A few weeks ago I was interviewed by the awesome Paul Teague for my first ever podcast – and boy, it was fun! I was pretty nervous, but relieved that the recording wasn’t live. Paul has instructions on his website – including things you might not think about such as trying to make sure your environment is as noise-free as possible (phones ringing, kids screaming, barking dogs don’t do well on podcasts for obvious reasons) – and I had to get hold of some headphones and a microphone and log into Skype. No video, just audio. So I didn’t need to worry about how I looked!
The recording of the interview itself was stress-free – apart from an incident with a neighbour’s howling dog (!) which saw me dashing into another part of the house to find a quiet spot. And Paul is so incredibly professional, he put me at my ease immediately. I had no idea what we were going to talk about beforehand – Paul likes to avoid over-preparing to keep the content and the conversational flow nice and fresh. Chatting over Skype was fun and easy, and it wasn’t long before I was sharing … probably a little too much!
But hey, that’s what I do. Complete transparency has always been my default position, and while I completely support and understand other people’s desire to keep their mouths shut about such things as how many books they sell and how much they earn every year, I just open my big old mouth and it all comes gushing out. Along with some interesting thoughts about publishers, the world of writing courses, and writing in general.
If you’re ready to listen, click here. And please leave a comment below to let me know what you thought. Be kind!
Joanne Phillips 
October 17, 2016 at 6:06 pm
Thanks very much for doing such a great job of promoting Joanne – and thanks once again for being a guest, I really enjoyed our interview.
Best wishes, Paul
*Paul Teague* Check out my Blog Follow me on Twitter My Facebook Page My LinkedIn Profile My Google+ page My YouTube Channel
October 18, 2016 at 8:09 am
Love it when people act so true to their star sign:
“Complete transparency has always been my default position, and while I completely support and understand other people’s desire to keep their mouths shut about such things as how many books they sell and how much they earn every year, I just open my big old mouth and it all comes gushing out.”
It’s part of your charm, Jo! x
October 18, 2016 at 8:07 pm
I listened to all of this Jo and I thought it was great! Thank you for being so open and honest about your experiences as an indie author (including how much you earn!). It was fascinating and insightful and so helpful.
I wish you all the best in your future endeavours as an author and hopefully one days as a bona fide teacher of creative writing. It makes me quite cross that they won’t accept authors who are self published for this role. It’s snobbish and wrong! So I do hope that you can cross that hurdle.
Hopefully some day soon everyone will give self published authors such as yourself the recognition they deserve. x
October 19, 2016 at 12:15 am
The podcast was very informative. I hope you do more of them in the future. Thanks for being so open about your writing and self publishing journey. It was also interesting to find out how you are constantly progressing and evolving as a writer and about your creative writing studies.
October 26, 2016 at 8:56 pm
There’s a lot of interest here and I’d love to ask more, for instance re Lightning Source and sale or return as I’ve battled both those too. Also I love how you insist that self publishing is real publishing and every bit as good and valid as the other sort. I’m cross though sadly not surprised that certain courses you teach expect you to get published by someone else to count! You come across well – and most of all genuine. And that in itself makes me want to read your books!
Elspeth Rushbrook