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Dracula, Typewriters & Childhood Scares: JD Barker on Writing Fear & Owning His Publishing Empire
10 Plays8 days ago
You read that right—JD BARKER is in the Kraken lair. Jo sits down with the international bestselling author of Dracul, Forsaken, and The Fourth Monkey to talk horror, publishing, and why chasing fear is the real writer’s journey. JD opens up about how Dracula changed his life at a garage sale, nearly getting buried alive in hay bales as a kid (yes, really), and why he writes in Scrivener, on typewriters, and even legal pads—all to tap into a different voice.
This episode goes deep on indie vs. traditional publishing, why JD launched his own Simon & Schuster imprint, and the real haunted island that inspired his new book Something I Keep Upstairs. Bonus? He gives killer advice for aspiring writers and shares the unbelievable moment he was handed Bram Stoker’s actual notes.
🎧 Listen up, horror nerds. This one’s your love letter.
🟣 All our links: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell
🛒 We’re Amazon Affiliates: Clicking and buying through our Amazon links helps support the show—thank you!
⏱️ KEY MOMENTS
- 00:13 – JD Barker is HERE: Jo freaks out (appropriately)
- 01:36 – The garage sale Dracula that changed JD’s life
- 02:25 – “That was a job interview”: How JD got the Dracul deal
- 04:06 – Revisiting Forsaken: Cringe or career-launcher?
- 05:54 – Something I Keep Upstairs: The haunted island is real
- 10:34 – Childhood trauma: buried in hay, haunted forever
- 13:04 – Gen X horror hits different (yes, even Halloween 3)
- 17:02 – Why JD writes in Scrivener, typewriter, and legal pads
- 21:17 – Total creative control: How JD got his own imprint
- 23:08 – Indie vs. traditional: royalties, rights, and regrets
- 24:32 – Advice to younger JD: “I needed the fumbles”
- 25:43 – Where to find him (and yes, his site is 🔥). https://jdbarker.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:08
Jo
everyone, Joe here and today, I'm not gonna lie. When the agent gave him the email, I actually thought it couldn't be him. Like, that's gotta be like a JD Baker or a JD, something else.
00:00:20
Jo
No, it's JD Barker. Yeah, yeah, we've got him. And this is an amazing catch. If you know anything about my background in horror, this is like the Mecca for me. So I'm so glad to have you here.
00:00:32
Jo
JD, how you doing?
00:00:34
JD Barker
I'm doing great, but I thought this was the Tonight Show, so I think we've got everything crossed.
00:00:38
Jo
Yeah. Oh, The other way. No, no.
00:00:40
JD Barker
No, I'm kidding. i'm I'm thrilled to be here.
00:00:43
Jo
Yeah. of Trust me. the The thrill goes both ways then. Now, I see that a your list of awards, quite impressive. And the small little, most people won't know this one book.
00:00:57
Jo
it They might not even know the original book that you did the prequel to. believe it's called Drac... Drac... How do you pronounce that name?
00:01:07
JD Barker
Oh, the vampire thing.
00:01:08
Jo
Yeah, the vampire thing. i don't know if we're going to catch on the vampire thing.
00:01:11
JD Barker
Yes. Yeah. So the the book was called Dracul.
00:01:14
Jo
Yeah.
00:01:15
JD Barker
So a lot of, are you a a fan of Dracula?
00:01:19
Jo
It was my jam. i have so much Dracula stuff. You have no idea from all the incarnations.
00:01:24
JD Barker
Okay.
00:01:25
Jo
Absolutely.
00:01:26
JD Barker
So Dracula, like I grew up reading at a very early age. and Dracula was what I considered to be the first adult book I ever read.
00:01:30
Jo
Right.
00:01:33
JD Barker
I picked it up at a garage sale for 25 cents. had the scary cover on it. I figured my mom would never let me read it, but she let me take it home. it scared the bejesus out of me. Like I left the lights on in my room for probably like three weeks after that.
00:01:42
Jo
Yeah.
00:01:45
JD Barker
it's the first time I've ever had, you know, like that kind of an emotional reaction out of a book. And I think I've been chasing that for the, like the rest of my life, either as a reader or as a writer. You trying to trying to recreate that. But my first book that I actually wrote on my own was called Forsaken. It was up for the Best Debut on Novel Award. um forget what year it was, but it was you know for the the Bram Stoker Awards.
00:02:05
JD Barker
I was at the the Horror Writers Convention. And while I was there, they sat me next to Dacre Stoker for a book signing thing. Dacre is Bram's great-grandnephew. So I figured I'm going to use that hour to de pick his brain and learn everything I can about Bram Stoker.
00:02:19
JD Barker
meanwhile, he was quizzing me on my history. And I had worked as a book doctor and a ghostwriter, worked with a lot of different people before. But we just kind of talked for a little while. I didn't realize it was going to actually go anywhere.
00:02:27
Jo
Yeah.
00:02:29
JD Barker
later on, he pulled me aside and said, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. That was ah kind of a job interview. My family and I, we've been trying to find somebody to write a prequel to Dracula for a very long time using Bram's original notes in his journals. And that something you'd be interested in doing?
00:02:42
JD Barker
I said yes, because the correct answer is always yes, when somebody asks you that question. it was a crazy ride. My wife and I met Dacre, I guess, a couple months later in the Carolinas. He had a cabin up there.
00:02:53
JD Barker
Second night there, he disappeared for a little bit and came back with his trunk and put it on the dining room table. And it was literally everything that was on Bram Stoker's desk when he wrote the original Dracula. it was that was that was crazy, a fun project to work on.
00:03:07
Jo
That's, that's an amazing story. And that's, and that goes to the point you never know, not so much if it's gonna be a job interview or something smile like that, but you never know who you're talking to. You never know what the intentions are. And as long as you are a positive and nice person and present yourself correctly, sometimes good things happen.
00:03:27
JD Barker
Yeah, I mean, I try to keep that in mind all the time. know, when I meet somebody, you know, who knows, four or five years down the road, I might be able to do them a favor, they might be able to do me a favor. I drop everybody's name into my little mental Rolodex and and sooner or later, you know, it seems to come back.
00:03:42
Jo
No, but that that's that is a key concept. And now we're going to go with the, you said you started writing early, earlier on, right? Have you went back to your early writings and looked through them and gone, I can fix this? Or do you think it was like, hmm, that's a good way to launch my career out.
00:04:03
Jo
But, you know, after the booster record happens, it kind of like falls away.
00:04:08
JD Barker
I've thought about going back. I mean, even like my debut novel, Forsaken, you know, like I've written, i don't even know, 20 books or so since I've written that one. know, I went back and read it a couple years ago. And like, there's there's things in there that, ah ah you know, to me now are cringeworthy.
00:04:20
JD Barker
Like, I would love to fix this. I would love to fix that.
00:04:23
JD Barker
But the truth is, that's where I was, you know, from a yeah ah ah writing standpoint at that particular moment in time. And like, I don't think it's something I should change. I think it needs to kind of stand on its own. I've got a couple novels that'll never see the light of day that are on my computer you know that I basically consider to be practice books as I was you know coming up in the world.
00:04:36
Jo
Yeah.
00:04:39
JD Barker
I think everybody's got to write about a half million words before they figure out what they're doing.
00:04:43
Jo
yeah
00:04:43
JD Barker
And you know even after that point, we're we're still learning. that yeah Our voice is changing. know We get better or we get different, I guess, for another way to describe it.
00:04:53
Jo
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, it's one of the things when you look back, and I think a lot of people who want to get into writing think it's always just one and done. Like, no, you you have to keep going. You have rewrite it.
00:05:06
Jo
Sometimes my friend, my my friend, ah ah we know each other kind of, but Pete Curiel is a comedian and he was asked about someone who bombed on stage on a joke and they're like, no, it's not an unfunny joke. You weren't strong enough to tell it at the time.
00:05:21
Jo
And sometimes some of our older writings, they're they're good concepts that we weren't strong enough as a writer to really pull it through at the time. And I think that's what people need to hear is sometimes like, yeah, you really do have to go back and you really can look at it and sort of like pull things up and that.
00:05:38
Jo
Now with this new book, the Something I Keep Upstairs, What made you? I mean, for me, I always think it's like people get made something in their head starts popping around. You know, we we have to do this to get it out.
00:05:50
Jo
What made you and really need to push this one?
00:05:53
JD Barker
This one, you know, normally it takes me about three months to write a book. This one took about four years from start to finish, mainly because it's it's based on a true story. The house is real. I live on a little island in New England called Newcastle.
00:06:06
JD Barker
And every day I go for a run after I finish up my workday. do a lap around the island. And at one point I crossed the beach. And if I stand out on the beach and look out over the water, there's a tiny little island off our coast. It's only about an acre.
00:06:18
JD Barker
There's one house on it. It's this little white house with a red roof. It's just far enough away where you can't really tell what's going on out there. um you know every once in a while, you'll see a light come on or you might see somebody walking on the beach.
00:06:29
JD Barker
know As a writer, like there's two words that you are are constant companions for me, what if? you know So the the moment I saw that house, you know my brain starts turning. What if this is going on? What if that's going on?
00:06:40
JD Barker
And you know I just I kept going about my day. And at one point, I came up with a tagline for the book. And that's usually how this works for me. And some random idea pops into my head and I'll drop it into my little note folder on my phone. And you know sooner or later, I'll revisit it.
00:06:53
JD Barker
But I came up with this this thing you know for a haunted house to be born, somebody has to die. which was the tagline for the book. And you know I sat on that for a little while trying to figure out what I was going to do with it.
00:07:01
Jo
Yeah.
00:07:02
JD Barker
And then I you know saw that house again and realized that that's probably the house that I should use for for this particular story. I started to research it. I i reached out to couple of local historians and found out a little history on the the island itself.
00:07:16
JD Barker
Uh, it's last incarnation where it was actually used. It was a life, a life, a Coast Guard life-saving station. so they used to deploy boats off of there. Um, this was way back in like the forties or fifties. Uh, and it had sat empty ever since then. It was literally falling apart and a local guy raised enough money to restore it.
00:07:31
JD Barker
I got ahold of him. He actually took me out to the house in his boat. And and as I was standing out there, know if you've ever been in a room where you you know, felt like, you know, like you just don't want to be there, like something, you know, creepy is going on or like, you know, like, like I was standing in the middle of this house, and like the hair on the back of my neck was standing up and like every ounce of my body was like, get out, get out, get out.
00:07:50
Jo
wow
00:07:50
JD Barker
And like, I had no reason for this, you know, like it was just a, you know, house just like any other house. but I left and started researching the the history of this particular Island. And I started stumbling into some, some pretty horrific facts.
00:08:01
JD Barker
Like back when yellow fever was breaking out, they used to quarantine everybody on this Island. and basically just left them out there until they died.
00:08:06
Jo
Yeah.
00:08:08
JD Barker
During the Spanish-American War, they would dock boats out there and they would leave everybody on the boat until they either died of starvation or disease, and then they would take the boat. took all the bodies and they threw them overboard and fed them to the sharks because the water is filled with great whites out there.
00:08:16
Jo
oh
00:08:21
JD Barker
just you know story after story. and Then when i start talking to the locals, you know they started telling me some of the ghost stories that happened. I think that's why this book took so long to write. I would write a little bit and then i would stumble into some other cool historical fact that I wanted to work into the story.
00:08:34
JD Barker
know, that that takes time. So i would put the book aside, go work on something else and then come back to it. yeah, four years.
00:08:41
Jo
Yeah. No, that's and it really kind of hits into my my next question. Because we see people like Stephen King and very good score on that one, by the way, using the character I like like read a little bit of that story like, Oh, yeah, that's nice.
00:09:03
Jo
That really reached out. And how his childhood informs his horror direction, right? And we probably all had moments in our lives where we just want to explore more in a different way.
00:09:19
Jo
You know, now that we're adults, we can kind of look in with the eye and say like, oh, maybe this is what happened or maybe is what I felt at the time and really explore that inner workings of us. And if we know if we can do this correctly, we can then bring it to the rest of the world.
00:09:34
Jo
what was like the one moment in your childhood that made you go, i need to explore. I need this horror thing.
00:09:43
JD Barker
You know, it's probably two things. So we've got reading Dracula. I think that was that that you know really hit home because I you know just the fact that a book could scare me was one thing.
00:09:46
Jo
Yeah. It was Dracula.
00:09:52
JD Barker
I think the other thing was like actually like a ah real like a life changing moment for me. We were playing at um neighbor's house and I think I was about seven or eight years old at the time. they had horses and they had this big barn.
00:10:03
JD Barker
And in the barn, they have these big bales of hay. And don't know if you've ever seen them, but like they're probably about four feet long, a couple feet square.
00:10:08
Jo
wow
00:10:09
JD Barker
they're pretty, pretty big. we used to build like forts out of them and inside their barn, almost like giant, you know, like a yeah giant Jenga set.
00:10:10
Jo
No. Whoa.
00:10:16
JD Barker
at one point we, we made tunnels like in this, inside the hay and I was in there and the thing collapsed on me. So I basically got stuck in there, but I was playing with, you know, all my friends, a bunch of six, seven, eight year olds.
00:10:26
JD Barker
And like, nobody wants to get an adult when something like that happens.
00:10:28
Jo
no
00:10:29
JD Barker
They want to try and you know, solve the problem before an adult finds out. I was stuck in there for probably, probably about five or six hours while they, they figured out a way to to actually dig me out.
00:10:35
Jo
well
00:10:38
JD Barker
the whole time I could hear rats, I could hear mice, I could kind of hear my friends, but you know, their voices were very muffled. That really, really freaked me out. And you know I've got a problem with claustrophobia.
00:10:49
JD Barker
know it all stems from that. But I think you know that's the scariest I have ever been in my entire adult life.
00:10:54
Jo
yeah
00:10:54
JD Barker
And I have jumped out of airplanes and it does not freak me out anywhere near as much as as that did. And yeah I think, yeah again, just like with Dracula, it's one of those feelings that I chase when I write. I try to recreate that experience with words.
00:11:06
Jo
Yeah, no, it's that that, you know, that is pretty scary. And you're right. When you're that age, it's okay. If it happened to us today, we'd probably pick up our phones, call for help.
00:11:19
Jo
And no, we're no, we're adults. But at that age, you're like, you're worried about getting in trouble so much.
00:11:25
JD Barker
Well, it was a different world, right?
00:11:25
Jo
They're like, Oh, don't.
00:11:26
JD Barker
Like you've you've got a Gen X poster hanging behind you.
00:11:26
Jo
Yeah. Yeah. That's my, that's my book.
00:11:29
JD Barker
You know, I'm, i' yeah, that's your book.
00:11:30
Jo
Yeah.
00:11:31
JD Barker
Yes, I'm Gen X, you know, so like back then, like our parents kicked us out of the house first thing in the morning, like on a Saturday, told us to come home when the streetlights come on and they didn't care where we were.
00:11:33
Jo
Yeah.
00:11:40
Jo
yeah
00:11:41
JD Barker
And, you know, we always came home, you know, sometimes it was with a broken arm or something because we fell out of a tree. But, you know, for the most part, they let us let us you know run off and do our own thing. And, you know this was just happened to be one of those days.
00:11:52
Jo
Right. Yeah. and You basically had to solve it yourself. and but Which gives life skills.
00:11:56
JD Barker
Yeah, it it does.
00:11:58
Jo
We learned how to solve so much of ourselves because our parents were working two or three jobs and it couldn't be home.
00:12:06
JD Barker
Oh, yeah. I mean, the whole latchkey thing, I don't think that even happens anymore, right?
00:12:09
Jo
Yeah.
00:12:09
JD Barker
So like half my friends used to come home from work and their parents came home four five hours later than they did. They, you know, they did their own laundry. They made their own dinner. And that was just the norm back then.
00:12:18
Jo
Yeah, i was normal. Absolutely normal. And then this brings me to a little bit of a, because of our generation and maybe even the area we grew up, I was i was in a suburb of Chicago growing up.
00:12:33
Jo
And then we had a little bit up north. But when Halloween 3 came out, Season of the Witch, which had nothing to do with the rest of the franchise, really. But it like was hitting home on the trick-or-treating stranger danger bad things happen.
00:12:41
JD Barker
Right.
00:12:47
Jo
And I think it depends on the generation how that movie hits. Are you familiar with the ah ah third?
00:12:53
JD Barker
i I remember that one and i I watched it, I think in a hotel because we we didn't have a TV at our house when I was growing up.
00:12:58
Jo
Right.
00:12:59
JD Barker
So like I would have to visit a friend's house and watch HBO or something. But I i remember watching that one at a hotel somewhere. I think we were on a Disney trip. and And like I had seen the first two. So I was like, what the F is this? Because it's not supposed to be.
00:13:11
JD Barker
But it but it was it was creepy in its own right. Very different story. But it was it was scary for sure.
00:13:14
Jo
Yeah.
00:13:17
Jo
Yeah, and that's it, because it's like, I've seen some of the older generation, like, why was that scary? I'm like, because you didn't grow up with, like, razor blades in your candy, and your masks were killing you, and all these, like, the M&Ms you couldn't eat, apparently, or something, you know?
00:13:30
Jo
Cyanide pills.
00:13:31
JD Barker
We, we had all kinds of, like I, you said Illinois, like I actually grew up in Crystal Lake, Illinois, which is about 50 miles north of Chicago. And because of Crystal Lake and the whole tie into Friday the 13th, like that was a big thing where where I was.
00:13:39
Jo
Yeah.
00:13:43
JD Barker
I remember as a story and like it may just be local folklore because I've never actually researched this to find out if it was true. But like the locals always told us that there was you know this girl down the street babysitting and her boyfriend decided to scare her.
00:13:55
JD Barker
So he dressed up like Jason and basically started tapping on windows, tapping on the door and just know freaked her out for a couple hours.
00:14:01
Jo
yeah
00:14:01
JD Barker
And at one point she opened up the door, saw him standing there in this Jason outfit and stabbed him to death. And again, like, I don't know if it ever happened, but like it was drilled into our mind as kids as something that could happen.
00:14:12
Jo
Right.
00:14:13
JD Barker
you know
00:14:13
Jo
Yeah, it could happen.
00:14:13
JD Barker
you i
00:14:14
Jo
That's the thing. Because we't it was good news and bad news, because we didn't have the internet in our pockets, we couldn't say like, oh, this is, well, I'm going to Google this, you know. But we also had to use our own reasoning skills.
00:14:23
JD Barker
the The internet was your friend telling you a story.
00:14:26
Jo
Yeah.
00:14:27
JD Barker
Yeah, I mean, the the internet was just this, you know, your friends telling you stories, you know, it's basically what you heard through the grapevine.
00:14:34
Jo
I left because I remember like the AOL discs that everyone had to the point where we're using them as coasters at one point or Frisbees.
00:14:43
JD Barker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, you've you've got mail on those. They they would send, that that must have cost a fortune. I would love to see the numbers on that.
00:14:47
Jo
Oh, yeah.
00:14:48
JD Barker
But yeah I think every house probably got like three or four of them a week, CDs for AOL.
00:14:54
Jo
Yeah, it was it was insane. It was at one point, I think the AOL discs replaced the encyclopedias at the end of the checkout aisle. that used to be there.
00:15:06
JD Barker
That wouldn't surprise me.
00:15:06
Jo
You know, like.
00:15:08
JD Barker
AOL was the thing. and like i I worked in finance before I got into writing at ah at a brokerage firm. And AOL was, like at the time, one of the hottest stocks out there.
00:15:14
Jo
Oh, yeah.
00:15:16
JD Barker
AOL, Netscape, there were there are a couple of them that were really big and everybody just assumed they were going to take over the world. and It's funny, you know like one little slip up in marketing and a company like that vanishes. yeah They could just as easily have been Amazon or Facebook today.
00:15:29
Jo
No, that's it. And if you're especially and if you were in finance, you should It's genius and it's evil at the same time. AOL is the first one that goes, we can sell your information to people.
00:15:43
JD Barker
Well, I'm sure that was a huge part of it because like yeah at the time, like we didn't nobody even considered that a possibility because it it never existed before as a problem, you know, so you you would pop this disk in your computer or it ask you a bunch of questions to get your account set up.
00:15:45
Jo
Yeah.
00:15:49
Jo
Yeah.
00:15:56
JD Barker
And, you know, you're basically creating a profile. And and yeah, they were they were selling that data to marketers and advertisers and and anybody else willing to write a check.
00:16:05
Jo
My God. Yeah. And that's and again, this it goes back to, you know, if you were not in that era, like you were seeing it as like it develops, it's we are a product of the time and that was a product of the the best intent gets used quickly, really quick.
00:16:20
Jo
And then it kind of goes on from there. Now, when you are drafting, I'm guessing we both probably started out on typewriters or yellow. Do I have any low, you know, the the handwritten yellow legal path type thing.
00:16:35
Jo
do you use software now? Like, are you using word processors? Are you guessing, but are you using like the, like pro writing aid has like a spark and they're like we'll give you an idea. So was like, eh, not really, you know?
00:16:49
JD Barker
Yeah, i don't I don't use anything like that. I write primarily in a program called Scrivener, which I love just because you can move stuff around.
00:16:50
Jo
Yeah.
00:16:56
JD Barker
So like I can take a chapter and I can drag it to a different part in the book and just kind of shuffle things around and and see like the 30,000 foot view of the book. I can see all the chapter you know headings and and
00:17:06
JD Barker
I hate working in Microsoft Word, mainly for that same reason. you know ah ah yeah it's It's easy to to work with a smaller document, but when you end up three, 400, 600 pages or whatever into a novel,
00:17:16
JD Barker
You know, it's real difficult to find something if you want to edit something and shuffle it around. It's a pain. And even like opening word on my Mac, like when I get towards the end of a novel, like it takes like 30 seconds to open up that file and that just freaks me out. It makes me think it's going to drop it.
00:17:29
JD Barker
i'm I'm pretty basic as far as my tools go.
00:17:31
Jo
Yeah.
00:17:31
JD Barker
I write the books in Scrivener. I've got a program called Simple Note that I use on my various devices. It's basically just a note taking app. what I like about it is I can type a note on my phone and it immediately appears on my Mac. It appears on my iPad.
00:17:44
JD Barker
Everything's always in sync. And I've never had like ah ah a conflict. A lot of those programs have conflicts where they you know you have to choose one flyup file or another. Things get lost. I've never had any problems with it.
00:17:53
Jo
yeah
00:17:54
JD Barker
I write in a lot of different ways. I don't know if you can see it, but there's a typewriter on the floor behind me there, under that table. I'm working on a novel on there. So every day I just write a sentence or two on this particular book.
00:18:05
Jo
oh
00:18:05
JD Barker
I've got another one I'm writing out longhand on legal
00:18:07
JD Barker
what I find is that if I change up the medium that I use to write the book, my voice is different. the one that I'm writing by hand, it's in first person, you know, it feels very personal. one on the typewriter is a detective noir thriller, you know, which is kind of fits with a typewriter, know so I try to do that too, just to kind of keep things interesting.
00:18:24
Jo
Yeah, ah ah I like when you say type breakers, like when we learn how to type, it was on the iron ones like they really had to strike the keys hard.
00:18:33
JD Barker
Yeah.
00:18:33
Jo
And the the first couple of modern keyboards for computers did not last. Cause like, bam, bam, bam, like break in half.
00:18:40
JD Barker
Now I learned on and an IBM Selectric. It was the only class in high school that didn't have homework.
00:18:43
Jo
Yeah.
00:18:45
JD Barker
So I took it like all four years in a row and I type 120 words a minute because of it. I can't. My handwriting is terrible, but I can type nice and fast.
00:18:51
Jo
Yeah. Same, same. And that's a the weird thing about the typing classes, uh, maybe because we're kind of in a small, the same geographic area growing up, it was, you could pick typing or, you know, or shoppers might that. And I was the only guy in typing classes.
00:19:08
Jo
And it was like, oh, you're the only guy. But you know what?
00:19:11
JD Barker
You were the only guy.
00:19:11
Jo
Five years later, it just pays off right now.
00:19:14
JD Barker
Yeah. I didn't mind being the only guy in that particular class.
00:19:17
Jo
Me neither.
00:19:17
JD Barker
Yeah.
00:19:18
Jo
It worked. It worked like, oh, you're like, yeah, I'm the only guy in this class. I know. Because that everything else is like, you guys go play for yourselves. I'll be with them in here. But absolutely. And then it it really, the computer, you know, internet age spawns. And then all of a sudden that becomes a goldmine of actual skill.
00:19:38
Jo
Yeah.
00:19:39
JD Barker
Yeah, I mean, i remember working on, went from typewriter to like a word processor, which was essentially, you know, like a dumbed down computer. All you could really could do was was type up document on it.
00:19:47
Jo
Yeah.
00:19:49
JD Barker
had a couple of those. I remember getting the first Windows based PC. I don't even remember what year that was. And I also had an Apple II, was it Apple IIc, Apple IIe, something like that.
00:19:59
JD Barker
It didn't even have a hard drive. Like it had those giant floppy disks that you had to use. Yeah, I just kind of gradually went with the the times. I mean, in today's world, I've got a nice brand new Mac on the desk.
00:20:10
JD Barker
I try to buy a new one every couple of books, mainly because the batteries crap out on you. They're only good for a couple of years. I think I've worked on just about anything or everything at this point.
00:20:19
Jo
yeah Yeah. Yeah, that really sounds about right. All tools should be there. And now for something I keep upstairs, and I think I see the book in the background right now, and the cover is, but the fonts that pop out, the colors is an amazing.
00:20:38
Jo
is If you were, well, you should call it shelf surfing. not sure if that even happens to the internet anymore. But that we used to shelf surf going, oh, the just by the cover look. I think it's an attractive pop out.
00:20:51
Jo
How much input do you have in your own covers and interior now?
00:20:56
JD Barker
Oh, I've got a hundred percent.
00:20:57
Jo
Really?
00:20:57
JD Barker
I, I, I, I indie published my first book. Then I, you know, that one sold quite a bit. I ended up in the traditional world for a while.
00:21:02
Jo
Right.
00:21:04
JD Barker
about a year and a half ago, I signed a deal with Simon and Schuster and I created my own imprint on Simon and Schuster. so I basically, I can publish what I want whenever I
00:21:10
Jo
Cool.
00:21:12
JD Barker
with Simon Schuster handling the the heavy lifting, they handle my print sales and distribution. I get to work with a fabulous team. So like for a cover like that, you know, like that's not something I would have been able to do as an indie author.
00:21:19
Jo
Cool.
00:21:22
JD Barker
You know, everything I can't really tell, but like, you know, there's raised text on there. They did rough edges on the pages, all kinds of really cool things that, you know, you could probably pull off as an indie, but it's not that easy to do.
00:21:35
JD Barker
use a lot of focus groups at this point, too.
00:21:37
Jo
cool
00:21:37
JD Barker
So when we come up with ideas for book covers, we'll you know get two or three different covers. We'll put it in front of a lot of people and you know ask them this question. If you were to walk into a bookstore and buy a book based solely on its cover, which of these would you choose?
00:21:49
JD Barker
yeah And then we get and we see our voting there. And you know if 80 percent of the votes go to one particular cover, that's the one we end up using. Same thing with titles. like I tend to test everything.
00:21:58
Jo
Yeah, and that's like back in the day, what was like, oh, you can never do that. You can never do this. you you never And everyone's saying you can never do something. It's usually something they are too afraid to do themselves.
00:22:11
Jo
And so when you're doing indie publishing and you get public you have 100% right and creative direction, that's where most people should be. But there may be like, oh, is it, you know, the back in the day, was a negative connotation, but no, you should own your stuff. You should be able to say, that's my fine. You should be able to say, I want this cover.
00:22:30
JD Barker
Honestly, indie publishing ruined traditional publishing for me.
00:22:33
Jo
Yeah.
00:22:34
JD Barker
because but Because I did indie publish that first one, yeah know I saw the economic benefits. You get roughly 70 cents on the dollar. a traditionally published author, you're lucky if you get 15 to 20 cents on the dollar.
00:22:44
JD Barker
And some of the things that you mentioned, you know as as an indie author, you get to decide literally everything. And when you're in the traditional world, they decide everything for you. So they can tell you this is what your title is going to be. This is what your cover is going to look like.
00:22:56
JD Barker
You your name is going to be this size. The title is going to be this size. You know, you've got no control or say in a lot of those decisions. so And because I had indie published the first title, i had gotten a taste of all that. So then getting thrown into the traditional world, it was very difficult for me to give up those those rights and those abilities.
00:23:12
JD Barker
is one of the reasons why I circled back and and put together this thing with Simon & Schuster. I wanted to have the control of being an indie author, I also wanted the distribution of you know one of the top five because yeah as an indie, you can do a lot of the things, but you know it's still difficult to get into bookstores.
00:23:20
Jo
ae
00:23:26
JD Barker
It's near impossible to get into the big box stores like Walmart, Target, Costco, grocery stores, pharmacies, airports, know those kind of things are still kind of out of reach, I think, for most indie authors, unless you're selling a lot of titles.
00:23:39
JD Barker
So you know I wanted to solve that particular problem too. And and Simon Schuster has been fantastic.
00:23:45
Jo
That's and that kind of rolls me into the next question. and I asked this all of all my guests I do. What is the one piece of advice that you would give a younger you when I say younger is usually around kid to teenage you?
00:24:07
JD Barker
Ooh, that's tough um because I've made you know some fumbles, but I think a lot of those fumbles also helped shape where I was going. I don't know that I would actually change anything. you know I worked behind the scenes for years. you know My parents told me writing is a fantastic hobby, but you can't make a living at it. You have to get a real job, is why I ended up working in finance you know behind a desk. you know I got a mortgage. I you know did everything that you were supposed to do, but I wasn't happy.
00:24:31
JD Barker
uh but i you know i published my first novel on my own um i think i was 43 years old when i did that i'm often asked you know like you know what would it you know what would things have been like if i had published something in my 20s i probably could have but i don't know that the books would have hit as well as they they did now because i think i needed that 20 some years you know working behind the scenes to to really fine-tune the craft so i don't know that i would actually change anything
00:24:44
Jo
yeah
00:24:54
Jo
Right. Right. No, that's good. That's perfect. Yeah. and And now, now, now, now. For your book, Something I Keep Upstairs, of course, by with the the great J.D. Parker, what can we do for your socials? Where can we find you?
00:25:15
JD Barker
Oh, easiest place to find me is at jdbarker.com. I'm on all the social media is at jdbarker. The book itself is is pretty much everywhere.
00:25:24
Jo
Yeah, no, it's I did a little bit of ah website website hopping today on on your site. And I love it. i Honestly, i was like, Oh, my God, this is I ah you might have a new subscriber to your mailing list.
00:25:39
Jo
It might be. It might be me. i Like, this is really cool.
00:25:42
JD Barker
watch watch for that I'll watch for that notification later today.
00:25:43
Jo
Yeah. Yeah. Pop it up. It's been great. And it's an honor having you. Honestly, i saw the list and I jumped on this one right away. Like, would you like to interview? Yes, I would. When?
00:25:58
Jo
How much? What? Huh? It's like, you're an amazing guest.
00:26:01
JD Barker
i I appreciate
00:26:01
Jo
So I will say thank you.
00:26:03
JD Barker
I appreciate it Thanks for having me.
00:26:05
Jo
yeah And then that's it for what's cracking today. So if you liked it, like and subscribe, pass it along, all sorts of stuff for myself, Joe and my guest JD Barker. We bid you good day.
00:26:17
Jo
Bye everyone.