Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / The Art of Suspense: Writing, Autism, and the Business of Storytelling with J.D. Barker | Ep 21 Live Free Ride Free

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The Art of Suspense: Writing, Autism, and the Business of Storytelling with J.D. Barker | Ep 21 Live Free Ride Free · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

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Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
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have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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and most importantly, find joy.
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I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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Welcome back to live free ride free today.
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I've got JD Barker, he is a best selling author.
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He writes thrillers suspense with a twist of the supernatural.
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He has had endorsements from no less than Stephen King.
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And such like royalty.
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He's also autistic.
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In terms of living a self actualised life, from where he began In his American
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childhood to where he is now, as many people know who listen to this podcast,
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autism, A U T I S M, auto Greek word for the self, this can often mean difficulty
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with a relationship with the exterior world, let's say, so it's intriguing
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to me that we're talking today with a storyteller, a communicator with
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a condition that is often perceived As not being massively conducive
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to storytelling and communication.
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Yet, here he is, and he's doing extremely well at it.
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His books are available on Amazon.
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You'll If you type him in, you're going to see a plethora of them.
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With excellent reviews, if you're a thriller reader, you're going to want to
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read him just for the sake of his books.
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But let's dive into the world of J.
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D.
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Barker.
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J.
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D.,
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thanks so much for coming on.
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Please give us a little bit of an idea about who you are and
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how you got to where you are.
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JD Barker: Well, thanks for having me.
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I, I, honestly, that's the first time I've ever heard that the, you
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know, the Greek root of the word.
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And all of a sudden it makes sense.
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I've never, never actually thought about it before.
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Yeah, so I'm one of those, I was born in the 70s.
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You know, so back then they didn't diagnose this sort of thing.
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You were just kind of the weird kid they pushed off into the corner.
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You're kind of shunned by, you know, your peers, by adults.
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And I just, I went through life that way.
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I had no idea, you know, I wouldn't say something was wrong with me.
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I knew I was different.
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I was reading by a very early age.
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I was reading when I was around three years old by the time I got into
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kindergarten, I read like all the Hardy boys and Nancy Drew mysteries and moved
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on to Charles Dickens and a bunch of the classics you know, always very
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good in, in school always terrible.
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When it came to social situations, I couldn't relate to other people.
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You know, and at first I thought it was just because I was doing
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things that the other kids weren't.
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You know, I was reading.
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At, at, at a young age.
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Other kids weren't doing that yet.
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I just, I didn't really relate to 'em.
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I actually related to adults I think a lot better than I did with kids.
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Mm-hmm . But, you know, I went, I went through school, I just kind
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of fumbled my way through it.
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Got into college.
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Ended up getting a couple of different degrees.
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I got one into.
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business, another one in finance.
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I got an IT degree.
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I got halfway through a psychology degree and found myself
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working in the corporate world.
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The last real job I had, I was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm,
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which is as horrible as it sounds.
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It's very similar to being like internal affairs at a police department.
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You have to monitor all the activity taking place at a brokerage
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firm, make sure that nobody is breaking any rules or regulations,
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compare every transaction against.
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a bunch of, you know, documented rules and basically look for any kind of anomaly.
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So problem solving, so I was very good at that.
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I ended up writing computer software to process a lot of
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it, to deal with a lot of it.
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I did a great job with that portion of my job but when I actually found a
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problem, I had to leave my office and I had to go to talk to other people.
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And that's where the real problems kind of came into play because, you
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know, I would have to basically go to.
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Hey, you made a mistake and here's why which automatically
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put them on the defensive.
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And then I had to try and communicate the issue with them
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and try and come to a resolution.
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You know, after a while, someone on
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Rupert Isaacson: the autism spectrum,
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JD Barker: yeah, you know, so there were a lot of clashes.
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But my boss, you know, to his credit, he was smart enough to recognize.
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I was very good at, you know, a portion of my job, not good with the people skills.
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He thought I had anger issues.
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Cause you know, everybody tries to put this into some type of.
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You know, explanation, put it in a box.
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So he sent me to an anger management class.
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And I sat down with the therapist for the initial interview.
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And we got about 20 minutes in and she stopped me and she said, Have
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you ever been tested for autism?
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Rupert Isaacson: And
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JD Barker: I actually had no idea what that really was other than that movie.
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How old
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Rupert Isaacson: were you at this point?
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JD Barker: I was 22.
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Okay.
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So, so it was a while ago early 90s.
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You know, so she started to explain that, you know, well, as we've been
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talking, I've noticed you don't make any eye contact you tend to, you know,
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stare at this one particular spot on my wall whenever you're speaking, you
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rub your thumb and your index finger together whenever you think and she
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just started rattling off these things that I've done my entire life and never
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really thought twice about and then she mentioned autism and she spent her daytime
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working with autistic children, which is why these things jumped out at her.
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Were you shocked?
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Were you
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Rupert Isaacson: insulted?
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Or did you think, ah, well,
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JD Barker: You know, at first I was taken aback because I didn't know what it was,
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and like I said, the only exposure I ever had to it was Rain Man, you know, that
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movie with Tom Cruise, which is not a very good depiction, you know, it's, it's
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nothing like the real, the real thing but she asked if I'd be open to getting
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tested, and I, I did, and then ultimately we landed on a diagnosis of Asperger's
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syndrome which in today's world, you're just on the spectrum somewhere.
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But back in the day, they had a name for it.
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And from my standpoint, you know, it gave me a problem with a name
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on it that I could actually solve.
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So at that point I started researching everything I possibly could.
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I read books, I saw movies, documentaries, any piece of
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information I could get on it.
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And basically started trying to tackle this thing.
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And essentially we, we created a list of things that, you know, problem things
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that I felt were problems in my life.
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You know, like the social situations, you know, social skills.
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But we also made another list of the things that I was able to do that other
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people couldn't which, you know, today's where I, I doubled down on a lot of those
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because I was able to do a lot of things that, you know, somebody that's quote
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unquote normal, wasn't able to accomplish.
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You know, so I, I spent the last 30 years, you know, basically
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trying to dig out of that.
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that whole.
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You know, a lot of these things I was able to correct or fix.
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She taught me how to make eye contact in a conversation.
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You know, the funny thing is that when I make eye contact, I can't pay
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attention because I'm literally telling myself in my head, keep eye contact,
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keep eye contact, keep eye contact.
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It feels weird to me.
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It feels awkward.
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I don't want to do it.
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So I forced myself to do it and oddly, like my wife knows, you know, we've
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been married for over 10 years now.
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She knows that if I don't look her in the eye, that I'm actually paying attention.
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You know, so like, she's picked up on that.
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She picked up on that very early on.
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But, you know, I basically started to work through as many
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of these, these things as I could.
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I mean, the social thing, that's never gone away.
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I don't think it ever will.
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But I've learned to mimic my way through social situations.
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And, and oddly like that, that kind of tied back to the writing career.
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Cause initially I was working on, projects I was working as a
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book doctor and a ghost writer basically working with other people.
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And I would mimic other authors
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Rupert Isaacson: That's that's a big jump from being a corporate guy, you know
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telling people that they're messing up.
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It come it comes back There's a jump there in the story
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JD Barker: Yeah, no, it comes back to me reading at such an early age, you know,
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books were basically my safe place, you know, when I wanted to get away from
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the real world, I'd open up the cover of a book and it just evolved, you know,
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from, you know, reading other people's stories to wanting to create my own.
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I had a sister who was 15 months younger than me so I used to write
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stories up, I would staple them together and I created a little library
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in my room and she would check those stories out, I'd charge her late fees.
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fees.
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You know, like this, this, this went way back to, you know,
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probably five, six, seven years old.
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But that's, that's basically where, where it started.
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But I had been told that in an early, early age, you can't
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make a living as a writer.
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You know, it's too, too difficult a profession.
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You have to get a real job.
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Which is how I ended up in the corporate world.
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But I would come home at night during all that time.
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And I would, I would write, like that was how I stayed sane.
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You always
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Rupert Isaacson: actually wanted to be a writer.
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JD Barker: Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I've, I've always done it.
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So I, I did that for about 20 some years.
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You know, basically the two different jobs.
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And over that time I had six different books that hit the New York Times
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bestseller list that I had written, but they all came out with other
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people's names on the covers.
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Because they were, they were ghostwritten.
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That gets old.
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After a while, you know, somebody else basically taking credit
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for teaches you the craft.
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It did, you know, and I wrote a lot of memoirs and I think that's what
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really did it for me because I had to get into the head of another person.
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I had to speak in their voice and tell a story from, you know,
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somebody else's perspective.
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And I think that's what really taught me how to create characters
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and be able to, you know, dig into fiction at the level that I did.
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Ultimately when that six book hit, my wife pulled me aside.
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She said, listen, I know you hate your day job cause I hated the corporate
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thing but I was kind of trapped.
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I had a big salary.
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We had a big house.
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We had cars, we had a boat.
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We couldn't just walk away from it cause it was expensive.
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So she came up with this crazy plan.
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We sold everything that we owned.
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We bought a tiny little duplex in Pittsburgh you know, which is a
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steel town in the middle of the U S.
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I bought a duplex, rented out one side to some tenants.
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We lived in the other side, got our expenses down to next to nothing.
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And I basically, we lived off a savings long enough for me to write a
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book on my own and get it out there.
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And luckily it just, everything took off.
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The first book sold really well.
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The second one sold even better.
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Some TV shows and movies came along.
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And I've been on that rollercoaster ever since.
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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So, people will obviously want to know what were those books you helped
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ghost ride that got onto the New York times bestsellers and what were these?
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Books that you then got your not just became your own bestsellers,
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but TV and film and so on.
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But just before we go into that, let me just backtrack with you.
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As a child, you say books were your safe place.
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Did you feel unsafe in the world?
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JD Barker: You know, I don't know that it was unsafe, I didn't, you know, in
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the 70s, like, we didn't even think that way, like, cars didn't have seatbelts,
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you know, like, we, we would jump, we would jump our bike off the, you know,
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off a ramp and go 20 feet across the, you know, the road, like, we, we didn't
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think about safety back then it just, you know, like, I would feel like certain
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situations, I just didn't understand them.
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You know, like kids would be playing, I would try to fit in.
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It always felt like I was imitating those actions which wasn't fun.
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And I would see these other kids who looked like they actually
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were having legitimate fun.
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And I didn't understand why it was fun for them and not fun for me.
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And at a young age, you know, that gets very frustrating.
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And at some point I would break off and I would grab a book and that would, that
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would call, that would call me back down.
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Rupert Isaacson: So it wasn't so much about being bullied
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or picked on or singled out.
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It was more just feeling why can't I fit in?
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JD Barker: Yeah, I mean that kind of stuff was happening too, but you
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know again in the 70s everybody did it, you know I picked on other kids
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they picked on other kids, you know We'd lock each other in lockers.
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Like it was just it was a very different time than it is today
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Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
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I remember it Okay, so, you know in some ways I'm quite similar I also used to
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use books as a safe place when I was at school why for you you said you read
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the Nancy Drew and those mysteries very, very early, like at three, why mysteries?
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JD Barker: You know, I, I think it was really just because that's what was on at
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hand and my mom owned an antique store and we used to go to a lot of garage sales or
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yard sales and she would literally pick up books by the box, you know, like 2 for,
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you know, 50 books to stuffed in a box.
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And initially, you know, I think 1 of those boxes had a mix of those
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Hardy boys and Nancy Drew's in there.
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So I just, I really fell in love with it.
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Mysteries like, I love the puzzle aspect of it.
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So I think that might have been part of it.
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But in general, like, you know, in today's world, I read across the board.
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I'll read a romance novel, I'll read sci fi, westerns.
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I don't really care what the story is about as long as it's a good story.
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Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm,
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JD Barker: mm hmm.
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And then you said you got into the classics at how old?
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That was when I got into kindergarten, so five,
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Rupert Isaacson: six years old.
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You were reading Dickens, Victorian English, at five or six years old.
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JD Barker: Yeah, I mean, to this day, Great Expectations is still my
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favorite book to the point where I actually wrote a retelling of it a
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few years back called She Has a Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be.
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And it's my wife's favorite book, and I travel all over the world at
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this point, and it's the one book people put in front of me and tell me
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it's their favorite everywhere I go.
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Oh, interesting.
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And
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Rupert Isaacson: why do you think that Victorian classics Got you at that age.
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And how did you deal with the fact that that English was so far
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from American vernacular English that you'd have had around you?
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Did you, you, you instinctively understood it or you actually had
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to have someone help you with it?
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JD Barker: No, I, I got through it pretty well.
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I think, you know, because I always saw books as being in another
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place, almost like this magical realm that I could kind of go into.
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So the fact that, you know, English was different.
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You know, to me, it just kind of fit, you know, it was, it was no
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different than finding a dragon in a story or, you know, a warlock or,
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or something else, you know, it was just a different way of, of talking.
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I probably didn't understand that, you know, in some part of the world,
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people actually spoke that way.
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You know, not, not at that age but in the books, it, it made sense.
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I do remember that when I picked up great expectations, the first time
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we were at the library and they had a section of the classics and all the books
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basically had the same kind of cover.
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So they look like they belong together, like a big set.
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And that's what initially attracted me to him because, you know, like I had gone
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through the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews.
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They all had a similar cover, so it all felt like, you know, this one big
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project, you know, that I had tackled.
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And seeing another possible project in all of those, you know,
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the classics laid out like that.
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I think that's what initially attracted me to it, but, you know, Dickens in general,
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like his writing is just fantastic.
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His writing is fantastic.
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Rupert Isaacson: I'm just thinking back now myself to Dickens.
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But there, you know, there are, what, what intrigues me is that it's It's
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not just the use of the language, there's also vocabulary stuff.
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So, you know, for example, if someone is drinking sack or drinking hock
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or something like that, you, would you have then gone and figured out
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what sack, what are they drinking?
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What do they mean?
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They're drinking hock, you know?
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No.
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JD Barker: Most of the times when I ran into something like that, I
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just kept reading through it, you know, because it was no different
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than somebody making up a word.
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You know, like when I read don't know, like doing when I got older you know,
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like there's a lot of made up words and fantasy novels and things like that.
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So like, I think my brain just kind of tied that all together is just,
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this was just some made up word.
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Like I didn't know that it was actually a real thing.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Right.
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Rupert Isaacson: The, the, the, the, the big picture rather
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than the details effectively.
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Yeah.
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But what is intriguing to me is that it's to some degree a little
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bit like learning another language.
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And your young brain at that time, obviously being very
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plastic would have been firing many, many neurons, I'm thinking.
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You know, dealing with these other worlds that, As you say, you weren't
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aware were actual worlds at that point.
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So, okay, so then you get into your early stages of mysteries.
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And of course, a lot of Dickens, they are actually mysteries, most of them.
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There's usually, you know, a big puzzle that has to be deciphered.
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And if you boil Dickens down, it's usually a bit of a suspense
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novel with a romantic twist.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Then you get into helping people.
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to ghostwrite and write memos.
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How does that happen?
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JD Barker: Well I was in college, one of my first jobs I worked
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for BMG Distribution, which was a division of RCA Records.
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And I was essentially a glorified babysitter.
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So they'd have a recording artist come into South Florida, I'd have to pick
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him up at the airport, get him to the radio station for interviews, get him to
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their concert, get him to their hotel, and get him back on an airplane when
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it was time for them to leave town.
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And this was some very famous people.
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So to really date myself, but we had people like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson and
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new kids on the block Madonna bunch of hair bands, poison, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi.
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Yeah, so I realized very quickly, I was running up a lot of debt, you
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know, going to school is expensive.
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And I had some very famous people in a car with me sometimes for a week at a time.
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So I would interview them.
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And then I would take those interviews and I would sell them to a lot of the
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magazines that were around back then, like 17 and teen people and tiger beat And
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when you work with anybody at newspapers and magazines, you quickly learn that
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they've got a novel that they've been working on for the last 10 years, you
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know, it's in a desk drawer somewhere.
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They're almost done.
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It's 400, 000 words.
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It just needs a little something.
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I was very good with grammar and punctuation and just
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kind of the rules of writing.
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So those people initially would give me those books to kind of
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go through them and clean it up.
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Then I started offering developmental suggestions, you know, like
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the story takes off here.
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This part should come out.
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You know, I think your character would develop me.
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It's a little work here.
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And that basically turned into a, you know, the side hustle as working
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as a, a ghost writer, a book doctor, basically helping those people tweak
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their novels and get them to the point where they were ready for publication.
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Over time, word of that spread yeah.
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And so agents would call me, you know, or editors would call me, they'd acquire
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a book that they absolutely love, but they couldn't get it published
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because it needed work and they couldn't get the original author to
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do it because they were just too new.
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And, you know, if you go to a debut author and you say, you've got to take
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40, 000 words out of this book, you know, that's a difficult thing, but
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they would bring me in as a hired gun.
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You know, I had no skin in the game, so, you know, I would just
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take their direction and, and they didn't sugarcoat anything with me.
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And it's funny because in today's world, you know, I'm a published
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author, you know, if I get a phone call from my editor, they'll you.
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You know, if they've got a problem with a book, they'll usually
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tell me two or three things they absolutely love about the book.
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Then they'll tell me that one thing that they need me to fix, and then they'll
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finish up that phone call with one or two more things they love about the book.
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They kind of sandwich it in between of, you know, the, the bad news
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between a bunch of good news.
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But when you're a hired gun, they didn't do any of that.
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They, they would just tell me everything they hated about the book,
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tell me what needed to be fixed.
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And I think that's, I learned a lot about the writing industry through
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those conversations and what the folks in New York were really looking for.
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Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
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JD Barker: I
17:27
Rupert Isaacson: think that if anyone who's listening is.
17:30
Wanting to write and publish a book, the two things to know are the most important
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thing about a book is its structure.
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The structure's got to be so good that it's invisible.
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And that's what keeps you going.
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And the other thing is the editing.
17:43
And really the editors should be on the spine of the book alongside the author
17:48
because I'm a great believer that any book that I've read that's worth reading,
17:52
it's largely down to the editors.
17:55
But it sounds like you've got a crash course in Editing effectively.
18:00
JD Barker: Absolutely.
18:00
And I totally agree about books are made in the editing process, not
18:03
necessarily in the writing process.
18:05
Rupert Isaacson: I agree.
18:06
Okay.
18:07
So give.
18:08
A couple of ideas of some of the memoirs that hit big and other books that hit
18:11
big that you helped to ghost write.
18:13
And then let's go into your own work.
18:15
JD Barker: I wish I could talk about that, but that, that whole industry,
18:18
like there are NDAs, NDAs for everything.
18:20
Yeah.
18:20
I mean, in today's world, I write books with James Patterson, like
18:23
he's constantly bugging me, you know, about the, those titles.
18:25
He wants to know who I worked with in the past and I can't even tell him.
18:28
There I, I, I wish I could, but it's just one of those things.
18:32
Okay.
18:32
That reminds me of
18:33
Rupert Isaacson: a very good story.
18:34
Do you, you know, who you, you, the famous actor not Christopher Plummer
18:37
gosh, Saruman in Lord of the Rings gosh, you know who I'm talking about and he
18:42
was in so many horror movies and, um, let me just find him quickly because it's,
18:47
it's a great story along those lines.
18:53
It's Christopher Lee and Christopher Lee had been a special ops intelligence dude
18:59
during World War Two, and he was always being pestered by journalists about this.
19:05
And he has a famous story of.
19:07
One person just wouldn't let go and wouldn't let go and wouldn't let go and
19:09
so he finally said can you keep a secret?
19:12
To this guy and he goes yes, yes, so can I?
19:16
And that was the end of the interview So now I get it Okay, so but nonetheless you
19:22
were brought in You have to sign the NDAs.
19:25
You can't talk about them, but you learn the craft then you float your
19:28
first book Tell us about that book
19:32
JD Barker: Yeah, so at that point when I sat down to write it, it was called
19:34
Forsaken I knew I wanted to write a horror novel because that was always my
19:37
favorite genre to play around in and, you know, at that point I felt like
19:41
I knew, you know, how to craft a good book, beginning, middle, and end it's
19:44
funny because you could take any one of my books and drop them into a three
19:47
act structure they all fit, but I've never had anything Formal training,
19:50
like my formal training comes from all the reading that I've done in the past.
19:53
Right.
19:53
That, that structure is basically ingrained in my head.
19:55
Like I, I know when I take a wrong turn while I'm writing mm-hmm . You know,
19:58
I know a twist needs to happen here.
19:59
The climax needs to start here.
20:01
Like, it all just feels organic to me.
20:03
So I sat down, I wrote Forsaken in the book I had to explain
20:06
where the wife buys a journal.
20:08
And just to get the book finished, I wrote that she walked into Needful
20:10
Things, you know, which is the story from Stephen King's novel fully
20:13
expecting to have to change that, but it was just a, you know, something
20:16
I did to get the book down on paper.
20:18
My wife read it and she said, you know what, before we change
20:20
that, why don't we see if we can get King's permission to use it?
20:23
And ultimately I was able to do that and that, that's what launched my, my career.
20:27
You know, the fact that he was wanting to take that chance.
20:29
How did you
20:29
Rupert Isaacson: contact Stephen King
20:30
JD Barker: to get that permission?
20:32
You know, the story behind it is, I think, what actually launched the book.
20:36
So, it turns out he's got a house in Florida that's about 10 minutes
20:39
from where my mother lives.
20:40
So we were, we were down there visiting.
20:42
We printed out the book.
20:43
We hopped in the car and figured, well, we'll head over to Stephen King's house.
20:46
You know, he'll be outside gardening or something.
20:48
I'll hand him the manuscript.
20:49
He'll give us a big thumbs up and we'll be on our way.
20:51
It didn't work out that way.
20:52
So, he lives on.
20:54
Yeah, he lives on a little island right off the coast of Florida we call
20:57
him Keys down there he lives on K.
20:58
C.
20:59
Key you go over this tiny little bridge, if you make a left, you go to the entire
21:02
portion of the, the island where bars and restaurants and stuff like that
21:05
are, if you make a right, you kind of go to the half that the king owns, and
21:08
there's immediately a private drive sign and no trespassing sign we got
21:11
about a half mile in and there was a gate and then there was another gate.
21:14
I started looking up in the trees thinking there's going to
21:16
be a sniper coming at us next.
21:18
And this is probably a bad idea.
21:20
So my wife and I, we turned around, we went to a little
21:21
restaurant down near the bridge.
21:23
I called a friend of mine.
21:24
His name was Dallas Mare.
21:25
He wrote another, the name Jack Ketchum.
21:27
He passed away a few years ago, but a really nice guy.
21:29
I knew he was friends with King and I told him what we were up to.
21:32
And he said, Oh yeah, don't stalk Steve.
21:33
He hates that.
21:34
Here's his email address.
21:36
Send him the book.
21:36
If he likes it, you'll hear back from him.
21:38
If the book is shit, he probably won't reply, but, but leave him alone.
21:41
So I emailed off the book with a, you know, a couple of little paragraphs
21:44
explaining what I was up to.
21:45
I didn't expect to hear from anybody.
21:47
And then about a day or two later, I got an email back from King and he
21:49
said, I love this, go ahead and use it.
21:51
Let me know if you need anything.
21:52
And you know, ultimately the book came out, I, I indie
21:55
published that very first one.
21:56
Sales were okay at the.
21:58
The start, but nothing spectacular.
22:00
And I hired a friend of mine to do PR somebody I had worked with back
22:02
in the music business years earlier.
22:04
And I told her about this failed trip to Stephen King's house and she said,
22:07
you know what, that's the story.
22:09
So she reached out to a bunch of publications and ultimately Publishers
22:12
Weekly wrote a story about this new author trying to get to Stephen King's house
22:15
to get his permission for use in a book.
22:17
And that story came out and librarians read it, bookstore owners read it.
22:21
And, you know, all of a sudden they started ordering the books and that's
22:24
where, where sales really took off.
22:26
Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting to me about that is that, A, he had
22:29
the time and the bandwidth to read that book because, you know, I mean,
22:34
I'm sure people send you manuscripts.
22:35
Do you have the time to read them, you know, maybe
22:39
JD Barker: no, you know, like I, I probably get, I, I know he gets over
22:43
a hundred books a month cause I've gotten to know him a little bit.
22:46
And you know, he doesn't read hardly any of them.
22:48
I take it at the time.
22:49
I didn't.
22:49
Yours.
22:50
I didn't realize how rare of a thing it was, you know, being autistic,
22:54
it's one, one of my superpowers, the way my wife describes it is
22:57
I don't take no for an answer.
22:58
I don't really see, you know, the possibility of a failure, you know, like
23:02
I personally, I feel like I would rather ask the question, turn me down that
23:06
they're not asked the question at all.
23:07
So I just always approach things that way.
23:08
Why do
23:08
Rupert Isaacson: you think he picked yours out of that hundred in the month?
23:12
JD Barker: If I had to guess just because it came in, you know, through that email
23:15
address, you know, which probably nobody has you know, and, and, you know, I was
23:19
recommended to him by a mutual friend.
23:21
You know, so it was a, but I mean, like he's, he's just an all around.
23:25
Very, very nice guy.
23:27
So I send him every book that I put out.
23:29
And I had one a few years back called a caller's game.
23:32
And I shipped it to him from Amazon and I got a phone call from the
23:34
Amazon driver when he was delivering.
23:36
And he said, listen, it's pouring rain out here.
23:38
I left the book at your gate.
23:40
You know, can you come out and get it?
23:42
You know, and this wasn't my house at Stephen King's house.
23:45
So I, so I emailed King and I told him that, you know, Amazon left this book
23:48
outside, he got his umbrella out, got his raincoat out, went out there in this nasty
23:52
weather just to get that book, you know, from, from his gate and bring it back
23:55
into his house, you know, like a lesser guy would have probably just let it out.
23:59
You know, left it out there to rot, but like, that's just the kind of guy
24:02
that he, that he is, you know, he, he remembers what it was like he wrote,
24:05
you know, when he wrote Carrie, he wrote that in a trailer, you know,
24:08
between a washer and dryer, you know, like he came from nothing, you
24:11
know, and he knows what that's like.
24:12
And, you know, that, that struggle is, is very real.
24:14
I think for all of us authors.
24:16
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
24:17
The other thing that surprises me is that of course he might've decided sure
24:21
you can use it, but as you know, authors don't necessarily own their books.
24:25
So if someone was to ask me.
24:28
If they could use something from my book, I'd have to check with
24:31
my publishers because effectively they own that book, not me.
24:34
So, why didn't his publishers kick up a fuss and say, No, no, this J.
24:40
D.
24:40
Barker guy, he's got to pay, you know, 20k to use that.
24:43
Blah, blah, blah.
24:45
JD Barker: King has been in this industry for a very long time and he, you know,
24:49
he knows the business inside and out.
24:50
I'm sure he, he looked, you know, he looks very closely
24:53
at every one of his contracts.
24:55
He knows what he can do and what he can't do.
24:57
But I totally understand what you're saying.
24:58
Like, I've got a fantastic agent who is very good at spotting those things.
25:02
Usually, you know, removes that kind of stuff, you know, from, from a contract.
25:05
But I've got film and TV deals in place now where certain
25:08
characters are owned by a studio.
25:10
Yeah, so I can't put out.
25:11
I can't use my own characters in some situations without getting
25:14
in the studio to sign off on it.
25:15
And the funny thing is, you know, the forsaken, you know, like
25:18
it's, it's the only book that I've written so far that hasn't been
25:21
optioned at some point for a movie.
25:23
And usually the, the turning point is because they find out about King's
25:26
involvement because, you know, they, they love the story, they're ready to make it.
25:29
It's, you know, a nice quick little cheap horror movie that they could film,
25:32
but then they hear that it's tied from.
25:33
Yeah.
25:33
Yeah.
25:33
Yeah.
25:33
To needful things and the lawyers get ahold of that and they're
25:36
like, yeah, but you know, needful things is optioned by so and so.
25:38
That means we have to get permission from these people.
25:40
These people have to sign off on it.
25:42
It gets, it gets so muddy that everybody just kind of walks away
25:45
slowly and doesn't do anything.
25:46
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
25:47
I mean, Hollywood hates a lawsuit.
25:48
I.
25:50
In the in the horse boy which is the main book that people know me for.
25:54
I used a very, very small excerpt from a Dr.
25:57
Seuss book because that's what I used to read to my autistic son and boy, oh
26:00
boy, the hoops I had to jump through just to get, you know, this tiny little
26:04
thing and it cost me quite a lot of money too, but it was worth it because
26:07
obviously it's part of the story.
26:09
I went through that with once you get into.
26:12
Go ahead.
26:13
JD Barker: I went through the same thing with frosty the snowman.
26:17
So I've got a book.
26:18
I wrote called the 5th to die and in it, they find a body inside of a snowman.
26:23
And I just wanted to use a couple lyrics from that song.
26:26
And I don't know if the rules are different where you are, but in the US,
26:29
it's based on a percentage, like, the words are basically a percentage of the
26:32
actual song that you're allowed to use without permission anything over that.
26:35
Particular number, you have to get permission, but frosty, the snowman
26:38
has so many repetitive lines in it.
26:40
You can't really get away with the whole lot.
26:42
So, yeah, we had to chop it down and just use little pieces, but it's, you know,
26:45
it's 1 of those songs where you can take off 2 words and everybody knows the rest.
26:49
Exactly.
26:49
Get away with it.
26:50
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
26:51
Okay.
26:51
So, of the books, give us a sort of chronology of the
26:56
books that you've written.
27:01
They are and where they've gone, like which ones have gone to TV, which ones
27:06
have gone to film, which ones have been option, but they haven't been made.
27:08
Just give us a bit of a geography of your work.
27:12
JD Barker: Yeah, so the 1st 1 was forsaken.
27:13
We've already talked about that.
27:15
While that was coming out, I wrote a serial killer series called the
27:18
4th monkey 3 different books based on a serial killer in Chicago.
27:22
That 1 went into the publication rights sold.
27:24
We also sold it for a few.
27:25
Feature film and for a follow up TV series with CBS while that was going on.
27:30
I wrote a prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker's family.
27:33
That one was picked up by Paramount with any machete attached to direct.
27:37
I think the next one that I wrote after that was a caller's game, which was
27:41
picked up by Ridley Scott's company.
27:45
She has a broken thing where heart should be the Charles
27:47
Dickens retelling that 1 was done.
27:49
It's currently in development as a, as a TV show.
27:53
There's so many, I'm trying to get my, it's funny, I think I've got
27:56
12 books out there at this point.
27:57
So did
27:57
Rupert Isaacson: those
27:57
JD Barker: early ones get, get made?
27:59
No, that's the thing, like, in Hollywood, like, everything has been optioned,
28:02
some of them over and over again, nothing has actually been filmed yet.
28:05
At this point, it's kind of a numbers game, you know, like,
28:07
I've got so many in the works, you know, something is bound to happen.
28:10
But, like, it is com Completely out of my control.
28:13
One of the things that I've learned is when something gets optioned
28:15
usually they, they go in for a year.
28:16
They go in for like 18 months, maybe two years at the onset.
28:19
But as soon as that option expires, the folks in Hollywood know that it's
28:22
a known commodity, so they tend to jump all over it, and somebody else usually
28:25
scoops up that option right away.
28:27
So things haven't been out of option but things can get really crazy.
28:30
A friend of mine told me once, if you watch the credits at the end of a movie,
28:32
you know all those names flying by.
28:34
It takes five or six minutes to get through all of 'em.
28:36
Every one of those people had to come together and be there in
28:38
order for that movie to make it.
28:39
To the screen and you know, it's like this perfect storm that has to happen.
28:44
Oh, so I, I, I so hear you.
28:46
Yeah.
28:46
So like stuff, stuff can fall apart.
28:47
I mean, to give you an example, a caller's game with Ridley Scott's company.
28:50
At one point I got a phone call saying Jennifer Garner had signed on.
28:53
She loves the book.
28:54
She wants to make it.
28:55
Jennifer Garner had a, what's called a first look deal with Netflix.
28:58
So now we had a studio.
28:59
Netflix greenlit a hundred million dollar budget for the project.
29:02
All this stuff happened probably within about two to three weeks.
29:05
Then we got another phone call.
29:06
Jennifer Garner's got a scheduling conflict.
29:08
She's got to pull out, you know.
29:10
So our star went away, then Netflix went away, and the budget went away.
29:13
You know, all this stuff, you know, within a month, you know, it's
29:15
like this crazy roller coaster.
29:17
So honestly, like I, I keep my head down and just kind of write the next book.
29:20
I know sooner or later it's going to happen.
29:22
But I try not to get too wrapped up in all that stuff.
29:24
Rupert Isaacson: Well, one of the things which I found with this Cause
29:26
I've had a couple of books optioned and then they stayed in option for gosh, a
29:29
decade, you know, and then one day and yes, all sorts of actors were attached.
29:34
It's exactly as you described it.
29:36
It all goes very quiet.
29:37
And then you get a phone call saying, ah, you know, this big person.
29:40
Or it's a person you've never heard of that they tell you is big.
29:42
Particularly as you get older like me and you sort of don't
29:44
know who the celebs are anymore.
29:46
And then it goes away for this sort of thing.
29:49
That actress goes and has a baby or it turns out that, as you say,
29:53
scheduling conflict or whatever.
29:54
But what I've found is Sometimes I don't wait around, sometimes
29:58
I just go and make them myself.
29:59
And so I made a documentary, I made two TV reality shows that way called The Quest.
30:04
Have you not considered just being a producer and making one of them yourself?
30:10
For the cra
30:11
JD Barker: At some point I might but, you know, like, I
30:13
know how to write a good book.
30:14
I know a good book is gonna bring me, you know, a nice payday.
30:17
I do really well with them.
30:18
So, like, I just don't have the, the bandwidth to branch out to, to
30:21
do other, other things like that.
30:24
Like, that would just take, there's, once we figure out how to get 27
30:26
or 30 hours in a day, then I could probably take something like that on.
30:29
But, but right now it's just not happening.
30:31
And is all your publishing self publishing, or are you with
30:35
several different mainstreams?
30:37
I've been all over the place.
30:38
So the, the Serial Killer series I mentioned, that was with HMH,
30:41
which is now part of HarperCollins.
30:43
I've got books with Random House.
30:45
I indie published my first book.
30:46
And then I, I kind of did a hybrid approach for a couple of books because
30:50
when, when you indie publish, you know, the economics are fantastic.
30:52
You make about 70 cents on the dollar.
30:54
Traditional publishers are good because they'll You know, they give
30:56
you a nice big advance check, but you've got to pay that advance back.
30:59
And usually it's for pennies on the dollar.
31:01
So you've got to sell a lot more books to pay that money back than
31:03
if you were to indie publish it.
31:05
So after I got about four or five books in that, I started
31:07
becoming very aware of that.
31:09
And I, I wanted to try and take some of the control back.
31:11
So I did a hybrid approach.
31:13
I basically told my agent, I'm going to retain English rights for myself.
31:16
So the various countries that speak English, I'm going to put those out.
31:19
And she's more than welcome to continue selling in all the foreign
31:21
territories for each of my books.
31:23
And I'm in about 150 different countries, a little shy of 30 languages.
31:26
You know, so I've got, it's a pretty decent pool.
31:28
She's still got to play in.
31:30
But I did that for a couple of books and I really liked it.
31:32
Then about a year and a half ago, I wrote a book.
31:34
called Behind a Closed Door, and I sent it off to my agent, and at that point, I
31:37
was with a company called Writers House.
31:39
They started shopping it, and while they were shopping it, we started getting
31:41
phone calls from the folks in Hollywood.
31:43
We ended up selling the film option before we sold anything
31:45
on the publication rights.
31:47
The, the publishers got wind of that, so then they, you know, all
31:50
the publishers all of a sudden wanted this book because it's been optioned.
31:52
So the book was about to go to auction, you know, meaning there were more than one
31:55
publishers that wanted to get involved.
31:57
And I got a phone call from a friend of mine who worked at Random House, and
32:00
she said, listen, we're about to offer on your book in this auction, and when
32:02
that happens, you need to turn it down.
32:04
And I asked her why, and she said, well, we're about to lay off a
32:07
bunch of people, and the editor who wants your book is on that list.
32:10
And there's nothing worse than having a book, you know, that loses its
32:12
editor at a publisher, because that book can sit there in limbo forever.
32:15
I got a similar phone call from somebody at HarperCollins about a
32:17
week later, and then all these These layoffs happened all across the
32:20
industry which really spooked me.
32:22
So I reached out to some friends of mine that I used to work with in finance.
32:26
Simon and Schuster had just recently been bought by a private equity firm.
32:29
So I started these back channel conversations with Simon and Schuster,
32:32
and ultimately I created my own imprint through Simon and Schuster.
32:35
We struck a deal where I basically created my own publishing imprint.
32:38
Through Simon and Schuster, they handle all of my print sales and distribution.
32:41
So I kind of get the best of both worlds.
32:43
I can put out whatever books I want, whenever I want, but through
32:46
Simon and Schuster, which means they get in all the places I
32:48
couldn't get to as an indie author.
32:50
So you'll find my books in the big box stores.
32:51
You'll find them in the grocery stores, the drug stores you know, any
32:54
place where, where books are sold.
32:56
So that's where I'm at today.
32:57
And I honestly love it.
32:58
I think it's the best possible position I could be in.
33:00
Rupert Isaacson: I agree.
33:01
Now, of course wading through the fine print of all those
33:03
contracts is a difficult thing.
33:05
Does your agent still handle all that?
33:07
Even when you're semi indie?
33:10
JD Barker: It, it depends on the contract, and I've, I've got multiple agents.
33:12
I've got one that handles domestic sales, another one that handles foreign.
33:15
I've got a film and television agent.
33:17
And I've got an attorney who kind of, you know, oversees all of it.
33:20
So depending on what's coming down the pike, I, I, you know, I, I tend to
33:23
pass it off to the right pair of eyes.
33:25
I try not to review that stuff on my own, but, but, but I can, I mean, I, I
33:28
was, I was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm for two decades.
33:32
You know, that, that's all legal experience.
33:34
I've, I've been through more contracts than.
33:35
You know, that I could name so I'm capable of doing it, but it's always good.
33:39
Even, you know, even if I was an attorney, I would still get a second pair of
33:41
eyes to look at some of these things.
33:43
Publishing contracts tend to be pretty straightforward, but a film
33:45
and TV contract can be 300 pages long.
33:48
And, you know, they might say the same thing five different ways in
33:51
different spots in the contract.
33:52
It's, it's best to have the right person to look at that sort of thing.
33:55
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
33:56
How did you go about getting your first agent?
33:58
I know, so, the reason I'm asking that question is, again, I know a lot of
34:02
people really want to write, and when they have something good whether it's
34:07
an a proposal, if it's non fiction, or they've actually written the book as
34:11
fiction, because Again, a little bit of insider information for the listeners.
34:15
If you're going to write a memoir or something like that, you can often
34:17
get a publishing deal with a very good proposal, but for fiction, you almost
34:22
always have to write the whole book.
34:24
But once you've got that getting an agent, of course, as you know, is.
34:29
Not just extremely useful.
34:31
It's kind of key.
34:33
How did you go about getting your agent?
34:35
And what advice have you got for people now because the industry's
34:38
changed a lot since we came into it so how did you get your first agent?
34:42
And then what would you say to people who are coming into to it
34:44
now wanting to find a good agent?
34:47
JD Barker: Well, the first time around, I did it completely wrong.
34:49
I had no idea what I was doing when it came to like, I knew how to write a book.
34:52
I had no clue how to get an agent.
34:53
So I actually bought a list of 200 agents just an Excel spreadsheet
34:57
with all their contact information.
34:58
And I sent out a mass email literally to whom it may
35:01
concern, you know, here, here's.
35:02
What my book is about, here's the first three chapters.
35:05
I sent everybody the exact same thing, which is not how you're supposed to do it.
35:09
If you go to an agent's website, everyone tells you exactly what they want.
35:13
They're all different.
35:13
You know, this agent wants a PDF file.
35:15
This one wants a word document.
35:17
This one wants one chapter.
35:18
This one wants three.
35:19
They want it in an aerial font.
35:21
But this one wants Times New Roman.
35:22
Like every one of them is different.
35:24
You have to appease them.
35:25
You have to do what they're asking because they will just hit that
35:27
delete button the second it comes in.
35:28
If it's not in the right format, you know, without even looking
35:31
at what the book is about.
35:32
So the first time with Forsaken, I sent all those out and I, and I didn't get
35:35
an agent, I got hardly any responses because I basically did it wrong.
35:39
When it came time for the second book, the fourth monkey, I had a
35:42
really strong sales record behind me which makes things way easier.
35:46
You know, because they were able to pull up my sales record.
35:48
They could see what I was capable of moving, you know,
35:50
on my own as an indie author.
35:52
That's something that's very attractive to the traditional publishers because
35:55
you've got a proven track record.
35:56
So I had no trouble getting an agent the second time around.
35:59
I think I'd make very
35:59
Rupert Isaacson: How did, well, how did you move all those
36:01
copies as The indie author.
36:04
I mean, I know that you had this great story about trying to get to Stephen
36:07
King and then him, obviously reading your book and so on, but nonetheless, to
36:13
actually move copies is another thing.
36:16
How did you do that?
36:18
JD Barker: Yeah, I mean, the Stephen King helped a lot because it, you
36:20
know, it kind of spurred things.
36:22
You have to have a good book.
36:23
That's key.
36:25
A lot of people think they don't even consider that, but you
36:27
have to have a five star read.
36:29
It has to be the kind of book where somebody reads it and
36:31
they tell five people about it.
36:33
Because word of mouth is what really sells books.
36:36
That particular book, and luckily a lot of mine have had that That
36:39
kind of power, you know, people just tell their friends about them.
36:42
They read one.
36:42
They've got to read the next five that I write, so I've been really
36:45
lucky when it comes to that.
36:47
I did a lot of advertising very early on Facebook and Amazon ads
36:50
before it was really popular.
36:52
I did a lot of translations early on before indie authors were
36:55
really doing that sort of thing.
36:56
I hired my own translators and put the books out in different
36:59
countries all on my own.
37:01
You know, and, and the margins are much better.
37:03
And I took that same, you know, that money and I was able to roll it back
37:05
into more advertising and it just becomes this self fulfilling machine.
37:08
So you were basically
37:09
Rupert Isaacson: using your savings to do those translations, buy those ads,
37:13
because that's the other thing is people have to know that the book exists.
37:16
They need to know that it's out there.
37:17
What would you say it costs you?
37:20
To put that first book out,
37:22
JD Barker: I think I spent about 1, 000 on the cover, maybe another
37:25
2, 000 for formatting and editing probably all in maybe 5, 000 or
37:30
so to, to get it out the door.
37:32
The audio book, I think I paid 400 per finished hour.
37:35
So that was about another 4 or 5, 000.
37:37
But I made that back like within the first month easily on audio books.
37:40
You know, they're, they're not quite as lucrative as they used
37:42
to be, but they, you can still, I mean, they're a huge profit center.
37:45
Yeah, I think every author should be doing that sort
37:47
Rupert Isaacson: of thing.
37:47
That's not cheap.
37:48
So you're 10 grand in there.
37:49
What did you spend on the advertising?
37:52
JD Barker: Oh, I mean, there is points in my career where I've spent 000 in a month.
37:57
I've done that within a week of publication on one book.
38:00
I spent, I think, 15, 000 in seven days.
38:03
Right.
38:03
It's all about, for me, it's about watching the metrics.
38:05
As long as the money coming in exceeds the money going out.
38:10
Rupert Isaacson: But that first book, your first time author, you,
38:12
you know, you're doing a bit of a financial white knuckle ride.
38:16
What would you say?
38:17
Okay, wait.
38:17
So we're 10 grand in for the production.
38:19
What would you say it cost you in the advertising and going back remembering?
38:23
This is what?
38:24
20 years ago or 15
38:26
JD Barker: years ago, it was about 10 years ago.
38:28
I, I don't, I, I couldn't give you a number without going
38:30
back to the spreadsheets.
38:31
I, I, it, it got significant at one point.
38:34
But you know, your dollars, we know it's not cheaper back in those days.
38:38
No, I mean, like I was getting click throughs at like, you
38:40
know, 5, 10 cents back back then.
38:42
Like in today's world, you just don't get that.
38:44
There's, there's, it's too crowded of a market.
38:46
So it's just, it's completely different.
38:47
You know, book bump back then, like you would get one book bump deal
38:50
and you'd move, you know, 5, 10.
38:51
Thousand copies in a day you know, like that just doesn't
38:54
happen anymore with book.
38:55
Bob, I'm, I'm always looking for like the next biggest thing, you know, from what
38:59
I've been able to tell over the years, if I see all the other indie authors out
39:03
there talking about it, doing something at that point it's, it's too late, you know,
39:06
like it's time to find the next big thing.
39:08
If you do what everybody else is doing, you're just going to
39:09
kind of get lost in that mix.
39:11
Rupert Isaacson: And how do you find, how do you go about
39:13
finding that new big thing?
39:14
Again, there'll be, there'll be young authors out there
39:16
needing this information.
39:18
JD Barker: Yeah, so that, I think the autistic person in me is, is what
39:21
really leads that charge, you know.
39:23
I, I look at a problem and I look for a solution to that problem.
39:26
So, to give you an example TikTok.
39:27
When TikTok first came out You know, I started watching it, trying
39:30
to figure out, like, how can an author move a book on tick tock?
39:33
And, you know, I quickly realized nobody wants to see me dancing around
39:36
in a bathing suit, holding up my book.
39:37
That's not going to work.
39:38
It's not scalable.
39:40
It's, you know, it's, it's one of those things, like, it's just not, you
39:43
know, I couldn't do it enough of that.
39:45
Like, so what I ultimately ended up doing, I, I hired a couple of college kids.
39:49
They combed through book talk, which was the hashtag used for tick tock.
39:52
And they started gathering email addresses of all the people that were.
39:55
pushing books on Tick Tock.
39:57
And ultimately I put together a list of about, I think it's 3, 500
40:00
to 4, 000 book talk influencers.
40:02
The smallest one's got a thousand followers.
40:04
The biggest one is a little shy of a million.
40:06
And we created a company called best of book talks.
40:08
So once a week we put out an email that goes to those influencers.
40:12
I get ARC copies from the traditional publishers for free.
40:15
That I can give to those influencers.
40:17
So it's very similar to book Bob, but for influencers.
40:19
So they get an email of five or 10 titles.
40:21
They can say, okay, I want this one, this one, and this one.
40:24
And my company arranges the, the ARCs to go to them directly.
40:28
So now I've got this giant tool that has this mailing
40:30
list that goes out once a week.
40:32
Anytime I want to push my own titles, I can put them in there and get
40:35
them in front of that large group.
40:36
You know, millions and millions of followers all in one shot essentially
40:40
for free because I'm piggybacking on a company that I already own.
40:43
Versus, you know, me trying to create videos just hoping to go
40:46
viral and create something, you know, like everybody else is doing.
40:49
So that, that's the kind of thing that I do.
40:51
I look for What gave you the
40:52
Rupert Isaacson: idea to start, that's brilliant, what gave you
40:54
that idea to start a company to supply these people with books?
40:59
JD Barker: My accountant, because if you once you start doing anything
41:03
that brings in any kind of revenue, it's best to break it off from the
41:07
other revenue generating sources.
41:09
So, you know, became an LLC.
41:10
Then it became a corporation.
41:13
I've done that quite a few times over the, you know, over
41:15
my career, just creating stuff.
41:18
You know, it's like throwing spaghetti at a wall.
41:19
I mean, for every 10 things that I create, one of them might actually work out.
41:22
But if I don't try, you know, like, none of them are going to work out.
41:25
So I'm always trying something different.
41:27
Rupert Isaacson: And in order to get, so, so when you're putting the
41:31
titles, I presume you still do this in front of these booktok influencers.
41:36
How do you get these titles?
41:37
How can you be sure that you can deliver them?
41:40
Because that's distribution effectively.
41:41
How do you become that distributor?
41:44
JD Barker: It's all already done in advance.
41:46
So while the influencers are signing up and working on that portion of the
41:49
list, getting the email and requesting books, publishers are basically bidding
41:54
for those spots within the email, just like if you're as an author, you try to
41:57
get a spot on book, Bob, you have to pay book Bob to be on that particular email.
42:01
So every book that's listed is a bought and paid for a spot
42:04
from the traditional publishers.
42:06
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
42:06
But I guess, I guess for me, what I'm trying to understand is you are, you are,
42:10
are you sending them physical copies or are you just No, we just, we pass them
42:14
recommending that they read something?
42:16
JD Barker: No, we, we give them two options.
42:18
So they can either download the ebook, you know, which we, we set up the,
42:20
the download link so they can actually download directly to their Kindle
42:24
or they can request a physical copy.
42:25
And if they request a physical copy that their information goes into a
42:28
form and that data gets transmitted to the publisher, and then the
42:30
publisher actually mails them out.
42:32
So we don't physically have to touch anything.
42:35
And how how do you choose which titles to put in front of them?
42:40
We get a lot of submissions from the, from all the publishers.
42:42
So we just kind of pick through them and, you know, pick our, our favourites.
42:45
What we feel is, is going to work.
42:47
You know, over time we've learned what the audience on TikTok is looking for too.
42:50
Like we know they're not going to resonate with like a children's book.
42:53
Westerns don't do particularly well.
42:55
It's, it's really fantasy and romance and thrillers, you know, come third.
42:58
So, you know, we've learned that over time.
43:00
And we, we keep that in mind as we pick the titles.
43:03
So it's mostly fantasy.
43:05
Fantasy tends to be the biggest right now, yeah.
43:07
Across the board.
43:09
This sounds like a full time job.
43:10
How do you have time to write?
43:12
I hire other people.
43:15
I mean, you know, it starts off as an idea coming out of my head then
43:18
I usually rope in, you know, one of my assistants or somebody to help me
43:22
then it just kind of grows from there.
43:23
I mean, at this point there's four different people that work
43:26
on best of book talk alone.
43:28
They're in the middle, like, right now, if things Continue tick tock is
43:31
going to get shut down here in the U.
43:32
S.
43:32
As of this coming Sunday.
43:34
So they've been scrambling to try and figure out what comes next.
43:37
So we've, we've already purchased all the domains for like best of
43:40
books to Graham and, you know, like basically all the other platforms.
43:43
The nice thing is in, in, you know, in that particular world
43:46
and influencer, they don't just put book reviews on a tick tock.
43:50
They tend to put it out on all the different social media platforms.
43:53
So it's going to be a sideways step for all of them.
43:55
It's just at this point, nobody knows where that sideways step is going to be.
43:58
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
43:59
I mean you say you just hire other people, but of course that takes, you know, There
44:04
must be a point where you're prototyping an idea like that, best of booktok,
44:08
where you have to just do it yourself and bootstrap it and then see if it works and
44:12
then Hire other people because of course that's expensive or do you take do you
44:16
take the risk and just hire right away?
44:19
JD Barker: No, no, it tends to grow like I tend to do, you know, like
44:22
99 percent of the work at the very beginning Then I bring in other people
44:26
on a 50 percent of that Just kind of whittle away at it until I get into the
44:30
I fall into more of a supervisory role
44:32
Rupert Isaacson: How long would you say you're having to do all of it
44:35
before you can hand it over to say 50%?
44:39
JD Barker: It really depends on the entity.
44:40
I mean, that that one took off straight away.
44:42
You know, as soon as we put it out there, we got reception from the publishers.
44:45
We got reception from the influencers.
44:47
I knew it was going to grow, and I knew I'd be able to scale it right now.
44:50
We're trying to decide.
44:51
Do we want to scale into other languages?
44:53
Do we want it?
44:54
We're only doing one email a week, and we could easily create one
44:57
email for thrillers, another one for fantasy, another one for romance,
45:00
put out three or four emails a week.
45:02
So those are the kind of conversations we're having internally.
45:05
Rupert Isaacson: So, with something like that, you're, you're writing,
45:08
now you're sort of influencing.
45:11
The next step, presumably, sounds like publishing.
45:15
Are you going to become a publisher?
45:18
JD Barker: Well, I, I sort of already am with my arrangement with Simon Schuster,
45:21
so I've, I've got that covered too.
45:23
Rupert Isaacson: But in terms of publishing other
45:24
people and becoming a house?
45:26
JD Barker: I've thought about it.
45:27
I'm doing a lot of work with coauthors, which I'm really enjoying.
45:30
You know, I've got a ton of ideas, but I've only had so much
45:32
time to write books on my own.
45:34
So every once in a while, I'll come up with an idea and I'll create it and bring
45:37
in somebody else to write it with me.
45:39
And I love doing that.
45:40
I mean, I've got a book I just.
45:41
That released in November called heavier.
45:43
The stones.
45:43
I wrote it with a woman named Christine Daigle, who's a
45:46
neuropsychologist in real life.
45:48
You know, so she was able to bring that mindset and that skill
45:50
set into the writing process.
45:51
And, you know, as an author, I can fake my way through it.
45:54
I can do a bunch of Google searches.
45:55
I can research and I can kind of create a character.
45:57
That's a neuropsychologist and make it seem authentic.
46:00
But having somebody who really does that in real life as part of the writing
46:04
process, you know, you can't beat that.
46:06
So, you know, I'm working with a ton of co authors just to try and.
46:09
Yeah.
46:09
To strengthen that and, you know, increases the number of
46:11
books that I'm putting out.
46:12
So it's kind of a win win for everybody.
46:14
Rupert Isaacson: And when you work with co authors, are you
46:17
doing a work for hire thing?
46:19
Are you paying them a fee and then they also get a percentage of a royalty?
46:23
How does that work?
46:26
JD Barker: Accounting for something like this can get really complicated if
46:28
you do it as on a split you know, split royalty basis, so I just do it as a work
46:32
for hire you know, they're basically coming in, you know, mainly for the
46:35
exposure and for the learning curve I can teach them how to write a thriller,
46:39
a solid thriller from start to finish.
46:40
And most of the authors that I bring in, you know, they're good, but they're not.
46:43
And then the flip side, when the book comes out, it's coming
46:46
out through Simon and Schuster.
46:47
It's coming out worldwide.
46:48
You know, so they're, they're basically, they've got a book with their name on
46:51
it and all these places they could never get to on their own which means when they
46:54
write their next book, you know, it makes it that much easier because an agent's
46:57
going to look them up and they're going to see they've had titles, you know,
47:00
at all, you know, all these different places, all these different languages.
47:02
They've got a proven track record, which makes it that much easier.
47:05
So, yeah, Again, it's, it's a win win for everybody.
47:07
Rupert Isaacson: So you give them, you give them room on the, on the book jacket.
47:11
You say this is, you know, J.
47:12
D.
47:12
Barker with so and so, or J.
47:15
D.
47:16
Barker and so and so.
47:17
JD Barker: Yeah, yeah.
47:18
I make it very clear that it was written with somebody else.
47:20
I give everybody the credit that they have coming to them.
47:22
You know, it's coming out of the world when I, you know, I didn't get that credit
47:25
when my name wasn't even on the cover.
47:27
I'm very cognizant of it to make sure that they get what they deserve.
47:30
Rupert Isaacson: And how do you find your co writers?
47:31
That's not, that's not necessarily an easy thing to find.
47:34
Especially good ones.
47:35
JD Barker: No.
47:36
You know, a lot of them, it's funny because they'll have a book coming out
47:39
and their agent will send me an ARC copy or their publisher will send me
47:42
one so I pick up on people that way.
47:44
I meet a lot of authors at writer conferences a lot of authors in today's
47:47
world, they know that I'm doing this, so they talk to each other, you know, I
47:50
get a lot of recommendations that way.
47:52
There's never been a shortage.
47:53
It's really about, you know, picking the quality of the, the names that
47:56
come in, the, the process, you know, the people that come through my door.
47:58
Rupert Isaacson: Well, indeed.
47:59
And that's not always.
48:02
A given, right?
48:02
Because you
48:04
JD Barker: No, I mean You don't necessarily know how
48:06
Rupert Isaacson: well they write until you try.
48:08
JD Barker: I really think that writing is, you know, like there's a writer's
48:11
gene, you know, like somebody can either tell a story or they can't tell a story.
48:14
Yeah, yeah.
48:15
I think you're born with that.
48:16
All the basics, the grammar rules, punctuation, all that kind of
48:19
stuff, like that can be taught.
48:21
But that writer gene, the storyteller gene, can't be.
48:24
So I really look for that.
48:25
If I find somebody who I feel can tell a story But need some work on something
48:29
else that I can fix, I'm, I'm all in.
48:31
But, you know, they could have perfect grammar, perfect punctuation,
48:33
their pacing might be great, but if they can't tell a story, you know,
48:36
it's like reading a textbook, and you know, it just, that won't work.
48:39
Rupert Isaacson: So you're looking, in general, for sort of first
48:41
time authors who might be looking for a break, would that be right?
48:46
And have they already written something so that you can test
48:49
whether or not they're any goods?
48:51
JD Barker: Some have, some have written full books, other ones have only written
48:54
short stories some work in the newspaper or magazine or, you know, they're doing
48:58
something else online where they're writing, but not quite at the novel
49:02
stage you know, so that it all kind of depends if they've got a book out there,
49:05
then obviously I've got an easy sample.
49:06
I can read if they've never written fiction before.
49:09
I'll give them some kind of an assignment to see what they come up with.
49:12
You know, everyone is different.
49:13
I don't think one project has come together the same way as another one.
49:16
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
49:17
And then in terms of when you are co authoring, it's an intriguing thing,
49:20
and I think a lot of people listening to this would, you know, see an opportunity
49:24
there, because there will be among our listeners some decent writers there who
49:27
maybe could see this as an opportunity.
49:30
Roughly what percentage of the book would you say they write?
49:35
JD Barker: They, they write almost all of it and, and that's, you know, on purpose,
49:38
you know, not because I don't want to do the work, but because if I write it,
49:41
they're not going to learn anything.
49:42
So I hold their hand through the entire process.
49:44
We come up with the title together.
49:46
We come up with the tagline together.
49:47
We write the backup book blurb, you know, which is a text that you'd
49:50
find on the back of a paperback.
49:51
I make them do all that stuff.
49:52
Create it, you know, at the get go before we do anything
49:55
related to the writing process.
49:56
Like, whenever I write a book, the tagline is always on a
49:59
piece of tape on my monitor.
50:00
I read it every single day before I start writing.
50:03
Same thing with the, the, about the book, you know, the back of book text.
50:05
Like, I feel like if you read that every day before you start writing,
50:08
it's always going to keep you on task to make sure you write the
50:10
book that you're supposed to write.
50:12
So I forced them to create all those different parts.
50:14
Once we've got those, I walk them through the outlining process.
50:17
You know, we, we outline the book from start to finish.
50:19
And, you know, I.
50:20
I keep we keep going at it and going at it until it's perfect, you
50:23
know, I basically teach them what they're what they're doing wrong.
50:26
I tell them what I would change in it.
50:27
You know, we just we keep going back and forth on it till we get an outline.
50:30
That's solid.
50:30
And then we start the writing process and I hold their hand chapter by
50:33
chapter sentence by sentence and walk them through everything that I've
50:36
learned, you know, working with people like James Patterson and then when
50:39
Rupert Isaacson: you And then when you If you were to average
50:41
it out, what would you say that co authoring process takes you per book?
50:45
Is it a year?
50:47
Is it two years?
50:47
Is it six months?
50:48
What is it?
50:50
JD Barker: You know, everybody's different.
50:51
I got an email this morning from one where he literally just said, We just
50:54
had our two year anniversary, and here's the final, you know, finished draft.
50:58
You know, he just went through like my, my last round of edits and
51:00
comments and stuff, and he just cleaned it all up and got it back to me.
51:03
So that one took 2 years.
51:04
I've got other ones that are done in 6 months.
51:06
You know, for me personally, I, I can write a book in 3 to 4 months.
51:09
Everybody's different.
51:09
The nice thing about this is there's no rush.
51:12
You know, I, I, I want it to be perfect.
51:13
I want it to be right.
51:14
And I, you know, if it takes 5 years, if it takes 10 years, I don't care.
51:17
But I, you know, I'm not going to rush something through just
51:19
for the sake of getting it done.
51:20
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
51:21
But of course, you know economically these people presumably they have day
51:25
jobs or side hustles or other things that they're doing What's the what
51:29
would you say is the average rate like?
51:34
If someone's listening to this, I think, well, maybe I'd like to have
51:36
a go at that co authoring thing.
51:38
But I'm not yet, you know, a, a, a very, a known author.
51:41
So my place in the marketplace is very much in the sort of beginner.
51:44
What, what could somebody expect?
51:46
What's the average that someone could expect to, to earn in a, for
51:50
a job like that, work for hire?
51:52
JD Barker: I don't want to get into the economics of it because
51:54
it's different for, for everybody.
51:55
I mean, I approach it based on their, their financial situation from a time
51:59
standpoint, I would say probably a year on the short end somebody who's
52:02
not familiar with writing a book.
52:04
You know, if they've only got experience in nonfiction or, or short stories or
52:07
something like that, it's probably a year and a half to 2 years from start to
52:10
Rupert Isaacson: finish.
52:11
Right?
52:12
I'm just, just thinking, you know, some people might think, oh, my
52:14
gosh, would I be able to like, you know, live for a year on that?
52:17
I would imagine the answer would probably be no, right?
52:20
They'd have to have other sources of income, no?
52:22
Probably.
52:23
JD Barker: Yeah, no, I mean, the point of this isn't, isn't the money you
52:26
know, what this really stemmed from like years back, I was mentoring a
52:28
lot of authors, you know, I was, you know, basically teaching them how to do
52:31
this, but they paid me for that and I felt icky about taking money for this
52:35
kind of thing, but I had to charge because it kind of weeded people out.
52:38
Well, it also takes time.
52:39
Yeah.
52:39
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
52:40
JD Barker: Yeah.
52:40
So, but I basically flipped the model on its head and instead of them paying
52:43
me for, for a mentorship situation, I pay them for the finished book.
52:47
So they do walk away with something, you know, rather, rather than, you
52:50
know, what they were doing before.
52:51
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
52:52
And then you said that you co authored with James Patterson,
52:55
who's obviously a huge name.
52:56
How did that come about?
52:59
JD Barker: He read The Fourth Monkey.
53:00
We, the publisher sent it to him hoping to get one of those blurbs,
53:03
you know, one sentence on the back.
53:05
And he, he read it and, and felt strongly about it and reached out and
53:08
asked if I wanted to co author with him.
53:10
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
53:11
So he also wants to get More books out there than he himself has time to do.
53:15
So did he some degree mentor you through that model?
53:19
JD Barker: Yeah, absolutely.
53:20
I mean he's he's been a huge mentor, you know, not only on the writing
53:23
front, but also the business side
53:26
Rupert Isaacson: Wonderful and on on his books, would you get
53:29
your book on your your name?
53:30
JD Barker: Yeah, we actually have fine.
53:32
Would it just be
53:32
Rupert Isaacson: them
53:33
JD Barker: in, in the, in our contract, it, it says that my name has to be printed
53:36
in an equal font size to his mm-hmm
53:39
Um, in, in, in America o other countries.
53:41
It's, it's different.
53:42
I think, I think you're in the uk, right?
53:44
It's so like some places that rule applies, some places it doesn't, but he
53:49
knows that I'm doing this for exposure, you know, so he's, he's got no problem
53:52
with, you know, giving me the name recognition and I bring a pretty big
53:55
audience to every book that we coauthored together, which, which is helpful.
53:59
Rupert Isaacson: And if somebody wanted to get into coauthoring obviously
54:02
there's a contract involved, I presume.
54:04
Would you have your agent or your lawyer draw up that contract?
54:07
Would you encourage them to get their own Representative to check
54:11
that contract over like what would your advice be for a newbie?
54:16
JD Barker: Yeah, I would never sign anything, you know without having you
54:19
know, the proper set of eyes look at it You know, so even if I send a contract off
54:23
to somebody else I always encourage them to you know, get their attorney to look at
54:26
it You know, make sure they're comfortable with all the language in it In a business
54:31
like this you have to you have to be very
54:32
Rupert Isaacson: careful No doubt, but I mean there's gonna be people
54:35
who are like, you know Barely, you know, paying the rent, how are they
54:39
going to afford to get an attorney?
54:40
Like how can they, if they're sort of young and hungry,
54:47
get to grips with the contract without, without that, or do they have to just
54:51
sort of go get the money from somewhere and actually find themselves an attorney?
54:55
I, if it were me, I know I would.
54:57
Yeah.
54:57
Yeah.
54:58
JD Barker: If I was, if I was penniless, I wouldn't put my name on something,
55:00
you know, signing an agreement without understanding exactly what's there.
55:04
Rupert Isaacson: Because I presume it also has to be a, an entertainment
55:06
attorney or a media savvy attorney.
55:08
It can't just be sort of your friend that does real estate
55:10
law or something like that.
55:12
JD Barker: Yeah, exactly.
55:13
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
55:14
Yeah.
55:15
Okay.
55:15
Well, that's that's fascinating.
55:17
So effectively, yes I mean that does sort of make you a little bit.
55:19
It sounds less like a publishing house and more like the old Renaissance
55:25
painter studio idea where you might, you know, buy a painting that's
55:28
after Raphael or you know or might even say Raphael Titian, but
55:32
it came from the Studio of that painted because he couldn't possibly
55:37
paint all the commissions himself.
55:39
So we'd have, you know, teams and teams of young artists who would
55:42
eventually, of course, make it and then go off and create their own studios.
55:45
Yeah,
55:46
Let's just quickly give, give everyone all the, the titles and, and the websites and,
55:51
and social media that they need to find to get to including your book talk stuff.
55:55
And then if there's just any closing words you'd like to.
55:58
We'll do that.
55:59
So how, how do people find you if they want to buy your books, if
56:04
they want to work with you, if they wanted to protect, to, to approach
56:08
you for co authoring or something.
56:10
How do people do this?
56:12
And give us your title list as well, so people can find you on Amazon.
56:16
JD Barker: Sure.
56:16
So the easiest place to find me is JD Barker dot com.
56:19
If you're interested in the coauthoring thing, there is a contact button
56:22
on there with with a little form.
56:23
Just fill that out and send your information and
56:25
I'll reach back out to you.
56:26
The books can be found pretty much everywhere.
56:28
I'm in bookstores all around the world.
56:30
You know, everywhere online.
56:31
I've got a number of titles coming out over the next couple of months.
56:34
We don't talk about Emma comes out in February first week of February.
56:38
I've got another book called the writer that I wrote with James Patterson
56:40
coming out in beginning of March.
56:42
And my next solo title comes out in May.
56:44
It's called something I keep upstairs.
56:46
Which is probably the scariest book I think I've ever written.
56:49
I, it took me about four years to actually get that one done because I, I
56:52
kept freaking myself out and had to put it aside and kind of come back to it.
56:55
But I, I got it done.
56:56
I'm glad that it.
56:57
I'm glad that it's finished and comes out in
56:58
Rupert Isaacson: May.
56:59
JD Barker: Alright, well I appreciate it.
57:00
Thanks for having me.
57:01
Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for coming on.
57:02
It's been a pleasure.
57:03
Bye.
57:04
Bye Thank you for joining us.
57:05
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