Do you aspire to write better stories? Do you have the ambition to aim for a career that rivals the biggest names in publishing? Today's interview with JD Barker will inspire you and give you some great tips around writing bestselling stories and building a long-term career. In the introduction, James Daunt of Waterstones and Barnes & Noble talks about the impact of the pandemic and a possible revival in Nook [The Bookseller], the newly-formed Black Writers Guild calls for sweeping change in UK publishing [The Guardian], Smashwords CEO Mark Coker does a round-up of the impact of the pandemic for indie authors [pandemic-publishing-for-indie.html">Smashwords blog], I'm doing a Facebook Live this week, Fri 26 June at 5 pm UK / 12 noon US Eastern on Facebook.com/thecreativepenn.  Today's show is sponsored by my patrons, those wonderful people who support the show with a few dollars a month. Knowing that you enjoy the show and still find it useful keeps me coming back to the mic every week after all these years! If you'd like to support the show and get an extra Q&A audio every month (as well as the backlist), go to www.Patreon.com/thecreativepenn JD Barker is an award-winning and international bestselling author of thrillers and horror. He is also the co-host of the Writers, Ink Podcast with J. Thorn. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript below. Show Notes * Starting out working as a book doctor * Getting career advice from Dean Koontz and co-writing with James Patterson * How to successfully write cross-genre * Choosing strong ideas and improving a story before it’s written – Writers Ink episode. * On approaching our heroes * The current state of the publishing industry * On the business of selling books * What trad publishers are looking for in book length and how our attention spans are changing * The importance of grabbing a reader right off the bat * Using new, untested platforms to market books You can find JD Barker at JDBarker.com, on Patreon and on Twitter @jdbarker Transcript of Interview with JD Barker Joanna: JD Barker is an award-winning and international bestselling author of thrillers and horror. He is also the co-host of the Writers, Ink Podcast with J. Thorn. Welcome JD. JD: Hey Joanna. How are you doing? Joanna: I am good. I'm thrilled to have you on the show. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. JD: That's actually a pretty long story. So I'll go back all the way to the beginning.