The Publishing Performance Show

Tony Lee - The "Write Backwards" Method That Creates Unputdownable Crime Thrillers

• Teddy Smith • Episode 104

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Tony Lee is a New York Times bestselling author who has successfully reinvented himself multiple times throughout his career. Originally starting as a computer games reviewer at 16, he transitioned through street performing in Covent Garden, writing for Radio 4, newspapers, comics, film and TV, before the pandemic forced him to pivot into self-publishing. Writing under the pen name Jack Gatland, he has achieved remarkable success with his crime thriller series, generating over 277 million pages read on Kindle Unlimited. His unique background spans 30 years in traditional publishing before building a profitable self-publishing business that now outearns his entire previous career combined.

In this episode:

  • How the pandemic forced a complete career pivot from traditional to self-publishing
  • Why he chose Amazon exclusivity and Kindle Unlimited for maximum revenue
  • The psychology of removing buying obstacles and building reader loyalty
  • Creating reader magnets and building a newsletter army of passionate fans
  • His unique "writing backwards" process developed from comic book experience
  • Why aiming for 3-star books beats perfectionism paralysis
  • The 25-step checklist he uses for every book release
  • Building authentic relationships in Facebook groups and reader communities
  • How 70% of his income comes from Kindle Unlimited page reads
  • The transition from hired gun to publisher mindset
  • Why rapid release schedules work better than perfect manuscripts
  • Turning beta readers into weapons specialists and expert consultants


Resources mentioned:


Book Recommendations:

  • Jack Gatland crime thriller series (starting with "Letter from the Dead"): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N1SJ447?&linkCode=ll1&tag=pubperf-20&linkId=400c65572fa1761b41f901ed6233057c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
  • The Lionheart Curse by Tony Lee: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09P2HKFHZ?&linkCode=ll1&tag=pubperf-20&linkId=400c65572fa1761b41f901ed6233057c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
  • Tom Marlowe spy series
  • Ellie Reckless spin-off novels


Connect with Tony Lee:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm really happy to be joined by Tony Lee, who's a New York Times bestselling author. So thank you for joining us, Tony. 

[00:00:14] Tony Lee: Thank you for having me alone. 

[00:00:16] Teddy Smith: So it is great to speak to you again. We've, we already came on the podcast once before, but we only gotta speak for a little bit of time, so it's great to be able to chat to you properly.

[00:00:23] Tony Lee: Yes, it was one of those. Sort of blink and you miss it moments as well because of the fact that I think you had about 20 a day you were speaking to something like that. Yeah. Someone else was waiting to come in and. You're like a conveyor belt. It was like the red carpet line. So I felt honored to get that opportunity to chat to you.

[00:00:43] Teddy Smith: Well, the Honor was all mine. Thank you for coming on. Um, but yeah, it's great to chat to you. So you are, an bestselling author. You've written under your own name under a couple of different names. Why don't you give us a bit of background into. What got you started into writing in the first place? 

[00:00:57] Tony Lee: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:00:58] Funny enough, I'm doing the islands writing, the Island Publishing Show in a couple of weeks and I'm doing the keynote, so I've been writing this down, so I've actually been remembering it, which is quite nice because I'm 54 and these things just fall out your head. So when I was about 15 years old at school, I decided that I wanted to be a computer programmer.

[00:01:17] Mainly 'cause I'd seen Superman three and decided that Richard Pryor could do it. I could do it. I hadn't really worked out that difference between reality and fiction at that point. But when I did computers, this is 1986, 1987, where working on BBC Micros PCs weren't even a thing really at that time.

[00:01:37] And when we came to doing work experience at 16, I couldn't get any computer work experience because there weren't that many computer companies out there. So I found myself going for the next best thing, which was computer games reviews. And I had a ZX 81, no, a ZX spectrum at the time, and I contacted a magazine called Your Sinclair and said, Hey, I need to do some work experience.

[00:02:02] And they sent me some games and I wrote some reviews and they paid me money. And so to 16, I'm suddenly a professional writer and I found this was something that I could do. So I then carried on through college. And then when I was trying to work out what to do with my life, I was funding myself by doing articles and, you know, doing reviews and things like that.

[00:02:24] And that carried on all the way up. Through my twenties, thirties, et cetera. And then as I went on through my life, things happened and changed. So I was a Covent Garden Street performer, but then I was paralyzed. Uh, it took me six months to get my legs working again. In that time I couldn't perform. So I started writing for Radio four.

[00:02:43] That led me into writing for newspapers. Newspapers led me into, working for the theaters and radio. Then I ended up working in comics. Then that took me to film and tv. Everything always led me to the next point. 

[00:02:57] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:02:57] Tony Lee: And then in 2020, the pandemic hit and I lost everything. I mean, literally before the pandemic, I had five strings to my bow.

[00:03:08] And I think I said this when I spoke to you in Vegas. I was, writing comics. I was writing film and tv. I was writing audio dramas, the forecast audio dramas. I was visiting schools and talking to reluctant readers, and I was running comic conventions. And of those five things, four died instantaneously.

[00:03:29] Yeah. Schools closed, comic conventions, closed comic shops, closed film, and TV closed. So all I had was audio dramas and everybody was doing that. And so I pivoted, I moved into writing for myself, which was something that many of the children's authors I knew had started doing. Um, one of the, my peers at the time was Barry Hutchinson, who was now writing as JD Kirk in crime.

[00:03:53] Um, a couple others had started doing the same thing, and so I then decided to move into that, which was now four and a half years ago. 

[00:04:01] Teddy Smith: Wow. So it wasn't really like you had a plan to get to where you are now. is everything's just been No. No. Absolutely not. 

[00:04:07] Tony Lee: And if you determined to me five years ago and said, where would you be in five years?

[00:04:10] I would genuinely think I'd still be in film and tv, still doing school talks still, you know, uh, doing everything I was doing before the pandemic. I hadn't even considered doing self-publishing, mainly because I'd come from 30 years in trad. You know, I was, as you said, I'm a New York Times bestselling author.

[00:04:29] I'm a multiple time New York Times bestselling author, but they're always for other publishers. They were never for myself, right? So I was, you know, I was the hired gun. I'd come in, do a job, then I'd go, and that's kind of where I expected to be. And literally it was utter desperation. I worked out, I had six months worth of savings.

[00:04:50] Um, at the start of the pandemic? No, about the middle of the pandemic. I had about six months worth of savings and worked out if I didn't have anything. By the time my money ran out, which was April, 2021, that was it. I'm done. I had to leave, I had to just change my job completely, move into something more, nine to five.

[00:05:09] And of course, everybody was doing that, so there were no jobs. It was an er. Hail Mary. 

[00:05:16] Teddy Smith: Yeah. And so the books you first, the first books that you're talking about now, that's the Jack Gatlin series, which is the one that sort of Yes. Got got everything moving a bit more. Yes. So did you, sorry, go on. I was gonna say, with those books, were they, that you used self-published them immediately from the start?

[00:05:32] Tony Lee: Yes. So basically I'd had a problem. For about three years beforehand. I had a, my agent, James Wills of Watson Little, uh, great guy, works with a lot of comic people. Uh, he's, you know, works with Adam Moore, people like that. I. Uh, he was also Chris Fowler's, uh, agent for crime when Chris was around. Um, he basically, we'd been back and forth in with a novel 'cause I'd wanted to write a novel.

[00:05:55] I'd never written a novel apart from one book, which was very much quickly written and put up to stop an IP theft about 10 years earlier. And, um, we've been back and forth in on a book called The Lionheart Curse, which is kinda like a Dan Brown mystery thing set in England and. We had literally been bouncing because I'd send him the draft, he'd come back and say, we're not too sure about the language.

[00:06:22] And by that I mean he felt I was writing too old for the audience, right? He felt that maybe a younger audience would want this. Not teenagers, but twenties and thirties. And he felt I was aiming it a bit higher, maybe a bit more action. And then the editors were coming from the publisher and they weren't too sure.

[00:06:39] And it's just a traditional thing that anybody who works in trade publishing gets is you write a book, it takes you however long, and then the rest of the time that goes out all the way over there is just back and forth thing with the publisher, the agent, the editor, everything. So this is why books take years to come out.

[00:07:00] When the pandemic started, I was still trying to get an answer on this. And so in my mind I was thinking, well, I'm not writing, I'm not a writer. this was proving to me that I wasn't getting anywhere. And, and even then James had said like, you know, even if we get this going, the most you'll make on this as an advance is maybe 10 grand, probably five grand.

[00:07:22] 'cause that's about the average. So even then at the pandemic, I'm thinking, well, at least five grand will help. Yeah. But when I realized there was no other options and I started talking to people who said, well, we are now publishing, I realized this was my only option. And, and I don't mean that in a bad way.

[00:07:41] I mean creative option because this was something I could do for myself. And it took me back funnily enough to my time as a Covent Garden Street performer, because when I was a Covent Garden Street performer, if I did a show, I got paid. I might not get paid much. It depends on whether it rained halfway through or whatever, but if I didn't do a show, I didn't get paid.

[00:08:03] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So 

[00:08:05] Tony Lee: the, the impetus for me was always to go out and perform and suddenly 30 odd years later, I'm in a position where I'm doing the same thing. If I don't write a book, I will not make money from this book. And so I decided I had to look at it and. I had a very quick, I mean, it was a massively fast turnaround on learning how it all worked because over the years I'd met people who self-published, and I found out very quickly there was two types of self-published author.

[00:08:39] There are people who say, I am a writer and I self-publish my books. And then there are other people who say, I am a publisher. 

[00:08:48] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:08:48] Tony Lee: And the books I publish are mine. 

[00:08:50] Teddy Smith: Yeah, 

[00:08:50] Tony Lee: it's the same thing, but it's a slight twist in the way that it's positioned because if you are actually looking at writing a book, it's not just writing a book that's traditional.

[00:09:02] Traditional is I write my book, I pass it to my editor, I move on to the next project. That's traditional self-publishing is you are everything. You are the editor, you know you are, whatever is being done. So I knew when I started, I had to do it properly. Now, I was very lucky because I picked crime. It was a good market to write in.

[00:09:21] I had been writing some crime TV shows that hadn't been picked up yet. COVID killed it all, so I was able to take these pictures and plots and scripts and sort of rub the serial number off and yeah, change it around a bit so I could actually then re-release them. I mean, letter from the Dead. The first Jack Gatlin book was actually a TV show pitch called Dead Letter.

[00:09:43] And was gonna start Mark Shepherd from Supernatural. Right. Okay. And I've known Mark for years and we were working on something together, but it never happened. And I went, well, I can use this. So it changed and I pushed it through that way. And that was how I just sat down. I, I looked at everything that had to be done.

[00:10:00] So it, it was. Write it under a pen name rather than your name. Not because you're embarrassed or anything like that, but mainly because Amazon has an algorithm that says, Hey, once your book comes out, everyone who bought your last book gets told. My last book was called, uh, what's it, uh, the Intergalactic Adventures of Mr.

[00:10:20] Clip Crop Into Galactic Space. Unicorn. It was under 8-year-old kids. And the last thing I wanted, it sounds a very serious 

[00:10:27] Teddy Smith: book. Yeah, 

[00:10:28] Tony Lee: yeah. I didn't really want Amazon going, Hey, kids, here's a murder. Yeah. So by writing it under a fake name, Amazon doesn't have any information on you, so it has to go on the category.

[00:10:40] So now it would go out to people who read the book, so it helps. Oh, there was an element of, if I was really bad at it, I could kind of just. You know? Yeah. It's not me. And I literally spent the first couple of months working through this, um, and in my mind I was going, all I have to do is cover enough money until the world starts again.

[00:11:05] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:11:05] Tony Lee: That was my thing. Even if I just get a little bit of money just to tide me over, that was my entire plan. And halfway through writing the book, I was told I had to write a prequel, a reader magnet, so I had to stop and read, write a reader magnet. I was then being told about cover design and being told about how to get the advertising moving on this without spending money, how to promote the book, all of these things.

[00:11:31] Then just. Once I started working on how to play it, I, I got it. But my first three books, I almost killed myself. I mean, I wrote November, December, January, February, I wrote four books. Mm-hmm. First time I'd ever done it. I'd never written books before that I felt were good because my agent had said, well, editor says this, or Publisher says that.

[00:11:53] So I had no idea if they were any good or not. But I was just throwing them out to see what happened and as it was, it is, they seemed to be liked. So yeah, I just carried on. 

[00:12:03] Teddy Smith: That's really interesting what you said, uh, a couple of points ago about being more of a book publisher rather than just being a writer who self-publishers, because that's basically the core message of this whole podcast, is that if you are really serious about turning your book business into making money, then you need to think of yourself as a publishing business, not just as someone who writes, because if you wanna be a writer, you know, go and write for a newspaper or go and be a writer and get paid for it.

[00:12:26] But if you want to actually start. Taking this seriously, you do need to think of yourself as a business and treating yourself in that exact way. 

[00:12:33] Tony Lee: Well, it, it's an interesting one 'cause I had this conversation in Vegas, um, not with you as with a different podcast. And don't get me wrong, there are people out there who are very much about the book and they really want to make sure it's perfect and everything is secondary and it works for them.

[00:12:50] And if that's the way you want to be, that's great, but be aware that the algorithm doesn't work in your favor. 

[00:12:58] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:12:58] Tony Lee: If you are rapid releasing, if you are bringing books to a particular market that you know are gonna sell, the algorithm is happier. The algorithm being Amazon, uh, will sell you more. So therefore, when you look at the people who are making the money, they're in genres that are very, very big and exciting.

[00:13:16] So, you know, paranormal, romance, romantic, things like that, they make millions because they know how to feed the beast. 

[00:13:24] Teddy Smith: Yep. 

[00:13:24] Tony Lee: If you have. I dunno, your 1942 historical fiction romance and it's a story you've wanted to write all your life. If you release it, that doesn't mean you are a failure.

[00:13:35] If it doesn't sell, yeah. Just means that the algorithm isn't right. So I'm not gonna say to people, don't do it because Christ do it. My first book was a sequel to Oliver Twist. 12 Years On, that was written as a graphic novel and then basically, someone tried to steal it as a film. Um, so I ended up having to write it as a novel to save the ip.

[00:13:57] I think maybe 20 people have read this book in 10 years. But it was a story that I wanted to have out there. So there was a point of going, this is what must be done. So when people start saying, this is how you must do it, I don't agree because it all depends on what you want you want out of the experience.

[00:14:16] Teddy Smith: Yeah. If 

[00:14:16] Tony Lee: you wanna write a book and have it on your shelf, great. Brilliant. Do it. If you wanna make money, great. Do it that way, you know, work however you want to do. I needed money. You know, I hands in the air, there was no, I desperately want to make my mark. I'd done that. I'd already been doing this in other areas.

[00:14:36] I needed to ensure I could stay alive, pay this mortgage and feed my dog, who is now sleeping behind me. So I was very altruistic when I looked at it. I was very much a case of how do I make this work? 

[00:14:47] Teddy Smith: Yeah. By your own admission, you said you didn't know too much about self-publishing when you first started.

[00:14:53] Can you remember if there was any particular marketing tactics you used at the beginning, which helped get you from your book not being seen, and then to, as you mentioned, that beast being fed and you starting to get picked up and shown and things like that? 

[00:15:05] Tony Lee: Well, it was a weird thing because I say I'm not, I was not a self-published author.

[00:15:11] I was a self-published comic creator. Yeah. And there was a part of my mind that did not click that the two were very similar. And I do conventions, as I said, I run, the comic zone of the London Film and Comic Con every year, and we have artists who turn up with their own self-published comics and.

[00:15:26] They're doing exactly what I was doing, but I never really saw it as a different thing. And they do the same sort of things as I'm do I was doing when I started, which is just basically you are making sure that your face and your brand is known. So, so the first things I did was I made sure that every objection, or sorry, every obstruction to buying my book was removed because anybody who sees your book.

[00:15:55] They don't really wanna buy it, you know, if you've shown them a way to do it, they'll do it. But if you can provide them a way out, they'll take it, you know? Yeah. It's one of the reasons why, um, salespeople are taught how not to answer, ask closed questions. You've constantly gotta give you a choice.

[00:16:13] So it's like, Hey, you've won either your carpet or your sofa, steam cleaned free of charge, which do you want? Do you want it, but which do you want? Yeah. Then you have to go, uh, sofa. Great. Yeah. We're in your area. Next week or this week? Which week's better? Uh, next week. Great. Monday or Thursday? Thursday morning Or afternoon?

[00:16:33] Afternoon. You don't want this bloody thing steam cleaned, but that path is moving you along. 

[00:16:39] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:16:40] Tony Lee: Simply by giving you the options and. I realized that a lot of this was stuff that could be used and could be thrown out there. So when I was creating Jack Gatland, and Jack was an I picked the name because Gatland is my mom's maiden name, and my middle name is John and I'm Irish.

[00:16:58] So Jack is the term that is given. And my uncle Jackie passed away recently, and I'd kind of named it a bit after him because if you're writing crime novels, the idea of a guy called Jack Gatlin writing crime novels. You kind of think, oh, he's seen things, you know, oh, he's, he's in that bar. He is knocking back his whiskey.

[00:17:17] You know, if I'd written as a Lydia Pretty Wings or something. 

[00:17:22] Teddy Smith: You can imagine an SAS soldier being called Jack Gatland or something like that. Exactly. You kind of, 

[00:17:27] Tony Lee: the problem I had was I couldn't tell people who I was, so I was having to do it as Jack, and I was completely, you know, nobody realized that Tony Lee was Jack Gatland until book four, and the only reason that I outed myself was because my agent couldn't sell the audio rights because they didn't have a Jack Gatland on their books.

[00:17:46] But they had a Tony Lee, so I had to put it out there. But by that point, four books in the algorithm didn't really get affected. But I found that things like, just being out there going to, Facebook groups and joining them like crime UK crime books or mm-hmm. You know, Kindle Unlimited groups, things like that.

[00:18:05] Following the rules, giving advice when needed, being polite, you know, just helping people. 

[00:18:12] Teddy Smith: Yeah, it, 

[00:18:12] Tony Lee: it sounds strange, but there were so many people who would just turn up and go, here's my book, gone. And it was like, don't do that. Do something different. So I was, instead of just coming on and saying, it's Monday, it's promo day, here's my book.

[00:18:25] I would be making a special little image. That was related to what I was about to talk about, or I find a reason to talk about something. So they got a story out of it, effectively doing a newsletter. Yeah. I also created a newsletter. The biggest thing I learned, and I can't think who told me, it was basically create a reader magnet.

[00:18:45] So I created a 15,000 word prequel to my first book, which gives you an idea of who Declan is, and it's a story that leads to the start of the book. The idea was is, hey, join my VIP readers group, not newsletter kids, VIP readers group that makes you important. Join my VIP readers group and you'll get a free book.

[00:19:08] So they instantly get a free story. If they read it and they don't like it, they never have to read my book again. At the end of that novel, there's two chapters of book one. If they like it, they can instantly buy book one. So I was putting this out there and I was joining every newsletter swap I could possibly find on book funnel and story origin and places like that.

[00:19:28] And I had a few hundred people on my newsletter by the time my first book came out and I had about 50 pre-orders. So I was happy with that. You know, I was, I was pushing it. But also once I had those people in the group, I could then just talk to them. And you know, just chat and you know, show pictures of my dog and stuff like that.

[00:19:47] Human humanizing jack. Yeah. And then once I outed myself, it became a lot easier. So then I was able to talk a lot more about things. So by the time four years on, I've got three, 4,000 people in that group. And there's been times I've cut that group down quite a few times because there's a lot of names you come on and just don't do anything.

[00:20:07] But I can pretty much guarantee if I put a newsletter out. At least $2,000, people will react to it. So as far as I'm concerned, that's the best thing you can do is you're building yourself an army. Yeah. I mean, I got into trouble with a couple of other crime writers about a year ago because I was talking about street teams now, street teams.

[00:20:27] Where I come from in marketing was the people who passionately talk about your work. So if you've got a book out, they're the ones who will be. Sliding your book in front of other peoples. Or they'll be saying, oh, you should read this book, not paid, just fanatical. And I had one writer turn around and sort of make a very big post as say, saying, I didn't, you know, I don't pay for street teams.

[00:20:47] And I had to apologize and say, look, I didn't mean what you think it means. And then literally the following three responses on this group were people who all said, I do that for you to this other person. Because they, they are fanatical fans. So it was all about getting the fans who are not zealots but are fanatical about what you do to the point they will tell other people.

[00:21:09] Yeah. And if you a readership this, that engrossed in your work, then you are laughing because you can then move on. I mean, I've moved on to doing Tom Marlow books. I moved on to doing Ellie Reckless books, spinoff novels, and I've had people going, I've never read this type of book before because they're like a spy book or something like that.

[00:21:25] But I followed 'cause it's you. 

[00:21:27] Teddy Smith: Yeah. And you said the newsletter is the way, is the main way that you sort of catch that community engage in between? 

[00:21:34] Tony Lee: Yeah, definitely. Definitely helped a lot. Newsletter helped. And then about a year into it, I started up a reader's group on Facebook. Mm-hmm. And that helped as well because that got a chance to put things out there for people who weren't on the newsletter.

[00:21:47] Um, I would say going into various groups that are relevant to your genre is also Facebook groups You 

[00:21:52] Teddy Smith: mean? 

[00:21:53] Tony Lee: Yes. Sorry. Oh, I mean, I'm in a couple of discord groups now that actually talk about things as well. So there's, there's elements. Make sure you are aware the conversation's happening. Yeah, if it's in Reddit or Discord or Telegram or wherever it is, uh, blue Sky, Facebook.

[00:22:08] Make sure you are there to answer a question. 'cause if you can answer a question, people remember. 

[00:22:13] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This is really good advice. 'cause I mean, most of the people I speak to are, 

[00:22:17] Tony Lee: I do apologize if I'm just going off on one. 

[00:22:19] Teddy Smith: No, no, this is perfect. I mean, most of the people I speak to in consulting calls and things are nonfiction books.

[00:22:25] And a lot of them ask me, what are the main tactics that I should be doing? And you've basically just said, all of the ones I recommend, you know, if you are going, if you're launching a book, get into Facebook groups and start interacting with 'em. Don't just go in and post your book, 'cause obviously you'll get kicked out.

[00:22:38] But you go in and be a, a known face in there, it doesn't mean you have to spend hours a day like, you know, just answering one or two questions a day could be enough. 

[00:22:44] Tony Lee: Well, when I was a co, one thing I've always remember is when I was a Cove Garden Street performer. 

[00:22:49] Teddy Smith: Sorry, you've said it three times now.

[00:22:50] What, what, what did you perform? Oh, 

[00:22:53] Tony Lee: I did street theater. I, I was basically, I did an, I was doing an article on Covent Garden that went along and saw it and thought, oh, I can do this. I couldn't juggle chainsaws or ride six foot, unicycle. I could tell story. And so I basically created a street theater story that.

[00:23:08] I got people outta the audience and they acted out the story. It, it looked as if I was mocking them, but by the end it turned around and I was looking foolish and they were making it look better and all that sort of stuff. 

[00:23:20] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:23:20] Tony Lee: And I, I was, I enjoyed it. I was good at it. Um, but one thing you do is when you start the show, there's nobody there.

[00:23:27] You know, you are walking out into that piazza and there is nobody, there's some people watching 'cause they know something's gonna happen. But you have to spend the first 15 minutes building an audience. To build the audience, you've gotta be blowing a whistle, shouting a show. You know, you pull out a bin and you stand on the bin, and as you're about to shout, you fall into the bin and you're basically making a fool of yourself, but you're being seen and then you eventually start pulling people in and then they stand there.

[00:23:53] And then I. Those people become your first audience. So then you're saying to these people, right, so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna go off, come back on, you guys are gonna go wild, and all these people out there are gonna come in behind you and they're not gonna know what, you know, that we are just doing this to get them in.

[00:24:08] So these guys become your allies, you know, they're your fellow collaborators. And that's the same with self-publishing, because the first people who came in into my books, half of them are my beta readers now, but they're all passionate. Making sure that the books work. So, you know, you, you've just gotta get out there, build that brand.

[00:24:32] But if you build that brand and that brand is your prick, you are not gonna get anybody buying your book. You've gotta be careful with what you do. 

[00:24:38] Teddy Smith: Yeah, for sure. Now, one of the interesting things that I read about you was, especially with, with Hooded Man Media, your digital first publishing, which works with the comics.

[00:24:48] Now you've on there, you mentioned that your, your production, you have an exclusive, you're exclusive with Amazon basically. So you, with those books that get published through there, you only publish for Amazon. And this is interesting because last week I spoke to Dale l Roberts about publishing wide. So it'd be interesting to hear the counterpoint about why you should be focusing on Amazon first.

[00:25:06] Tony Lee: Dale's great. I love his YouTube. Yeah. But most of what Dale seems to do is a very much, a lot of either nonfiction or what I call, low effort books. He used to do a lot of like notebooks and things like he, he finds the things that can be mass sold and he might have changed since the last time I looked, but a lot of what he was doing was very much along those lines of, these are things that you can release and you can put out there and these can be sold.

[00:25:30] The, the creativity factor isn't as much. Does that make sense? 

[00:25:35] Teddy Smith: Yeah, it makes sense. I dunno, I, yeah, I, I'd have to ask him, but I, I think he's,

[00:25:39] Tony Lee: he's not, he's not going off and writing hundred thousand word fantasy novels. He's 

[00:25:42] Teddy Smith: more like nonfiction. I think he focuses on, yeah. 

[00:25:46] Tony Lee: With that kind of thing. Yeah, he could go on Etsy and release these things.

[00:25:51] You know, there's a lot of places you can go with it. For me, when I looked at this, and you gotta remember, I was looking purely, desperation was very much my thing here. 

[00:26:01] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:26:02] Tony Lee: Amazon was the obvious choice. Yeah. Um, now for me, Amazon was the obvious choice because of two things. One, it was easy to get there and people bought from Amazon, but the second thing was kindled unlimited.

[00:26:16] Because for my books to be on kind and unlimited at the time, and it might have changed now, but the eBooks have to be exclusive with Amazon. Yes. So basically I, uh, I know Mark Dawson does a thing where he'll release his book as an ebook, but he'll release it on like Cobo and Apple and things like that for about a month.

[00:26:34] And then he turns around and says, that's gone now. Now I'm exclusive on Amazon. 

[00:26:38] Teddy Smith: Yeah. I think only the ebook has to be exclusive. Not the, not the payback. 

[00:26:41] Tony Lee: Yeah. But the thing was at the time is when I started doing it, I wasn't really that worried about the paperback. Yeah. And as it was, I was adding, uh, my own ISBN.

[00:26:51] I still had some from comics and ISBNs ISBNs, no matter what the media is. But at as far as I was concerned, it was ease. It was ease of everything. But more importantly, the money I've made over four and a half years, which is, you know, a substantial amount, probably 70% of it has come from Kindle Unlimited.

[00:27:11] Teddy Smith: Amazing. Yeah. '

[00:27:12] Tony Lee: cause the genre I write in, which is Crime and Cozy, crime and Mystery and stuff like that. These people eat books. And I'm not even joking, they will literally go onto Facebook and say, I need a new writer, minimum eight book series. 

[00:27:25] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:27:26] Tony Lee: Because they're reading a book a day. Because Kindle Unlimited is Netflix for books.

[00:27:30] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So if you 

[00:27:31] Tony Lee: can find a series that people want to just chew their way through, Kindle Unlimited works for you. Yeah. That's money that's not on the table. 

[00:27:42] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:27:43] Tony Lee: Now if I went to Apple Books or if I went to Cobo or I went other places to sell my eBooks, I'd have to be a hundred percent sure that what I made there outweighed what I lost from not doing kind unlimited.

[00:27:58] Yeah. And in my genre, I don't think there is. 

[00:28:02] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:28:02] Tony Lee: I don't think there's that much of a difference. Uh, I still keep an eye on it. 'cause don't get me wrong, if Amazon screw up my. Account one day or something like that, then I will. But for me, it seems that Amazon at the moment still for better or worse, love him or hate him.

[00:28:18] Amazon's the biggest gaming town, so you have to go with that. 

[00:28:22] Teddy Smith: Yes. It's quite interesting with them. Sorry. I was gonna say it's quite interesting with, 'cause you are a fiction, my books are nonfiction. Mm-hmm. Kindle Limited make up a really tiny proportion of my, uh, ebook sales. Uh, even eBooks I make, I, I sell way more paybacks.

[00:28:35] So it's interesting that you, that you have that experience with the, with the eBooks on Kindle Limited, and that's your, I think I read you have 170 million pages read on. Oh. 

[00:28:47] Tony Lee: Wow. You know what, while, while I'm actually talking to you right now, I will open up my book report and I will tell you now of all time.

[00:28:58] So let's look. So this is all time. So this is from the moment I started as Jack Gatlin back in 2020, all the way to now. Um, let's see if it, actually, this is where I find it won't open now, and it's just gonna, oh, I've done all this stuff and it show. Pardon my name. Uh, okay. So basically, yes. So all the way through it, all my books have been exclusive, as I've said.

[00:29:21] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:29:22] Tony Lee: And at the moment I've had 277,000 pages read. Sorry, 277 million pages read. So it's over a quarter of a billion. Yeah. Um, when I look at my royalties compared to my. KDP select royalties, and I'm not gonna give the numbers or anything like that, but I can see here that literally my print royalties and my ebook royalties together are roughly half of what my KDP select royalties are.

[00:29:51] Oh, that's in total over those entire time. So therefore, I now know that basically 6 66 to 70% of my income comes from people reading page at a time limited, who literally. Make 85 90% from ku and then there are some in my same genre who will only make 40%. 

[00:30:15] Teddy Smith: Yeah, crazy. 

[00:30:16] Tony Lee: It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:30:18] Teddy Smith: Yeah, I think you gotta think.

[00:30:19] Yeah. So I think you're right. I think if you are publishing novels that are gonna be page turners and people are gonna wanna read every single one you do have, I think Kindle Unlimit just seems to be the obvious answer by an absolute mile. 

[00:30:29] Tony Lee: And there might be a day when Kindle Unlimited isn't.

[00:30:32] Or it goes down too low or something like that. But at the moment, for me, it makes sense to stay with that and therefore I will stay exclusive with Amazon. Now when it comes to comics, with the exclusivity to Amazon, it's mainly because it's a really hard thing to say. 'cause I've been writing comics now for almost 25 years.

[00:30:51] Comic stores and things like that are becoming a bit of a thing of the past. I don't like that. I love comic stores, but Diamond, who are the main distributors of comics went bankrupt last year. Diamonds UK got bought out by someone else, but they're still kind of wobbling, you know? Um, the only reason a Amazon hasn't got a bigger hold is 'cause they managed to absolutely kill the app Comicology, um, which was a great app for reading comics and an Amazon bought it and played around with the UI and it didn't work.

[00:31:22] But Amazon's still, again, you know, all it has to do is fix that and then that's changed it. The new Kindles will be color. Once they have color Kindles, comics will be okay on Amazon and therefore, bam, it's gone again. So you've gotta look at what's happening in five years. 

[00:31:37] Teddy Smith: Yeah, the Kindle color just come out this like this year, I think, didn't it?

[00:31:41] Yeah. 

[00:31:41] Tony Lee: Yeah. And this is it. So five years from now, I think Amazon, again, you'll be buying your graphic novels from Amazon on Kindle rather than, uh, you know, anywhere else. 

[00:31:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. I 

[00:31:52] Tony Lee: hope, I hope there's less of a monopoly, but you know, you have to be a pragmatist. 

[00:31:56] Teddy Smith: Yeah, for sure. Now, one of the topics you are talking about in one of your upcoming speeches is about your writing process, and you've got a bit of an interesting way of approaching it where you write your books backwards.

[00:32:09] I was trying to work out how that would work, and so I couldn't even think about it. So I didn't even prepare any questions on that exact topic. I thought I would just let you explain then try and understand it as you were talking. 

[00:32:19] Tony Lee: It's great. So I come from 

[00:32:21] Teddy Smith: comics, 

[00:32:22] Tony Lee: and comics is one of the hardest disciplines to write, and people sit down and watch this again.

[00:32:30] I read them when I was five, you know? But if you watch a film or a TV show. They can be as long as you want, or short as you want. Mm-hmm. It used to be TV shows had to be a set time, but now they're not. But even if they aren't, it's not you that changes that. It'll be a, an editor who will cut down to fit the space.

[00:32:48] Um, your screenplays will be as long or as short as you want, you know, and Aaron, so can used to write 32 Minute West winging episodes or 38 minute West Wing episodes, and they were 65 pages long. If you're writing a novel, it can be as long as you're short as you want. The chapters can be as long as short as you want.

[00:33:04] All of these things are completely linear comics. You're told what your page count is. Comics you are told it has to be 22 pages. It has to be 110 pages. It has to be 144 pages because comics are printed on an eight based sheet. 

[00:33:24] Teddy Smith: Yep. 

[00:33:25] Tony Lee: So it will go up on those lines. So therefore, when someone turns around to you and says, right, this comic is a 32 page comic, four pages are gone for outside cover, inside cover, et cetera, then you've got title credit.

[00:33:37] You've got 22 pages. You can't write 21, you can't write 23, you've got to set it at 22, which means you can't start on page one and go, let's see what happens. You have to work it all out. In addition, if you've got a massive reveal like, oh my God, you know, this is a, ah, this, I can't believe this has happened, that can't be on a right hand page because unlike a novel, when you open up a page on a comic, you instantly see the image here no matter what.

[00:34:07] Right? You might not know what the context is, but the image has been seen and processed, which means if there's a big reveal. You've seen it and now you're on this page, but you're remembering it's there. So a big reveal has to be on a left hand page. Well, that only gives you, in a 22 page comic only gives you 11 pages you can use.

[00:34:28] And if you've got two reveals or now you have to start moving things around. So before you even start writing, you've gotta start playing God with the pages. 

[00:34:39] Teddy Smith: Yeah, 

[00:34:39] Tony Lee: so when I started writing comics, I realized that, and this was primarily when I was writing the Doctor Who comics, is you have to end with the cliffhanger.

[00:34:48] You have to end with the moment. You have to find something near the end that you can get to because that is the moment that will then decide what happens here. So big moment here means I can then do two pages to end it, and that gives me 19 pages beforehand. You are constantly robbing from Peter to pay Paul, you are working out how to do this.

[00:35:10] Teddy Smith: Okay. 

[00:35:10] Tony Lee: But as I wrote with comics, it started to change the way I looked at writing stories. So I will come up with what I do school talks that I call it the could have, should or would moment. And it's the point where you watch a film or you're reading a book or a TV show or something where. I do apologize.

[00:35:29] Sorry. It's the point of a film or TV show or whatever when something takes you out of it. So for example, uh, your favorite character dies or your character, the two characters you want to get together end up not getting together and they get, she goes off with him or something else and your brain just goes, no, I'm not sure about that.

[00:35:53] In your mind instantly. If you're a creator, you've come up with a better version. 

[00:35:58] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:35:58] Tony Lee: And in your mind, you've got the could or should have were the moment. It could have been better. It should have been better. And in your mind it would've been better. And that my friend, is the idea. And once you have that idea, you can work your story for me.

[00:36:12] But your story idea is never once upon a time, your story idea is always. Put the gun down. She said, you smack bang in the middle of a moment. You don't know what's going on. Who's she, why they got a gun? What's happening? And once you've got that moment, you can start asking questions. And so when I, and I do this again with kids when I do a school talk, because I do Robinhood, because everybody knows the story of Robinhood.

[00:36:39] So I go, the sheriff of Nottingham is going to hang, made Marian. And made Marian's going, you don't want to do this. You'll be sorry, but she's not scared. 'cause she knows that up there in the Battlements, Robin Hood's there to save her. 

[00:36:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah. If 

[00:36:51] Tony Lee: I said, sheriff Marian Robin, what happens next? Anybody who knows the story of Robinhood will go, Robin saves Marian and defeats the sheriff.

[00:37:00] That's what happens. But if you don't know the characters, if you don't know the story. We dunno what's gonna happen. I mean, she's being hanged by a law enforcement officer. She could be a bad guy. She could be a serial killer. The guy up there in the battlements could be here to shoot her in the face. We don't know.

[00:37:16] So you start to ask why. Why is she being hanged? I. Because this happened. Well, why did this happen? Because this happened. So when I talk to kids, I say, you are gonna tell me the story. And there is no wrong answer because when you work backwards, you can fit it to fit the story. So I'll say, made Marian's about to be hanged.

[00:37:34] Why is she being hanged? And I'll get someone shout out 'cause she's a dinosaur. Great. You know? Brilliant. Okay, so why does the sheriff hate dinosaurs? 'cause they killed his mom. Brilliant. Was Marian the dinosaur that killed his mom? No, her mom was brilliant. So now we know Marian's a dinosaur. Her mom was a dinosaur, killed the sheriff's mom.

[00:37:54] The sheriff's going to kill her instead, but why not? And you just work asking the question and working your way back. And because you are working your way back by asking those questions. It's a lot easier to work it through, but also you can come up with moments like, oh, they're trapped in a cell. How do they get out the cell?

[00:38:11] They've got a, a key that can get it out. Brilliant. So now we know that earlier in the story, we'll get to a point where we have to find a way that they get that key, and that's a check offs gun. We now know that they're gonna have a moment earlier on that leads 'em to get to here. So by working backwards, I know the problems before I even get to 'em.

[00:38:31] And then once I've got to the beginning of the story where we've got the beginning of how it all happens, I can then go back to that moment and go, right, sheriff Mion Robin, how does it end with this revised story? And then that's how it'll go. So for example, with my books, I'll have one single moment that will get me what I need to do.

[00:38:53] And often it's something like, it's the murder itself or it's, it's a crime that happens later in the book or something that gets me and I go, oh, that would work as a great act to end. Well, now I have to get to the act to end. So rather than just working it out, act to end beginning make my way there, I will just pull myself back.

[00:39:14] I asking the questions and once I've got the questions answered. Then I can start writing. 

[00:39:19] Teddy Smith: Yep. So how's that look in? So how's that look when you're actually doing your preparation? Have you, I'm guessing you create some kind of outline for your books. Chaos. 

[00:39:30] Tony Lee: That's chaos. I use about a dozen different things.

[00:39:33] I use plotter. I like using plotter because plotter gives me. Things like the three act structures or the hero's journey or stuff like that. So I can kind of look at the plan and go, oh, at this point I should be doing this. 

[00:39:45] Teddy Smith: Mm-hmm. 

[00:39:46] Tony Lee: I use, I mean, a lot of what I use is I'll use, I've got like a remarkable, and I'll have this beside me and I'll be jotting things down as I go along.

[00:39:53] But what I also do is I learned very quickly that I had to start working. As a business rather than a writer. As I said, I'm a publisher who prints, who writes. So I use Notion. And Notion is a dashboard system that all of my tasks, all of my, projects, everything is placed in Notion, but what it also gives me is notebooks where I can throw ideas in.

[00:40:21] So, for example, I have an Apple shortcut that I can talk into my Apple watch, like a spy, or I can tap it into my phone or even on my computer, tap in an idea, press return. It will then go into my, inbox in my notion, and I can just mark that as a, this is a. Notebook folder for say my next book. Yeah. My next book is for Shadow Threat, so I'll go, this is a shadow threat note click, which means that then when I go into that notebook page.

[00:40:52] All of my ideas for shadow threat that I've come up with over years, you know, every time I've had an idea, boom, that's there. So therefore, when I'm starting to, yeah, I've got my moment, I've got my idea, I can then go into that folder and look at all my other bits and pieces and go, that could lead to that, which then gives me that.

[00:41:12] Okay, I like that. So that's nice. What else do I have in this? Okay, he's gonna be doing this and I want it in this book to do this. So if I'm doing that, that must be there. And then I'm putting it into plotter and I'm marking it down. One thing I do in plotter that, and I've wound came up with this as well, 'cause you won't let me, my own template is plotter does it as chapters, but I like to do it as 5,000 words.

[00:41:41] Because my books average 80,000 words, and I know every two and a half thousand words is roughly a chapter. So I go words, one to 5,000, 5,000 to 10,000, 10,000 to 15,000, and I'll put everything where I think the words will be, not the chapters. Sometimes I'll have a chapter that's 150 words. Yeah. And it depends on what the story shows.

[00:42:05] But then I'll get an idea, and this is where it, again, it comes from comics, is I can look at it and go, right, so I now know that pages, what words, one to 25,000 are sorted. I also know that 80,000 to 65,000 sorted this bit here is blank. This entire second act is blank. Let's go back into my notebook. What else haven't I used?

[00:42:27] Okay, that can go there. That can go there, that can go there. So if I'm doing that, that character needs a subplot. That subplot leads to that. If I now move those in, now I've got a working story. Now, I never used to write like this. I used to write very much like chapter one. Let's go and I just let myself get to it and I succeeded with that.

[00:42:50] But you will always get to a point where you get to 50,000 words. And you realize you've killed the murderer, right? And you got bored and you had an explosion. 

[00:42:59] Teddy Smith: Yeah, 

[00:42:59] Tony Lee: or I had a plan and I'm so far off the path into the woods. I'm having tea with the witch in the gingerbread house. So you've gotta kind of get yourself back on.

[00:43:09] So what I will always do, and this is something I I tell everyone they should do, is when I write my vomit draft, which is my, this draft zero, and just throw everything in, you can edit it in a minute. I get to about 50,000 words, and then I go back to page one and start again. And I don't mean rewrite the entire thing.

[00:43:26] I mean just read every page and check to make sure that I haven't. Altered anything significant or if I have that I can fix anything that hasn't been altered, that's connected, I might have realized I needed a new character to turn up. Well, if I have a character turn up, it's 50,000 words into an 80,000 word book I.

[00:43:47] That's a bit of a con, so I now need to bring that character into a couple of scenes earlier. Yeah. In the same way that a movie that's really cheap will hire Morgan Freeman for a day and have him do like 15 scenes in a day and inflict them throughout the entire film. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm doing.

[00:44:04] I'm just finding ways to like change this as I go along. So by the time I get back to page F, well to word 50,000, I'm now 55,000 and now I can carry on. And again, that moment is my kind of Marion Sheriff Robin moment. Yeah, so working backwards isn't from the end. It's from near the end, but it's showing me what the end is by going that direction.

[00:44:28] Teddy Smith: Yeah, 

[00:44:29] Tony Lee: that's really interesting answer and I apologize for that. No, it's perfect. Everywhere 

[00:44:36] Teddy Smith: I get so many questions. I mean, one of the main questions I get from, especially from fiction writers, but nonfiction as well, is, you know, tips about writing and where to start and how to, how to get that first draft out there.

[00:44:47] And this, you know. Starting from that point of where do you want the ending to be and what, what is the smoking gun as you mentioned, or what is the ending that you want to see, and kind of working back from that makes perfect sense because. You know, you are, you can fix potholes as you go along, you know, but you can't If you get to the end and you've already written it really nicely and suddenly you've realized, yeah, as you mentioned, the murder is dead.

[00:45:07] That's quite a lot of rewrites. 

[00:45:09] Tony Lee: I've, I've blown up more. I literally, I have people who write the books I write and they'll have, there was a murder. They turn up, they solve the murder. Done. 

[00:45:19] Teddy Smith: Yeah. I have 

[00:45:19] Tony Lee: three, four people die in each book because I literally have to end the chapter with a cliffhanger, so I'll have things going on and they're, they're far more running, jumping, climbing trees explode.

[00:45:30] But here's one thing I was taught and it was, it kind of goes against what a lot of people think when they're writing, and this is one thing I have noticed a lot of writers, and I said at the start, if you want to write the perfect book and that's it, good do it. There are a lot of writers out there who haven't pressed publish because they don't know if their book is a five star book yet.

[00:45:51] They don't know if it's gonna be the book that does everything. And what I was told very early on, I can't remember who told me it is, they said, don't write a five star book. Write a three star book, but don't release it at the same price as the big publishers. Because if a person pays eight pound for a book and it's not as good as they thought it would be, they're gonna vote it lower.

[00:46:13] If they read a book that's half that price, don't vote it higher, but more importantly. Nobody writes a five star book unless it's only got five reviews and they're all from the family. The biggest books in the world, some of the greatest novels like Gone With the Wind, uh, of my and Men, um, Fahrenheit 4 5 1.

[00:46:33] I recently was checking these for this keynote speech I'm doing. They're all on about 4.1 out of five on Amazon. You know, my books are 4.3. I'm not better than them. It's just purely that's how the algorithm works. Stop striving to write the Five Star book because the guy who went for the Three Star book has his book out now and he's published and he's making money.

[00:46:55] The person who's trying to write the five Star book is on draft 27. 

[00:46:59] Teddy Smith: Yep. 

[00:47:00] Tony Lee: And will constantly be, and earlier when I mentioned The Lion Hot Curse, which is the book that I was trying to write and would never get going and stuff like that. Well, when I started working as Jack Gatland and I mean working, it was doing well and I realized this was something that was going ahead.

[00:47:15] I spoke to my agent who decided that maybe they should get some of my Jack Gatland money. And I said, well, no, because I'm not contracted to Amazon. So Ag deal is only my contracted work that you can provide. And in the end, I stepped away from them. Uh, I've gone back since 'cause they're now doing my film, their books to film.

[00:47:32] But I said, I'm not doing my books through anymore. And I gave them my 60 day notice. I. And basically 61 days after that.

[00:47:46] I released the Lionheart Curse. It's the exact same book that I was told wouldn't actually work. The one that I was told the editors weren't too sure about it and things like that. And I did everything that I knew what I needed to do. I put it into veem. I had it looking properly put together. I had a great cover sorted for it.

[00:48:09] I. You know, I, I got it. Everything that I learned over the other books and I released it with no free orders or anything, I just went, here's a new book, bammed on its own. In the last two years, that book has made me four times what I was promised as my highest amount. If I did everything they said. And yes, it's not on a Waterstone shelf, but if I wanted it to be, I could do that.

[00:48:40] I'm happy where it is. I'm just happy it's out. You know, I'm enjoying the fact it's being released, but this is a three star book as far as I'm concerned. Although if you go online, it's 4.4 on Amazon. Yeah, don't stress about that. There's absolutely no need to stress about it. Stephen King, James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson, they don't stress about it.

[00:49:02] They write their book, pass it, move on to the next. If you want to be making the money, they do. You kind of gotta be the same. 

[00:49:10] Teddy Smith: Yeah, I agree. I think you're right. I think you've gotta be, you've gotta be publishing as many, as much as you can, gotta keep writing, and you gotta be thinking about your business, not just about creating that perfect book, because otherwise you'll just always be just in this ever, uh, this loop of like trying to fix everything you do and trying to correct everything and just never really getting anything out there.

[00:49:28] Tony Lee: And don't get me wrong, I mean, I'd love to create the perfect book and I do my best to give the best book I can. I mean, I have 25 lines in my to-do list for every book, 25 lines. And they might be things like create the cover, create the title, uh, the Amazon page, um, a book linker, oh, I actually, important thing if you, if you are a writer watching this thing and you want to release a book.

[00:49:55] Get something like a Genius Links or book link. A link for your book, right? 'cause the one thing I see more than anything are writers saying, Hey, buy my book. It's on amazon.com, stroke A SIN. And that's great. But if I'm in the UK and I click on that link, it will take me to the Amazon UK page and go. Oh no.

[00:50:15] So it, first of all, well take me to the page, but then go, oh, you look like you're on the wrong country's page. Let me take you to the right page. And then you go to your Amazon page, but it doesn't take you to the books page. It takes you to the main page, which means you then have to retype in all the details to get that book.

[00:50:31] And as I said at the start, people love to find a way to not buy something. A book Linker is geo linked. Therefore, if you click it in America, it goes to.com. Click it in the uk. Goes to uk. Yeah, it's free. It's worth doing, but it's one of my 24. I finished my book. I go through it as an edit. I put it through write Pro writing aid, just to check if I've missed words or things like that.

[00:50:56] I then send it to two different editors. One is a plot editor, one is a proof editor. They send me back their notes. I revise my book. I then go through it again myself. I then send it to two more editors. One is a Find Online editor, one is a weapon specialist. For my spine book because I once had someone complain that I realized I'd put a Glock with a safety catch and Glocks don't have safety catches and I'm British, I don't know.

[00:51:21] But this guy pulled me up on it and I said, would you like to be my, you know, my weapons specialist? another little thing for anybody who's watching this, if someone sends you an email saying, you made a mistake, hire them. Yeah. 'cause they contacted an A, an author out of the blue means. They will do that for you if you ask them.

[00:51:40] Yeah. My best beta readers are people who pulled me up on something and now get a chance to help me with everything. But again, go the thing. So I've gone through five levels of editing before it's even gone to my beta readers and my beta readers pick things up before it goes out. I know people who go, right, 

[00:51:57] Edit line post. They'll get people complaining, but they're still making four stars out of five. So it all depends on how much work you want to put in to make the book you want to make. For me, I want to have a book that people enjoy and people don't complain about. I want people to feel that they've got their money's worth of the book.

[00:52:18] The fact I make money from it is a bonus. Realistically, you know, all I ever wanted was to make my rent back the money that I was losing in the pandemic. 

[00:52:27] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:52:29] Tony Lee: You know, and in the last four years I've made more money in the last four years from doing Jack than I did the previous 34 as Tony together, which is insane.

[00:52:39] Teddy Smith: Yeah. But 

[00:52:40] Tony Lee: I couldn't have done these four years as Jack without knowing the previous 34 years as Tony. 

[00:52:46] Teddy Smith: Yeah. It's like what Ricky Dva said. Uh, and I bring him up a lot in this podcast because I think he basically is my biggest inspiration. But he was like, I couldn't have written the office if I hadn't worked in office all that time before.

[00:52:57] So, you know, it is about using your previous 

[00:53:00] Tony Lee: experience. I, I couldn't have written the Dex books if I hadn't murdered many people and left Monday allegedly. Allegedly lawyers. Allegedly. 

[00:53:09] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on. This has been a fascinating conversation. I'd love to hear about your process.

[00:53:15] Um, I'll ask to get you back on. 

[00:53:16] Tony Lee: It's pleasure to talk about it. I'm sorry, I just ramble off. I hope that No, it's been, it's been super 

[00:53:21] Teddy Smith: interesting. Have you got, what, what are your projects you're working on at the moment? 

[00:53:25] Tony Lee: So, at the moment I've, I'm trying the moment to rapid release a lot of books for 2025 because I want to take a break in the latter half of the year.

[00:53:33] Mm-hmm. As I said, I burned out quite badly when I first started, and I've always been aware. When I'm getting close, if that makes sense. My dog has recently been diagnosed that she's lost, a lot of eyes say she's 30% visual now, so she needs a bit more attention and I spend more time with her, which means I'm not writing.

[00:53:54] But what I've also been doing is, I don't have it, do I have it on me? Yeah. So I actually narrate my books. So when I'm actually talking, I will, dictate into a plowed device or something like that. So I walk her a lot, or if I'm spending time with her, I can talk. So I'm using this to hammer out books a lot quicker at the moment.

[00:54:12] So. This year, I've got a new series that's coming out this month. Liam Harper, which is, I've been told is effectively reacher meets the littlest hobo, which most people of my age or American will understand. Mm-hmm. I've got my next Tom Marlowe spy book I'm writing at the moment. And I'm also, I've just finished.

[00:54:31] I mean, and this is the thing about a rapid release. So I will point this out very quickly for anybody who thinks they could do it. I have literally just sent off my edits. For my April novel, my March novel has just been sent back to me with a final wave of edits, which I'm now putting into the presetting stage.

[00:54:51] I am writing my July novel and I'm planning out the marketing already for my August novel. Right. In the meantime, I'm also writing a comic with I am maiden front man, Bruce Dickinson, which is great, but he's mad and he's also on tour with I'm Maiden, so. I'm having to work around his time zones and things like that, and I'm also talking at the Iron Publishing Show, in a week and a half.

[00:55:19] And then I'm also talking in Lanier, in Seville in May. So I've gotta make sure I've got, presentations for them. So it's quite hectic, but at the same time, I wouldn't change it for the world. I genuinely, it's the best job. it is the best job I could ever have. I do everything I want to do. Oh. I'm also running a Comic Con in July.

[00:55:41] But, you know, I'm, it's everything that I wanna do because if I don't wanna do something today, I'll do it tomorrow. As long as I can keep my, my head above the water, it can work. And if I can get these books out fast, then I can enjoy my summer a lot better. Yeah. But what will actually happen, I'll be honest, Teddy, is I will find, I've got two spare months and I'll write another bloody book.

[00:56:05] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on. If people wanna get in touch with you, join your newsletter, that sort of thing, what, where's the best place to do that? Um, 

[00:56:12] Tony Lee: to be honest, I'm currently revamping all of my, websites, et cetera, because I recently started the new branding of, uh, one man, two names beforehand.

[00:56:20] It used to be there was Jack Gatland and there was Tony Laber. Now I'm writing Urban Fantasies under my name again. It's kind of all merging into a big group. So you can find me@jackgatlin.com or Tony lee.credit uk. All of my social media has gone back to being Mr. Tony Lee. So Twitter, blue Sky, Facebook, everything like that is Mr.

[00:56:39] Tony Lee. Um, you can contact me at hello@hoodedmanmedia.com. Uh, hooded Man Media again was named because when I was Jack Gatland I was hiding my identity and Robin Hood hides identity. 

[00:56:52] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:56:52] Tony Lee: Um, and yeah, so I'm pretty much ask me a question. I'll do my best to answer it. 

[00:56:57] Teddy Smith: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for coming on.

[00:56:59] It's been fascinating talk and we'll speaking soon. 

[00:57:03] Tony Lee: Thank you. 

[00:57:04] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about publishing performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start.

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