We hung out with Brian Palmer (aka B.C. Palmer) for the first time in Hybrid Pub Scout Episode 14, when he came on to talk with Emily and Marie Robinson about managing ghostwriters and writing fantasy and romance. This time, he talks about something he'd already referred to in his first appearance: freeing us all from the iron grip of Microsoft Office with his new book writing app—Scribi Writer's Studio.

With his new software, Brian plans to create an all-in-one book writing, collaborating, and discovery program to help authors stay on target. We talk about how the app functions, all the things he's envisioning for its future, and how every person working in the indie-publishing chain can get in on it together.

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Welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast with

me, Emily einlander and me. Karin kalasky, hello. We are

mapping the frontier between traditional and indie

publishing, and we have a repeat guest on today. This is Brian

Palmer. I fell for it. What did I fall for? Time? You were so

entertaining the first time that I just had to say, yes,

yes. Well, I hope that's I hope that's true this

time as well.

Brian Palmer is the definition of the modern

authorpreneur With over 60 books written and published as a

fantasy author, romance author and ghost writer. He also co

owns Harbinger press with the incomparable Marie Robinson, and

is recently expanding his entrepreneurial compulsion with

the first full featured smart platform for writers, scribby

writers studio, where he where he finds the time to cuddle with

his husband, Scott and his Wonder Dog Mac, is a matter of

some speculation and calls into question the very nature of time

and space as we know it. Welcome, Brian, thank you for

putting so much effort. That was great.

That was awesome. Go big or go home. That's, that's

we've been having so many, like, buttoned

up, serious, like, additional interviews lately that it's good

to have another, like, silly person on, I mean, that in the

best way possible.

Yeah, no, yeah. I completely understand. This is

not a job. You get it. You're, you'll lose your mind if you try

and take yourself too seriously at this job.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and now you're, did you

develop the software yourself? This isn't on the list, but

like,

Oh no, no. Well, I came very close to it. It is. It has

not been developed and deployed. I have a number of, like, demos

and stuff. But we're at the this is, we have reached the point

where we now, we have a developer on the line. We have,

we have someone who's like, you know, excited and understands it

like, I ended up speaking to like, six different developers,

and it took me until I met the people at brain hub, before I

explained it. And they were like, Okay, well, we all really

want to write books, so you should, so we definitely want to

do this. There are a bunch of nerds, and that's what I was

looking for, is a bunch of, a bunch of a bunch of nerds who

always wanted to write books. So that's the stage that we're at.

I feel like everybody, there's at least one

person in every group of people who is like, I've always wanted

to write a book, yes,

yeah, yeah. There's, I think it's, I feel like there's

got to be at least four or five people in every group, if it's

big enough, like it's, I don't. I've only met a couple of people

ever who were like, wow, that's something that I, you know, just

would never want to do, or whatever. And really honestly,

those are just hypothetical people who just didn't say, Oh,

well, I've always wanted to write a book, because it's like,

the first thing people say when they find out that you write

books, yeah.

And I kind of love that, yeah, so do I think

it's wonderful just have an automatic into a conversation.

So let's, let's start into the meat of this discussion, and

we're going to talk about your, your latest venture. What is

scribie? Writers, studio, star, do? Studio, studio, studio.

So scribie is a full featured smart platform for

writers, and by that I mean that you can do everything in one

place. You can brainstorm, eat, sheet, outline, write,

collaborate with your editors, co authors and beta readers,

compile your ebooks and box sets in with the system that we have.

You could do that in seconds. And on top of being able to do

these things, though, the application is actually like

technologically smart. It learns how you work. It makes

suggestions about scheduling. It can work with your smart

devices, like your phones and tablets and other other devices

in the future as well. We want to tie it into just everything

that we can so like, help you get on track and help you meet

your goals and stay scheduled, and help you coordinate with

your team, like your editor, your proofreader, that sort of

thing to really become kind of like a kind of like your virtual

assistant, as well as your office space, like, so if you've

Ever seen some of these sci fi movies where you've got, like,

the sort of, like the smart virtual assistant. There's,

there's one movie in particular that I remember there being

someone like, sitting down to write their memoir, their

computer is like, what happens next? Sort of thing. We're

trying to get as close to that like sci fi level of like

automation, integration and assistance as we can and with

the design that we currently have, we're gonna get, like,

really scary, close to something kind of like that, and we have

plans to just make it smarter and smarter over time. So cool,

yeah, it's

well, you gotta have that. Sci fi aspect,

if you're like, trying to appeal to people with big imaginations,

yes, for sure, for sure. So it's kind of like a So, so it's, it's

like project management software, but like, also writing

software, but also social software, yeah.

So a lot of the, so, a lot of the clients that I work

with as a ghostwriter, they use something called Basecamp, and

they and they love it. They've adapted it to their thing, to

how they work as a small publisher, and it's great you

you do have to, like, upload your files to the platform, and

then pass to somebody else who does their like, edits or

whatever, and then they upload a new file, and then you have to

download that file, and you do this, like, sort of, upload,

download, export, import, cha, cha. And what I wanted to

develop was a place that's kind of like, just like, like a

virtual writer's office. You go to this place and there's an

assistant waiting for you, and you can do everything that you

need to do here. If you need to send the file to your editor,

you don't have to do the download, upload, export, dance.

You just invite them to the document, and they can edit

right there. And if you are using your beta readers, then

you just send out an invite, and they come and they read and they

leave comments. And instead of having to like, there are some

platforms for beta reading. They're really amazing. We mean

me and Marie, we use them. It's really frustrating to have to do

the like, six window dance, where you have to, like, have

the different windows for each of the readers and their

comments that they left as well as your document, and then you

have to track like, which chapter is this and that sort of

thing. We wanted to do something where everything is in one

place, and the more time I feel like, the more time you can

spend on the page doing work, the more likely it is that you

will actually finish the book, especially if you've got,

especially if you got an application that occasionally,

like, pops up on your phone to be like, hey, you've got to

write 2500 words today.

Are you a little worried? Are you a little

worried that's going to become like the Duolingo owl, though?

Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, like, literally

threatens people. Yeah. I know

almost learned, like, I've almost learned French and

German and all these other languages, almost.

And it's like, I miss you. You're really not

dedicated enough to this. Are you like, literally telling you

mean things like co star, co star and Duolingo are the

meanest apps

I know. They get on your they get on your ass about

learning languages and stuff. Um, I Well, for one thing, the

way that the platform is is devised and designed, everything

is incredibly flexible, like I was, I went into it being very

conscious of the fact that I'm an incredibly structured writer.

So my first instinct was to be like, I will introduce this

platform, and everyone will write books this way, because

this is the way that works for me, which is kind of like the

first instinct of all writers. But obviously that is super not

true. So it's designed to be incredibly flexible. Everything,

like, there's like, everything can be switched on, switched

off. So if you, if you're the kind of person who just really

doesn't need notifications at all, you just switch them off.

If you're the kind of person who wants reminders at the beginning

of the day but doesn't want something to like bug you all

day long, you know, then there's just, literally, there's just a

switch, switch for that to turn off midday reminders. We so we

thought about all of these different things, like what's

going to be annoying to some people but very useful to

others. And then one of the cool ideas, not, it won't be like a

day. One thing it'll be it'll be like in the first phase as we

roll out new features and stuff like that. But one of the things

that I would really like to be able to to offer on the platform

is more customized messages. So whether that is just, whether

that is letting people design their own messages which and not

everybody's gonna want to do that, or offering basically like

personality profiles, the very helpful patient, helpful and

patient scribby, the sort of like, crack the whip scribby,

and then for people like me, like the really snarky scribby,

that sort

of thing, and the people like Karen, the

shaming scribby, yeah,

I grew up, I noticed you haven't written anything

today, exactly.

Corinne, you have not read anything all year.

And I'm gonna tell everybody on our podcast. Just kidding, she's

reading now

I'm the one. Again, it's true, but I was

gonna say I think that like, as far as like levels of motivation

go. I think that's a really great idea, because I have this

problem with like, fitness apps where it's like, you can choose

like a trainer, and you can choose like, the one who's like,

really, like cheerful, who I hate, or the ones who are just

more like punishing, who I think are more effective. But, yeah, I

told you, right. It totally depends on the person. But I

think that's like. Really smart. Like, addition to to the

program, yeah, yeah.

Day one, those, those reminders and things are going

to be very kind of generic, yeah, over time, will roll out

more personality and stuff. I need that, like, all of my, all

of my notifications would be really sort of brutal and

snarky. Like, do you want to write this book, because, if so,

you're 30 minutes late. What are you doing with your life? That

sort of thing, like, that's what motivates me. But I know other

people would be

really efficient. Oh, my God, we're all

so different. Because if somebody like, if I got

reminders like that, I'd just be like, fuck you. You don't know

me. Yes, I do, and then I'd never write again. I am driven

by spite in so many ways.

Thank you. You're welcome.

All right. I remember speaking of spite. I

remember when we talked in Episode 14 that part of what you

wanted to do is just like, blow Microsoft Word out of the water.

Like, yeah, like, kind of describe the differences. And

what you Is that still the fact

so what so I was I had started to, I had started the

germination period of this whole thing back then, when we, when

we actually had that, that's what I was kind of referring to,

is like, I don't know what it is, but I just want to do

something that will, just like, free us from the iron grasp of

Microsoft Word, and which is, I mean, I don't want to invoke the

trademark wrath of Microsoft. They're, they're a wonderful

program. There it's, you know, word is a standard.

Don't sue us Microsoft Word.

But it's a very, it's a very broad tool. And, you know,

there's every industry, like, whether you're an athlete or,

like, you're an accountant or you're in, like, stock markets

or so like, everybody has some sort of, like, specialized

software that's, like, just for their industry. And and writing

software is one of those that gets really sort of, it's just,

it's very broad, like Microsoft Word is, like, yeah, you can

write a book in Microsoft Word, but it's, it's not. It's not

designed for us. It's designed for everybody who wants to put

words in a document and send something, you know? I mean,

it's not, it's not specialized to being a writer to being an

author, right,

right? And it completely slows down your

computer and crashes if you put too many words in there and

like, if the comments suddenly disappear and,

right, yeah, yeah, it's got some it's got it's got some

hitches, some some hitches that can be fatal to a project. If

you're an author, some Tolkien

as you go on, it just gets harder and harder,

and you have to, like, shore up your fortitude.

So, yeah. So I am so. So I am in a I am on something

of a minor epic quest against Microsoft Word, not because it's

a bad program, but because we could just do a lot better. And

everybody else, every other industry, they are doing better.

So there's no reason we shouldn't. But you'd asked, what

you said this was, what are the main differences, like, what

sort of sets it apart

and what makes it similar? Like, what are the

things that it improves upon? I guess,

yeah, well, for one thing, let's say, let's say

you're gonna write your write your novel or your nonfiction

work, or anything like that, anything that you're gonna write

in Microsoft Word. For one thing, it doesn't do any degree

of, like, element tracking. So you're going to write a book,

you've got the one well, if you're like, if you're anything

like me, you've got the one document that is the sort of

like, I have an idea I need to, like, kind of spew words onto a

page to kind of work that idea out right. That's one document.

And then now I have to take all of that, and I have to organize

it into something sort of approximating an actual story.

And that's a second document that, you know, hopefully

becomes an outline, or it does at that point, 1 million and

then finally, like, it's time to it's time to actually write the

book. And so that's a matter of having, like, the brainstorming

sort of document in one place and the outline in another, and

then the main document. And I kind of like, we're jumping back

and forth between them, and there are a couple of ways

around that to use, like comments and that sort of thing,

but it's a lot of manual work, and all of that manual work is

time that I'm not writing a book, right? So one of the main

differences is just how we organize all of that information

on scribie, as you we've got a we've got our various, like

writing stage sort of dashboards, right? And you don't

have to use all of them, but they're all available. You've

got your brainstorming dashboard, a beat sheet

dashboard, outlining dashboard, the writing dashboard. Uh, sort

of take you through that, through that whole process. If

that's the kind of writer that you are, as you build them, they

become cumulative. They're each everything that you put down in

your in your brainstorming documents, answering particular

brainstorming questions that either you write for yourself

because you just know what you need to ask yourself to get the

right story, or because of the way that we sort of structured

the back end, you can download genre specific questions from

our library. You can get them from your friends, like we we've

made everything kind of shareable and accessible right

as you fill those out, they get logged into your story base, you

move to the next stage, and you take all of that with you, and

it's just, it's accessible in the side pane at a click, and

it's always there. So if you're in the process of doing your

beat sheet, and you think like,

and the beat sheet, the beat sheets kind of

like a outline, right? Like all of the points you have to hit in

the story for people to

like, if you're for those that don't know, if you

are either a highly structured writer, or you just like, you

just like, a nice, sort of, like, structured place to start

your outline. A beat sheet is the, it's the it's the it's the

series of like necessary moments and turns in a story that give

it good structure. The moment the wizard comes to town and

tells Frodo, you know, you've got to take this ring to the

Mount Doom,

the call to adventure, as as Joseph Campbell

would say,

yeah, exactly the call to adventure. That's a, yeah,

those are all. Those are beat systems and beat sheets and so,

yeah. So that's, so, that's the essence of a beat sheet. We so

what we wanted to do is make sure that as you do that work,

the work that you do, is then always accessible. It's nicely

organized, it's easily searchable, and that you never

have to leave your current like if I'm in the outlining stage, I

don't have to leave and go to another document to look at my

beat sheet. I don't have to go somewhere else to look at the

brainstorming if I want to, if I'm going to start building like

a story Bible, for instance, I can start doing that from the

first stage. And all of that stays organized and moves with

me, so that by the time you get to the point where you're going

to write the book, it's been a cumulative process that has

stayed with you. You don't lose anything. Everything stays

organized. There's no jumping from one document to another.

You can always stay on the page that you're on. And I am of the

belief, and it's been sort of borne out by talking to a lot of

other authors, that the more time you can spend on the page,

the more likely is that you will get the job done and get it done

quickly every time you every time you leave the page, that's

a break point. That is a point where you can get distracted. Go

check your email, get on Facebook, Twitter, go record a

podcast, whatever it is. Sorry if you stop what you're doing,

you know you're gonna, you'll end up distracted and that sort

of thing. And not everyone is, and not everyone is like that. I

mean, I'm, I'm the sort of writer that if I leave the page

for a minute or more like I'll get distracted and do something

else, and then have to remind myself to go back. Some people

do it with just sheer gumption and willpower. And those people

are awesome. They are in the minority.

What is willpower anyway? Like, what

does that even mean?

Like, willpower, I feel willpower is just I mean.

Speaking as a speaking as someone who practiced

hypnotherapy for about six years, willpower is really just

a habit. Like, there's no such thing as willpower. Willpower is

an illusion. You're either you're either, you either have

good habits, or you take the time to make good habits. But

there's not really, like, a, yeah, anybody who makes it seem

like they have iron will. They're just, they're just used

to doing things. That's what that

is. Just used to doing things. They

just have a habit of, like, completing tasks. That's

it.

Can you go into a little bit more detail about

the social Writers Group aspect of the software, and do people

already need to have a writer's group in place, or is there a

way to find other authors within the program,

the to the to what, how you'll find other authors

initially, there's a social platform aspect. It's very it'll

be very narrow, though. It'll be just for the people who are

actually creating new projects and that sort of thing. But when

you first when you first log on, and you make your first pen name

and that sort of thing, whether that's an actual pseudonym or

just your name, you'll be able to tag your tag yourself or a

particular series in a particular genre. So if you're

like a romance author, fantasy author, science fiction, that

sort of thing. You can let scribie know that, and you can

look for other authors on the social platform like you just

look up like fantasy authors and connect with people. What we

expect is that the more common way for people to connect will

be that they already know somebody who's using the

platform. So. And reach out and create a connection that way.

And then writers groups, they work, they work the same way

that you would expect them to like as a Facebook group. You

you create a new group, and you invite a user to join the group,

or somebody invites you to join a group, that sort of thing.

Over time that's going to expand. And part of that is

because we, we, our whole first stage is all about just making

the writing experience, like easier, more organized, more

efficient, giving you some support so that you've got this

virtual assistant that's sort of like helping you get things

done, and also providing collaboration, that sort of

thing.

So the virtual assistants doing like the heavy

lifting, and the author, the other authors are there for

like, support and ideas and stuff like that.

Yeah. Well, writing is a lonely It's a lonely

profession. You know, you gotta have friends, but by providing

the providing that initial social platform, and really that

like the idea of connecting with other authors, creating writing

groups, that sort of thing, that's actually a byproduct of

what we want to do. So we already have to lay the

groundwork for the social aspect of the platform, because we want

to do more than just help people write books and stay focused and

meet their goals and things like that. We actually have long term

plans for new and interesting ways to connect authors to

readers. So the social platform initially is just for the

authors, for the people who are who are subscribed to the

platform, and that sort of thing, because we want that

framework in place, and that's a good way to use it. But over

time, we're, we're hoping for that to be a place where, say,

You're a reader and you love fantasy, and you got some

friends, and they tell you, like, we're on scribie, or you

get a link from the author in your newsletter, and say, and

the author says, like, hey, come join scribie. It's completely

free. You can download the mobile app. I'm going to start

putting excerpts and teasers and things like that out to my

reader group. They all join, and we want to be able to do things

like you. Let's say you finish a book. You've got it published,

and scribie can. You can let scribie know the store links

mark a book is published, and scribie will take that store

link and send it out to users on the app on their phone and pop

up and say, like, hey, one of your favorite authors just

released this book. Here's the link. So we want to shorten the

gap between I discovered this book and I went and I picked

this book up, right? So that's the long term plan. And because

we have that, and because we have that plan in place, like

everything that we're going to do long term, we've got, like,

a, we've got a five year map for where scrutiny goes over the

next five years. Once it once it launches. And in order to make

sure that we can meet that map, we've got all of these, all of

these sort of modular features to start with that eventually

expand so writer groups. How you find them? It works just like

any other social network. You look it up by subject, you

connect directly to another user. What we are hoping is that

people will invite other users onto the platform. So if I, you

know, have a favorite proofreader, a favorite editor,

or something like that, I invite them to the platform. They're

not creating projects, so they don't have to pay to use it or

anything. But then they're there, they're available. They

start connecting with other authors. Because I tell

somebody, I've got a really excellent editor, they're here

on Scribd. They can work in your document live like, here's their

name. You should hire this person because they're already

in your office, basically. So that's, that's how we're hoping

that that will work,

a little bit of built in marketing. Yeah,

absolutely, is. Is it just for people who are writing like sci

fi, fantasy? I mean, story Bible, I've mostly heard from

fantasy authors, but, I mean, can even, you know, non fiction

writers work with it like, who? Who is it tailored for?

So the back end of our story base is super

customizable, and we've tested a lot of really fun ways for doing

things like storing research notes for a particular subject

matter, which, if you're if you are writing fantasy or something

historical, then you know you've got your particular needs as far

as research goes. But the same thing can be applied to just

like to like nonfiction in general. So if you're

researching a particular subject or trying to get your thoughts

organized, or that sort of thing, and you want to organize

them in a way that makes them very searchable, we the story

base is searchable. Story base is what we kind of call the

story Bible. But it's, it's more than that. It's it's every book

in a series. It's all the characters, it's all the notes

and everything that you take it. It's a database. So story

database, we call the story base, and yeah, and so it's

searchable just by text. So every note that you put in

there, if you go to the search bar and you look up a particular

word, it's gonna pull up everything that. Sort of

attached to that, but we also allow for really specific

searching through hashtags. So if you were going to write

nonfiction, and you're going to separate it into, let's say

you're going to talk about story structure, and you're going to

separate it into, like, multiple different topics on the, you

know, on the topic of on the subject of story structure. And

you can tag those notes as you come up with them, or as you

pull them from one place, give them a hashtag that matches the

subject, and then when you need to reference all of those, you

just click the hashtag and pull up all of your notes related to

that particular subject, right? So we've so we thought about

ways to make it really flexible, because even within like things

like fantasy, like not everybody keeps the story Bible the same

way. We can't impose structure on someone's like process, not

an outside structure. But what we can do is provide tools that

allow you to build the structure yourself.

Okay, so is the software mostly for self

published authors, or can authors who are working with the

intention of querying literary agents benefit from it? Also?

Yes, and so now I'm just kidding. He's

married to a to a drama person

theater director, although, as it happens, He

loathes

improv I also loathe so why am I not surprised? But I hate it so

much.

He's Yeah. He loves, like, very well structured, yes, thought

out, right? Like, directed theater that, like, Yeah, is

there for a purpose to make a point, right? Yes, which is to

be fair. To be fair, I'm not a big fan of improv either. I

mean, I love, like, Whose Line is it? Sure I don't like amateur

improv,

right? Oh God, no one likes that. Nobody.

That's the sort of that's like a first draft. Like, no one should

see your first draft.

So, yeah. So the way it was designed, what I thought

about initially, of course, was, what do indie authors need? And

that is because indie authors do not have the same kind of

professional support network that a traditional published,

traditionally published author does, right? We have other

needs. We have additional needs, but our but the needs that we

have are actually like all of the basic needs are the same

needs that a traditionally published

author does. So where can authors go to get

started

well, so we are so the next stage in our grand plan for

development is a crowdfunding campaign. This is not a this is

this. This software doesn't exist yet. It exists. It's as

frameworks and demos and things like that. But it's not ready to

deploy by yet, by any means. So we are about to launch a

crowdfunding campaign to raise $120,000 which is a lot, it is.

But the reason that we are confident, the reason that we

set the budget like we did, is because we have, we have built a

system that is, we have built and designed something that is

designed to grow very rapidly. We have a really, really

specific plan. And a lot of the times these types of tools like,

Well, I hate to just like, call out call out people, but there

is another tool out there that tried to tackle the story Bible

problem, and their development was incredibly slow and

frustrating, and they lost a lot of users, and they still haven't

quite gotten there. So what we wanted to do is make sure that

we have a plan laid out so that our very first release is

incredibly useful to the most number of people, so all of our

core features from day one, people start using it, and it

will immediately change the amount of time that you spend

doing menial tasks. It will immediately make your whole

process more efficient easier, help you capture it and be able

to repeat it more easily, that sort of thing. So, so so that's

the reason that the target is, is, is where it is $120,000

because we didn't want to release something that was only

gonna be like kind of partially useful for a little while,

right? But people who do want to get involved can find us on

Indiegogo, or can find us@scribby.org super easy to

remember, and people can get involved for as little as $5 or

we, we have a number of different like levels for

backers and stuff if you want to get involved, but like you're

strapped for cash, you're just not sure, you're not sure that

you necessarily, or you're a reader, and you just want to get

your favorite author and early birthday present that we have a

level for that just $5 and then we also have varying levels from

like 40 to 70 to like, when we launch, you'll be able to get,

you know, extra months, basically, for at a discount,

for scribing, right? And then we've got a $250 level that is.

For lifetime access to Scribd forever. So that's $250 if you

are going to live to be, say, 100 years old, then that's like,

that's paying like pennies a month for scribie For the rest

of your life. And we are very confident. I mean, we've got a

lot of videos up the campaign page. The pre launch campaign

page is up. We've got videos, showing videos and gifts and

images, showing all the little nitty gritty details of how it

works. I am confident that this is the type of tool that if your

goal is to be a professional indie author, if you want to

build a big catalog with lots of books, especially if you're

going to write in series, which is as a fiction writer,

especially, that is the way to make money you you have to write

in a series to make really good money as a as an indie author.

But if that's your goal, then this is the tool that you will

use literally every day of your career, and it will drastically

change the way that you write. I am 100%

confident in that. Brian, thanks for thanks

for joining us today.

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

I was I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about this.

Yeah, all right, and we'll, we'll put all

of your links in the show notes and keep everybody updated on

your progress with this. And you can follow us on Facebook at

hybrid pub scout on Twitter, at hybrid pub scout on Instagram,

at hybrid pub Scout pod. And you can sign up for our newsletter

and download the hybrid pub Scout guide to picking your

publishing path. So if you're not sure whether you should do

indie publishing, self publishing, traditional

publishing, if you're wondering what to do, this might help get

you started. What do you have to say? Corinne, what do you got?

Stay safe out there, and I don't know

again, live, laugh, love,

as I always say, yes,

thanks for giving a rip about books.