‘The foundations of how authors build visibility, build a readership… while the tools change, the principles don’t.’
Jane Friedman has been commentating on the business of books for many years, and her classic The Business of Being a Writer has demystified the industry for thousands of authors. So on the release of its second edition it seems a good time to ask: what has changed over the seven years since the first edition?
It turns out that while the specifics of platforms and tech tools have moved on, the principles of writing and promoting a good book are pretty much as they always were: the fundamental challenge of persuading people to care about your writing still remains, and it’s arguably harder than ever in the face of what Jane calls ‘the tremendous fragmentation of attention across so many different channels’. And as a writer you need to engage with those channels, in fact you should even be asking if you should be focusing there instead of on a book.
But in any case, one channel that remains powerful for authors, and which Jane herself uses brilliantly, is the newsletter: we talk about how to write a good one, and how and when to migrate to paid subscription.
She also shares her own systems and processes for writing, including how she’s integrated AI tools. It’s part reality check, part masterclass, and it’s wholly worth your time.
Jane’s site: https://janefriedman.com/
Jane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janefriedman/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: I am here with Jane Friedman, who spent over 25 years working in the publishing industry with a focus on business reporting and author education and her book, The Business of Being a Writer, which is out now in its second edition, is a classroom text in many writing and publishing degree programs.
And her excellent newsletter, to which I’m a subscriber, The Bottom Line, provides market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals. And she works with organizations such as The Author’s Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
She’s basically, do you know, if you’re in publishing, you already know Jane. If you’re not, then talk to somebody who’s in publishing and they’ll tell you all about her.
So first of all, it’s great to have you here. Jane,
Jane Friedman: Thank you so much, Alison. A pleasure.
Alison Jones: Welcome to the show and congratulations on the new edition of Becoming a Writer. How does that feel?
Jane Friedman: I’m glad it’s done.
Alison Jones: I hear you, and we’re going to talk about your writing, your own writing process as well. But yes, how has the business of writing changed and I think it’s seven years, isn’t it, since the first edition? What sort of made you go, do you know, we need a new edition of this book.
Jane Friedman: Well, I mean, the straightforward answer is my editor asked me to update.
Alison Jones: This book has sold really well. Can we have another edition?
Jane Friedman: Right. But, you know, I also felt a little cringe around certain chapters or sections of the book, especially anything related to digital media, digital publishing, social media, all of that has shifted so much. And I just couldn’t stand by a lot of the sections related to that. And you know, if someone…
Alison Jones: What do you mean?
Jane Friedman: Yes. So there was, in the first edition, I did a lot of discussion of what was happening in the magazine industry, the shift to digital publishing and some of the business models surrounding that. So when I actually wrote the book, which of course was before the publication date, you know, Buzzfeed was an ascendance, there was a lot of focus on using things like Facebook and then Twitter to push traffic. And, a lot of that has fallen apart.
There’s been…
Alison Jones: There’s no other word for it.
Jane Friedman: Yes, there isn’t.
Just this tremendous fragmentation of attention across so many different channels. And of course that first edition didn’t talk about TikTok, which has become a really important part of how books get discovered, or at least how certain books get discovered right now.
Of course, in another eight years that’s likely to change. So, you know, in the second edition when I was revising it, I tried to avoid pinning myself into a corner with some of these things, but there’s only so much you can do.
Alison Jones: And what tends to date and what you’ve just sort of articulated there is that the channels change, the tools, the technology changes. Do you think any of the principles that you were setting out have changed or evolved in that period of time as well?
Jane Friedman: Fortunately, not so much. I think the foundations of how authors build visibility, build a readership, I think while the tools change, the principles don’t. So that guidance, you know, even though I still revisited it and made some structural changes to the book because my own thinking has shifted.
I don’t think that anyone will be misguided by the first edition. They just have to kind of mentally substitute in kind of the new tools and platforms that have come into the picture.
Alison Jones: You mentioned then the fragmentation of attention, do you think that reading has changed if writing hasn’t so much?
Jane Friedman: Oh, that’s a big question. I mean, the fear and anxiety is that deep reading has declined, the ability of people to focus on a book length work, that people are shifting into video and shorter attention spans.
But I don’t know, I don’t know that my book is the place for me to, like, I don’t really get into addressing those anxieties or fears. Those are for other authors to address, but I do try to focus people on look for the readership or the audience that is going to be most open to you. That, you know, their shared values, their shared interest, you treasure the same things, you’re all literary citizens who put a lot of value on books and the deep reading experience.
Alison Jones: Literary citizens is a great phrase. But you touched on something really interesting there, which is that I think publishing tends to be quite a closed ecosystem because we’re writing for people who read books.
Jane Friedman: Yes…
Alison Jones: …and they’re still out there, and actually even the blockbuster readers are still out there.
People still love that sort of deep immersive experience, particularly for fiction. I focus on nonfiction books, on business and self development, and I am definitely telling authors, much more than I used to, break it down, put the subheadings in, create some white space on the page, because I think that the habit of reading screeds of text on a page is one that we’re just not into as much.
It’s just harder for people to access information that way.
Jane Friedman: Yes. And I think looking at the much bigger picture, I feel like anyone who’s an expert or an authority or writing nonfiction, especially if they’re not in the storytelling space, so if it’s, information, benefit oriented, prescriptive in any way. I feel like there’s actually, there’s a tension in: do you really want to spend the time to do a book? Or would you better meet your goals doing a newsletter, something that’s more short form, doing TikTok videos, any number of things that could reach a bigger audience because of that attention issue that we’re discussing?
Alison Jones: And I would say actually it’s not either or, is it? If you’re going to be writing a book, I think you better be putting stuff out on the other channels to get the attention. I mean, I don’t think you can say, oh, I’m not going to do social media. I’m going to write a book instead. Because how will people know about your book?
Jane Friedman: Right, right. I totally agree. I think the concern I hear coming from, let’s say, literary agents and some publishers is that because writing and publishing a book sometimes doesn’t have much monetary reward, there are easier ways to monetize your expertise than spending a ton of time on the book.
So, but that’s not to say that the book does not have value. It does, but it is like such a time sink, if you’re doing it properly.
Alison Jones: And it’s interesting because I was sort of in this whole publishing sort of revolution back in sort of 2009- 10, when we were suddenly the ebook was here and it was all going change. And almost the longevity of the print, the value that people have in the thingy-ness of a print book really surprised me.
But on reflection doesn’t surprise me at all because we spend so much of our lives on screen that why would you want to read a book on screen as well? It’s just a very unsatisfying experience and there is, I think, real social and cultural value in the whole kind of booky-ness of it.
Jane Friedman: Yes, certainly we’re seeing that play out now with how print sales, especially on the fiction side, well nonfiction too, but fiction has become so print driven lately in terms of growth with the deluxe editions and the sprayed edges and all of these things that make it, like on TikTok, you know, the people who are spreading the word about books want to hold up a physical object.
So yes, that has been a surprise to me as well, because I think in that, like I lived through that same period that you did in the industry, and I too thought that eBooks would become the majority format and that is not the case.
Alison Jones: We had music, didn’t we? We looked at music and we thought, that’s where we’re going. And music has gone totally digital, but books haven’t, and you’re right, it’s something about being able to, what was that great phrase, books do furnish a room and they do make a great social TikTok prop and, you know, all of that, so fascinating.
So if you were writing the book, Jane, about becoming a publisher rather than becoming a writer, what do you think you would’ve been looking to update over the last seven years or so?
Jane Friedman: I can only think about this in terms of if I were going to try to start a profitable publisher today, I would really focus on a community or niche that I felt like I deeply understood and could see how to serve them, not just through books, but through lots of different channels or mediums. And I don’t mean just like social media, but I mean whether that’s classes or merchandise or you know, message boards, things that really get people involved and building trust around the brand so that when you do come out with books, it’s not from this organization that you’ve never heard of.
I feel like with the really big publishers, you know, I’ve thought this for years and , I’m still kind of waiting for the repercussions of this, but there’s so many dozens of imprints under the big corporate publishers that don’t mean anything to readers.
The authors might mean something in some cases, but I think the imprints lose meaning over time, especially as consolidation occurs. So what I find is that the publishers who their names do mean something to communities and to readerships, I find that they have a lot more residence and staying power and something that I don’t want to get too trend oriented, but something that I’ve noticed that I’m watching closely, is how the subscription box services are starting to reach into publishing, which makes total sense to me because they understand the readers so well and have that direct to consumer reach.
So I feel…
Alison Jones: It’s curation then that you’re paying for, isn’t it? And the experience of receiving it through the post.
Jane Friedman: Right, exactly. So, you know, fundamentally what I’m suggesting is a direct to consumer approach that I think has been a weakness for the really big traditional publishers because typically they were selling to booksellers or wholesalers or whomever, and they haven’t necessarily had that close relationship with what readers are looking for.
So that’s, I mean, when I entered the industry, I don’t know how much it really mattered unless you were in a really, in an enthusiast community. But today I feel like it matters more than ever.
Alison Jones: That’s what immediately comes to me when you talk about the publishers that have got the brand loyalty, the brand awareness, it tends to be the niche, it tends to be the military history, I think of Osprey and so, you know, but absolutely, you know, there are people who will buy any book that they bring out because that’s thing.
Vertebrate is another one for outdoor stuff.
Jane Friedman: There’s a literary publisher in the UK Fitzcarraldo, I think. I think that’s the one, but they’re, you can tell one of their books is on the shelf from across the room because they have such strong branding and they’ve built up a reputation for doing a certain type of book.
Alison Jones: Yes. So fascinating. And that ecosystem that you’re talking about, like it’s not enough just to publish books and put them into bookshops. You need the sort of the community. You need the brand awareness and sort of touch points, that really reflects back on your own experience as well with your newsletters.
I know that’s a bit of awkward segue, sorry. But I do want to talk about your newsletter. because it’s so good.
I think, you know, it’s something that publishers and also authors maybe don’t do so well. What makes a good newsletter?
Jane Friedman: As of today, voice, the voice is so important. Or you’re providing a perspective or a lens that someone else or other news outlets aren’t necessarily applying. Part of this can be curation. It could be reporting. It could be analysis, but there has to be a stance.
And what I see, and partly what, like the subtext here is AI and the fact that AI, I see AI generating some of the content I see in newsletters, and for me that’s disposable. I don’t care what AI has to say about some of these issues. I care what a person, a human being with history or context or knowledge of the community, what they think this means.
That’s what I’m looking for in a great newsletter, aside from just, you know, show me something I’m not seeing elsewhere.
Alison Jones: And I do also have that kind of, you can’t be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it? I mean, really. And you’ve sort of achieved the holy grail of newsletters, which is you’ve got a viable paid newsletter. I’m really interested in that transition. When’s the right time? Why do you do it? What does it make possible?
Jane Friedman: So I was able to start a paid newsletter, this was in 2015, because I already had a really well established website with like six figure traffic. I had a free newsletter that reached tens of thousands of people. My name was recognizable for the topic that I was writing on.
And so when you say, look, I now have this subscription, this paid thing, even if the conversion, you know, the number of people who actually pay is 1%, that’s still enough to make it viable if you’ve already built up the audience through other methods.
I think it’s really hard, and this is what makes me a little bit cynical at times about Substack selling writers on its platform.
It is so hard to start a subscription newsletter from scratch when you haven’t done any other work that would tie into it. Just, you know,
Alison Jones: Why would somebody pay for you and your new newsletter, which they’ve never heard of or, yes….
Jane Friedman: …that’s what I see the most of these days, and unless people already know your name or you have a really compelling angle, like, I just saw one about tell your story of getting laid off, the job you were laid off from, now that’s a pretty compelling angle and so maybe I don’t have to know who is behind it, but otherwise we probably need to know the name.
Alison Jones: Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it, the less well known you are the more niche and specific your topic has to be to catch people’s attention.
Well, let’s go backwards a step then, if it’s not about setting up a paid newsletter, which it isn’t, how do you, I mean, I know it’s graft and I know it’s good content and all the rest of it, but I guess, what’s your best tip for establishing a newsletter that gets traction?
Jane Friedman: Oh, I think part of this depends on what category you’re in. And also how well known your name is. So there are some categories of paid newsletter where the benefit is really clear and people have a motivation to subscribe because of that benefit. Like investing, you know, business growth, things that you are getting some sort of information that is going to help you run your business better, earn more money, et cetera.
And then you can see this in some other areas where I’ve been drawn to pay for newsletters, even if I didn’t know the name, but I trusted the person’s credentials. So health and wellness, like really specialized information on a topic where you feel like, okay, I want regular information from this person on this topic that I can’t find elsewhere.
So there has to be this feeling of…
Alison Jones: …and, well, that’s the kicker, isn’t it? I mean, there’s not much you can’t find on the internet.
Jane Friedman: Well, yes and no. Like so much of the material that’s available for free and paid, I have to admit, is it’s throwaway. So many people repeat what other people have already published. There’s a lot of regurgitation and repurposing and it’s also not particularly focused on reader’s needs. So it’s, you know, obviously it’s hard to talk in generalities because I think so much of this is audience specific.
Let me, I’ll use a health example, and this ties into book publishing as well, so I think it’s useful. There was a blockbuster book in the US called, it’s still, I think, on the bestseller list called Outlive by Peter Attia.
And he has a podcast, he’s had it for quite some time. It predates the book, but it’s a premium podcast, there’s some amount of it that you can listen to for free. You’re going to have to pay 25, maybe $29 a month if you want his insights into what’s currently happening in health news and research.
So his conversations with other people because most of his podcasts are long form interviews, you know, you can listen to that all day and they’re long and they talk above the head, I think of most health consumers. So, if you want his insight into what’s currently happening in health research, you have to pay.
Alison Jones: It is such a good example, isn’t it, of how you segment almost your content, how you build a community, and also how the book fits into that broader ecosystem and reinforces it.
Jane Friedman: Right. Exactly.
Alison Jones: The affordances, you know, the book is your manifesto, it’s the sort of principles of stuff. The weekly thing is the reactive, what’s going on in the world and what’s my take on that.
And these complement each other really well.
Jane Friedman: They do.
Alison Jones: It’s a good discipline, isn’t it, as a writer to think about what your pillars are, you know, where you’re going to put content out and also how they’re going to reinforce each other and create the synergy.
Jane Friedman: Exactly. I think too many people are thinking only about one side, like free and then the other paid, and not about how they feed into each other.
Alison Jones: I want to talk to you about writing, Jane, because when we talked about, you know, you’re glad the book was finished and we sort of shared a sort of wry smile because you know, we’ve all been there.
What does your writing process look like and what do you get out of it?
Jane Friedman: It is very deadline oriented. That’s the first thing I will say about it.
Alison Jones: I do not do this for fun.
Jane Friedman: Yes, writing books is not something I relish and I have to break it up into really small pieces, so I’m rarely doing it. And I would say this is likely true of many, if not all nonfiction authors. It’s not like I’m sitting down to write it from page one to the end. I’m really just focusing on very discreet things that I need to either research or write after I’ve done the research.
You know, I expect there’ll be a third edition of this book. So, like, already I’ve got a bucket, you know, in my note taking system, I use Notion, but it doesn’t really matter. It could be Evernote, whatever you prefer. So I’ve already got a bucket in Notion, third edition, and then it’s broken into different topics.
And so when I find things that I’m like, oh, I’m going to really want to mention this or update this in the third edition, it goes in the appropriate folder or slot.
Alison Jones: So much of success in life is down to systems, isn’t it?
Jane Friedman: Well, I think especially for nonfiction, I can’t speak for the novelists since I don’t write fiction.
Alison Jones: No, there’s no novelist listening. Don’t worry. We’re we’re all nonfiction geeks here, we’re in your world. Do you have a sort of table of contents that you write to, or does that emerge as you sort of coalesce ideas along the way?
Jane Friedman: Well, for the second edition, I was probably halfway through the revision, or I thought I was halfway through when I decided I needed to rip up the table of contents and redo it. So fortunately I use a program called Scrivener, which allows you to reorganize things very easily or test out different structures in just minutes.
So, actually the hardest part of the revision was deciding what should the new structure be. Because I felt like the old one was not correct any longer.
Alison Jones: And it feels like a sort of leap into the unknown, doesn’t it? Because you’ve got a table of contents and you know it’s not quite right, but at at least it’s there. Then you have to sort of abandon it and scramble together a new platform to make it all hang together. I don’t know, I personally find that, like you, so hard and then you look back at the end and you go, well, of course it’s like that. It couldn’t have been any other way.
There’s a, you know what I mean? There feels like a sort of retrospective inevitability about it, which wasn’t there when you were trying to put the damn thing together.
Jane Friedman: Yes. You really have, my ideas and arguments develop as I go through the writing and the revision.
Alison Jones: Which is why we write, right? You want you want that, yes.
Jane Friedman: So that’s, you know, that’s why the structure keeps shifting, I think when I write.
Alison Jones: Yes, which is very disconcerting at the time, but you have to keep in mind it’s a good thing. So one of the things that’s changed in the seven years since the last edition is AI, generative AI and how that’s impacted writing. Has that impacted your writing practice?
Jane Friedman: It’s impacted outlining, brainstorming, finding information, now with the deep research tools, it’s saved me tons of time. Like, if I’m doing a trend piece that involves TikTok, for example, I don’t use TikTok myself. I’m really averse to searching it, but if you can now use tools like ChatGPT’s Deep Research and ask it look, I’m trying to find a pattern here on TikTok of these certain authors or titles or trends come back to me with research, with the citations. Because you obviously to double check.
Alison Jones: I know, exactly.
Jane Friedman: And it will, it will give you the citations and you can check them. So that’s one thing that’s really helped me.
And it can also, the big caveat I have to put here, other than the hallucination piece, is that they do have the tendency to confirm your own assumptions.
Alison Jones: It’s an echo chamber, isn’t it?
Jane Friedman: So you have to really push against it and say, what am I missing? What didn’t you tell me? What is a critique of this?
Alison Jones: What would somebody taking the opposite view say? Yes.
Jane Friedman: Exactly.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. That’s such a great tip. Yes, and you don’t realize it.
It’s so seductive having someone agree with you and be…
Jane Friedman: Oh yes. yes. And apparently it’s becoming even more…
Alison Jones: Obsequious?
Jane Friedman: Yes, obsequious is a good word. It’s becoming more that way. And the developers can’t explain why.
Alison Jones: Yes, it is quite scary. It’s so interesting. Wow.
And of course there’s the tiny problem of intellectual property in the way that it’s been trained on. You know, your book, I’m sure, and mine and…
Jane Friedman: Oh, yes. Everything.
Alison Jones: Let’s not go there, that’s a whole extra podcast.
Jane. I always ask my guests for their best tip for a first time author.
So typically the people listening will be business book writers or self-development, nonfiction writers. What should they know before they go too far down the line?
Jane Friedman: Well, if you’re interested in traditional publishing, please, please, please be able to puzzle out the answer to a couple questions before you go too far and waste your time. It’s the ‘so what’ and ‘who cares’ questions. Yes, the ‘So what’ is why this book right now? Like, what’s the resonance of it at this moment in time?
I’m not saying you can’t write an evergreen book, but you have to be able to tie it to something people care about at this moment. And so the people…
Alison Jones: …the marketing people do.
Jane Friedman: Yes, exactly. And then the ‘who cares’? Like who is it that you’re speaking to? It’s not anybody and everyone and aliens should they land, it has to be a specific group that you feel confident addressing.
Alison Jones: Yes, please don’t write it for the aliens. That’s not a viable market sector. I mean, I’d add to that the ‘why you’ as well, there’s a sort of credibility piece there as well, isn’t there?
Jane Friedman: Yes, there is.
Alison Jones: I think you’ve sort of implied it, but I think we should just state it as well. Please don’t write your book and then try and find a publisher.
Please write a proposal and then take it to a publisher.
Jane Friedman: Yes, yes. That was strongly implied that is absolutely.
Alison Jones: Yes, because fiction’s different, isn’t it? In fiction, they want to see your manuscript, but in nonfiction it’s very much like, you know, what’s the book about? As you say, who cares? Who’s it for? And and why you? And then they’ll take it on and then you write the book.
But yes, don’t write it before you’ve sold it or don’t write it before you’ve had that feedback from publisher, I guess. Brilliant.
And I always also ask for a recommendation, a book that you have perhaps read recently that you’ve enjoyed, or a book, I mean, you’re not allowed to recommend your own, sorry. But a book that you think somebody listening, who’s interested in the business of books, should read.
Jane Friedman: So this is a bit of a unconventional suggestion.
Alison Jones: We’re here for those.
Jane Friedman: But it’s How to Reform Capitalism from The School of Life because I just love the way it talks about business concerns, especially during a time when I feel like there are people who are kind of anti-capitalism or they see the downsides of business.
I feel like this book really brings a thoughtful approach to how you can transform it and as the title indicates in a way that serves the greater good and your own business goals.
Alison Jones: And it’s such an interesting model, School of Life as well, and it’s almost like sort of composite author, so, yes.
And Jane, if people want to find out more about you, more about your brilliant newsletter, more about your books, where should they go?
Jane Friedman: janefriedman.com, that’s where everything lives.
Alison Jones: Well, that was easy. Well, I will put that link up on the show notes @extraordinarybusinessbooks.com. Thanks so much for your time today. It’s been absolutely fascinating.
Jane Friedman: Thank you so much.
