as a book factory. So I just grab his name for this example. And I actually think he might consider having an AI trained on his work to help him spit out the next book. That’s the sort of author he is. So. But I don’t think publishers. I want people to think about publishers as also filled with human beings who got into a creative field because they want to work with creative people and do creative work themselves.
Jane: I don’t consider them to be widget factories And I think because of all of the fear surrounding the technology right now, people are just automatically concluding, well, if it’s a for profit publisher, they’re going to try to work us out of the equation as quickly as possible. And I just don’t feel like that’s true. Okay, so then the third thing I’ll mention and then we can decide where you want to go next. With AI, if you’re using these tools for any part of your writing or creative process, I mean, you ultimately have to decide where you’re going to draw the line. I think it’s a very personal decision. It’s going to depend on your genre and your goals and who your partners are. Like, who’s your publishing partner? What are your readers expectations?
Jane: Realize that you need to do some of your own self reflection. Because AI can be used in ways that I find are going to take you straight to the lowest common denominator. Like someone producing a romance novel in 24 hours. With the benefit of AI, you can do that, but that is not the same thing as using AI to serve some creative vision that you have and using it as a tool that augments your capabilities. And what that means is going to be different for every single writer. If you choose not to use AI, I think that’s a totally acceptable choice and you don’t have to use it.
Jane: I do think that people who are in genre fiction, I mentioned romance, I do think there will probably be more pressures there just because especially in the self publishing community, I find that there’s a lot of pressure to produce on a faster schedule. And so it might be more tempting in those spaces or you might feel more pressure to use the tools in order to keep up with other authors. I do think readers, there’s going to be readers who are totally comfortable reading AI generated work or AI assisted work, and then there are going to be readers who are like, no way. But the eventuality there, I think is I don’t know how long we’ll be able to tell if an author used AI or not. So that’s coming soon. Sooner than I think some writers realize.
Stacy: Yeah, I mean, it just grows exponentially. Right in the capabilities. Yeah, it’s an interesting. I like that you’re kind of leaving this to the writers to explore their own values, their approach and how they want to use it. And to your point, when I think about nonfiction, which is the space that I’m in and the type of books that I work with, so these are people that are often taking their decades of experience and bringing it into something meaningful for the world. But then there’s also like a internal journey that needs to happen for all of that to come together and I think create something that’s really meaningful. To your point, that may be a little different than Romance is a great example. What a hungry group of readers constantly want new books all the time.
Stacy: And I like that you’re thinking about nuance there. When you think about AI, just as Jane the human being and publishing pro, what possibility do you see what excites you about AI? And then where are the places that you kind of want to wrap your arms protectively around? Writing and writers in the industry?
Jane: Yeah, I mean, I use AI every day for countless administrative tasks. It’s been a godsend for my website, which I created and maintain myself. There are things I’ve wanted to improve about my site for five or more years. I’ve finally been able to do that using AI, of course, it’s known for coding, and I use it for coding, though I’m not a coder. But I can totally let it generate some code for me. And it works, even though I don’t know what it means, which is kind of, you know, it’s mind blowing. And I’ve used it to help me brainstorm and structure articles that I’m reporting on. So I’ll have like a dozen interviews that I’ve done over a course of a month or two.
Jane: And it’s like, gosh, you know, trying to connect that first conversation to the most recent conversation and thinking through, what are the patterns here? What are the. What are themes I want to pull out? AI is really helpful for that. And I, you know, I work alone, well, with my husband. And so I don’t have collaborators. I do have a copy editor and a fact checker. But AI, some people will call it their thought partner or, you know, like a coach or an editor. I think about it as a way to. As a clone of myself, actually, because of the way that I’ve set it up and trained it and the instructions I’ve given it and what I ask it to pull on, like my own writing work, essentially.
Jane: So it is like working with a clone of myself, someone who has a much better memory and someone who is a lot faster in noticing patterns or assessing data. I think that when I. When I consider the future for the publishing industry, what I’m really optimistic about is the way that it might bring readers to books and authors through the adaptation, through the creation of adaptations that would not be economically feasible otherwise. So we’re already seeing publishers do audiobooks with AI voices for their deep backlist. So really older titles where there’s no way it’s going to be economically feasible to do an audiobook. The sales aren’t there, but you do an AI voiced one, it serves the purpose. This is especially true for academic and scholarly books. And you’ve now made that book accessible to more people. Same is true with translations.
Jane: It’s going to be a huge revolutionary thing to watch AI get good enough to do a translation across, you know, more than 100 languages. And then HarperCollins has started taking some initial steps of looking at how short form video can be created out of romance books. Short form video is very popular right now with younger people. And also they’ve partnered with Toon Star to do some YouTube animations of YA books. So I’m very excited for the. I mean, maybe those authors aren’t excited, but I’m very excited for the authors. I’m excited for the publisher to see if some of these adaptations will work to make books authors more visible to younger audiences who would have never otherwise encountered the work. And it brings them into books.
Jane: Now, I may be a Pollyanna here, I fully admit it may not work out the way I’m describing, but again, these sorts of adaptations and use of the ip, it would just be too expensive for publishers or authors to pursue this without the benefit of AI. So I’m just curious to see if it can be used for good in that sense. As far as where I want to protect writers and myself in the industry, I mean, there’s a real temptation with AI, you know, to outsource that really. I find it a really important process of grappling with your own ideas and figuring out what you want to say. Like if you’re feeling tired or you just want this project to be over. There can be a real temptation to go to AI and just have it spit out your argument for you.
Jane: But I think we all know if we’re honest with ourselves when we’re shortchanging our own creative process and discovery process. You don’t just want to take what the AI spits out because it is, like I said earlier, going to be lowest common denominator. So we have to still hold ourselves accountable for doing the hard thinking work. But I think it can be also done in tandem with these tools and you can take away, you can speed it up a little bit, but only if you speed it up too much. You’re missing your own human spark, whatever it is that makes your work special.
Stacy: Great Answers. I love all of what you just said. And on your earlier point about the possibility, I was thinking about access to knowledge. And when I was at the. I mentioned, I was at the London Book Fair and they had the CEO of Audible at one of the keynote stages. And I’m. I’m totally going to skewer the data, but it was something. It was something like, there’s only, outside of the us, uk, there’s only two other language, or in kind of just American and UK English, two other languages that have more than, I think, 50 or 80,000 titles in translation. And they. And then like, basically most. This is for audiobooks. Most of the other countries have less than 5,000. It was like a tiny, tiny amount.
Stacy: And I was, you know, I live in Portugal, so of course I was thinking about Portuguese. I’m thinking about, you know, countries where they have a language that’s not spoken by much of the world and thinking about, you know, also people with disabilities that will have access now to audiobooks that wouldn’t have had it before, maybe with dyslexia or learning disabilities. So I think, like, to your point, there’s some accessibility and inclusion, that hopefully it will be used for good there as well. And also to your point, that creativity and the work that we need to do even, you know, I’m working on a book right now, and it would have been really easy to go in and say, give me the comp titles for this idea.
Stacy: But I did the work of looking it up myself and I came up with so many connections and, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to refine my own thinking without that effort.
Jane: Yeah, exactly.
Stacy: Last question. Before I ask you the last question that I ask all of our guests. You know, we’ve been talking about business. You’ve, you know, being the business, being a writer, talked about ways that AI can be integrated and how you’ve integrated it in your business. And I think sometimes when we start talking about business, and especially as an American, you know, we have like this hustle culture mentality of, you know, really holding depletion on a pedestal. It’s not really about rest and restoration. So I’d love to hear from you a little bit about how you make this sustainable, given your longevity in your work, your consistency, the fact that you didn’t throw your hands up and go, I’m done. I’m over it. What have you done to maintain that balance and sustainability of your own career?
Jane: I do have really strong boundaries to start around the workday, so I let Myself sleep, however late I want to sleep. I have a leisurely breakfast, I do some of my own reading, not work related reading. And then I get to my desk when I’m ready to get to my desk, which is still morning, to be.
Stacy: Clear, just declare.
Jane: And usually by 6pm I’m done. There are some days where unexpected things happen. I might work later than that, but when I’m done. I don’t have email on my phone, I don’t do work calls after hours. There are some special cases where I might teach an evening class, but even that I generally turn them down. I say I just don’t teach after a certain hour, I’m not at my best. I always regret agreeing. When I teach in the evening hours. Of course, if I’m away from home, traveling, it’s different, but I’m just referring to when I’m at home. And then if the weekends, if there are any work obligations, it’s pretty rare again, unless I’m traveling. So I try to maintain that space for myself and my family and my friends. And you know, the other pieces of it are just learning.
Jane: And I am at a great point in my career now where I get to say no to things that I don’t think are going to be either worth my time, worth the money. They’re not. It’s. There’s a book by Derek Sivers called Hell yeah or no, I think I’m getting that title right. So if you get an opportunity or something, there’s something that you’re thinking about pursuing, it should inspire a Hell yeah, not a like, well, maybe there’s another version of that Kevin Kelly talks about where he says if you’re accepting a responsibility or an event invite or a project and you’re not excited to do it the next day, you should say no. And so I try to abide by those principles and that does protect me from burnout. I realize though that early career that’s maybe not the most workable strategy.
Jane: And certainly when I was like about 10 years in, I was saying yes to everything. And that was hugely beneficial for me. But it was at a different time in my life. I wasn’t married, I had a lot more free time. I was younger. So there are, you do go through phases. It’s allowed to change how you tackle these things. But again, as we discussed with AI, this is also a very personal thing. But if you’re suffering from burnout and like you’re not being able, you can’t handle it all you have to decide what compromises or sacrifices you’re going to make. For some people, it’s like, well, I’m going to get less sleep or I’m going to watch less tv or this family relationship will have to be on hold. I mean, everyone has to figure it out for themselves.
Stacy: Beautiful advice, Jane. Let me ask you our last question that I ask all of our guests, and that is if you could recommend one book to listeners, which I know is a very hard question. One book. It is one that has profoundly impacted your life. What would it be and why?
Jane: At this moment in my life, there’s a book that’s been very meaningful, how to say Goodbye, and it’s actually a very short illustrated book. You could read it probably in 10 minutes. And I don’t know that I’m going to remember the author’s name. She’s an author illustrator. Her first name is Wendy, but it’s easy to find if you just look up the title.
Stacy: Okay, I’ll be sure to find it and link to it in the show notes. Now I’m going to have to go check it out too. I like how you answered that. It’s at this phase in my life because of course, doesn’t it change a lot depending on where you’re at? Jane, where can our listeners and viewers subscribe to your newsletter? Follow you, tell us where to find you.
Jane: Best place is my website, JaneFridman.com so that has information about everything I do, the classes, the newsletters, the events, et cetera.
Stacy: Okay. Amazing. I’ll be sure to link to all the things in the show notes. Jane, thank you so much for your time. It’s always such an honor to get to talk with you and to get to hear from your predictions, your insights. I really appreciate your time and energy today.
Jane: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for the thoughtful conversation and thank.
Stacy: You to you, our listeners, our viewers, for being with us. I really hope this supported you on your writing journey, your author journey, and that you’re leaving today not only with some practical things that you can go do, but feeling inspired and encouraged in all the of things. I want to thank as always Rita Domingues for her production of this podcast. You would not be watching this or listening to it without her. She is the reason everything happens beyond me just talking and I am grateful and I will be back with you before you know it.
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