I’ve just finished a fantastic screenwriting short course at the National Film and Television School and in today’s show, I’m going to go through a few things that I found useful as an author and hope that you can apply them to your writing situation, whether you are specifically interested in screenwriting or not. In the intro, audiobooks.html">Smashwords introduces audiobooks alongside Findaway Voices. I also talk about the implications of the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data breach, why we should update our personal privacy settings as well as our Privacy Policy pages, as well as adhere to ethical standards in our own advertising. Plus, why you need to update your email signup based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law coming into effect on 25 May 2018. I'm with ConvertKit for my email management – here are their thoughts on what you need to do. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atwww.draft2digital.com/penn J.F.Penn is the Award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the ARKANE thrillers and London Crime Thriller series as well as other dark fantasy stories. Her books weave together ancient artifacts, relics of power, international locations and adventure with an edge of the supernatural. [Yes, this is me! Just my fiction brand which is a little different to my non-fiction brand under Joanna Penn.] Why did I want to do a screenwriting course? I’ve been flirting with screenwriting for ages and have started scripts before but haven’t finished them. After a lot of books in 2017, I was a little jaded with the novel format. I needed to be enthusiastic about story again. I wrote the script of Map of Shadows in January and it was FUN! The most fun I’ve had writing in ages – and as Dean Wesley Smith often says, stop taking everything so seriously, you are being paid to make things up. Awesome! I love learning new things and the short course at NFTS was available, so I applied. So it was the right time for me. My writing style suits screenwriting because I write short and with an emphasis on visuals. I’m a plot-based writer and I’m also commercial. That’s a huge part of the film/TV industry. It has to be able to find an audience and make money or it won’t get made. With the launch of the new Amazon Charts, it has been increasingly clear that many bestselling books are bestsellers because they are now a TV show or film e.g. The Handmaid’s Tale re-entering the charts after many years, Altered Carbon books are back in the bookstores. Visual media is a great way to sell books. More people watch and listen than read – and the visual and audio way of telling stories is different to the novel...