The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
Information is power. From Mindset to Tactics to Implement- this is a deep dive into how Hollywood truly works with inspirational and empowering interviews of Business Leaders and Creators around the world. Get to know global creative and thought leaders from Hollywood and beyond as they share their knowledge and engage in unique conversations led by a successful Hollywood insider on navigating Show Business and making an impact in all areas of life. Explore the journeys that made a difference in the path to success of accomplished creatives and thought leaders around the world.
The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
The Making of a Best Seller and how to get published with JD Barker
JD Barker knows how to write a best seller and understand the process of selling and publishing one's own work. In this episode, packed with tips and advice, he shares his inspiring journey from ghostwriter to bestselling author, emphasizing the importance of personal branding and collaboration in storytelling. He discusses the evolving landscape of publishing, the influence of AI, and his exciting upcoming projects, providing valuable insights for aspiring authors. Tune it to get the the insights on:
JD's transition from a finance job to full-time writing
Insights on personal branding and audience building
Importance of collaboration in the writing process
Role of AI in creative endeavors and its limitations
and all about his upcoming book projects, their themes, and the journey from page to screen.
To find out more about J.D go to his website:
Thanks for listening! Follow us on X, Instagram and Facebook and on the podcast's official site www.theheartofshowbusiness.com
Welcome to the heart of show business. I am your host, alexia Melocchi. I believe in great storytelling and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television and music industry works. We will cover. Dreams come true, the road less traveled journey beginnings and a lot of insight and inspiration in between. I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll sound and action.
Alexia Melocchi:Hello to all my listeners of the Heart of Show Business podcast. You know I haven't been doing as many episodes as I like to lately, but whenever I have a guest on, it's for a very, very special reason and when I discovered this incredible, worldwide renowned New York Times bestseller author and some of his books and his trajectory of his career you know, going from obviously publishing with some of the biggest publishing houses to doing it on his own and pivoting and still succeeding at it and, of course, having some of his books already sold to major studios to be made into features, I told myself I have to bring this gentleman on. So I have with me here JD Barker. He is a New York Times bestselling author. His books have been published worldwide with some of the biggest publishing homes. He was a journalist before. He was writing for a lot of magazines, doing celebrity interviews, and then, you know, he went into, I think, into the indie publishing world back in 2014. So I think it's way before we all caught up into this. And you know his novel Draco was sold, of course, into the studios.
Alexia Melocchi:He's collaborating with some of the greats, like James Patterson. He has another thriller called the Fourth Monkey. He's been with HarperCollins. I mean, you just have to look him up. He is a powerhouse in the thriller supernatural horror. You know, true, not I don't think it's true crime, but crime space. I haven't read all your book, pardon me, because I went. It would take me five months to read them. So pardon me for not being fully up to speed, but you are my kind of author, so welcome to my show, jd.
J D Barker:Well, thanks for having me. I'm gonna have to bring you along everywhere I go and you can just introduce me at the, you know, at the, at the opening of the room when I walk in.
Alexia Melocchi:that was perfect it's my little Hollywood pizzazz. You know, when you're a producer and you have to pitch something in a room, it's like, okay, can we put the highlight reel? And just like, really like use the buzzwords and just like get people intrigued, right? So yes, I'm full hire it's fun.
J D Barker:it's fun hearing it like that, because you know, to me like it just it went by in a blur, but you know, you basically just summed up the last 30 years of my life.
Alexia Melocchi:Exactly, and because I want people to be curious about you. I mean, I find it so boring when people start reading off a thing and they're like, oh, and this, and he did that, so what's the point? You're going to be on my show, you're going to talk about it, which is so fantastic, you know. So I want to hear a little bit about your origin story, because, of course, you started out an author, I'm going to write books, and why did you also choose all this very dark, dark genres, let's put it this way.
J D Barker:Well, I, you know, like a lot of the people in your audience, you know I've been writing pretty much my whole life. It was kind of my go to, you know, just to keep myself sane. It was, you know, something I just did for fun and my parents encouraged that portion of it. You know, writing was a fantastic hobby in their eyes but they kind of drilled home. You know, writing is great for, you know, fun activity but you can't make a living at it so you have to get a real job, you know. So I kind of. You know that's sort of how I spent the first half of my life. You know, I went to high school, finished that up, went to college, ended up getting a degree in finance, another one in business, another one in IT, I got halfway through a psychology degree. Then I ended up working in the finance industry and through all of that, you know, I would come home and I would write.
J D Barker:And one of my first jobs I worked for BMG Distribution, which was a division of RCA Records down in Fort Lauderdale in Miami. That was essentially a glorified babysitter, so they would have a recording artist come into town and I'd have to pick them up at the airport, get them to the radio station for their interview, get them to their concert, get them to their hotel and then get them back on their airplane when it was time to go. And you know, meanwhile I was going to college during the daytime, which is expensive. So I quickly realized I've got some very famous people in the car with me. You know they're a captive audience, sometimes for four or five days at a time. So I started to interview them and then I would take those interviews and sell them to magazines like 17 and teen people and teen beat and you know all these other magazines that were huge back in the nineties that are probably gone now.
J D Barker:Um, but when you work in that world, when you work for newspapers and magazines, you quickly realize everybody you're working with has a novel at some stage of development. It's in a desk drawer somewhere. They've been working on it for the last 10 years. It's almost done. It's 400,000 words. You know they're just they're, yeah, they're kind of lost, but I was very good with grammar and punctuation.
J D Barker:So initially people would just hand me those books and ask me to just kind of go through it and, you know, clean it up for them, which I love doing. It was fun, and that that turned into providing developmental advice and ultimately it turned into a side hustle as a career, as a book doctor and a ghostwriter. So you know, I was working in finance, you know, after I got out of college. Ultimately I was a chief compliance officer at a brokerage firm, which is as horrible as it sounds, but it's one of those jobs that pays really good. So I was kind of kind of stuck and then I would come home and I would work on these other projects at night and over 20 some years I ended up with six different books that hit the New York Times list that all had other people's names on the cover that I had essentially written, which gets really old after a while.
J D Barker:So when that six one hit up, my wife pulled me aside and she said Listen, I know you want to become a full time author. Let's figure out a way to make this happen. But we were kind of trapped, you know, because I had the big salary, we had a big house, we had cars, we had a boat. You know our monthly expenses were, you know, somewhere around $10,000 to $12,000. So we couldn't just walk away from all that. So she came up with this crazy plan. We sold everything that we owned, we bought a duplex in Pittsburgh, rented out one side and lived in the other, and she sat me down at the kitchen table one day and showed me the bank statement and said, okay, this is our savings. It looks like you have about 18 months to make it as a writer go, and I know that's a lot of stuff, but you know that that's essentially where I kicked off my my career as a full time author. You know it's 20 some years in the making and overnight, overnight success.
Alexia Melocchi:Wow, that is so inspiring. I mean just that alone. I'm going we hit a home run on this one. I mean, first of all, there's one thing that I've seen as a little bit of a common thread for a lot of people who have been successful in their creative endeavors is that they do have a little bit of a business experience, and I am sure that having worked in the financial and business world also helped you think okay, I wrote this book.
Alexia Melocchi:Now how do I sell it? How do I pitch it to obviously at the beginning, to a publishing home? Or how do I build a brand so that I can get readers, so that I can demonstrate to people that my books are good? Because you know, we all know, back in the day we did not have algorithms, we did not have, you know, social media as much as we do today. So how did you, once you started, getting your first publishing deals which I'm sure you made it before the deadline, I would think, hopefully and how did you build the audience? Your, your publishing house can only do so much right. So how did you go about it? Because I know you spoke about personal branding, um, in your talking points, and I'd love to know a little bit how you incorporated your business structure into your creative path well working in the music business.
J D Barker:You know it's a very similar model to books and I saw a lot of people come and go. I saw a lot of the mistakes that they made and I saw what worked and what didn't work. One of the things that has stuck with me my entire life one of the people that I interviewed was Madonna. Back in the day when she was touring for Vogue and we talked about her album promotion and she said that whenever she had a new album coming out, she would make a list of what she saw everybody else doing at the time and then, when she finished that list, she would make another list of things nobody was doing. And that's essentially what she did to promote her book. I've always thought of it as zigging instead of zagging. So you know everybody else is zigging, so you want to zag, you want to do something that's going to make you stand out. So that's always been a benchmark in everything I do from a marketing standpoint. But essentially, I mean I started in the same place that everybody else did. I had zero people on my mailing list. I had zero followers on the social media platforms. You know you start off with one, two, 10, 20, 100, 1000. And it just kind of grows over time.
J D Barker:Each book that I put out is a conscious decision on my part to kind of expand my audience. You know I tend to bounce around in genres. If you read my Wikipedia page, I think it sums me up the best and it was crafted with particular language in mind. It says I'm a suspense author who may also include elements of horror, of sci-fi, of this and of that. And we did that on purpose, because a lot of times when I do an interview, you know, even like this one, the first place a reporter goes to is that Wikipedia page. So it basically defines who I am as a, as an author. It gives them talking points from an author standpoint by bouncing around in genres. I'm almost like a literary Pied Piper, you know.
J D Barker:Like my first couple of books, you know, I was told by my publishers my audience was women, 45 and over, and I said that's great. Now how do I get a different audience? You know not that I want to, I don't want to replace them, I want to add to it. So I wrote a book that was very heavily young adult, you know, to grab that younger crew I wrote a prequel to Dracula, for Bram Stoker's family to rope in the horror authors or the horror readers. So I'm always looking at each project. You know how is this going to expand my audience and bring back into the fold?
J D Barker:And, as a writer, as long as you have a common thread, you know like in my case it's suspense. You know all of my books kind of have that same look and feel to them, the same kind of pacing. You know I can branch off a little bit and people will follow along, and it's not a formula that I invented. You know I studied the big name authors very closely. I studied Stephen King, I studied James Patterson, dean Koontz, like all these. You know Nora Roberts, all these people that were selling a ridiculous amount of books to figure out. You know what they were doing and how. You know these are the names where you walk into a bookstore you see their title on the cover and you don't really care what the book is about. You just buy it because it's them. That's where I wanted to see my career go, so literally everything I've done has been towards that as the end goal.
Alexia Melocchi:Wow, and you did make it within the deadline. Right that your wife gave you, Did you I?
J D Barker:did. Yeah, I think I. I don't think I've ever missed a deadline. I'm autistic, which is something we can talk about if you want to, but that's always kind of been there. If you put a problem in front of an autistic person, we can't do anything else until we get that done. So a book deadline is has never been a problem for me.
Alexia Melocchi:That is so, you know, and this is absolutely. I mean that that is definitely something to talk about. I did have a guest before. His name is Matthew Kenslow, who is autistic, and he, he put himself through school and it took him, you know, years to go over and over again. But he was like I am, I am going to be a scientist, I'm going to teach, I'm going to go and inspire kids, and I mean the most amazing challenges.
Alexia Melocchi:It was never say die and and, and you know, he approached everything a little bit like you're talking about it. It was in a very analytical way. It's like seeing it on a chart, you know, like how, in minority report, you see the people that are like looking at things and moving them around. That's exactly how he planned his life and he planned his career, you know, and everything he wanted to do the sciences, the teaching, the degrees and everything. And I would think you know when people say artists, autism is not a handicap, autism is a special ability. I always say that as far as what I'm interpreting it as. So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, was there and was there anybody who turned you down because of it, or no?
J D Barker:No, I mean essentially, you know, like my social skills have always been terrible. I wasn't diagnosed with autism until I was 22. So I didn't know what was going on. I just knew I had trouble, you know, being around other people and socializing. But once I got that diagnosis, you know, again, it was a problem that somebody could put in front of me that could be solved, you know. So I started to research autism. I was diagnosed with something called Asperger's. So I, you know, researched that in particular and you know, once I was able to do that, I could, you know I, very similar to what I do with books, I made a pro and cons list. You know, these are the negatives that this creates for me. Here are the positives it creates for me. And I doubled down on the positives, one of the things that I learned later.
J D Barker:You know, as an autistic person, you know we tend to mimic the other people in certain situations. You know, it's kind of how we get through life. You know, to give you an example, if I'm standing at a party with four or five friends and somebody cracks a joke, I may not find it funny, but I'm going to laugh, you know, a millisecond later because everybody else is laughing. I basically copy what I see happening around me to try and appear as normal as possible, which is a silly thing to have to say out loud, but that's essentially what's going on, you know, in an autistic person's head. So mimicking is something I've been doing my entire life.
J D Barker:And what I didn't realize is, you know, I said, when I was working as a ghostwriter, I was actually mimicking other authors and one of the skills that it gives me is I can read, you know, like a couple paragraphs, a couple chapters written by somebody else. I can pick up on their writing style and their cadence and their vocabulary and I can mimic that writing style which, you know, at the time I was in high demand as a ghostwriter because I could write a memoir for somebody else, but in their voice, you know. So that's a skill I've kind of carried over. Now that I'm writing fiction, you know, it just adds a little bit more authenticity, I think, to my characters, because each voice is very different. They're very real people to me when I put them down on paper. So you know, just like anything else, I just kind of looked at what's working, what's not, and then, you know, try to focus on the good stuff.
Alexia Melocchi:Well, you're doing fantastic here, to begin with, and you already picked up like the style of of my own podcast. And you know, one of the mantras of my own podcast is talent takes you places, mindset takes you everywhere, which I do believe that, and you literally embody that. And and I am now I'm going to have to pick up all your books, as if I don't have enough time, but I'm going to have to read up all your books. As if I don't have enough time, but I'm going to have to read them because I'm totally intrigued. And bringing it back to the books, when you write, is there a thought in the back of your head I want to see this into a movie or a series. Or do you just write the book for the pure pleasure of writing it and then, if it gets sold like quite a few have of yours, great. If it doesn't, it's not a deal breaker.
J D Barker:Like, do you think about seeing the visuals of your stories when you I've been trying to figure out Hollywood from the beginning and like, the more I look at it, the more confusing it actually gets. Every one of my books have been optioned, with the exception of my very first one. It's got a tie into Stephen King and because of the legalities of all that, you know, the lawyers tend to tell the studios just to take a step back. It's just not worth the trouble. But every other one that I've written has gotten optioned. And it's funny because I wrote a book called A Caller's Game and at that point I think I had five options that were already in play. And when I wrote that book like I consciously tried to write a book that couldn't be filmed. I'm like I'm going to make something that they can't, even just to see what happens. And then the book came out and Ridley Scott's company picked it up right away. We had talent tied to it right away. You know I blow up like half of New York in this book and I just I figured that it's just not going to happen. But you know, it just literally just comes down to a budgeting thing. It's like, yes, we can film it. It's going to be a $200 million project, but it can be, it can be done, you know. So even that one's moving forward.
J D Barker:I think what happens is for me like when I write, you know, I basically create characters to the point where they they are very real people and I take them and I drop them into one, you know, into the plot, I drop them into a scenario. But because they're real people to me, I can watch them and they can basically dictate their actions. So I'm more or less watching a movie playing out in my head and I'm writing it down as fast as I can when it's working. That's essentially what it's like. The side effect of that is the words. You know, the book itself is very cinematic.
J D Barker:So I think, when the folks in Hollywood, when they read it, you know just, it feels like a movie and you know just, it feels like a movie and you're like, if you read a lot of my reviews, you're going to see, you know a lot of them, people point that out. They're like this was like watching a movie, this was like watching a movie. Um, so I guess that's the outcome of it and the, you know the. The bonus is that the folks in Hollywood tend to grab those. Um, you know, to me that's a numbers game, you know, I just I put my head down and I just write the next book. You know, sooner or later I think something's going to get done.
Alexia Melocchi:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's also because you're getting sold to the powerful guys, and nothing against them, because of course, when you're dealing with companies like Ridley Scott or Paramount or whatever, it's definitely an asset to your own personal brand, but they have so much going on sometimes and they can only get green lights, so many projects at any given time, especially when they're expensive. The indie producers who unfortunately may not have enough cash to pay for those book purchases or book auctions because they have to basically go out and hassle. Sometimes some of those films get made a little quicker. I mean I've seen that happen even with the Last Legion or Valerio Manfredi. I mean obviously it was the Weinsteins, but you know he's Alexander the Great was optioned by. You know he's Alexander the Great was optioned by. Well, it was first optioned by really Scott's company that went into Baz Luhrmann's company, that went from Universal to Fox and they hired a writer that they didn't like the writer. So it's still sitting there after almost 20 years. And then, you know, oliver Stone got to do his version of Alexander the Great, but that's something that I've seen. He's that version of Alexander the Great, but that's something that I've seen.
Alexia Melocchi:We have one of our own films from one of our authors, that Camelot's cousin, the spy who betrayed Kennedy. David is a historian, so he loves to do history, thrillers and things that have to do with politics. You know, because he was also a pastor, for you know some of the detail of George Bush, you know bodyguards and Homeland Security, so he loves those stories. We had a well-known actor, blair Underwood, who partnered up with us and we are now sitting in the trades and, you know, five years later nothing has happened, because then, of course, we have the war with Russia and now we can't. It's dealing with Russia and we can't do anything.
Alexia Melocchi:So you're right, it is very confusing because there is a lot, of, a lot of moving parts. You know the streaming, the streaming, wars, you know the, the hollywood strikes, the pandemics, the shutdown, but I I'm sure your stuff will see, will see itself on the screen, because one of the great things and and I don't know if you read it in the news now everything is about books. So even in hollywood I mean you're having to be who's a major platform from youtube that is a streamer and financier they're starting their own book division so that they can develop book to made into features, um. So I I find that fascinating because you're almost like a pioneer, you you know, into into what you started to do, because now everybody wants books, no kidding Well it's funny because you can actually revive content.
J D Barker:So there's a movie from the 90s called Flatliners which has always been my all time favorites. It's got Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts, kevin Bacon, billy Baldwin, oliver Platt all these people basically at the start of their career, you know. So they were unknown at the time but then they went on to do these, these crazy, amazing things. I have loved that movie my entire life. And the guy who wrote it his name is Peter Filardi. He's actually on the Dracul project, working on that and I, you know, started bugging them years ago. I was like, hey, if you ever get the rights back to this, I've got an idea. And the studio had the rights. They weren't going to release it, so I just kind of figured that that was never going to happen. And then in January he gave me a call and he's like hey, columbia gave me my rights back. Do you still want to do something?
J D Barker:So we basically came up with an idea, something, a fresh take on the Flatliners storyline, so basically a way to reboot the franchise. But we're doing this completely backwards. So, rather than the movie coming out, you know I'm writing a book based on the original screenplay that he wrote, but with a completely new storyline, new twist to it to take it into the 21st century. So we announced that when we first signed the contract, all the studios jumped all over it. We've got a crazy list of studios that wanted at this point we haven't even finished writing the book yet. But you know. So we're basically rebooting what was originally a movie, was never a book, is now coming back as a book. First, that will become a movie, you know, and I'm not actually the first person to do this Meg Garner did it with Heat 2.
J D Barker:You know, she wrote the sequel to that movie, heat, which was another fantastic movie, you know, and nobody expected anything like that. It started off as a movie. They wrote a book, you know, based on, you know, to follow that storyline and take it into a new direction, and now that's in development as another feature film. So yeah, I'm constantly encouraging authors get out there, take a look at IP. You know that still stands. That works well today. You never know. You know that that still stands, that works well today. You never know. You know if, what, what you can reboot, you know, and if you don't ask the question, if you don't give it a try, it's never going to happen.
Alexia Melocchi:So you gotta you know if you find one you know, light up somebody's email box, see what happens. Worst case, you know, somebody will say no. But at least you know, I published my own book, but mine is all about mindset and you know how to like navigate Hollywood and I self-published it and it was really done. Because of all the courses that I've done on pitching and all of that, I just wanted to offer my cliff notes version of how to succeed in Hollywood and beyond. And then we started developing, you know, a true story, you know, set in Hollywood, like New York of the 1920s, sort of like the woman that went against Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. A true story, true biopic.
Alexia Melocchi:And we wrote the feature scripts. We commissioned both the script of her and her son because he became a spy, and all incredible stuff. But guess what? We just turned those two scripts into a novel and the novel is coming out January 15th, you know. And because we said, you know what, let's build the audience. It's a very expensive, you know, project movie to make, or actually two movies. Let's get those two movies and condense them and turn them into a novel. So I think a lot of people are doing that as well. They're turning existing movie scripts and going. You know what? I don't think I have enough traction on that as much as I want to, because they're expensive. Let me build the audience.
Alexia Melocchi:I think also the writer from I think it's the writer from Twilight. She was self-published as well. If I'm not mistaken, there's quite a few people Fifty Shades of Grey. I think that was pretty much hybrid publishing, self-publishing. I mean, was there a moment? Was your decision to go from traditional publishing to your indie publishing financially driven, or was it more about having control about the trajectory of your book and or your books in plural?
J D Barker:It was a mix of everything. So I indie published the first title. So I kind of got a taste of that world and ended up selling a lot of copies. We sold about a quarter million copies of it, which was enough to put me on the radar of the traditional guys. If you sell a lot of books as an indie, they watch those lists very closely. So when I went to sell my next book I ended up getting a seven figure deal with a movie and TV show attached to it for the fourth monkey series. On the traditional side it was initially with HMH, which is now part of Harper Collins.
J D Barker:But my next several books we published on the traditional model and there were a couple things that I, you know, I got that taste of being indie and I think that's what really, you know, sparked a lot of my decisions, because you've got a hundred percent control over everything from your cover to your formatting. You know I hired professionals across the board. So even though I indie published, I still had copy editors. I still, you know, hire the best formatters out there. I wanted to make sure that an indie published title, if it came out, it was still on par with something coming out of Random House, because in my eyes that's my real competition. So it had to look like something you know coming out of the big houses. But so I basically got a taste of all that. The economics were a big part of it, you know, because as an indie author you get roughly 70 cents on the dollar, which is fantastic, and on the traditional side you're lucky if you get 15 to 20 cents on the dollar. So they hand you a nice big check at the get-go, which is great, but you have to pay that money back and you have to pay it back in these small little increments. So I did a couple of books on the traditional side and then I really started questioning all of this and I went to my agent and I said listen on this next one, which was like a caller's game, I'm going to retain English rights for myself. I'm going to put them out through my own press. You're welcome to sell all the foreign territories like you normally do, and I'm in about 150 different countries. You know 20 to 30 different languages or so, so there was still a big market for that. But that was basically my first step as a hybrid author. You know we traditionally published the book in some places I indie published it in others.
J D Barker:A year after the book came out I looked at the list of countries where it was published and you know if, if, if, it was in a language or not in a language where I wanted it to be, I hired my own translators and put it out there. Um, so I did that for a couple of books. Um then, about, I guess about a year ago, I finished up a book called behind a closed door, um, which started getting a lot of interest from the Hollywood side straight off the bat, and they dubbed it 50 Shades meets David Fincher's the Game. So my agent wanted to take it out. He was like, let's just shop it and see what happens. So he shopped it to all the big publishing houses. We had a number of them that wanted it. It was going to go to auction. We ended up signing a film deal before we signed anything on the publishing side.
J D Barker:And then I got a phone call from a friend of mine who works at Random House and she said listen, we're about to offer on your book in the auction but you need to turn it down. And I asked her why and she said well, we're about to lay off a bunch of people, including the editor who wants your book. I got a similar phone call from somebody at HarperCollins about a week later and then all these layoffs happened across the board. And if you've ever known an author who has a book that's at a publishing house and you lose your editor like that book can end up in limbo for a very long time. You know, a lot of it depends on your contract. You may get your rights back, you may not, depending on the language in that contract.
J D Barker:But that all scared me because I didn't want this book to have that kind of fate. So I kind of reached back to my friends in finance that I had worked with years ago. Simon Schuster had just recently been bought by a private equity firm. So I reached out to Simon Schuster and ultimately I struck a deal where they let me create my own imprint, with Simon Schuster handling my print sales and distribution, which is what I'm doing now. So I basically have the best of both worlds I get to act as an indie author, I can put out whatever books I want whenever I want, but I have Simon and Schuster as the backbone.
J D Barker:So they're getting those books into all the places that I couldn't get to as an indie author. So you'll find them in Costco, in the grocery store, at the airport, you know all those places indie authors are, you know, at this moment from, you know can't get into. I'm able to get my titles there. So that's what I'm doing now and, honestly, it makes a lot of sense because from a financial standpoint, you know I'm collecting revenue as an author, as the publisher, um, you know. And from simon and schuster's standpoint, it makes sense too because you know I'm the publisher, I'm taking on the financial burden of the cost of a print run, let's say. But if the book does well, they profit too. So, like, it made sense for them to partner with me.
J D Barker:And I think you, you're going to see other authors, other publishers, do similar deals to this in the next couple of years. Because to me it's the next logical step of this. Because if you take a big indie author who's selling a ridiculous amount of books, you know a traditional publisher will waive a million dollar check in front of them. That author is going to say no, because they know the economic side of it, they know that they don't need that money. Up front, they, they know that they don't need that money up front. They'll make it back on the other side. But you know, if you change it a little bit, you offer a deal similar to the one that I signed. All of a sudden, that indie author can get their title into a lot of different places and still collect the same revenue that they were getting before as an indie. That's a no brainer, I think, from from all sides. So I think that's how we're going to see this entire industry go.
Alexia Melocchi:I think it's happening globally and you hit the spot on that one. I think it's happening also in the film distribution arena. I mean, you've seen how many movies you're seeing now ending up on Netflix, have already been seen on HBO, there've been HBO productions or Amazon, but then they end up in Netflix. And with a lot of indie filmmakers too, when they're making the smaller movies, I always say to them don't get the big sale with Apple or Amazon or whatever, because once you're tied into that, that's it. You know you have no other ways to exploit your film. But if you start with a niche, for example, if you're having, say, you know, a sports movie, go to all like the platforms that are putting out sports films, you know, so that you're going to have your audience right there. Play that out, play the different niches and whatever the themes are of your movie, and then you can still end up with the big boys or girls or publishers. So I think it's happening on a global scale.
Alexia Melocchi:It's happening in the music business, it's happening in the streaming and in the distribution model, in the production model. It's happening in the author model. Now I'd like to address the elephant in the room, because obviously there's all this talk about AI and chat, GPT and all of that. Are you finding this tool helpful to you as an author? Or is that kind of taking you off because you're seeing everyone and their mother thinking I'm going to be an author and I'm just going to put an idea into ChatGPT? Write me a book and I'll publish it, and it will do just as well as your book.
J D Barker:What do you think? We are years away from that actually happening. At least, that's what I tell myself when I get up in the morning. Yes, I use all the different tools, the AI tools more because I really want to understand where they're at from a developmental standpoint.
J D Barker:My personal favorite is one called Claude, which isn't available worldwide. There's only a handful of places where you can get it, but it just seems to write very well certain things so I can feed a book into it. I can tell it give me the text for the back of the book. You know there's 200 words, the back of book blurb. It can do a fantastic job at that, and if you don't like what it gives you, you know you give me something else. You just type that in 10 seconds later it gives you something else, so you can tweak that. You can get a tagline for your book. It's fantastic at creating ad copy, but can it write a book? No, because essentially, what ends up happening? And if you, if you think about the tech itself, you, and if you think about the tech itself, you know you're talking to an encyclopedia All it can do is regurgitate what it's already been told, which means that it can't have an original thought.
J D Barker:It can communicate things that have already been done, but in my world, you know, like that just doesn't work. So, like for an AI, one plus one always equals two, but when you write a thriller, one plus one really needs to equal three. You need to surprise people. You know, I write books with James Patterson. If Jim and I get on the phone and we brainstorm an idea, he will come up with some crazy things out of left field that I would have never thought of that an AI could never possibly come up with, you know. So that's our edge as humans. Our voice, our writer voice, is our other edge.
J D Barker:You know, I don't think an AI is ever going to be able to duplicate my writer voice. And you know, like I've been told. You know, like people have said, if you want to duplicate Stephen King, all you got to do is feed all of his books into an AI. It's going to learn how to write like Stephen King. If you think about it, that's actually not the case. You would have to upload every experience that Stephen King, the person, has ever had, every interaction he's ever had. All of that would have to go in there and then maybe it might be able to duplicate that. So that's never going to happen and if it does, I think it's probably years away. I mean, ai has to have an original thought before it even becomes competition at this point.
Alexia Melocchi:Yeah, and I think right now, as you said, it's useful to cut the hours of the more tedious things like writing the back of a book cover or maybe doing you, you know, a little quick synopsis so you can put it into your book presentation and then you can edit it yourself. It can give you that, but I don't think it was like that. We're talking about this at the producers guild of america awards and they said they said, producers, your job is safe with AI because, ultimately, when you have to go in the room and same thing like you're talking with authors and you have to pitch an idea and you have to say, you know there is a shark that speaks, you know AI wouldn't be able to come up with a story that because they're going to say, wait, sharks don't speak. You know it's going to go into that, but we, you as a storyteller, as a champion of storytellers, you can invent the craziest things in the room and you can pitch them. You can't pitch them as a machine.
Alexia Melocchi:And I think that goes like you said. Somebody would have to get into your mind and to your thought of saying, oh, what is Jay thinking about all day long? What does he want to do next. How does he act in this situation? And I think that's something that is probably, hopefully, 100 years away, before we even close it to my famous question that I asked you before, because this has been such an inspiring conversation I Obviously you had this challenging moment at the beginning of your career, which was you gave yourself a deadline with your wife, you sold everything and you just I got to do this. You know or forget about it. Were there other moments, once you peaked in your career although there's never really a peaking? Were there other moments where you've encountered a major stumbling block which you had to get out? Your get yourself out of it, and what type of mindset did you use or what type of logic did you use to get yourself out of it? I know it's a very complicated, long winded question.
J D Barker:I tend to. I mean, there's always another brass ring. You know, like there's always something more that you want to obtain. You know, like I won an award, so now I'm an award winning author, I can put that on the cover. I hit a bestseller list, now I can put that on there. I'm a New York Times bestseller, I can put that on there. But in my mind, like I'm in reality, my highest place on the New York Times list was number two. I've never actually hit number one, which means bestseller on the list. So I'm still striving to get that number one. There's always something bigger, but I tend to look at what's working and what's not. You know, everything in my life tends to come down to that. You know, I make a lot of lists of what's working and what's not.
J D Barker:Very early on I looked at branding. You know, if you walk into a bookstore, particularly if you're on the traditional side, they're going to make the title of your book huge and the author name is this tiny little scribble. You know, at the top or the bottom that you can't see unless you get right up on it. Um, but you know, if you look at the big name authors, you know the ones that are selling well the stephen kings of the world. Their name is huge on the cover and the title is this tiny little scribble, um. So that is the ultimate goal from my standpoint. So I started watching my book covers that were coming out of the traditional market and pushing for that. Ultimately, I created a trademark version of my name, which I now license back. So if one of the traditional publishers wants to put my name on the cover of the book which they have to do if I write it they have to actually pay me a license fee in order to put my name on the cover.
J D Barker:I developed my own covers. You know the images and I licensed those back, you know. So rather than having a publishing house create the book cover for me, I do it and I give them the option to license that cover, and I do that on a worldwide basis. And it may seem silly, but like the cost of creating the cover is maybe 1000 to $2,000 to get a really good one, I license each of them for anywhere from 500 to a couple thousand dollars per country. The same image over and over again.
J D Barker:So, like I look at every aspect of my business and figure out what's working and what's not, how to capitalize it, how to monetize it, how to improve it. Recently I just created a new line of co-authored titles, you know, because as an individual I can put out two to three books a year at my writing pace. But to me that's not enough. You know, working with James Patterson, I think, has fed that that a little bit. I've studied his business model very closely. So now I'm working with co-authors.
J D Barker:The book behind me we Don't Talk About Emma. I wrote it with a guy who lived in New Orleans for a number of years. He knows the city inside and out. He knows the people, he knows the places, he knows the smell of the city. New Orleans is a character by itself. I could write a book about New Orleans and I could probably Google enough to be able to fake my way through what I needed to. But having somebody who really knows that city inside and out it adds an authenticity to the story that I couldn't create on my own. So I seek out co authors that can bring in expertise from left field to add a dynamic to the book. So I am always looking at ways to expand my craft and my business model and take everything to the next level.
Alexia Melocchi:Wow, I absolutely love that. And, again, I always say, art is a collaborative, you know effort, whether it's writing a book or making movies, and it always ticks me off sometimes when there is either a filmmaker or you know well, filmmakers have to do their own directing, although sometimes it can be two, but you know or authors, you have to be open. I mean, look at you, you're collaborated with James Patterson, so I love that you are open to bringing in other authors who can give something maybe different inside your books. How do you do those partnerships, though? I mean, are you the lead author and then you just find somebody? Or can somebody come to you and say, JD, listen, I have an idea. I've been writing this book. I love to partner up with you because I love your brand, of course, and I love your name and I love your expertise. Can we do something together? Are you open to this type of collaborations?
J D Barker:Yeah, I mean they all come together. It's like the Hollywood stuff, like no two books have come together the same way. I spend a lot of time mentoring other authors. It's something I really enjoy.
J D Barker:You know, taking somebody, like if they've got that writer gene, like I can tell you know. Like it just jumps out. You know this person can write, but they may not understand the business, they may not understand pacing, they may not understand this or that. I've been there, done that so I can teach them all those different things. So when I bring in somebody to co-author a book, it's a give take on both sides. I'm getting a book out of it in the end, but they're getting a major education in how to write a thriller.
J D Barker:And then, on the flip side, that book is going to come out through Simon Schuster, which is something that would be difficult for many authors to obtain. It's going to be in virtually every bookstore. It's going to be anywhere where you find books. It's going to come out in a lot of countries. That gives them a big leg up. So when they write their next book on their own, they basically walk into that project with this education behind them. So they're writing a much tighter book than they would have before, and they've got an established track record on a worldwide basis. So when they walk into an agent or a publisher they can say, hey here, this is my last book, here's how it's done. And that agent can use that same knowledge. They pitch that book in Spanish, they can talk to a Spanish publisher, and that Spanish publisher is going to be able to see that person's name, as already sold books in their country. So it just gives them a huge leg up.
Alexia Melocchi:Oh, my goodness, I love that. I'm already thinking about so many people who could use. You know who could use working with you on that, and I know there's only so many hours in the day, but I love that you're you're giving back this way. How does your wife feel about, like you, being such a multitasker and being so busy? Do you even have any time for your personal life? And I know you live, you know, outside of the city, I think right now, and so you're having a little bit more of a quieter life, correct?
J D Barker:Yeah, we, when we were in Pittsburgh and the book started hitting, we realized we're living in Pittsburgh and we don't have to. So we started looking all over the country. We ultimately we bought a house on an Island right off the coast of Portsmouth in New Hampshire, which we which we love. I can look out my office window and I can see the water. You know, the elementary school that my daughter goes to is right across the street so she can walk to school. It's it's very picturesque. So we've we've got a fantastic life.
J D Barker:One of the things that honestly started happening when the book started to take off. You know they start coming out in different countries and I would get interview requests from these different places and they would come in at like crazy hours. You know, like we need you at 11 o'clock at night, we need you at two o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, and initially I took all of them because you know that's what I was told to do, but it just you can't sustain a career, I think, doing that. So in today's world I have a quitting bell that runs at three o'clock every day, like that's when my business day ends, no matter what. So any kind of interview, you know, any business activity. Everything's got to be done before 3 pm. Three o'clock. I go fora, run around the island to kind of clear my head and then I come home and I spend the rest of the night with my daughter and my wife and we just we have family time. So you know, I just try to enjoy all of it.
Alexia Melocchi:There's always a need for discipline in life and you know what? Thank God for Zoom right and thank God for you know, all the positive aspects of this pandemics and lockdown is that now you probably don't have to go on so many book tours. You can do your own book tour over Zoom and talk to everybody. You don't have to get on the plane and travel the world. You can do this like this, which I'm sure makes it easy and makes the family happier and everything. This has been such a great conversation, jd. I'm so happy that we connected and you gave so much information and so much wisdom and so much inspiration already to me personally and respect, obviously, for the craft um. We're getting to the, the famous life quote, life mantra, um that you know your go-to um. Have you thought of one since you and I started and pushed the record button?
J D Barker:yeah, so, early on, working with james patterson, one of the things that he told me is at the top of every, he writes everything by hand. He does it on a notebook and at the top of every page he writes the words be there. And you know, it sums up a lot of different things. You know and we really drove that home when we were writing the first book together you know, be there in the scene, with the characters right right there down on the ground, know, like, be in that scene, be in that moment, um. But you know, that's it's taken on another meaning to me because, you know, as an autistic person, I tend to focus very heavily on either where I've been or where I'm going.
J D Barker:I don't necessarily spend a whole lot of time in the actual moment, um. So you know, for me, be there also means, you know, be there in the present. You there in the present, enjoy whatever's happening around you right now. Don't dwell on the past, don't spend time thinking about the future, but be there in the current moment. So I try to do that too. So be there, I think, is probably my go-to phrase right now.
Alexia Melocchi:I love it and you certainly are applying that just by your own life rule that you stop working after 3 pmm and you're taking your time to be with the family and thank god, like I said, you're busy, but at least you're physically there. That's, I think, the joy of being an artist, a writer, you know, a producer, whatever. We don't have to be out clocking in and clocking out. Like you said, we can still be there for the people that we care about the most. So it's the one that we just mentioned and I see on the wall. Is that the next book that is out right now that we need to plug in and promote? When is it dropped? Has it already dropped?
J D Barker:I have so many books coming out, so my last one depending on when this airs, my last one was called Heavier the Stones. It released in November. We don't talk about Emma, which is the one that's behind me. That one comes out in February. In March I have a book coming out with James Patterson called the Writer, which is one of the funnest books I think I've ever worked on, definitely my favorite of the ones I've worked with Jim. And then in May I've got a crazy one about a haunted house on an island and it's based on. It's based on a real house that I see every day when I go on my run around the island, and the tagline for the book is for a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die. So you basically know where the story is going and it's one of those books. It was the scariest book I think I've ever written. I worked on it for a number of years, had to keep putting it aside and putting it aside, but eventually I got it done.
Alexia Melocchi:Years I had to keep putting it aside and putting it aside, but eventually I got it done and it's a frightening tale, Wow. Well, this interview is going to become coming out early in 2025, definitely in January. So, yeah, so we'll have. We'll definitely be able to mention some of those books and even the ones that are coming out. Whenever you know you have specific drop dates, I mean, do let us know. We'll continue to plug the episode. It has been such a true joy and pleasure to have you on my show, JD. I cherish the conversation and for any of you who have questions about JD and you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate review. As you all know, I don't have to repeat myself. I don't have sponsors. I'm doing it out of the love for the craft, so please do support me, but also support my guests by clicking on their website, click on their Amazon author pages, buying their books, because we want to keep them turning out great storytelling. Thank you for being on my show, JD.
J D Barker:Thanks for having me Appreciate it.
Alexia Melocchi:It's been great. It's been great Everybody. The heart of show business over and out. Ciao. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the heart of show business. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can also subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcast player. If you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at theheartofshowbusinesscom.