What are the key elements of a good crime novel? How can you reboot your author career through publishing and marketing changes? Ed James shares insights on his writing craft and author business. In the intro, Jeff Bezos steps down as CEO of Amazon [The Verge]; Why this is the best time to be in publishing [The Hotsheet]; Why enterprise publishing is on the rise [Mike Shatzkin]; plus I'm on the Intermittent Fasting Stories Podcast. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Ed James is a Scottish crime author with over 20 crime and thriller novels spanning five different series set across Edinburgh, Dundee, London and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.A. 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 is below. Show Notes * The differences between crime audiences in the US vs UK* The essential elements of a crime novel* How Ed’s engineering background influences his writing and plotting* Where ideas come from and how to keep things original while adhering to genre tropes* Curiosity as a muscle* Different publishing choices for different books at different times* The importance of book covers for book marketing You can find Ed James at EdJames.co.uk and on Twitter @EdJamesAuthor Transcript of interview with Ed James Joanna Penn: Ed James is a Scottish crime author with over 20 crime and thriller novels spanning five different series set across Edinburgh, Dundee, London and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.A. Welcome, Ed. Ed James: Hi, Joanna. It's good to catch up again after so long. Joanna Penn: Indeed, and we see each other in person occasionally at events. Tell us a bit more about you, and how you got into writing. Ed James: My path to writing was because I was looking for a creative outlet as I was growing up, and it used to be music, and I was in bands and so on and so forth, and then that all died a bit in about 2005, 2006 time. I was very angry about music, and how much time I'd spent on it and a lot of other things, so I just started channeling my energies into writing. And over that next four years, it was a case of writing what people call practice novels, I suppose, over various genres, sending them off to agents, getting absolutely nothing other than maybe a few ...