Episode #37
From Writer to Publishing Business: Biba Pearce on Indie Publishing, Making Books Pay and AI - ep 37
Can you really make a living from writing. What changes when you start treating your books as a business? In this episode of Talking Tech with Creatives, I talk with award-winning crime author and indie publisher Biba Pearce about the business behind a writing career. Biba writes across crime, thriller and romance, publishes through traditional and independent routes, and runs her own imprint, Mortlake Press. She shares how she moved from experimenting with self-publishing to building multiple series, working with publishers including Joffe Books and Liquid Mind Media, and developing a publishing model designed to generate long-term income. We talk about writing five or six books a year, building a backlist, Kindle Unlimited, rapid release, advertising, translations and international markets — as well as the growing role of AI. Biba also explains how she uses technology and AI within her publishing business while protecting the part she considers uniquely human: her authorial voice. We explore: • how Biba moved from a technology career into full-time authorship • traditional, independent and hybrid publishing • why backlist and read-through matter • whether authors can genuinely make money from books • KDP, Kindle Unlimited and international publishing • AI-assisted translation and audiobook possibilities • what happens to editors, designers and narrators as AI develops • why human voice may become even more valuable • using AI for research, analysis and publishing workflows • GEO and how AI is changing online search • how writers can prepare for a publishing industry that is changing fast This is a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, technology, publishing and what it takes to build a sustainable career around your work. Find Biba Pearce via her website and social channels. Website: https://bibapearce.com/ Instagram: @author_bibapearce Facebook: @authorbibapearce TikTok: @authorbibapearce Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bibapearce Subscribe to Talking Tech with Creatives for conversations about how technology is changing the way creative people work, build and create. Stella Oni — Author | Speaker | Lecturer | Podcast Host Website: StellaOni.com Speaking: Speaking engagements LinkedIn: [Stella Oni on LinkedIn] Instagram: [@stellaoni_official] TikTok: [@stellaoni_official] X: [@soni_official2] TRANSCRIPT STELLA: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech with Creatives, a podcast where we talk about creativity, technology, culture and all the different ways technology connects with creative work. Thank you so much for listening consistently. Every time I post, you listen, and I really appreciate that. If you’ve been listening regularly, or if you’re new, remember to subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching. I have an exciting conversation for you today, especially for authors. My guest is Biba Pearce, and she is a powerhouse when it comes to writing, publishing and the business of being an author. I’ve wanted to have her on the podcast for a long time, and we’ve finally made it. Biba, welcome to Talking Tech with Creatives. BIBA: Thank you so much for having me on, Stella. It’s a pleasure to be here. STELLA: I’m so happy we finally got you here. For those listening, this is going to be particularly interesting if you’re a writer or author and you want to understand the business of publishing, marketing and building a sustainable career. Biba, I want people to know a little bit about your background first. Give us your origin story. How did you start? BIBA: I started like most writers, I think, reading everything I could get my hands on as a child. I loved genre fiction right from the beginning: romance, crime and fantasy. When I grew up, I did a couple of writing courses, and it was during those courses that I realised I loved the process and that writing was something I wanted to do one day. It took a while to get to that point, but I kept learning, writing, practising, doing courses and building my craft. Eventually, when COVID hit and I wasn’t working anymore, I was able to concentrate full-time on being an author. That was when I really got my opportunity. STELLA: Fantastic. I’m going to dig a little deeper. I detect an accent, so let’s start there. You’re South African. You write across thrillers, crime thriller series and romance, so you have quite a broad spectrum of experience. That doesn’t come from nowhere. What were your influences growing up? BIBA: I think growing up in Africa is a very particular experience. There are a lot of contradictions. Things are rarely black and white. There are positives and negatives. It’s stunningly beautiful. It’s wild. It can be dangerous. All those things have influenced my subconscious over the years, and I think they come out in my writing. I’ve also travelled a lot. South Africa is quite far away from the rest of the world, so when we travel, we tend to travel quite far. I’ve always had a curiosity about the rest of the world. When I travel, I observe, learn and take notes, and everything I’ve seen or experienced over the years somehow filters into the writing process. I’m sure that’s the same for a lot of writers. Your experiences shape the writer you become. When I started writing, South Africa wasn’t as advanced in publishing as it is now. Self-publishing wasn’t really a thing. Agents were few and far between. We didn’t have access to the courses, information and resources that we have today. I felt quite limited in what I could do. It was only when I moved to London in my twenties that that world really opened up to me. Suddenly I had access to more information, courses and knowledge, and I was able to travel more too. STELLA: When you were growing up, did you know you wanted to write? Were you good at literature and English? Where did it begin for you? BIBA: English was probably my strongest subject at school, which is no surprise now. I loved it, and I think that was the difference. I actually enjoyed it more than my other school subjects. But I didn’t know then that I wanted to be a writer because, growing up, it wasn’t really a career option we thought about. I was more concerned with getting a proper job, making money and then raising my child. Writing wasn’t really on my radar as a career until I got older and realised that I was spending a lot of time outside my other jobs writing. Gradually, I was trying to write more and work less. I was prepared to make that sacrifice and take the financial cut because that was where my passion lay, but I wasn’t ready to give up working completely because I still had to support myself. It was really only when COVID hit, and I had already self-published a couple of novels, that I made the switch to full-time writing. By then, I had been following a lot of indie authors online who were doing it for themselves because Kindle had become established. There were groups appearing on social media where you could learn from other authors. I was seeing all these people making it work and thought, if they can do it, what’s stopping me? I used to work in tech. I had good knowledge of websites and platforms, so I realised I had a skill set I could transfer into publishing, particularly indie publishing. I started doing more and more of that until eventually I made it my full-time job. STELLA: You said you had already self-published some books. Did you try traditional publishing first, or did you intentionally decide to self-publish? BIBA: When Kindle came out and the first indie authors started appearing, I decided to experiment. I had written a romantic suspense novel. It probably wasn’t very good, but I thought, let me see if I can get it onto KDP, the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. I wanted to understand the process and learn how the product page worked. I managed to publish it. It didn’t do much, to be honest, but I didn’t really know what I was doing at that point. I wasn’t aware of promotion, advertising, networking or community. It was simply an experiment, but the important thing was that I did it and learnt from the process. A couple of years later, when I had another book, I approached it more seriously and more effectively. It was a slow process, but while I was still working full-time, I continued learning on the side. So by the time lockdown came around, I felt ready. I felt I had enough knowledge to do it properly. STELLA: What year did you first self-publish? BIBA: A long time ago! It must have been around 2006. STELLA: The reason I ask is because I follow Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn, and groups like 20BooksTo50K. Everybody thinks differently, but you made the decision that this could eventually replace your full-time job. How did you make that transition? BIBA: It was because I was seeing other people do it. In groups like 20BooksTo50K, there were people making five or six figures a year. Some were making that in a month. Some had fewer books than I had written. Some were earlier in their journey than I was. Some had fewer technological skills than I had. So I think there was a little bit of FOMO. I was sitting in a day job that I didn’t want to be in, browsing these groups and thinking, what are these people doing that I’m not doing? How are they getting this right? I started paying very close attention. At the end of the day, I think it came down to self-belief. You reach a point where you think, there’s nothing stopping me from doing this. I have the skills. I just need to do it. STELLA: I’m quite cautious by nature, so I’m interested in when you knew you could really do it successfully. You were also able to write quickly and produce books consistently. There was a period when rapid release was talked about a lot. Authors would write several books and release them close together because the first book could drive sales into the next ones. Did you follow that model? BIBA: Yes and no. When I first started, I was very sporadic because I hadn’t really understood that yet. Once I started taking it seriously, I knew about rapid release. And there’s nothing like deadlines to make you finish a book! I’m also an outliner. I read a couple of books and articles that helped me fine-tune my outlining process. The first was around the Snowflake Method. I would start with one line, then two lines, then a paragraph, then several paragraphs until I had fleshed out most of the plot. I also added research notes. This was all longhand at first, and I gradually built up a document containing everything I needed before I started writing. Then I read Save the Cat, which helped me move from having a sprawling notebook full of notes to an actual three- or four-act structure with specific beats. Once I understood that, it replaced some of the Snowflake approach and became more of a hybrid system for me. Then I would take the Save the Cat outline and break it down chapter by chapter. I’d say, this chapter needs to contain this beat, this information, this character development. I try very hard not to put anything into my stories that doesn’t need to be there. As a reader, I get bored if an author goes on too long about something that doesn’t drive the story forward. So everything I put into a story either contributes to the plot, develops the character or motivation, or perhaps becomes a clue later in a mystery. Nothing is wasted. STELLA: That explains why your books are fast-paced. Let’s move to the business side, because this is Talking Tech with Creatives. When we talk about business, we’re also talking about technology. You already understood technology, and you were able to combine that with your creativity. But it still takes boldness to step away from a stable job. You’ve said that seeing other people do it helped you. BIBA: Absolutely. But lockdown also gave me the opportunity. If that hadn’t happened, and I hadn’t lost my job, I can’t honestly say I would be where I am today. If I’d kept my job through COVID, I might never have taken the leap. It was a combination of things: what I knew, the skills I had, what I wanted to do, and the opportunity that presented itself. STELLA: You’re now what we might call a hybrid author. You work with publishers such as Joffe Books and Liquid Mind Media, and you also have your own independent press. Talk us through that model. BIBA: I love being a hybrid author because it feels like a safety net. It prevents me from having all my eggs in one publishing basket. Self-publishing came first, although not very successfully. Then I got the deal with Joffe Books. Through that process, particularly the editing and publishing process, I learnt a huge amount. STELLA: What did you learn? BIBA: I learnt how to self-edit properly. I learnt about different editing passes: structural, developmental, line editing and proofreading. I learnt about publishing schedules: when the cover design would happen, when promotions would go up and how the process fitted together. I had read about all these things before, but it’s very different seeing them applied professionally to your own books. Joffe were great to work with, and I had a fantastic editor. There was a good back-and-forth, and I took everything I learnt from that experience into my own publishing label. They really helped me understand what I do now. Liquid Mind Media was another opportunity that presented itself. STELLA: Where are Liquid Mind Media based? BIBA: They’re based in the US, and it’s the publishing label associated with L.T. Ryan. He’s a very successful crime writer in the US, and the imprint now publishes other authors too. STELLA: And then you created Mortlake Press. Why did you decide to start your own press? BIBA: After learning so much from different publishers, and while still self-publishing my romances under a pen name, I wanted the credibility and professionalism of having an imprint. I knew what that world looked like now, and I wanted to apply that same standard to my own work. So I started Mortlake Press. Now, everything I write where I retain the rights is published under my own imprint. STELLA: At what point did you start seeing your writing as a business? People often say you can’t make money from writing. True or false? BIBA: It’s a difficult question because there are so many different ways to write and publish. If you’re writing one book a year, it’s going to be harder to make money than if you’re producing more. If you’re traditionally published, the royalty model is different from self-publishing. If you’re selling direct, that’s another model again. Then there’s Kindle Unlimited, where you earn from page reads, but if you’re wide, you forfeit that exclusivity. There are so many different ways to publish now. That’s why being hybrid works so well for me, because I can choose the model that best suits each series. If someone’s main aim is to make money from their writing, then a faster release schedule in Kindle Unlimited with a long-running series is probably one of the strongest routes. Direct publishing is also becoming more important because you can keep more of the revenue, although marketing and advertising still come with their own challenges. For me personally, I do lots of different things. Some series are exclusive to Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited. Those tend to be my longer-running series because page reads help sustain cash flow. Joffe’s publishing model is also heavily digital and Kindle Unlimited. I also have a romance series with nine books, and the read-through works well for me there. STELLA: That brings us to backlist. You were able to build a solid nine-book series, put it into Kindle Unlimited, and that gives you recurring income. So over time, if you’re consistent with your writing, you can begin earning from multiple areas. BIBA: Exactly. It takes time to build up enough books and series. I have some series that are wide. I have books I sell directly through my website. I have books with Liquid Mind Media that are co-authored, so there’s a royalty split there. I diversify quite a lot. But again, that comes after years of writing and building up multiple series. STELLA: Let’s talk about crowded markets. Crime, thrillers and romance all have very competitive markets. How do authors stand out without losing their own voice? Some people say they write purely because they love writing. For me, I write because I feel compelled to write, but I want to sell too. I’m interested in monetisation and building different business models. Passion doesn’t put food on the table. So for people listening who want to make writing into a business, how do they stand out? BIBA: It is a very crowded marketplace. A lot more people are publishing, and of course we can’t ignore the influx of AI-generated books. But I think the author’s voice is what makes them stand out. That is something specific to the individual. Our experiences, travels and everything we absorb over the years go into our books. That affects characters, plots, resolutions and motivations. That becomes your unique selling proposition. Once readers get to know and like your style and voice, that’s something they come back for. It’s your way of telling a story. But first, you have to make sure you’re putting out a good book. Good books are what rise to the top in a crowded marketplace. And good books are what make readers come back for the next one. So if you can write a book people genuinely want to read, your voice is what helps you stand out. I don’t think AI is able to replicate that in the same way, at least not yet. STELLA: Since you’ve brought AI into the conversation, let’s dive into it. There’s a huge divide among authors. I work in technology as a technical writer, so I’m quite comfortable using AI to do heavy lifting for me. Anything that helps advance my work, save time or save money interests me. Then you have authors using generative AI to write. They prompt the work, they consider themselves authors, and some are making substantial amounts of money. That’s their prerogative. Then you have another group of authors who hate AI with a passion. And I understand that too, particularly because of the way the models were originally trained, using creators’ work without permission. That anger exists across the creative industries. You also have people like me who use AI behind the scenes for business processes but still write our own work. At the same time, publishers are using AI. Book retailers are starting to grapple with AI-generated books. So where do you think all of this is going? BIBA: I’m going to try to be as fair and diplomatic as possible because I also have a tech background. I’m an early adopter of technology. I love technology. I was the first person in my family and among my friends to have a computer, to start programming and to build websites. So when AI arrived, of course I was excited by the possibilities. I see it as an exciting development in the technology landscape. Its potential impact on businesses, particularly small businesses, is enormous. It removes barriers we previously had. It gives us extra tools. It makes life easier in many ways. It can help analyse data, optimise results and act as an assistant. It can do a lot of the heavy lifting for businesses like mine and for indie authors. I also understand why many authors are against it. I’m part of the Anthropic civil case because books of mine were used to train AI. A publisher I worked with realised that some of my books had been included and put in a claim, and I had to confirm they were mine. That said, I do use AI for things like research. If I need to know what a particular landscape looks like somewhere I’ve never visited, AI might be one of the tools I use. You still have to fact-check everything. In crime or romance, perhaps an occasional detail is less critical than it would be in historical fiction, but readers will notice if you get something wrong. For me, AI is a tool. I would never let it write my novels because I feel very strongly about
