Jen Graybeal Creative Coaching
21 episodes listed below
Practical author business with a warm publishing brain.
Books, Business, & Mindset is a warm author-business show built around practical craft, career, and mindset conversations. Episodes move from friendly interviews into usable lessons on rights, royalties, email marketing, planning, reader connection, and staying adaptable when the business changes.
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Books, Business, & Mindset looks at author life as both creative practice and small business. The tone is warm. The substance is practical. Across interviews and solo episodes, the show keeps asking what helps writers move from vague ambition to real decisions about craft, marketing, publishing, planning, rights, and community. Guest conversations often begin with personal writing histories, then widen into career lessons. Lisa Raine brings the conversation into rights, royalties, copyright registration, and historical romance. Y.M. Nelson connects author visibility with email marketing, romance fandom, Star Trek, superhero shows, and the fun of readerly nerd culture. Lucinda McGarry’s episode turns toward data, Facebook ads, Kindle Unlimited pages read, boxed sets, and the kind of pivot that changes an author’s sales trajectory. Toby Doyle brings romance, cozy mysteries, writing community, GenreCon, and the long process of finding time for stories. Kelly Farmer’s appearance folds queer contemporary romance, found family, improv, acting techniques, conference panels, and creative energy into the same author-business frame. The solo episodes are more instructional, but they keep the conversational feel. Marketing tactics are separated from strategy. Planning starts with a messy brain dump. Author teamwork is treated as a real need, not a sentimental slogan. The show is strongest when it translates abstract publishing advice into ordinary working choices: what to promote, who the audience is, when to change language, how to read the data, and why support matters. It favors encouragement with enough directness to be useful. It also has a clear affinity for genre fiction, especially romance and mystery, without narrowing itself to craft talk alone. The result is a show for authors who want their writing lives to feel less improvised and more intentional.
Made for: This show suits authors who want clear, friendly guidance on publishing, marketing, planning, and sustaining a writing career. It is especially relevant for genre-fiction writers navigating romance, mystery, reader communities, ads, newsletters, and long-term creative momentum.
What sets it apart: The show blends author interviews with hands-on business coaching, so personal writing stories usually lead into usable choices. Its strength is making rights, marketing frameworks, planning systems, and career pivots feel approachable without flattening the realities of publishing.
Running an author business is so much more than writing. Jen Graybeal (she/her) is a certified creativity coach, educator, and editor that has spent more than ten years helping authors create stories they are proud of and businesses that align with their individual vision of success. She empowers authors through encouraging feedback, collaborative problem solving, and gently-applied tough love. Visit her website for client testimonials at www.jengraybeal.com or follow her on the socials: @JenTheEditor.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Books, Business, & Mindset turns the commercial side of authorship into concrete decisions about planning, promotion, rights, and adaptation.
Jen Graviel treats an author's career as an operating problem: define the goal, separate strategy from tactics, and turn vague intentions into work that can be scheduled.
This is your reset button between "fix website" and yet another doomed social calendar.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical guide to author rights, copyright registration, and the cost of waiting too long.
Jen Graviel steers this conversation with Lisa Raine toward a clear business question authors cannot ignore: what happens when a work is used before registration is in place.
A practical author-business conversation about reinvention, data, and keeping books moving.
Lucinda McGarry's move from government work into romantic suspense gives the episode its center, and Jen Graviel keeps the focus on the practical steps behind that shift: leaving state service in September 2003, publishing through a small press, parting ways in 2010, and then…
An author's acting and improv background informs a practical look at creative process.
Kelly Farmer's conversation on Books, Business, and Mindset keeps its focus on queer contemporary romance and the habits that help sustain the work. Farmer, who has been writing romance novels since junior high, comes back to the belief that everyone deserves a happy ending.
A practical reset for authors who keep mistaking activity for strategy.
Books, Business, and Mindset uses the four P's to give authors a plainspoken reset on marketing. Jen Graviel draws a clear line between strategy and the busier tactics that often crowd it out, including social media posts, calendars, newsletters, and advertising.
A grounded planning reset for turning an author's loose list into actions, protected time, and visible progress.
Planning for an author business is framed as a way to take back the day, especially when the year has drifted or never had much structure to begin with.
Odd questions, followed patiently down to the incentives.
Jen Grabial, a certified creativity coach for more than 10 years, interviews Moni Boyce, a USA Today best-selling romance author and former film producer.
The practical warning hits early.
Jen Graviel interviews Y.M.
Jen Graviel opens by introducing Lucinda McGarry and sketching the arc of her writing life.
Jen Grabeel interviews hybrid romance and cozy mystery author Tobi Doyle about her writing journey, upcoming series, and marketing mindset.
Jen Graviel welcomes Kelly Farmer and introduces her as a best-selling author of queer contemporary romances with snarky humor and plenty of heart.
Jen Graviel opens by framing the four P's as a marketing framework used across lots of industries, including for authors.
Jen Graviel discusses the three essential teams every author needs: a writing team, a publishing team, and a marketing team.
Jen Graviel continues her planning process series, emphasizing the importance of a complete brain dump without self-censorship.
Jen Graviel presents a six-step planning system for authors that moves from capturing every task to regularly reviewing the list.