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It’s the moment you have all been waiting for, yes the award-winning Freelancing for Journalists podcast has returned for its eighth series.
But this time we’re doing something a little bit different. After our recent Bonus episode with freelance journalist Saima Mir about her debut novel The Khan went down so well with our lovely listeners we decided to give you a bit more of the same.
So this time, we’re bringing you our Summer Reads series of interviews with journalists who have turned their hand to writing a range of different books from the thriller you can’t put down to photography, non-fiction, memoir, and ghostwritten works.
We’re starting it all off today with our friend and colleague Lisa Bradley. While also working as Deputy Head of Journalism at the University of Sheffield, Lisa has published two novels so far with more in the pipeline. We chatted to her all about how she found an agent, the bumpy ride to getting her first book Paper Dolls published, what she learnt along the way and what her next project is.
Our goal for this series, as it always has been, was to make it as practical and informative as possible. We wanted to ask those detailed questions about how you get a book deal, how you get ideas and plan out a structure and how you manage to write an entire book while doing your other work.
We also thought it might be quite useful in this newsletter to take you behind the scenes of how we put a podcast series together.
Back in May we agreed that while we had our list of freelance topics we want to cover (and don’t worry we will get back to them in the Autumn) there was definitely scope to mix it up a bit and speaking to journalists who were also authors seemed like a great fit.
We had some initial ideas but also put out a call on social media for anyone who would be interested in speaking about their work and we got a lot of responses. We have six episodes and a bonus per series so the next task was to have a planning meeting to work out who we would include. While we were spoilt for choice, the decision ultimately came down to what would make a good mix of topics. Self-publishing a photography-led cookbook is not going to be the same process as taking a deep dive into the rise of Tik Tok or writing a fitness guide with Nell McAndrew.
Our sponsor was already in place so it was just a case of asking people to take part (no one said no) and finding a time when we could all do it. Our research assistant Helen juggles the diaries and gets it all booked in. We always try to record a series quite quickly but we were also up against a deadline of looming annual leave for both of us.
Emma writes the scripts with questions and organises the Zoom, Helen sorts the show notes and social media and Lily gets it all uploaded to our host platform (we use Captivate). On the day of recording an episode we check everyone’s sound is working, fix anything that isn’t and do it all in one take. We also have back up recordings which is just as well because this time we needed all of them! We cross our fingers that dogs, parcel deliveries, roadworks and any number of other issues don’t get in our way.
Maddie our producer then does her magic with the intro, outro and transition music, a bit of editing if needed in the middle. From having the idea for the series to the first episode coming out today it has taken just over six weeks. We only launch once they are all recorded and we also have a very special episode to end the series which we will reveal soon.
So we hope you enjoy it. We will be back at some point before Christmas with a series that will be back to our original format. But for now have a listen and let us know what you think!
Survey winner
Thank you to everyone that gave feedback about the newsletter in our recent survey. We had some really useful insight that will help us shape what we bring you every week. We will be randomly selecting one of you this week to receive a set of our Quick Guides worth £20. If you don’t hear from us and are interested in checking out the Quick Guides, take a look at our Payhip store. Keeping on theme you can also download our webinar on podcasting if you want to learn more about how to get started.
Triumph of the week
Having two ideas commissioned for September on the back of random throwaway comments made to friendly editors. Is this the new way to pitch?
That feeling when
You stay up late writing the newsletter and the next day half of it has disappeared again.
We love to hear your feedback on everything we do, so feel free to drop us an email anytime at freelancingforjournalists@gmail.com
Bye for now!