Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

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TheCreativepen.com. And that's Penn with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number 543 of the podcast. And it is Friday the 2nd of April 2021 as I record this.

In today's show, I'm talking to Jeff Elkins about dialogue, why it's important, how to write

authentic conversation, the importance of subtext, how to differentiate between characters,

how to research dialogue, and more. So that is coming up in the

interview section. In publishing news, so ACX has now started showing audiobook returns. I can see

some on my dashboard for Q1, 2021. And I've got, just so you know, about a 2% return rate across

my whole backlist for Q1, and they're only showing Q1, so January, February, March.

If you wanted to compare it with yours, I thought I would just tell you because it's interesting.

Obviously, some different books have different rates, but yeah, it's just interesting.

And only one of those books is in KU, my German mindset book.

Everything else is wide.

So I don't know how much of a difference that actually makes.

But that German one did not get any returns.

So at least we now have some more data.

People can have a look and assess what might be going on.

Lindsay Barocca tweeted,

it's good they're not hiding it anymore, but it shows what BS their policy is. I can see people

trying and not liking a book one, but having a bunch of returns on book six suggests people

...