Expanding Audiobook Revenue Through YouTube And Podcasting With Derek Slaton

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How can you shift your writing and publishing process to focus on YouTube and podcasting as a primary audiobook focus? How can you use AI tools to help you create, publish, and translate your books? Derek Slaton goes into his indie author process.

Inspired by Derek, you can now find my audiobooks on YouTube: Books for Authors on YouTube @thecreativepenn; and my fiction, short stories, and memoir on YouTube @jfpennauthor.

In the intro, Spotify has expanded audiobooks into Germany, Austria. Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and Publisher Rocket has introduced more country stores;
Second Edition of The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman;
T. Thorn Coyle on the MidList Indie Author [Wish I’d Known Then Podcast];
What if AI replaces me? [Claire Taylor What If Podcast]; plus, my Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition is underway, coming June/July!

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Derek Slaton is the author of the Dead America epic zombie series, with more than 100 books in the main series and many more spin-off stories. I heard Derek on the Brave New Bookshelf Podcast and wanted to ask him some more questions.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Zombie book tropes and settings
• Utilizing AI audio tools to efficiently output audiobooks
• Finding keywords and creating thumbnails for YouTube audiobooks
• Manualling adding ads to monetize your audiobook on YouTube
• YouTube audience vs. Audible audience
• Publishing audiobooks on podcast platforms
• Using AI tools to overcome the cost barrier of production

You can find Derek at his YouTube Channel @DerekSlatonHorrorAuthor.

Transcript of Interview with Derek Slaton

Joanna: Derek Slaton is the author of the Dead America epic zombie series, with more than 100 books in the main series and many more spin-off stories. So welcome to the show, Derek.

Derek: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you, but first up—

Tell us a bit more about you, and how you got into writing, and why you love zombies so much.

Derek: So I started writing many, many years ago. When I was in high school, I rented Dawn of the Dead on VHS, and the movie itself didn't really scare me, but it was when I went to bed that night and started thinking about, “Hey, what would I do in a zombie apocalypse?” It was like a light switch was flipped.

So it's like I had to start writing down what I would do, and over the years and decades, it just sort of grew from there.

I used to be a photographer. I was a concert photographer traveling the country with bands, and then I moved over to commercial real estate. When I was on the road, I would have my laptop so I would just write.

Over about four or five years, I built it up enough that I could go full time. I went full time with it in January of '24, so I'm a little more than a year into it.

Joanna: Brilliant. Then I want to come back on the zombie books, the tropes of the zombie books. So I read some zombie, like Jonathan Maberry. I'm sure you've read some of Jonathan Mabery's stuff, but he says, “It's not about the monsters, it's about the people who fight the monsters.”

I wondered if you could talk about the tropes of zombie books and why you just have an unending number of zombie stories in you?!

Derek: The great thing about the zombie apocalypse, is that it's happening to everybody everywhere, and everybody has their own story. So there's a million stories that can be told in the zombie apocalypse.

It's not just the strong military type fighting. It's the waitress having to deal with zombified customers, and the high school students having to deal with classmates, and just on down the line.

There's just so many different scenarios. I'm three and a half million words into my series, and I still have another hundred stories plotted out that aren't really repeats of what I've already done.

Joanna: So you're writing about America, but obviously it's very, very big.

Are you writing about places you've been to or you know yourself?

Or are you putting in different places? Because place makes a difference, doesn't it? Like it's different whether you're in the Florida Everglades versus up in the mountains?

Derek: It's a combination. I have been all over, but a lot of the places I haven't been, Google Maps of all things, has really helped me out. I'll look at the town, and then I'll drop myself into street view and just kind of walk around the area and see what my characters would be seeing and write it from that perspective.

Also it comes directly from places I've been. I had to make the drive from El Paso back to San Antonio, which is about nine straight hours of driving through nothing. That spawned the idea for the “El Paso: Creeping Death” series, just a million zombies marching towards them.

So it's been a nice mixture of both, and just about every single story has been set in America. I have done one story set in London that's only on YouTube at the moment, but it'll eventually be released in print. Something I want to explore more as the series goes on is how it's impacting other countries around the world.

Joanna: Then I guess I have a question about worldbuilding because with that many words, I mean, I barely remember what I was writing last week.

Do you have a world document where you keep all the rules of your world, all the characters, or is it just out of control?

Derek: It's a combination. I have the rules for my zombie universe, how the zombies are formed, what they do, their timeline and all that. Thankfully, I mean, it's very simple. So if I drop in on a story a week into it, I know how the zombies are, so I'm able to just jump right into it.

I have a have a story bible for the main series, but all of these side stories that are mostly one-offs, I don't really worry about as much because half the time nobody lives through them, anyway.

Joanna: The benefits of horror! I think that's really interesting because when I was thinking about your different places—

People in your position sometimes open up their world to other people to write in. Is that something you're thinking about?

Derek: No, just because I have so many stories that are in the pipeline, and just have stories I want to tell. I produce them so fast, I mean, I'm releasing a story of a week.

Even if I had somebody else writing stories, I really wouldn't have a place in the schedule to release them. An hour and a half to three hour story every week is, I think, about as much as my fans can handle.

Joanna: So let's go into your process then. So you said a story a week for an hour and a half, which is funny because most people talk in terms of word count, but you talk in terms of time.

Tell us about your story process for creation and publishing.

Derek: So it really changed about a year and a half ago, when I started focusing more on YouTube. I changed how I write because it used to just be free flowing, the word count's the word count, the chapters are however long they need to be.

With YouTube being ad-based, I had to change to almost a television mindset of, okay, I need a break every 12 to 15 minutes, which turns out to be about 2000 words.

So I started writing 2000-word chapters, which really, really helped with the speed of the writing because I knew the beginning and end of each chapter. So if I was short on the word count, now I can go back and just add a little bit of banter, then bam, we're there.

As far as the week to week process goes, half the time I'll know what I'm writing the next week on Friday, so I'll plot it out. Sometimes I'll have just a great idea for a story on Sunday night and completely change track and wake up Monday and just dive right in and see where it goes.

Generally speaking, I'll spend two to three days writing out the story, refining it a little bit, and then going straight into the audio, which is where I do the final edit. I'll edit it as I'm producing the audio. So at the end of the day, I'll do the video, upload it to YouTube, and move on to the next one.

Joanna: Okay, well, we have to get into that in more detail. So I heard you on the Brave New Bookshelf podcast, and you really inspired me about YouTube.

For people who might not understand the AI audio piece, how are you doing those audiobooks so quickly?

Derek: I use a software called PlayHT. It's pretty much the direct rival with Eleven Labs, which is the big AI audio. The biggest difference is that PlayHT offers an unlimited plan. If you're producing as much audio as I am, that's vital, mainly because I need to keep a roof over my head.

I'll produce it chapter by chapter. So I'll paste it into their studio thing, render it, and then listen to it, then make whatever changes I need to make because you can re-render by line. So if I don't like the inflection, I can change a word. It's just quick click, and 30 seconds later that has a new audio generation.

Once I have the finished audio, because I export it by chapter, I'll pull it over in the Final Cut Pro. I'll drop in motion background, so I know where the chapter breaks are when I'm putting it in the ads and YouTube, and export it. Then it's just straight to YouTube and on the schedule.

Joanna: Okay, so a few questions there. For people who haven't done audio with AI—I know what you mean by make some changes—but what are some of the most common issues that you found with using AI voices. I think we're calling it “producing” now.

When you produce the audio, are you having to change specific things regularly? Or is it quite a quick process?

Derek: Honestly, it's gotten better as time goes along. I just produced eight chapters this morning, so it was a full hour and a half book. Nine times out of ten when I have to redo a line, it's a glitch in the software or it mispronounces a name. Other than that, the instances are few and far between.

So it took me three hours to produce an hour and a half worth of audio content today. So it goes really quickly.

Joanna: Well, that's good, though, because that's still twice as long. I think some people think you just upload the file and you hit output and that's it. Like yourself, I also listen to the audio as I go through, so that is an important part of the process.

So let's say it's this hour and a half book. You then upload it to YouTube. I've been trying to model you, although my channel has lots of different things on it. So when I upload it to YouTube, I've got a description field, I've got the title field, I've got a thumbnail, I've got some other things.

What are the most important things that you need to put into those YouTube fields?

Derek: I mean, really the most important thing are the keywords for people to search and just having a thumbnail that grabs people's attention.

This went back to the winter of December of 2023 when I was switching over to AI audio, I decided to throw up an AI thumbnail, just a random zombie scene.

I put it up there in place of my book cover, and my views doubled overnight. So just having that dynamic thumbnail is bigger than really anything else because that's the first thing people see.

They don't look at your title, they don't look at your description, if they don't click on the thumbnail. If they don't click on the thumbnail, they're never going to see anything else.

Joanna: That is a really good point. I put up my Mapwalker series, my Mapwalker trilogy, which is three books. I did actually make character thumbnails and I put them up, but because the rest of my channel isn't the same, they just look really weird. So I've replaced them with the book covers again. Now your channel, if people go to it— Just tell people where your YouTube channel is.

Derek: Just type in my name in the YouTube search. It’s Derek Slaton. It's the first channel that pops up. It's just “Derek Slaton Horror Book Author” or something along those lines. Just below the channel will be about 40 different zombie story thumbnails you can click on.

Joanna: They're all very consistent. I think that's what's interesting about your channel, it really is super consistent. So I feel like there's two different authors who are listening—well, more than that—but people like me who've had a YouTube channel for ages, and it's full of a lot of different stuff.

Then people who want to do something like you, where it's something very consistent in look and feel. So I feel like your thumbnails are clear, your genre is clear, and you've done all the things that you're meant to do, which is fantastic. You did mention keywords there—

Are you using any specific tool to find the keywords specifically for YouTube?

Derek: Yes, I subscribe to something called TubeBuddy, which is all one word. It's actually integrated with YouTube, they're an official partner.

It'll analyze your thumbnail. It'll provide keywords for your type of video. It'll help you pick out shorts, and a whole host of other things. For $3 a month, it's worth every penny.

Joanna: I'm definitely going to get that. That's very helpful. Then you also mentioned putting ad breaks on. So my fiction channel at JF Penn Author is not monetized. As we record this, I'm desperately trying to get it there.

My Creative Penn channel is monetized, and I just click the box that says “yes to ads,” and I've never done anything manually.

What's the difference between just letting it do its own thing and doing it manually?

Derek: It is very important to you and anybody who is listening, make sure you manually put in ads where you want them, and to turn off automated ad placement.

Especially now, because they are updating their system to automatically analyze your video and put ads where they think it should go.

Especially if you're using AI audio because there will be occasional pauses in there between lines, and YouTube will read that as, “Oh, that's a natural break. Let's throw an ad in there.”

I checked it on one of my videos, and it went from eight ads that I had placed to about 75. That's not going to work.

Joanna: Okay, that's a lot. Okay, so that's something to do for that longer form content. Okay, so in that one and a half hour book—coming back to this one that you've done today—you'd expect to have seven ad breaks in that?

Derek: Yes, this book was eight chapters, and I do an ad between every chapter and one at the end. So it'd be eight ads altogether.

Joanna: Okay. Obviously, this is hard to know, but—

Approximately how much revenue do you expect to make for that kind of length book?

Derek: I mean, generally speaking, you make your most money in the first two to three weeks because that's when it's popular, and that's when you get the most views.

The way I view a video being a success, an hour and a half video, is if it makes $100 and gets an extra 25 to 35 subscribers in that first week. That's about where it typically falls. I mean, I know $100 for a video doesn't sound like a lot, but it's just in that initial week, and then it continues making money essentially forever.

Having that fresh content bringing in new subscribers, new viewers to the channel, they'll click on the playlist like, “Oh, there's 350 hours of stuff here. Let's go listen to older stories.”

So after a while, it just snowballs. So just having that fresh baseline, $100 and 25 to 35 subscribers in a week, that's what I deem to be a success.

Joanna: So is there anything else you do? So you do the TubeBuddy, but—

Do you do any other form of marketing for the channel? Do you do paid ads or anything else?

Derek: I do absolutely no advertising, period. Everything I have across every platform is just natural growth. I have done ads in the past. I stopped in January of last year because I wanted to try it out to see how it would go.

I was releasing weekly content across everywhere, Kindle, podcasting, YouTube. With just that constant stream of fresh content, it's like, okay, I know because I write in a niche, I have a limited amount of fans that are out there.

Sooner or later, if I keep putting content out there, they're going to discover me naturally.

I was at a point financially where it's like, okay, I'm well above where I need to be to be comfortable. So rather than focusing hours upon hours each week on trying to tweak ads and spend a bunch on that, I'm just like, I'm just going to let it build naturally.

So far, I mean, it's worked great. Last year was my most profitable year, and I didn't spend a dime on advertising.

Joanna: That's why I got excited when I heard you on the Brave New Bookshelf, and people definitely have a listen to that too. It covers a slightly different angle to this episode.

I've always been a fan of content marketing, always. It's how I've built my business. This is another form of content marketing, but it's also revenue, because people can listen for free.

Obviously, I've heard it before, and people listening are like, okay, but indies have been talking about putting audiobooks on YouTube for years. So why now?

I was thinking about this, why I was so resistant to it, and I think it's that I thought that YouTube audiobooks would cannibalize my audiobook revenue elsewhere.

So what do you think about that?

Is it just an entirely different audience? Or do you also put your stuff elsewhere?

Derek: I mean, honestly, it's a completely different audience. Because I switched over to AI a year and a half ago, I haven't released anything on Audible or Findaway Voices because for the longest time, they haven't accepted anything but their own AI voices.

So, I mean, my Audible sales were kind of flat lined before I made the jump to YouTube, and they've remained at that level ever since.

What I'm finding is the people who buy audiobooks are one audience, the people who listen on YouTube is a completely different audience, and the people who listen to audiobooks via podcasts are yet another completely different audience.

Joanna: Yes, after hearing you, I was like, of course they're a different audience. I mean, even with my husband, my husband does YouTube, and I don't watch YouTube myself. Yet, he also watches videos.

He doesn't listen to audiobooks on YouTube, but I know other people who do. So I was like, this is crazy. What was stopping me?

So if people listening are feeling like nothing's happening — or I will say, so my channel, JFPennAuthor, is not monetized. So right now, lots of people are listening to the audiobooks, and I am not getting paid.

Any tips for people who want to get into that monetized bracket?

Derek: Honestly, just have consistent uploads. It'll keep you in the algorithm, and it feeds back on itself.

Recently, I think maybe within the last year, YouTube changed how they promote their videos, what they deem to be a good thing to promote. It went from number of views to how long people listen, and more importantly, how long your subscribers listen.

So last week, my story was three hours long, and my average listen time was right at about an hour, which fed back to it being promoted to new people. So just having those long stories that your fans will listen to.

One thing that helps me is I release my stories every week at the same time. Noon Eastern Time on Saturdays. So within the first hour, I have 400 or 500 people tuning in, and it boosts the algorithm.

Joanna: Which is great. You've become a habit. I mean, this show is a habit for people. It goes out at 7:30am UK time on a Monday, and the same thing happens. So I completely get the habit.

It's just not something I can see happening for my fiction at the moment. Although, it's so funny, because you've definitely inspired me around thinking about all this stuff.

I also wanted to ask you about the podcast thing because, again, I have two podcasts. They're mainly interviews, solo shows, that kind of thing. They are not fiction or audiobooks.

Tell us about how you do audiobooks for the fiction.

Derek: It's really the same thing that I'm doing on YouTube, only just in pure audio form. So there's no video attached.

I just take an mp3 file of the audiobook, and because I write in novella format, most of the episodes are an hour and a half, two hours long. That seems to be the perfect length for a podcast, so I just release a book as an episode.

I tried it on a whim, and within a month, I was monetized. It's grown over the last year and a half now, and it's grown to the point where, financially, it's just a slight step down from what I'm making on YouTube. So it's just another revenue stream for the same content that I already have.

Joanna: What service are you using for that?

Derek: I use a company called RedCircle. They're a podcast distributor. They distribute to Spotify and all these other places. What's great about them is that they have a sales team that will go out and find the ads that will populate within your podcast.

So just like YouTube, I go in, I set where I want the ads to go, and whenever somebody downloads it, if they download it for later, the ads are already inserted into the podcast. So I get credit for all those.

Joanna: Is it one podcast feed with all the stories on it? Or is it a separate feed per book?

Derek: It's all one podcast feed. So there's just a new story every week.

Joanna: Okay, right. So that is also called Derek Slaton, is it? Or is it called like Dead America, or something?

Derek: It's called Dead America.

Joanna: Okay, so it's called Dead America. So let's take my Mapwalker trilogy, so it's about 20 hours of audio in total, across three books. I would make that a podcast feed for that series, for example?

Derek: Right. You could break it up into two hour chunks or hour-long stories, however you want to do it, and just have them as weekly releases. Let it build up. The great thing is, once it's out there, once it's monetized, people will come across it, listen to it, and more income.

Joanna: Okay, and can you schedule them? So if I did that, let's say I split them into two hour chunks or whatever—

Can I schedule them all at once?

So it's almost like a piece of work to upload all the files, schedule it, do the ad breaks, and then I just let it go.

Derek: Absolutely. I mean, I have the next three months' worth of podcasts already scheduled. So I sit down one day a quarter and just upload 20 – 30 books to it, and place the ads, and let the auto scheduler do its thing.

Joanna: That is cool. Again, it's so funny the kind of blocks we have in our minds. Of course, again, I'm very aware of fiction podcasting. I just didn't think about that from the case of putting an audiobook up.

I always feel like fiction podcasts have multi-cast and they're very full of actors and pro narrators and stuff like that. So I guess we should tackle that.

Are you getting any kickback around the use of AI?

Derek: When I started doing AI on YouTube, I had the initial string of protest. I was very open and honest with them, with my fans. Like, here's why I'm using AI, because if I use humans, I could release a story every three to four months. Using AI, I can keep doing it weekly. Almost immediately, everybody bought in.

I've had a fraction of that level of kickback on podcasting, but I was honest with them, responded to their comments with what I just said, and for the most part, it's been smooth sailing.

I even released two shorts back to back. One was human narrated, one was AI-narrated. Despite having the negative AI comments on the AI episode, I actually had 20% more views on the AI episode.

Joanna: Are you using different voices?

So do you use a variety of men and women and accents and stuff, or do you just use one narrator?

Derek: I have one narrator for all of them. The only time I changed narrator with the AI was when I did the story in London. I used a narrator with a British accent, just because it felt right.

I played around with doing multiple voices, and even polled my subscribers on YouTube. In about a three to one margin, people were like, no, we like the one voice.

People care more about the story than having multiple voices talking to them.

Joanna: Yes, and this is another thing.

To me, when I listen to audiobooks, I want the content. It's not about the voice. In fact, I'd rather the voice disappeared. I think the voice disappearing is when people get used to the voice, so that, I think, is what your listeners are saying, which is that we're after the story.

The fact that they're listening to it rather than reading it doesn't make any difference.

You're also publishing those as ebooks—on Kindle only, or elsewhere?

Derek: Just Kindle. I'm in Kindle Unlimited because with the size of my series, nobody's going to buy all the books.

Joanna: Do you use AI covers as well?

Derek: Yes, I started using AI covers with releases that started coming out like last summer. Mostly, they've been well received.

Joanna: I've been using a lot of AI imagery for the last couple of years. Again, a lot of people listening are just scared. You know, when you upload a book to Kindle, you have to click the box that says, “How did you use AI?” I'm like, it's not a problem. You just click the box and you say you're using it.

Do you have any issues at all about using any of the AI stuff?

Derek: Oh, no.

It's been life changing for me. That was a big reason why I was able to go full time last year, just because it cut my costs down by about 99%.

Joanna: I love that. I love that. This is, again, why I encourage people to listen to the Brave New Bookshelf podcast, in general, because I think everyone who goes on that show is also AI positive, as you are. They find it just amplifies their creativity. You're a story machine. It's incredible.

Derek: One of the big things anti-AI people say is like, “oh, it's killing creativity,” and it's actually the opposite, at least it has been for me.

If I wanted to do a new story, a new plot line, do anything before AI, I would have had to have risked thousands of dollars for the editing, the audio, and advertising for it.

With AI, I essentially have no cost barriers. So I can write whatever I want without fear, without worrying about, okay, if this fails, I'm going to lose thousands of dollars.

With having a built in audience, as long as it's in the horror/sci-fi/action genre, I know I'm going to make money. It might not be a lot of money, but I know I'm going to make money and not lose money.

It has really opened up creativity and allowed me to tell stories I otherwise wouldn't have been able to tell.

Joanna: I totally agree. It's such a spark for me when I have a creative session with AI. If I'm just thinking about a new book—like yesterday I was thinking about something—and I just get on Chat or on Claude, and I'm going backwards and forwards, and it's sparking ideas.

Like you, I feel like it makes me more creative, and it just gives me bigger horizons for what's possible.

Derek: Absolutely, and especially with Claude with the new 3.7 Projects, I can upload one of my previous stories, and it's like, “This is how I want the story to sound. This is what I want you to emulate,” and I can go back and forth with it.

It's like having a writing partner, basically. It's speeding up my process. I bounce ideas off of it and stuff. It's like talking to myself, but a more intelligent version.

Joanna: Exactly. I also feel like the word “co-writing” is becoming more and more true, because it is a sort of true collaborative creative process. Although I've worked with co-writers before, and I'm actually a terrible co-writer because I'm so controlling.

So with Claude, [co-writing] actually works a lot better. How about you?

Derek: Yes. If it does something I don't like, I can be like, “No, don't do that.”

“Okay, sorry.”

Joanna: Yes, and it's very helpful.

I think you're also using AI for translations. Is that right? What's your process?

Derek: I am. I use ScribeShadow, which is AI translations tailored towards fiction. I was one of the early adopters of it. When it first came out, I was like, sure, let's give it a shot, see what happens.

They had like six languages, mostly European languages. It's like, okay, let's throw it up there and see what happens. Italian and Spanish were kind of like, eh, okay, but Germany just took off immediately.

I was just putting up a handful of stories, no advertising still. My first book even got a KDP All Star bonus in German. I've never even had that in America.

Joanna: You didn't have any proofreading? You just went straight from ScribeShadow?

Derek: I went straight from ScribeShadow because at the time, that was before they had partnered with a human translation service that gives them a heavily discounted rate to check everything.

By the time that came along, I had probably 40 books out in German. I went and looked at my ratings and reviews, and I think I had like a 4.3, 4.4 out of five, across all the books.

Then I went and looked at my American versions, and it's like, huh, the German versions are actually higher. So it's like, whatever problem people have, it doesn't appear to be the translations. So I just kept that up because it seems to be working okay.

Joanna: I realize some people listening are just going, “No, no, don't do it!” I have used ScribeShadow, but then I also paid for the proofreading and all of that kind of stuff, but I've only done it for some nonfiction. Oh, I did a short story as well.

I haven't jumped in because, of course, when you pay for all of the other stuff, the costs add up. As you were saying, you wouldn't be able to release at the pace you release, like in German, if you were paying for all of that.

Derek: Right.

I grew up loving B horror movies. So, low budget. They had the creativity, but they didn't have the budget to pull off everything they wanted. I latched onto that mentality.

So releasing in German, with the way that I am not paying for the extra translation or editing, like just embracing that B movie mindset. Get it out there. As long as it's entertaining, you'll find an audience.

I know full well I'm leaving 15, 20% of my potential audience on the table who don't like the AI translations, but it's not worth the extra time and money that I would have to spend in order to potentially get them.

I seem to have a regular audience that tunes into my books every week in German because, I mean, I'm profitable within seconds of releasing. So it's like if they're happy, I'm happy.

Joanna: I love that. You mentioned there the 20% you're leaving on the table. I literally wrote down before you said that, 80/20 rule, because that is what you're doing. You're doing the 80/20 rule pretty much for everything. That attitude of like the B movie, which, of course, people love.

I think this is what's so interesting. Listening to you, I feel the freedom. I feel the sort of indie vibe in you, which I just love. I was saying to my husband, listening to you, I caught almost like a flame, I feel. That's why I wanted to talk to you and just say thank you.

I feel like sometimes I get bogged down by so many expectations because I've been doing this a long time.

I've been doing this since 2007, 2008, and I lose track of that flame. So I wanted to say thank you to you for kind of lighting that again. I mean, you're like a proper indie, Derek!

Derek: Well, I'm a huge Iron Maiden fan, and one of the things that struck me interviewing Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer years ago, he's like, “We've never gone for radio play. We play music that we like to listen to. We do what we like, and we found an audience.” They're one of the biggest bands in the world.

Like that B movie mindset, like them, it's like, you know what? I'm going to write something that I would want to read. I've just kept pushing it out, and it's taken a little while, but I have an audience, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

Joanna: Well, great. I think maybe there's some more of your audience coming over.

Tell people where they can find you and your Dead America books online.

Derek: The best place to find me is on YouTube and on Spotify as well, The Dead America Zombie Podcast. My books are available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, not only in America, but Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Derek. That was great.

Derek: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.