The Writers Chair

Dan is considering rebranding his own publishing company, and the reason is a banned tarot reading. At a literary festival last year, a scheduled occult-themed event was pulled because the venue had ties to a nearby church. It got Dan thinking: with the word “devil” in the name Devil’s Rock Publishing, will it become a barrier as he starts selling at more events and eyes talks at schools and colleges?This is a short solo episode with an announcement at the end. Dan walks through the logic of the possible rebrand (and why he’d keep the artwork he loves), shares updates on his 2027 events, the Hatching Season charity anthology for Mind, and his current projects. He also explains why he’s leaning towards making The Nowhere Line a direct-and-events-only book, and why, after eleven years, he’s finally planning a series that is purely for himself.The episode closes with the news that The Writer’s Chair is taking a short break from its weekly schedule. The feed isn’t going anywhere, and Dan is clear he’ll be back, but books come first for the rest of the year.🎙️ What we get into:Why Dan is considering rebranding Devil’s Rock Publishing, and the origin of the name and logoThe Innsmouth Literary Festival incident that made him question whether “devil” is a barrier to events, schools and collegesWhy you can become numb to your own brand name, and how to sanity-check it before spending on banners, tablecloths and business cardsHow to find Dan at his 2027 events, with an events page coming to his websiteThe state of the Hatching Season charity anthology (proceeds to Mind): around 60,000 words selected and the final stories under reviewThe challenge of balancing an anthology’s reader journey when many strong stories overlapWhy The Nowhere Line is likely to become a direct-only, event-exclusive book, and why indie freedom makes that kind of experiment possibleWhy Dan realised he doesn’t actually read series, and how he plans to change that while planning his ownWhy he’s considering a purely “selfish” series, and how he’s narrowing down cosmic horror versus dark fantasyThe announcement: a short hiatus from the weekly schedule, with the podcast feed staying liveLinks & Resources:Daniel Willcocks: https://danielwillcocks.comDevil’s Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.comFree seven-day course, Finish Your Damn Draft: https://danielwillcocks.com/finishSubscribe to The Writer’s Chair If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last year, Dan’s Halloween book sale pulled around 2,500 people to the page. This year it pulled 850. The click-through to authors’ books dropped too, and the sales didn’t follow. It’s a candid opening to an episode that’s less a victory lap and more an honest post-mortem, recorded the day after launching his first solo fiction in three years.This is a solo episode. Dan celebrates the release of Cock, his psychological rural horror novella about a killer cockerel (yes, the title is the joke, and the book is far darker than the pun suggests), and breaks down what he’s learned launching it. That includes why he sat on finished books for years, why he’s moving towards direct sales and in-person events, and what’s actually working for discoverability in a market where organic reach has all but dried up.He also shares the upcoming events he’s booked for 2027, an update on the Hatching Season charity anthology for Mind, and the early results of his Facebook ad tests on the Twisted Tales series. The through-line is a practical one: build a consistent reader experience, sell direct where you can, and stop expecting the platforms to do the discovery for you.🎙️ What we get into:The Halloween sale post-mortem: 2,500 page visitors last year versus 850 this year, and why cross-promotions are getting harderWhy he believes sharing failures is more useful to other authors than sharing winsThe paralysis that kept him from publishing a solo book for three years, and the mindset shifts that got him out of itHow he reframed his priorities around print books and events, rather than chart positions and review countsThe origin of Cock: a four-year-old joke that became a darker, more psychological story once he stopped forcing it into the Twisted Tales mouldWhy selling ebooks direct (via PayHip, and testing a platform called Curious) means fewer sales but a much bigger margin and instant payoutsHow the playful Cock marketing got around 25,000 views and interactions, yet converted to very few salesThe TikTok Live experiment: the requirements to unlock extra visibility and why it may be one of the last organic discovery routesWhy Facebook ads to the Twisted Tales series work: readers who buy Jack go on to buy the rest, so ad spend comes backWhy a consistent reader experience (branding, linked stories, a shared universe) matters more than any single book, and how he plans to build that from his backlistLinks & Resources:Cock by Daniel Willcocks: https://danielwillcocks.com/cockSubscribe to The Writer’s Chair If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"If we don't define the canon, someone will define it for us." That line, from Dr. Chesya Burke, became the organizing principle behind an anthology that started as a phone call between two old friends and ended up assembling some of the most influential names in Black horror alongside brand-new voices getting their first-ever publication.Maurice Broaddus is an award-winning Afrofuturist, editor, and librarian with over a hundred short stories published in Lightspeed Magazine, Black Panther anthologies, Jordan Peele's Out There Screaming, and more. Dr. Chesya Burke is an assistant professor of English and US literatures and director of Africana Studies at Stetson University, whose writing has been compared to Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison by Nikki Giovanni, and named "formidable" by Samuel Delany. Together they've edited Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now, out from Flame Tree Publishing on 17 November 2026, featuring contributors including Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and P. Djèlí Clark.We get into how the project evolved from an impossibly broad vision into a focused, budget- and genre-constrained anthology, why a poetry reading at a convention led to poems being added to the collection almost by accident, and how a script from Tales from the Hood ended up sitting inside a prose anthology. We also talk candidly about what new writers actually need to hear — that developing a distinctive voice can take a decade, that AI actively hinders that development, and that rejection is universal even among the writers who inspired this very book.🎙️ What we get into:What Afrofuturism actually means, and its roots tracing back through Martin Delany, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sun Ra, and Octavia ButlerHow a phone call between longtime friends became a full anthology partnership with Flame Tree PublishingWhy the anthology had to start at a specific point in history rather than attempt a full chronological surveyThe budget and licensing realities that shaped which historical voices could and couldn't be includedWhy they invited every contributor to choose their own foundational story rather than assigning oneHow a convention poetry reading led to poems — including someone's first-ever publication — being added to the anthologyWhy Dr. Burke believes AI actively hinders new writers developing their own voice, rather than helping themThe years-long process of developing a distinctive authorial voice, and why rushing that process is one of the biggest reasons writers don't make itWhy they see the book as "myth-making" — defining Black horror's canon on their own terms before someone else does it for themWhat's exciting both editors most about where Black horror and new voices in the genre are headed nextLinks & Resources:Halloween Book Sale https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026/Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now https://www.flametreepublishing.com/black-horror-canonical-voices-from-then-to-now-isbn-9781835629598.html Maurice Broaddus: https://mauricebroaddus.comDr. Chesya Burke: https://thechesyaburke.com"Cock" by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cock/Subscribe to The Writer's Chair If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer. 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Willcocks' own nonfiction book got flagged and blocked from Draft2Digital — not because it was bad, not because it broke any rules, but because an automated system decided it looked too generic. The irony wasn't lost on him: a book written entirely by hand, blocked by a filter built to catch AI slop. There was no appeal process. Just a flat rejection email and a trail of customer support conversations to work through.In this solo episode, Dan steps away from interviewing guests to talk through what's actually happening in his own author business right now — from a stalled flat sale eating his bandwidth, to relaunching The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0, to finally publishing a new solo horror novella, Cock, four years after the idea first came up on a beach at ChillerCon.He gets candid about the current state of author marketing: why organic discovery on social media has become nearly impossible, why pay-per-click advertising is now close to essential, and the early results from his first real Facebook ad test selling his Twisted Tales series. He also shares an honest, no-polish look at submission life — including a full manuscript read request from Tor Nightfire that ultimately ended in rejection — and makes the case for writing in series as one of the clearest paths to sustainable author income right now.🎙️ What we get into:Why The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0 got blocked from Draft2Digital and other platforms as flagged "generic AI content" — and how he got it unblockedWhy there's currently no formal appeal process when a platform blocks your book, and what persistence actually looks like in practiceThe Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale running 5–11 October, featuring Flame Tree Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, Bloodbound Books, and dozens of indie authorsThe four-year origin story behind Cock, his new rural horror novella, from a joke on a beach at ChilliCon to a finished 37,000-word bookSubmitting The Nowhere Line to Tor Nightfire, getting a full manuscript read request, a kind rejection, and where the book stands nowEarly results from his first Facebook ad test promoting Jack and the Twisted Tales series — real numbers, not just theoryWhy he believes pay-per-click advertising has become close to essential for discoverability in 2026, not just a nice-to-haveHis argument for writing in series rather than standalones, based on what's actually working for authors he knowsThe ongoing mission behind Devil's Rock Publishing beyond being a personal imprint — including nearing £15,000 raised for charity since 2022An early-stage idea for a new kind of incubator publishing contract to help new horror writers get startedLinks & Resources:Devil's Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.comDeliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale: https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026Cock by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cockSubscribe to The Writer's ChairIf you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer.📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennie Nash once told a three-time New York Times bestselling author to throw out a 500-page memoir she'd spent years writing. It wasn't cruelty — it was pattern recognition. The author's own frustration, the sprawling page count, the lack of a clear intention: all of it was a signal Jennie had learned to read after years of asking the right questions instead of promising the right outcomes.Jennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company built to help writers write books worth reading. She's coached clients to deals with agents and major publishers including Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, and is the author of nine books across three genres. Before book coaching, she was a solid mid-list traditionally published author — until a failed six-figure auction and a botched self-publishing attempt pushed her toward the coaching work that would become her real career.We get into why she treats book coaching like an entrepreneurial startup problem — borrowing directly from Seth Godin and Simon Sinek — rather than a purely creative one, and why she believes most writing education fails to address the actual, holistic support writers need. We also talk candidly about pricing: why she charges thousands of dollars for services others sell for fifty, and why she thinks the myth of the "genius struck by lightning" is directly responsible for writers chronically undervaluing their own work.🎙️ What we get into:Why she told a three-time bestselling author to scrap a 500-page memoir — and how she read the signals before ever seeing the pagesThe failed six-figure book auction and botched self-publishing attempt that redirected her from writing full-time into book coachingWhy she borrows directly from Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, and startup culture to teach writers how to operate in the modern publishing worldThe real distinction between an editor (who arrives after the work is done) and a book coach (who's in the process with you the whole way through)Why she charges $3,500 for a 250-word query letter — and what she's actually delivering beyond the edit itselfHer method for asking the "big questions" about a manuscript instead of getting lost in line editsWhy she believes the "genius in the attic" myth of creativity devalues writers' actual labor and justifies underpaying themHow breaking the creative process into replicable systems changed both her coaching practice and her businessWhy she believes writers should think like entrepreneurs: find the market's unmet need, then build a business around solving itHer honest framing of coaching responsibility: you provide the road, but the writer has to driveLinks & Resources:Jennie Nash: https://jennienash.comSubscribe to The Writer's ChairIf you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer.📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair📚 About Jennie NashJennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to help writers write books worth reading. Since the company's inception, writers serious about reaching readers have trusted Jennie to coach their projects from inspiration to publication. Her clients have landed top New York agents, national book awards, and deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of nine books in three genres. She taught for thirteen years in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, is an instructor at CreativeLive.com, and speaks on podcasts and at writing conferences across the country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.