317. Unmasking Hybrid Publishing with J.D. Barker

International bestselling author J.D. Barker talks about the different types of publishing, current industry trends, and why hybrid publishing is the path forward.

▬

Visit J.D.'s website:
https://jdbarker.com/

Grab a copy of his books:
https://jdbarker.com/books/

Follow J.D.'s socials:
https://www.facebook.com/therealjdbarker 
https://www.instagram.com/jdbarker_author/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. The publishing landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years and this has included the introduction of alternative publishing options. One of these options is the hybrid publisher, which often combines the benefits found in both self and traditional publishing. And international bestselling author J.D. Barker is here to share his thoughts on the future of hybrid publishing.

Jennia: Well first, I am so thrilled to have you here!

J.D. Barker: Well thanks for having me! I appreciate it.

Jennia: So just because I see this come up all the time in writer groups, could you share the differences between hybrid and vanity publishing?

J.D. Barker: Yeah, I'll go into a little bit of a backstory so you guys have everything. So I indie published my first title, but I ended up selling a lot of copies which put me on the radar of the traditional publishers. So I ended up doing a couple of trad deals after that. Then after that I started looking at the economics because if you publish anything as an indie, you know, you do really well. Like, you make roughly about 70 cents on the dollar. And on the traditional side it's fantastic. They give you a big check up front. But what they don't tell you is you have to pay that money back and you have to pay it back in these, you know, small little percentages, usually, like, 15 to 20 cents on the dollar. So I basically got to the point where I didn't need that advance anymore. I was doing really well. So I started to question that math. So I went to my agent and with the next book I said, you know, "I'm going to retain English rights for myself. I'm going to publish those on my own through my own indie press and you can go ahead and sell all the foreign territories as you normally do." I'm in roughly 150 different countries, you know, about 30 or so different languages. So, you know, it still kept the door open. So the difference, you know, basically the way I see it, a vanity press is, you know, basically somebody that is asking you for a check to do X.

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: You know, they'll put your book out, they'll design your cover, they'll edit it for you, they'll do all these different things, but you have to cut them a check in order to do that. Sometimes that can be worthwhile. Most of the time, you know, when you really break it down, it's really not. A lot of it depends on, you know, how much work you're willing to take on yourself, how much you're willing to give up. You know, you have to weigh all these things. But there's a lot of people out there that will take advantage of an author in that particular situation. And I think that's where the vanity presses, they really did a lot of that. They were horrible, you know, back in the day—you go back to, like, 80s, 90s, and probably before that. I think they've been around since the beginning of publishing. In today's world, what I typically call a hybrid approach is what I had mentioned I did with that last book. You know, the book was traditionally published in some countries, it was indie published in others. So it was kind of a mix of both.

Jennia: Ohh, interesting. So when you were looking at the economics of each of it, did you actually sit down and do the math and find a breakeven point with one method over the other or how did you go about doing that?

J.D. Barker: Yeah, well, the thing is with the traditional side, like, you know, like I mentioned, they'll give you a nice big advance check, but then you have to pay all that money back. It's just an advance. And some of the other things that I saw that I didn't like is, you know, I would get charged for various activities. You know, if they sent books out to—promotional items, things like that. You know, like, a lot of expenses basically ended up in my column as a red letter item—

Jennia: Oh really?

J.D. Barker: —something that I would have to pay back. Yes, you have to really look at your contracts very closely and ask for the accounting. 'Cause a lot of publishers, they won't even send you that. A check just goes to your agent and your agent, they take their 15 percent, they send you the difference. You typically don't see the paperwork involved or, like, an Excel spreadsheet breaking things down. And I started asking for those and then when I started asking for them, I saw some things that were red flags for me.

Jennia: Mhm. Can you mention what some of those red flags might have been?

J.D. Barker: You know, a lot of it is just various expenses. Years back I worked in the music industry and I saw the exact same thing with record labels in artists. Somebody would go on tour and the cost of their tour bus would get charged back to them, the cost of gas would get charged back, the cost of the employees to set things up at that particular event—their hotels—like, all that stuff got charged back to the artist. And the artist wasn't aware of it unless you actually looked at those line items. It's not quite as bad in the publishing industry, but I feel like it's kind of leaning in that direction. These margins are just getting tighter and tighter as the years go by and I think publishers are looking for any way to stay positive. And, unfortunately, the cash flow is just—it's getting so tight. I think they're looking at the authors. You know, like, what can we move from our column to their column from an expense standpoint? And it's completely different publisher to publisher. You have to really look at it very, very closely.

Jennia: Mhm. That's something I've heard a lot. Especially with marketing and that sort of thing where we're thinking about, like, that golden age of publishing and there's still all those assumptions floating around 50, 70 years later that these will still be covered. That you will have a book tour and it will all be covered by the publisher and arranged by them, or that you'll have all these signings and same thing. But yeah, it just seems to be exactly what you're saying. More and more of it is being shifted over to the author or not being done at all if the author doesn't do it.

J.D. Barker: Yeah, I mean, one of the other things that I started doing when I was on the traditional side is I would ask for a copy of their marketing plan. And I was pretty lucky that the books sold for decent amounts. I got fairly big advances and because of that I had a nice marketing team behind each of the titles. So they would send me a PowerPoint presentation basically detailing everything they're gonna do. And, you know, as an indie, I would start seeing things that they're not doing.

Jennia: Mmm.

J.D. Barker: Like, they weren't doing BookBub ads, they weren't doing Facebook advertising, they weren't doing this, they weren't doing that. Initially I brought that up and said—we kind of divided and conquered. Like, that was my thinking. "You guys do this stuff, I'll do this." And I shared all that with them. But what I found is if I told them that I was going to spend money on Facebook ads, then any budget they had for Facebook ads kind they got shifted to something else. They basically cut back. So I stopped telling them what I was doing. I just started doing things on my own and—just to augment what they were up to. And that worked for a while too. It's just—you have to remember that this is a business relationship. They're not your best friend. They're trying to make money, hopefully, off of your book. In the end, you have to look out for yourself. So I'm just extremely cautious.

Jennia: Mhm. We touched on this a little bit, but what would you say if you just had to make a grand observation about each of these types of models? What's left up to the author and then what's taken care of by the publisher with each of the main three?

J.D. Barker: Years back—I think Hollywood glamorizes the author life quite a bit. If you see an author in a movie or a TV show, they write their book, they're sitting in a nice quiet office with a fireplace going, and the pages are kind of growing next to their typewriter or their printer. They finish it up, they mail it to their agent, and then they're kind of done. You know, like in the movie or TV show, they don't do anything else related to that book. But in real life, you have to flip your marketing hat on, and they will make you do all this stuff. You have to get out there and do interviews, you have to do blog posts. I've known Dean Koontz for years and, like, a couple years back he sent me an email and they had sent him bookplates to sign. And I think it was, like, 400,000 of them.

Jennia: (laughs) Oh my gosh!

J.D. Barker: It took him weeks to sign all of these. And, like, this is Dean Koontz, you know? Like, he's still doing that.

Jennia: Right!

J.D. Barker: I write books with James Patterson and we're constantly brainstorming marketing ideas. The difference there is he came from a marketing background. That's what—he was in advertising before he started selling books. So he tends to lead the way. The publisher will come at him with two or three things they wanna do for a title, and he'll come up with something completely out of left field to try because it's worked for him in the past. I tend to approach these things along the same way. I try to look for things that nobody's doing and try something new.

Jennia: Yeah, I do think that's definitely a benefit, especially if you do have that background. Because it also makes you aware that there are possibilities. So even just that ability to look at something like the contract or look at the expense report and knowing to question it, knowing that maybe there's an alternative to what's being presented to you.

J.D. Barker: Yeah, absolutely. One of the other big shifts I've seen, particularly in the last couple of years, I think a lot of authors are coming out of the indie world. You know, like, a lot of people—I went to the Author Nation conference back in November—

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: —and there were so many people there that didn't even try to query an agent. They just put the book out on their own. It's like they're skipping that entire step. And what's happening on the traditional side—you know, if, like, you look closely at them, all the big-name authors—like, when you walk into a Barnes and Noble and look at those names—they're all older. You know, a lot of them are aging out. They're in their 60s, they're in their 70s. They're not really replenishing that stock. They're not bringing in new authors at the level they need to in order to keep the machine running. Which is dangerous. And I think part of the reason for that, you know, is what I had mentioned earlier. If you—you know, you indie publish a title, you see the economics of it, you realize how much money you're making, you know, it doesn't make sense to necessarily go the traditional route.

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: You know, the traditional publishers are watching the sales—you know, the bestseller list very closely at Amazon, they're seeing some of these names come out of nowhere as an indie author, and they're trying to scoop them up. And these authors are saying no, you know, because it doesn't make sense, you know, like, "Here's a million dollars, come sign with us." And, like, I can make that back in a couple of months, I don't need you anymore. The only real leverage that the traditional publishers still have is the locations where they can get your books. They can get your books into Costco, they can get them into the grocery store, they can get them into the drug store. You know, places as an indie, it's still difficult to do, but that's kind of the only edge that they really have at this point. So I see a lot of this shifting. I recently signed a deal with Simon and Schuster. I created my own imprint—

Jennia: Mm.

J.D. Barker: —with Simon and Schuster. So they're basically working as my back end. They handle all my print sales and distribution. So in my world, that kind of gave me the best of both camps because I'm able to still put out books like an indie—I can put out any titles I want whenever I want—but they come out through Simon and Schuster. But we're economic partners in this. You know, like, if I do a print run, I have to pay for that out of pocket—

Jennia: Ohh, okay.

J.D. Barker: —so the danger of that is basically on me. If that book doesn't sell, it comes back to bite me, not necessarily the publisher. But the flip side of that is if the book does well, we all do well. My margins are much bigger. I—and because they can get me into some of those places, that's beneficial to me. So it made sense. And I think that's where a lot of this is leading. I think a lot of the indie authors, they do really well, they sell a lot of books. But when they sit down and look at their Excel spreadsheet that they're using to track all of this, they realize that most of those books are eBooks, and then they're maybe selling some audio and things like that. But they're not really doing that well on the print side because the margins just aren't there as an indie author when you're printing one title at a time—

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: —The only way you can make money on print is to print in bulk or to work with one of the larger publishers. So I think at some point it makes sense to do what I did and kind of put a foot in both camps.

Jennia: Do you have any advice for how authors can do that or try to do that if it's something they've already been considering?

J.D. Barker: You know, the deal that I did with Simon and Schuster was—as far as I know, I was the only one that they actually did it with. And it was very early on and they'd recently been bought by a private equity firm, so a company basically looking to take Simon and Schuster in a new direction.

Jennia: Mm.

J.D. Barker: What I think you're going to see in 2025, though, is the other publishers, I think, are gonna come around to this. Folks at Random House and Harper Collins, I think they're going to look at this model and realize that this makes sense from both standpoints and they may start offering the same thing. And you may see some bigger indie authors signing with some of these larger publishers. And the lines between indie and traditional are gonna get more and more muddy.

Jennia: Yeah, exactly. Do you think that readers really care how a book is published? Because I think that might be part of it too.

J.D. Barker: No, not at all. I mean, when was the last time you bought a book because it was published by a particular—like, I literally don't know. You know, it's the author name on the cover.

Jennia: Right.

J.D. Barker: It all comes down to quality, really. Like, whenever I publish a title, whether it's going to the indie route or the trad route, you know, it goes through the ringer. I put it through a number of beta readers, a number of editors. You know, there's professional formatting, professional copy editing. I don't cut any corners on that stuff, because every book that I put out, whether I put it out on my own or through somebody, it has to measure up to something coming out of the traditional publishers. Like, that's always been my benchmark. I think the people that really have trouble in this are the ones that, you know, they write a book, they have their friend proofread it—

Jennia: Right.

J.D. Barker: —or their spouse, then they load it up on Amazon, they hit that publish button, and they just kind of hope everything is gonna work out. And what ends up happening when you do that is your friends and family will pick up that title. You'll get 10, 15, five-star reviews from people that know you. And then all of a sudden the real readers kind of stumble into that book and they start pointing out all the flaws and the typos and the developmental problems that might be there, and then the book kind of fizzles and dies. So I think regardless of which camp you're in, you have to put out a five-star read. Like, this whole thing starts with a really good book.

Jennia: Yeah, I completely agree. It goes back to something that Angela Yuriko Smith said when she was on the show and that was that you have to have a product that people will want to buy. Again, exactly like you said, it has to be a quality product. It's not going to matter if you have the best cover in the world or you do have that set of beta readers who think that it's the best thing ever because, right, what kind of sample size is that? You know, five readers out of the 5,000, 50,000, whoever it is you're hoping to reach doesn't really tell you much.

J.D. Barker: No, and I've seen authors try to spend their way to success. You know, "Well, I'm going to spend $10,000 on Facebook ads." And you can do it, but the problem is that you don't—it props that book up for a short amount of time. You know, and if the quality isn't there, then all it does is amplify that. More and more people talk about it. The only thing that really sells books or, kills a book, in the end is word of mouth. You know, either people love a book and they tell a friend about it and that keeps it going, or they hate a book and they tell a friend about it and that puts it into an early grave.

Jennia: Mhm. Well, so besides the economic side, what are some of the other benefits? Because I've also heard people talking about the creative control. So I wondered if you could touch on that a little bit?

J.D. Barker: Yeah, so I'm a control hound. I love to keep control of everything. With the first book, Forsaken, when I put that out, I hired a company called 99Designs, which I imagine some of your listeners have probably used before. It's a great service. You pay about four, five hundred dollars and they'll have 40 to 50 different designers create covers for you and then you can kind of pick the one that you want and fine tune it with the winner of that. So what I would do is, when I got down to, like, 10 or 15 that I actually liked, I would put those out on social media with a simple question: If you were to walk into a bookstore and buy a book based solely on its cover, which one would you pick? And then the winner of those types of contests were the covers that I ended up using. And a lot of times they were very different from the cover that I liked.

Jennia: Oh! Really?

J.D. Barker: My personal preference may not be what the masses are into, so I always look for whatever the largest sample group wants. So I always tried to do stuff like that.

Jennia: Yeah, it goes back to that whole thing earlier about sample size and making sure that it's going to reach that broader audience, not yourself or your family and friends.

J.D. Barker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jennia: So you were talking, too, about when you were at Author Nation and noticing the different ages of authors. Is that something that's very recent or is this something that you've noticed over a period of a few years?

J.D. Barker: Well, up until now—Author Nation is kind of a funny conference because it was 20 books to 50k for years.

Jennia: Right, yeah.

J.D. Barker: And, you know—and every indie author knows about it. But if you're on the traditional side, you're basically told not to go. You know, because as a traditional author, like, they don't want you exposed to that. They don't see it as something that's on par with what they're doing. You know, like, there's still a little of that, you know, nose in the air kind of thing.

Jennia: Yeah.

J.D. Barker: You know, so I avoided it for years. Not because I didn't wanna go, but it just didn't seem like the right fit for me. So I went to the typical conferences. I went to Bouchercon, I went to Thriller Fest—you know, the ones that I was kind of expected to go to as a thriller author. But one of the things that I noticed in each of these is the ages of the various authors where we're getting up there along with those big name authors that we all know, the ones we see in the bookstores—

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: —But the attendance was kind of climbing too. You know, when I went to something like ThrillerFest, I saw older, you know, authors there, not a whole lot of younger people. When I went to Author Nation, it was the exact opposite. You know, I saw, like, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds excited about writing and getting into this profession. So it was very refreshing for me. I mean, one of the other things that I noticed—and I've always felt that, you know, big conferences, like, ThrillerFest or Bouchercon, they're fantastic at helping debut authors out and getting noticed, and they're great at promoting the really big names. But they don't really do a whole lot for those people that fall in the middle, which is the bulk of authors that are published out there. You really need to figure out—you know, like, once you get the book out, you need to figure out how to take it to that next level. How to start selling internationally, how to score a film option, all these other things that come into play. And at Author Nation, I found answers to those things. You know, they're helping that segment of people in the middle, which I think is very beneficial too.

Jennia: Yeah, exactly. I think that also just points back to what you were saying earlier about how we're going to continue seeing these changes within publishing. Because even just these observations you're making there all point to it, but is there anything else you've seen that shows we were heading in that direction?

J.D. Barker: You know, I think I've seen a lot of the cuts that happened last year were a little frightening at the large publishers. You know, they're just—they're trimming back and trimming back and they're squeezing every employee for whatever they can get out of them. It doesn't matter what business you're in, when you see that happening, you know that business is going in the wrong direction. And we're still seeing that. Like, there's still layoffs happening at these big publishers. They haven't righted the ship yet. And part of that, I think, is because they haven't changed their business model in so many years.

Jennia: Mmm.

J.D. Barker: I had mentioned the marketing plans that I used to get on my trad published books. I got one two years ago that was virtually identical to one that I saw eight years ago for another book—

Jennia: Oh really?

J.D. Barker: —other than they did, like, a Find and Replace on the document. I mean, they didn't change anything from a marketing standpoint and they're basically doing the exact same thing. "We're gonna target these newspapers, these magazines. We're gonna send you [to] a couple these conferences." They're doing the same thing they did 10 years ago and hoping that it's still gonna work. And, you know, this world is just evolving so quickly—

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: —It's not the same place it was 10 years ago. You have to change with it.

Jennia: Yeah, exactly. That's another thing, too., I've heard [not just] about traditional publishing but just in general, the slowness of everything and how the turnaround time might be much lengthier than what you were hoping for. But it sounds like that plodding along is happening at every single step, not just the publication date. But even with adopting these new changes that, like you said, the indie authors are already doing and they've already moved on to something else.

J.D. Barker: Yeah, I mean, any big corporation, they just—they tend to move slow. They get comfortable and they don't adopt change as quickly as they did when they were a startup.

Jennia: Mhm. So if you had to guess what publishing as a whole is going to look like say, five years from now, what do you think it will be?

J.D. Barker: Oh boy. It's hard to figure out where it's going to be 30 days from now—

Jennia: (laughs) We could do 30 days instead if you'd like!

J.D. Barker: (laughs) I mean, I think the deal that I said that I signed with Simon and Schuster, I think is going to be more commonplace. I think you're gonna see the big publishers reaching out and basically striking more of a business deal with authors rather than signing an author as an employee, as a work for hire kind of situation. You know, which is what it's always been in the past. I think it's gonna make sense for us to all kind of partner together. Indie authors can use the resources that traditional publishers have. Traditional publishers want the big name indie authors. They just have to find a way to make it all work.

Jennia: What do you think that will look like earlier on in the process? Say even when someone is trying to query or find an agent?

J.D. Barker: A lot of people ask me whether they still should query an agent and go that route. And the truth is yes, I think you should. For a lot of reasons. I think if you've got a brand new book and you've never published before, hearing from those gatekeepers, it's very important. If you query a bunch of agents and they all turn down your book, you know, there's probably a reason for it and you need to listen. And if they don't give you an answer, I always tell people to prod them. You know, find out—if they rejected you, see if you can find out why. If you're hearing the same thing from multiple people, the answer isn't put it out on your own as an indie author, the answer is to fix that problem. Because, you know, like I mentioned earlier, you need a five-star read regardless of how you put it out—

Jennia: Mhm.

J.D. Barker: —in order for it to succeed. So you have to figure all those things out. I think having a book in the traditional world is a huge learning experience. You know, seeing it go through all of those different steps. You know, if you're not familiar with publishing, you know, that's an easy way to get a crash course. You can try and stumble through it and figure it out on your own as an indie author, but if you have a book with Penguin Random House or Harper Collins, like, you can document every step that they take from start to finish. And then when you do get to the point where you want to put out a book on your own—if you ever decide that's the route you wanna go—at least you know what all the steps are. You know how to take them.

Jennia: Do you think there's anything that could possibly happen that would shift this potential future in a different direction?

J.D. Barker: I think another weird shakeup—you know, like, Amazon came in and they completely disrupted the entire system. You know, even today, like, they're still one of the biggest publishing companies out there—

Jennia: Yeah!

J.D. Barker: —but they're not really recognized as that. You know, most of these surveys, you know—like, the Top Five, like, Amazon is never mentioned as a Top Five even though in reality they are. If you look at the bestseller list, at least on the Amazon side, most of those titles are their own. They've got a unique situation because they can see what people are searching for on Amazon before they actually buy anything. They can go out there and find authors to fill a void, you know, based on just what they're seeing in search results. That, I think, is huge. I think AI is gonna obviously disrupt everything again—

Jennia: Oh yeah.

J.D. Barker: —You know, whether it's AI written books or it's AI being used to sell books, who knows how it's gonna come into play, but it's gonna shake this place up tremendously.

Jennia: Have you noticed some shifts already happening because of the introduction of AI and the whole publishing world?

J.D. Barker: I've seen a lot of horrible writing coming out of AI—

Jennia: Yes (laughs)

J.D. Barker: —I've played with it just to try and stay on top of the technology. And for me, you know, using it is almost like talking to an encyclopedia. Like, it's not capable of an original thought. It can regurgitate things that it's read, things that's been taught over and over again. But if I wanted to brainstorm an idea for a book, you know, it's not gonna give me anything new because it's not capable of doing that. That being said, I don't think we're that far off from the point where that's gonna actually happen. It's evolving so quickly. Once it has an original thought, I think we're—in a lot of ways, we're in trouble. As authors, you need to double down. For me, I've got a brand—like, I'm building a brand. I've trademarked my name. I make sure my name is very large on my various book covers. My advertising, my name is what I push more so than individual titles.

Jennia: Mmm.

J.D. Barker: I think that's important. And my voice. I stress that my voice in writing, that's what draws the readers in, that's what keeps them and gets them to come back for the next book. That's not something AI is ever going to be able to duplicate. They may not be able to duplicate my voice, and AI may come up with its own, but I'm always gonna have mine.

Jennia: Yeah, those are really important too. But I want to go back to just a little bit where we you were talking about with the author branding and why you think that's going to make a difference when it does come to AI, not just sort of trickling into the marketplace, but maybe exploding in the marketplace?

J.D. Barker: Well, I think it's gonna come down to the number of titles. I've been publishing on my own—I just had my 10-year anniversary since my first book came out. The year that I published that first book, there were 700,000 books that came out that same year. This past year, in 2024, there's over 2 million. And that's before AI really gets involved. AI's got the ability to start churning out a book a minute if it wanted to. Like, you know, Amazon's tried to put some guardrails up on that, and I'm sure those kind of things will happen. But books are gonna start sneaking into the system. That 2 million number, that could easily be 5 million books published in 2025 or 2026. You need to figure out how you're going to stand on top of all that. Like, how are people gonna find you as an author in, you know, 5 million books, or 2 million books? And again, for me it's all about brand recognition.

Jennia: Mmm.

J.D. Barker: If you think back to just walking into a bookstore, there's certain names when you see them, you will buy that book just because they wrote it.

Jennia: Yeah.

J.D. Barker: You don't necessarily care what it's about, but you know that you're getting a particular quality, you're getting a particular type of story, and that's enough. You're in for the long ride. That's what you need to build.

Jennia: Yeah, that's great advice. But it also makes me think, too, about those authors who shift genres. Do you think that that will impact them anyway? Say the people that do write a thriller and then they write something in, like, the YA area and then maybe they hop over to romance, do you think that that matters or not? Or should they stick to one genre? Or maybe create distinct versions of their author self?

J.D. Barker: I was told early on to try and find a common thread, because I'm one of those people. I hate the idea of writing the same book over and over again. I've purposely bounced back and forth between horror and thriller. So I literally write a horror novel, I write a thriller novel, I write a horror novel, I write a thriller—I go back and forth. If you go to my Wikipedia page, I think it sums it up best. It says I'm a suspense author who may include elements of horror, elements of Sci-Fi, elements of this, elements of that. So suspense is my common thread. And as long as I have that, the readers seem to be along for the ride—they'll jump genres with me. I think if you do something really drastic though, like if you're a romance author and you've got five or six titles out there and then you decide to write a Sci-Fi novel, that could be problematic. So you have to gauge that very carefully.

Jennia: That is great advice. Well, do you have any closing thoughts or anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to include?

J.D. Barker: No, I think just keep at it. Try to stay on top of what's happening in this industry. I mean, it's moving very, very quickly. Just don't ignore it. Don't get overwhelmed, but stay on top of what's happening. But, ultimately, I think you just kind of keep your head down and write that next book. Because, ultimately, like, writing the book is the most important piece out of all of this. And it's easy to get lost in all the news and everything that's happening and forget that. But, you know, writing those words every day, that's what gets you through the finish line.

Jennia: Yeah. Excellent insights. Thank you so much!

J.D. Barker: Well, thank you!

Jennia: And thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information! And then please join me next week when Francesca Lia Block will be here to talk about writing as part of your healing journey. Thanks again!