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In this episode, I speak to J. Thorn, horror and dark fantasy author.
J and I talk about what inspires his writing. I laughed heartily when he said that the most-asked question to him is, “How do you sleep at night?”
But J is an author who sees himself as an entrepreneur and uses many avenues of marketing.
In this intersection of law and business, copyright law is the target. Copyright law doesn’t protect inspiration, only the expression of ideas. It is an important area of law for artists because artists control the results of their work – the fruits of their labors. Without copyright law, would art proceed at the rate that it does proceed? Someone else using another’s work seems to intrude upon our internal sense of fairness.
Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the episode:
Intro:
It’s the Law and Business podcast, hosted by me, Anthony Verna. We help your business understand its legal obligations better. My practice focuses on trademark, copyright, intellectual property, and advertising and promotion law. Contact me at Anthony@vernalaw.com.
Anthony Verna:
Welcome to the Law and Business podcast. I’m here with J. Thorn, dark fantasy, horror writer. And that’s basically the same genre, correct?
J. Thorn:
Uh, pretty much.
Anthony Verna:
All right. Cause I remember Phillip K. Dick once said that science fiction and fantasy are the same genre as well. And, as you know my law practice is intellectual property, so we like to protect. -well, we can’t protect ideas, but we like to protect the expression of the idea and we effectively protect inspiration. So, let’s start with where your inspiration comes from.
J. Thorn:
Sure. Inspiration is, it’s really kind of hard to describe. I think, like a lot of artists, I feel compelled to create and for better or worse, sometimes that compulsion is out of your control. So, I think I’m sort of inspired by just life in general and, I’m compelled to kind of to tell stories and so the inspiration could be as something as complex as a major life event or it could be as something as simple as a stroll through the woods. It’s really, it’s really sort of unpredictable, but it’s also exciting at the same time.
Anthony Verna:
So what are some, let’s talk about a little life event, something daily that has inspired you in the past.
J. Thorn:
Sure. Have you ever woken up at night and you’re not really sure what woke you up?
Anthony Verna:
Of course.
J. Thorn:
Yeah. Well that’s a perfect example. And being a horror, dark fantasy writer, you can imagine the depth to which you can take that experience. Most of us, most of the time we’ll roll back over and go to sleep or go get a drink of water or look out the window. But you can take that one little moment, that everyday moment that we all have, and you could really turn that into something else.
Anthony Verna:
Okay. And, and how about something more grandiose that has inspired you?
J. Thorn:
You know, I’m a parent and I have two children and I think that experience… No, not a specific experience, but just being a parent, I think, fundamentally changes your outlook. And it’s not in a judgmental way. I’m not suggesting that. I just think it really alters the way you view the world. And so, I think that having children is a pretty significant life change and I think that’s I can draw inspiration from that as well.
Anthony Verna:
So, taking your inspiration, putting it down on paper, this is what you do, this is your career, correct?
J. Thorn:
Yes.
Anthony Verna:
So how did you you take this from, well, I hate to use the phrase hobby, but, as they say, if you don’t make money, it’s a hobby. How did you take this from hobby to career?
J. Thorn:
Well, it’s not a, it’s not a straight line and it’s not a very clear line either. Never a straight line. No, no. It’s never, it’s never what you planned, right? It’s never what you set out to do. I consider myself more of an entrepreneur than I do a writer. And I say that because I do write, but I don’t, there’s this quote unquote full time writer, a persona that I think a lot of people who are authors and outside of the writing they had this had this sort of fantasy in your head that means you sit in a cabin in the woods with a cup of coffee and a computer and…
Anthony Verna:
Or these days, you sit at Starbucks with a cup of coffee.
J. Thorn:
Right. Yeah. Whatever your personal preferences, right? And you sit there and you craft the great American novel and then you fly off and vacation with your family on your private Caribbean island. And like that’s just not the reality for 99.9% of writers. So, I have, I do consulting work, I do technical writing. So yes, writing fiction is a career, but it’s not my only revenue stream. And so I have to be I have to be pretty nimble in this market and I have to take advantage of opportunities and I have to use my strengths as an independent author in moving fast. So, how does that look? What’s the straight line? I think the biggest distinction between what you might consider a hobbyist or sort of just a person that’s writing for their own fulfillment is, at some point, you have to step back and you have to look at your art as a product.
Anthony Verna:
And let’s talk about being nimble. Cause I think that’s a very key component that you just hit on because on one hand, when you’re writing for yourself and however we define that, it’s very different than being a technical writer where somebody else maybe has given you instructions or has given you a previous manual version or something to that effect that you need to base your new
product off of. And also, that’s not yours.
J. Thorn:
Yes.
Anthony Verna:
So how does your mindset differ?
J. Thorn:
I think you have to pay close attention to what is happening in the world of publishing. And you have to be willing to take a little bit of a risk. I personally know some great authors who are risk averse and that there’s nothing wrong with that. I think we all have our own sort of comfort level. But being nimble is sort of a, it’s a nice way of saying you’re going to have to put your neck on the line and you’re going to have to take some risks. And most of the time they’re not going to pay off. So, you know, being nimble for me. I’ll give you an example. In around this time last year, I started to notice on Amazon, there were these multi-author box sets that were appearing and for the lay person, it’s basically if you go on Amazon and you browse in the Kindle store, authors were getting together, let’s say five, six, seven, eight, even as many as 12 of them.
And they were putting all of their individual novels into one collection. And so, you as the reader could buy that single collection. And inside that you would get 10 different novels from 10 different authors. And this was not a new idea, but I noticed that around this time last year, there were more and more of those were appearing and they were doing really well in rankings and in reviews. And within about two weeks of making that observation, I had a box set up for sale. And so that’s what I mean by being nimble. If I had been with a traditional publisher, well first of all, traditional publishers probably wouldn’t permit their authors to be included in a box set like that. But even like a smaller publisher or an independent press, you’re probably looking at six to nine months turnaround time if it’s being organized by a small press and by that time that opportunity may have long passed. So, by being nimble and taking a risk, taking a chance, I was able to get into that game right away.
Anthony Verna:
And when you take one of your writings and you put it in a box set with three or four other authors, you’re in a way acting as if it’s a reading co-op, for lack of a better phrase. But, fans of each author can easily, discover not just a new works by that author, but new works by other authors that they may also like.
J. Thorn:
Yeah, absolutely. U The boxes have got a lot of traction because we priced them at 99 cents. And clearly there’s an argument and I think it’s a valid argument, , that says, wow, you’re really devaluing your work. You’re putting out seven or eight novels and you’re basically charging 10 cents a piece. And I never really saw it that way. In fact, I saw the box sets as advertising that paid me. So, the idea was I could get my work in front of not only other readers, but other readers of the same genre, and that’s really important. So, these box sets were not sort of randomly themed box sets. They were genre box set. So, I know that readers who like Scott Nicholson’s work, they’re going to like my work and vice versa.
And so we sold, and we still are, we’re selling a good deal of these and it’s not making us a ton of money because we’re at the 35% royalty rate. So, on a 99 cent box all eight authors are splitting 35 cents. Right? But we’re selling a bunch. And we’re selling enough that we’re making a little bit of money and so, that’s how I kinda see it as advertising that’s paying me. I really don’t see it as devaluing the work because it’s even a step up than say, giving your book away for free. If you’re using a KDP select free day or you’re making your book freely available, you’re getting no financial compensation for it. At least we’re getting something and we’re getting our words out to new readers.
Anthony Verna:
And at that particular point, are you finding that people who bought the box set are coming back?
J. Thorn:
Well, there’s a few interesting things that are happening and I’m basing this just on the reviews for the box sets. I don’t have a real nice data set to back this up, but what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing on the reviews are two things. Glenn James and I who were sort of spearheading the box sets, we kind of branded them a certain way. So, the biggest series is called This is the End. And there’s three versions of that. And there are some authors that are in some and not in others, but they’re branded. If you put them all next to each other, they look like they belong together. So, we’re starting, we saw readers who bought the first collection and then bought the second and bought the third. We’re also seeing reviewers, saying that they went and bought the authors’ other books from the one that was included in that box set.
Anthony Verna:
Okay.
J. Thorn:
So, for example, I put book one of a series into these box sets and I’m seeing reviewers saying that they’re going and buying books two and three.
Anthony Verna:
Yeah, so in a way it’s not quite a free preview, but in a very big way, it is a preview of one particular series.
J. Thorn:
Well, in most cases, yes, the, the novels that are inside the box sets are either standalones or they’re book one in a series. And so that’s the idea, you give the reader for a dollar, you give the reader a full novel, you know, and there are seven or eight of them in there and they get to taste a little bit of a taste, but it’s not a sample. It’s a full novel.
Anthony Verna:
Right.
J. Thorn:
So, I think it’s the best of both worlds.
Anthony Verna:
And I’m curious if you’ve ever seen any of your work elsewhere that might be unauthorized.
J. Thorn:
As a matter of fact, I have.
Anthony Verna:
How are your views on that? Because I have a feeling your views are not the traditional view and the traditional view is, I didn’t authorize it so I have to pull it away. I have to lock it down. I also have a feeling that view is changing in general.
J. Thorn:
I think it is. And I think I’m somewhere in the middle on that. This sort of concept has been talked about a lot and I don’t know who to attribute it to, but there’s the idea that obscurity is worse than piracy. If you’re not being read at all, that’s worse than someone feeling as though your work is valuable enough to steal it. I guess , for me, seeing my work on a pirate site and it’s someone that’s making it available for free, I’m probably gonna request that be removed, but I’m not necessarily going to go full bore at that. I think for me, and this hasn’t been the case and I hope it isn’t, I think I would be really upset if I somehow found one of my novels that had a different cover on it and a different author name and a different title. But it was my book. That would really, really concern me because that’s different than sort of pirating one of my existing books or giving it away for free.
Anthony Verna:
Is that because intellectually there’s something more dishonest about it?
J. Thorn:
It feels that way to me. And, I think everyone has their own sort of threshold on that. But yeah, I would feel like if it’s my intellectual property and someone is passing it off as their own, to me that feels worse than someone giving away one of my books for free when I’m trying to sell it.
Anthony Verna:
I can understand that completely. So, getting back to the entrepreneur in you, what else do you do to get the word out of who you are? Because on one hand I think a lot of people believe that an author just sits there and writes and then stuff comes in. But, in your particular case, because you’re not backed by a big publishing house and there’s your give and take with a big publishing house, but you need to get the word out there on who you are. How do you do that?
J. Thorn:
Well, the only way you can do that well is to just have a lot of content. The more books you have, the more titles you have available, the greater chance of someone finding you, and the greater chance that if they like one of your titles, they’re going to go and read more. I think it’s a pretty common understanding that readers read authors, they don’t read books. And I don’t know if that’s true for a lot of art forms, but it is for a book. So, it’s completely plausible for a reader who discovers a new author to read a book and they like it, to go and read the entire catalog. So, it’s definitely in your best interests, especially with fiction, to have as many titles out there as you possibly can. So, it works as sort of a net to get new readers. And it also helps to build royalties once someone’s sort of caught in that net, for lack of a better analogy. As far as getting the word, I think getting the word out, like that’s the million dollar question, right? I mean, we’re all screaming into this insane sea of social media and we’re all trying to be heard and noticed. And that’s really, that’s the million dollar question for everyone. And I think the go to for a lot of authors, for a lot of people as well, clearly social media, right? Like, I’m going to get a million followers and I’m going to get a a thousand likes on my Facebook page and then all of a sudden people are going to start buying all my stuff. And, I don’t think I ever believed that completely. And now I feel like I’ve completely discarded that idea.
I’m on social media now strictly to interact and engage with people. I rarely post stuff about my books. I rarely tweet sales links. There’s just no, first of all, there’s no evidence. There’s no strong evidence that supports the fact that if you see a tweet with a book link in it, you’re going to buy it. I mean, you’re talking like less than 1% of the time that happens. And now there’s even some pushback on that. I think people are more skeptical of messages coming on social media that are selling. They want to be informed or they want to be entertained. They don’t want to be pitched to necessarily.
Anthony Verna:
I’ve certainly had that and I know it’s anecdotal more than of course, scientific, but I’ve certainly had people say to me, Twitter was a lot better when we didn’t have everybody needing to sell something on it.
J. Thorn:
Yes, yes. Yeah. You talked about sort of having an entrepreneurial spirit or how do you get the word out in a way that is new or innovative or different? The biggest thing you can do, I think, is just kind of be yourself on, and I know it sounds hokey, but I think your tribe kind of find you, but you have to be authentic about it. So, I’ll give you an example. In I guess May, I started, the Horror Writers podcast and about two months ago, I brought on an a co-host and, we’re doing our podcasts weekly now. It costs us money. It costs us time. There’s absolutely no correlation between having a podcast and selling books. Well, what it does is it lets people know I’m here and, I’d like to think we’re offering a service. You know, we’re entertaining, we’re informing, and eventually, over time, maybe that sets me apart. Maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. But I think those are the, and I’m not saying everyone needs to start a podcast, but I think you need to kind of find other ways to kind of give and/or entertain or inform and then that that will come back and help you.
Anthony Verna:
Especially, I think in your genre, I think a lot of people believe that the science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers out there do nothing but sit in a cave and are hermits and it’s not really true. You know, for example, Ray Bradbury was on an episode of You Bet Your Life and you can probably find that on Hulu and Netflix, and I’m sure it’s up on YouTube illegally somewhere. And it’s hysterical to see Groucho Marx talk with Ray Bradbury, who you know, is like, “Yeah, well, I met my wife.” “How’d you meet your wife?” “Well, I was at the bookstore.”, Like duh, Ray Bradbury, an author went to the bookstore. “And it turns out she knew my books.” Groucho Marx was like, “Well, that must have been very, you know, you know, that must’ve been very, very, uh, simple and easy. You get to talk about yourself.” And in a way, I would, I guess you’re right. It’s hokey. Be Yourself. It sounds very Disney, especially from our author, but it really shows that, yeah, you’re not a hermit. You’re not coming through as somebody who’s disassociated with life, which I think is a stereotype in your particular genre.
J. Thorn:
Yeah. I was on Joanna Penn’s podcast a few weeks ago and she said, “You know, I got to ask you the question I always get asked, which is, how do you sleep at night?”
And what she meant by that, and I totally got it, was, I think people believe horror writers, they do live in a dungeon and they’re sacrificing goats, at every vernal equinox, and you know, it, we’re just regular people. We have mortgages and families and things like that. And so, I think it’s the one great way to use social media is to let that shine through and just be authentic. And there are some days, there are some weeks where I don’t tweet at all. And there are some weeks where I’ll tweet every day. But it’s not a marketing plan. It’s just I’m, and I do it when I feel I do it. When I don’t, I don’t. And I’m on Twitter and I’m on Facebook primarily. I have a Pinterest account. I am not there very much. I’m not. I don’t have much of a presence on Google plus. I’m not gonna go there. I’m not going to spread myself out just because I think that’s what I have to do.
Anthony Verna:
You know, it’s funny you mentioned that cause our firm actually has a Pinterest account and it was kind of one of those shots in the dark that I’ve certainly shied away from putting a lot of effort into because how many times can I take a picture of something and say, “Hey, that’s a really good advertisement.” And there’s not much more I can say because that would be ethically not right to keep commenting about other people’s advertisements or trademarks or whatever. So, there are times when one social media avenue isn’t particularly correct from a business standpoint.
J. Thorn:
Right, right. Gary Vaynerchuk’s got a great book on that. The Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. He does a really good job of sort of explaining what the pros and cons of the different social media platforms are. The book is already a little bit dated, but it gives you a good understanding of who is on Facebook and who is on Twitter and what industries would benefit from which social media platforms. Like, you know, Pinterest is probably in. If I were a graphic artist, I would be all over Pinterest, but, it’s not as well suited to someone that puts sentences together for living. So, first of all, you got to like it and it’s gotta be the audience that you’re looking for.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. So what’s coming up for you? Is it just at this point you have your business plan, which part of it is a podcast? It’s not really social media, but however you get the word out there, is it lather, rinse, repeat at this point for you? Or is it still evolving? Is it still changing? Is it still finding something new to get the word out there?
J. Thorn:
Yeah, I think it, it has to always be evolving. Things are changing so quickly, not only in this industry, but in our world, especially around technology. You can’t do this. You can’t do the same thing as you did two years ago. I mean, some of the things you can, but you can’t have the same approach and you can’t just rehash the same thing because things change. So, I don’t know if the podcast is not really part of a marketing plan. I’m just doing that cause I’m having a good time with it right now. And I told Richard Brown, my cohost, I said, “You know what? We’ll do this while it’s fun and if it’s not fun, we’re not gonna do it.” It’s fun right now. But it may not, if it becomes a chore or a task, I’m not going to do it just because I feel like it’s a good marketing technique.
I think for me right now, I’ve sort of established a nice back catalog. I have, I don’t know, I should know this better, but I think I have like six or seven full novels, maybe eight full novels and short stories and different titles out there. And, and so I’m continually writing my own stuff and really through the rest of 2014 and into 2015, my focus is really going to be on collaboration. So I started a really big collaboration and finished that, The Black Fang Betrayal. And that was with 10 authors. But now what I’m looking to do is to co-write a lot of stuff. So, I’m already pairing up with some other authors in different ways, in different genres. And that’s how I’m looking to grow and to build. And when you pair up or when you collaborate, you amplify your ability to market and you’ve cut down the amount of time it takes to produce content. So, everybody wins in that situation.
Anthony Verna:
So, when you’re collaborating, is it always a set out as a 50/50 split or with 10 authors, a1/10 split or how does your effort into writing get divided?
J. Thorn:
Yeah, I think it’s going to be a case by case basis. For The Black Fang Betrayal, that was something I organized because I was really passionate about it and I wanted to prove to myself I could do it, but I didn’t feel like I was entitled to any kind of special compensation for that. So, there are 10 authors in that, and we all get 10% of whatever we make on it. I have some other co-writing projects in the line that’ll be a straight up 50/50 split. I have others that I’m not really sure yet. Yeah, I think it’ll be really individualized, but I would say the most common arrangement would be a 50/50 split.
Anthony Verna:
That makes absolutely perfect sense. We’ll keep it. Keeping it simple makes business grow a little better as well, right?
J. Thorn:
Yeah. And part of what I want to do is I’m sort of looking to collaborate in two ways. I want to collaborate with writers who I look up to, who I admire, who I’ve been reading, because I want to learn from them. You always want to learn from people who do things better than you do. So I’m always looking to improve and so I’m trying to work with authors who I perceive to be really stellar and really at the top of their game. At the same time, I know how hard it is. And so what I’m also looking to do is work with aspiring writers, writers who don’t really have a platform yet but are really great wordsmiths who have a passion, who have a desire, they’re motivated. And so, I’m looking to partner with those types of people as well. So, it just really depends on the situation and I think every co-writing opportunity might be slightly different. But my approach is the more I can work with other people, the better writer I become.
Anthony Verna:
And how does that, again, going back to the fact that this is a business, how does the co-writing effect the sales? Have you seen more sales growth in whatever you have written?
J. Thorn:
Yeah, I think that’s a time will tell on that. I have seen co-writing situations really work for other people and I have no reason to believe it won’t work for me. But, I’m not far along enough yet that I have any titles out except that one 10 author co-written piece. So, I don’t have a lot of data to support that. But even in that, I’ve noticed because there are 10 authors involved in it, I’m gaining new readers and in whatever correspondence I have with them, whether they sign up for my mailing list or they leave a comment for me on Facebook, I’m sort of detecting where they’re coming from and I’m noticing that they’re coming from some of the readership of these other authors, which is great.
Anthony Verna:
No, that is wonderful. It’s a win for everybody. Yes. And how was The Black Fang written? Did everybody have a chapter? Did you have an outline and people started filling in the outline? How you split the work between 10 authors?
J. Thorn:
Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And it took several sort of iterations for me to kind of figure out how it was going to work. The original concept was we were going to do like a parlor game where someone wrote a piece and they handed it off to the next person. And they picked it up and then that person wrote the next piece. And that was the original plan. But then we realized to create a novel in that way, the person at the end of the line would almost have to read an entire book before they could even write their piece. And just like logistically it would’ve taken a long time and I’m not sure we could have pulled it off. So, when I had that realization, what I decided was to craft a story that allowed each writer to write a piece and allow me to kind of stitch it together in a way that was compelling and made sense. And so that was the approach. Each author received a, not really a prompt, but sort of a scenario. And so, I told them, you know, here’s the city that you’re writing in, here’s your character, here’s what your character wants and here’s kinda how it has to end in a loose kind of way. And then they could fill in everything else. So, they did have some structure, but it wasn’t a real strict outline either.
Anthony Verna:
And were there any points of disagreement maybe in the structure and the plot?
J. Thorn:
No, I don’t think so. I was pretty transparent in the process and what I did before I sent them their prompts or their assignments, I wrote the beginning and the end. And so, I said, here’s how it’s going to start and here’s how it’s gonna end and here’s how your piece is going to fit in. And I took some feedback and I changed some things. So, they all knew sort of the overall story arc. Now what did happen, over the course of the collaboration is a few people dropped out and a few people were added and they were just normal life circumstances like there, I wish I had some juicy drama on it, but there really wasn’t any. I think one writer realized early on that it was a sort of heading in a genre that he wasn’t really comfortable with and it was going to be hard for him to write and I totally get it. And someone else had the life situation that came up and they had to back out so those kinds of things happened. But there wasn’t any gnashing of teeth or anything like that.
Anthony Verna:
No, it’s good when a collaboration can come together.
J. Thorn:
Yeah. And honestly, it probably shouldn’t happen. Like on paper it should look like a train wreck. So, I’m really happy that it did.
Anthony Verna:
And, J., I’ll let you plug away, before we run. Where are you ranked in terms of horror sales?
J. Thorn:
I’ve been as high as five. I was at five in March. For the most of the summer I’ve been kinda hovering on the first page, somewhere 10 to 15, I think. I think now I’m in the 20s somewhere. Sales fluctuate. You have these peaks and valleys. I try not to pay too much attention to that. I mean, clearly, it’s because those rankings are based on sales and I think that’s different than winning awards or contests, which are very subjective. I like the idea of sales determining that rank. So, I’m proud of that. But at the same time, I try not to focus on it too much because I’m kind of neurotic. And once you go down that dark hole of checking your ranking or checking your sales a couple of times a day, it’s not helping you. So, I’m very pleased with wherever I am right now. I’m getting some visibility. I’m getting new readers every day and I’m very thankful for that.
Anthony Verna:
All right, J,, thanks very much for coming on and how can everybody find you?
J. Thorn:
Easiest thing to do is just go to jthorn.net and you can find everything I do through that.
Anthony Verna:
All right. Wonderful, J. Thanks for coming on.
J. Thorn:
My pleasure, Anthony.
Anthony Verna:
All right, I’ll talk to you later.