Interview with J.D. Barker – S. 10, Ep. 25

My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer J.D. Barker.

Don’t miss our discussion on writing across different genres and the benefits of collaborative writing.

You can download a copy of transcript here.

Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today is a New York Times and international bestselling author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime mystery, science fiction and supernatural. That’s quite a bit. His debut novel Forsaken was a finalist for the Bram Stroker Award in 2014. Several of his works have been optioned for adaptation to motion pictures. It’s my pleasure to have with me my guest, JD Barker. Hi, JD. How you doing today?

J.D. (01:32): I’m doing great, Debbi. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Debbi (01:34): Well, it’s my pleasure to have you on, believe me. I’m glad you’re here. I love that you have no problem with mixing genres in your work. I think that’s awesome. Would you say that there’s any particular genre that tends to be dominant in your writing?

J.D. (01:51): Well, it’s funny. I grew up, I’ve been writing my entire life, but I worked behind the scenes for about 20 some years. I worked as a book doctor and a ghost writer, basically helping other people get published, and one of the things I saw over and over again is an author would write a particular book and it would hit, and then all of a sudden they had to write that same book, but different for the next 20 books. The publisher just wanted that same book but different, and honestly, that scared me. I didn’t want to get caught in that kind of hole, so I made a conscious effort from the very beginning. I’m a huge fan of horror. I’m a huge fan of thrillers, so I basically bounced back and forth, and I think my Wikipedia page probably sums it up the best. I think that’s what you were reading from, but I describe it as a suspense novel as the common thread with little elements of horror, of sci-fi of this, of that and what that allows me to do. As long as I keep that thriller-suspense framework in place, I can branch out a little bit and the readers come along for the ride. It’s not so different that it frightens ’em off.

As long as I keep that thriller-suspense framework in place, I can branch out a little bit and the readers come along for the ride. It’s not so different that it frightens ’em off.

Debbi (02:51): That’s really cool. That’s great. So it gives you more flexibility

J.D. (02:54): And agents hate it, and publishers hate it because again, they want you to write that same book, but different. But I’m finding that the fans, they actually enjoy it because I’m not giving them the same book every single time. I think it gets old as a reader too, so it allows me to mix it up and just keep it fresh.

Debbi (03:12): Totally, I agree. Yeah, so you’re directly reaching the readership as opposed to going through what a publisher thinks this should work, which is something I’ve advocated a long time.

J.D. (03:27): Everybody approaches this from different angles, which is something else I picked up on over time. As a business model, publishers really only care about selling that book, the one they have in front of ’em, the one they signed you for. That’s really their only priority. But you as an author, you really need to look at your business, your model, your brand, and approach it from that standpoint. And you can really see the stark differences. If you walk into a major bookstore, you walk into a Barnes & Noble and you’re going to see pretty much the title of every book is huge. The author name is tiny little print at the top or the bottom. It’s an afterthought because the publisher knows they have to put it on there, but they just want to sell that one title. But if you look around that same bookstore at the brand name authors, the ones that we all know, the household names, you see Stephen King, Nora Roberts, James Patterson, John Grisham, their names are huge, and the title is nice and small, and they’ve obviously built up to that over time. But I think as an author, you really need to keep that in mind from the get go. And if you’re with a traditional publisher, push to have your name as large as it possibly can, and if you’re indie publishing do the same. I mean, there’s no reason not to.

Debbi (04:34): Wow, that’s great advice. Excellent. I agree with you. I have to say, you are definitely an example of a successful indie author. What did you do to develop a readership?

J.D. (04:52): I did a lot of different things. I wish I could pin it down to one in particular. I fell into being an indie author. It wasn’t actually my goal when I was working as a book doctor and a ghostwriter, that was all for traditional publishers, so I had fully intended to go that route. But when I finished up my first novel, it was called Forsaken. I went to query agents, and even though I worked in publishing, I had no idea how to actually query an agent. I never had to do it before, so I did it all wrong. I bought a list of agents, I think there were 200 of ’em on an Excel spreadsheet. I wrote a form letter literally to whom it may concern, and I sent every single one of ’em the exact same email. I sent them the first three chapters of my book as a PDF file, as an attachment.

(05:31): And for the most part, most of them ignored it because agents are very particular in what they want, and they’ll list the specs on their website. They want to see the first chapter, they want to see the first three. They want it in an Arial font. They want it in Times New Roman font. Every agent’s got their own little quirky little thing, and if you don’t do that quirky little thing the second you end up in their inbox and they catch it, they just hit the delete key. So I basically queried all wrong. I didn’t get any real responses, and I decided to indie publish. But I made a conscious effort when I did that to basically come out with something that was on par with something coming out of a traditional publisher. So I hired professionals across the board for editing, for formatting, for cover design. Ultimately, we released a hard cover and audiobook and an ebook on the same day with plans to put out the paperback six months later, which was the traditional model at the time. And I basically made it as indistinguishable from something coming out of Random House, and that worked back then in 2014. It allowed me to get in front of a lot of places that I probably wouldn’t have if people knew that I was an indie author, and I basically hit the ground running.

I decided to indie publish. But I made a conscious effort when I did that to basically come out with something that was on par with something coming out of a traditional publisher.

Debbi (06:35): Yeah, it’s funny you have the same kind of story that I had. I also fell into indie publishing. It’s like I had a contract with a publisher. The publisher went out of business nine months later, and it’s like, I can’t sell a series that has been published and then gone out of print nine months later. It just doesn’t happen.

J.D. (06:58): No,