Podcasts about indie authors

In this episode of Pencils and Lipstick, I sat down with Jake Lynch to talk about his unexpected journey into writing Christian fiction. He shared how a moment in Isaiah prompted him to write his first novel and how he now builds stories around intentional themes—taking characters from problem to solution. We dove into crafting meaningful character arcs, writing with the reader in mind, and creating faith-driven stories that explore doubt, growth, and redemption.You can find out more about Jake on his website: https://authorjakelynch.com/Sign up for my writers' newsletter to learn more about the craft of writing, know when my workshops are and be the first to get exclusive information on my writing retreats. https://katcaldwell.com/writers-newsletterWant more information on my books, author swaps, short stories and what I'm reading? Sign up for my readers' newsletter. https://storylectory.katcaldwell.com/signup You can always ask me writing questions on instagram @author_katcaldwellSign up for the first Craft and Connect live event! https://tidycal.com/writeyourlife/craft-and-connect-live-march-24

What if discovering strong indie books were as simple—and as trustworthy—as walking into your favorite bookshop? In this episode, Alliance of Independent Authors director Orna Ross and campaigns lead Melissa Addey introduce ALLi's new Big Indie Author Bookstore. They explain why it was launched now, how it differs from a standard indie author book list, and how it helps members gain greater visibility and credibility. The discussion also looks at how ALLi will work with readers, librarians, bloggers, and booksellers to connect the right readers with the right books. Show Notes The Indie Author Bookstore Sponsor Our Creative Self-Publishing stream is brought to you by Orna Ross's Go Creative! program—helping authors harness the power of creative flow in writing and publishing. About the Host Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller's "100 top people in publishing". She also publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is greatly excited by the democratizing, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website.

D2D's CEO Kris Austin joins the D2D team to reflect on our 2025 and another year in publishing, and to look ahead to what is on the horizon in 2026. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Fantasy author Martin R. Nelson joins David Watson for a candid conversation about the brutal reality of the creative life, the deep themes in his high fantasy series "The Annals of Tessian," and the relentless struggle to get noticed in a saturated world. We dive into his new book, "The Culling of Souls," and its predecessor, "Children of the Dying Hearth," exploring the powerful ideas that fuel them. Martin breaks down how the first book is about the courage to leave your comfort zone—a theme embodied by a teenage boy who might be the heir to a lost empire, a 600-year-old elf who's still just a kid, and a noble ruler forced to get his hands dirty. The sequel, "The Culling of Souls," tackles a more internal battle: the painful but necessary act of cutting away the parts of yourself that hold you back, like a traumatic memory that no longer has to define your tomorrow. This isn't just a book talk; it's a raw look into the heart of an indie author. Martin opens up about the crushing self-doubt that comes with asking people to buy your work, the frustration of hitting a wall with gatekeepers and expensive (and sometimes useless) editorial reviews, and the overwhelming noise of 4,000+ books published every single day. He shares the "empty stadium" feeling of creating incredible work with no crowd watching, and the crucial difference between an athlete's measurable "personal best" and a creator's invisible race. But the conversation is also filled with hope and hard-won wisdom. They discuss the power of building a "body of work" and waiting for that one brick to be knocked out of the wall, as described by podcaster Dan Carlin, so the people on the other side can finally see you. Martin shares stories from the band Stereophonics about how their biggest hit was a song they almost threw away, proving that sometimes you just have to keep showing up. They also touch on the practical side of book promotion, debating the merits of targeted Amazon ads versus scattergun PR and the hilarious potential (and pitfalls) of using AI to create promotional videos. If you're a writer, artist, or anyone trying to create something meaningful, this episode is a must-watch. It's a testament to the idea that even if the stadium is empty, you have to lace up your boots and run the race anyway—because the only thing you can control is showing up for tomorrow. Timestamps: 0:00 - The Indie Author's Dilemma 1:09 - Introducing Martin R. Nelson & "The Annals of Tessian" 2:18 - The Theme of "Children of the Dying Hearth": Leaving Your Comfort Zone 4:45 - The 600-Year-Old Elf: A Fun Fantasy Trope 6:00 - The Honorable Ruler Who Needs to Get His Hands Dirty 8:14 - The Bilbo Baggins Principle: No Hero's Journey from an Armchair 9:07 - "The Culling of Souls": Cutting Away What Holds You Back 11:13 - The Trauma That Defines You vs. The Trauma You Learn From 14:34 - Emotions Are a Window to the Soul 16:11 - The Truman Show: How Trauma Traps You 17:02 - The Universal Struggle: Jesus, Buddha, and Marcus Aurelius 18:36 - The Crushing Self-Doubt of Selling Your Own Work 20:11 - The Joe Rogan Comparison & The Empty Stadium 22:50 - The Athlete's "Personal Best" vs. The Creator's Invisible Race 24:02 - Van Gogh, Bob Ross & Finding Success After You're Gone 26:25 - The Power of a Good Conversation (and Respecting Boundaries) 29:01 - The Stereophonics Story: "Just Some Shit" Becomes a Hit 32:13 - Dan Carlin's "Wall" Theory & the Body of Work 34:39 - The Gatekeepers: Agents, Publishers, and 4,000 Daily Books 38:10 - The $700 Kirkus Review That Was Total Garbage 40:06 - AI Video Promotion: Hilarious Failures & Huge Potential 43:56 - Amazon Ads: Targeting the Right Niche 45:05 - The Power of the "Everyman" Podcast 48:06 - Turning Up the Volume for the RIGHT People 51:00 - The Fascination with the "Everyman" in History 52:28 - How You Can Support Indie Authors Martin https://martinraynelson.com/

Have you ever lost track of time inside a book? That's no accident.In this episode of Conversations with Rich Bennett, mystery romance author Melissa Roos shares how she went from growing up seven miles outside a small Iowa town to publishing six emotionally layered suspense novels in just five years.Melissa opens up about overcoming shyness, choosing indie publishing for creative control, building strong female characters, and revealing secrets one page at a time. She also explains why critique groups are essential, how reader feedback fuels her passion, and what inspired her latest novel, The Truth Lies at the Edge, after a life-changing visit to the Grand Canyon.If you love fiction filled with heart, tension, and unforgettable settings, this conversation is for you.Learn more and grab signed copies at MelissaRoosAuthor.com.Send a textVote for us here 10% off All MembershipsRuntime: 2/10/2026 until 2/28/2026Code: CRBPodcast This discount is valid only for memberships purchased February 10, 2026 until February 28, 2026. It cannot be applied retroactively to previous purchases and may not be combined with any other discount or promotion. All memberships purchased are nonrefundable.Book Fair at Bel AirCelebrate the Magic of Words in Bel Air, Maryland!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showRate & Review on Apple Podcasts Follow the Conversations with Rich Bennett podcast on Social Media:Facebook – Conversations with Rich Bennett Facebook Group (Join the conversation) – Conversations with Rich Bennett podcast group | FacebookTwitter – Conversations with Rich Bennett Instagram – @conversationswithrichbennettTikTok – CWRB (@conversationsrichbennett) | TikTok Sponsors, Affiliates, and ways we pay the bills:Hosted on BuzzsproutSquadCast Subscribe by Email

In this week's episode, we take a look at five Instagram tips for writers, and we also discuss recent Facebook ad changes. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store: CAINA25 The coupon code is valid through February 23, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 290 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 13th, 2026, and today we're looking at five tips for Instagram marketing for writers. We will also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and publishing projects.   So let's first start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store, and that code is CAINA25. The coupon code is valid through February the 23rd, 2026 so if you need a new ebook for this winter, we've got you covered.   And now on my current writing and publishing projects. I'm currently 91,000 words into Cloak of Summoning, which will be the 14th book in my Cloak Mage urban fantasy series. I am hoping to finish the rough draft in the coming week, and then it's going to need a fair bit of editing because I've decided to change things and move things around to improve it. So if all goes well, I hope that book will be out in the first week of March, assuming nothing comes up before then.   I am also 8,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, which will be the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and I am hoping that will be out in April, if all goes well.   In audiobook news, Blade of Storms is completely finished and I believe as of right now you can buy it at my Payhip store, Kobo, and Google Play, and it is currently working its way through processing at all the other audiobook stores. Hollis McCarthy has finished recording Cloak of Titans, which is the 11th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy series, and if all goes well, my proofer should be able to listen to it this week and then hopefully the audiobook will be available to you sometime in March. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects.   00:01:51 Thoughts on Facebook Ads   Before we get to our main topic, I want to have a brief digression into another part of the Meta empire, specifically Facebook ads and my recent experiences therein. I've mentioned before that I stopped using Facebook ads in October since the Advantage Plus system, which is their AI targeting system, was giving me headaches.   For a brief summary of my experience with Facebook ads. I started using them in 2019, did really well with them in 2020, then Facebook randomly started banning accounts during this craziness of summer 2020. I got my account reinstated, used them less frequently more and more until October of 2025 when I stopped using them altogether because Advantage Plus made targeting so hard. Since then, I've relied mostly on Amazon ads and BookBub ads to good results. However, I've also read various blog posts from people who have been struggling with the Advantage Plus system as well, and they've been investigating it thoroughly as internet marketers tend to do, and they've uncovered something interesting that isn't mentioned at all in Facebook's documentation about the new changes, specifically that Advantage Plus uses the text content of your ad to target it.   Under the old system, it didn't work that way at all. You would select interests that match your ad, usually popular authors in the fantasy genre (like J.R.R Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, and so forth) and then you wrote the text of the ad and supplied an image, which was usually called a creative. The creative was like 80% of a successful Facebook ad. You just needed a good picture, more or less. The Advantage Plus system by contrast targets according to the text in the ad. So while you still need a good creative, you need to be precise in the ad text. So for example, you need to write something like this: "Fans of The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Mistborn, and Game of Thrones will love this free epic fantasy available for Kindle readers." Now, I found the arguments in these blog posts persuasive, so I decided to give it a try. The results are on the better side of okay-ish, I will admit. I didn't lose any money and did make a bit of money. The results were definitely better than I expected, though the ad using Advantage Plus typically only has a shelf life of six to 10 days before it stops working. That said, the old system was still better because the interests were more granular and I could assign them more precisely. I used to be able to advertise Frostborn, Cloak Mage, The Ghosts, and Demonsouled all at the same time because I could target the ads so precisely and granularly. There's absolutely no way I could do that now because the Advantage Plus system is a black box. It basically boils down to "trust us, the AI will figure it out" when it very obviously can't.   So for the moment I will have one Facebook ad in the rotation until Meta changes something and everything breaks. There's no way I'll run as many Facebook ads as I did in 2020, when sometimes I had eight different Facebook ads going at once. Apparently in the last three years, Meta spent around 130 billion on AI, give or take, and what they got for that money is an ad targeting system that frequently doesn't work, and when it does work, doesn't work as well as the old system did. Spending unfathomable sums of money to replace a system that worked pretty well with one that intermittently doesn't work, and then when it does function, doesn't work as well as the previous system seems to be a pretty good summary of the "AI revolution" so far.   00:05:05 Main Topic: 5 Tips for Instagram Marketing for Indie Authors     Now onto our main topic this week, five tips for Instagram marketing for indie authors. Because I'm looking for new alternatives to Facebook ads for reasons I just discussed, I have just started using Instagram as part of my marketing strategy, and many indie authors, especially in the romance genre, have reported a lot of success marketing through Instagram so I wanted to learn more about it and share what I learned. In today's episode, I'm going to focus on marketing through your author account, not paid Instagram ads, which could be a separate podcast topic in the future. Here are five tips that might help you with running an author Instagram account.   #1: Find a strategy beyond book promotion. Like any other form of social media, if all you post is promotion for your books, it'll be hard to gain a following. Before you start posting regularly, you'll have to think about what else you have to offer your audience. Even if you want to keep your posts exclusive to writing, there are other types of posts you can make, like behind the scenes peeks, extra facts about a character, or using the poll/question feature to engage with your followers about the books. Follow other author accounts from writers in your genre to learn about their successes and how they engage with their followers. That said, a warning with that, spending a lot of time looking at posts from engaging with other authors creates a closed loop and doesn't further your goal of getting your books into the hands of your readers. Looking at other author accounts and engaging with them definitely falls into the category of what I've called writing adjacent activities that can easily give you the illusion of progress but not actual progress that I've talked about on this podcast before. Ideally, you should spend most of your time on Instagram with readers, not other authors.   It's also important to find the balance between providing personal content to make readers feel more connected to you and having it drift too far into being a personal account. Most of us have seen author accounts and social media accounts that post far too personal of relationship details or various long types of rants on various topics that I find it hard to believe help sell any books. The balance will be different for everyone, but always keep in mind that your primary goal on your author accounts is to be a space for your brand as an author. In that same vein, posting negative reviews of other books or negative comments about other writers is not a smart idea in the long run. At best, it looks like you're attacking someone else to make yourself look better, and at worst, you can end up as part of one of the many Bookstagram dramas that crop up with predictable and tedious frequency and in the process, you may make yourself some enemies for life. Nobody wants that.   Spamming your books by promoting them in other author's accounts, comments sections, or worse, DMing them is considered bad form and not even remotely effective in the long run.     #2: Your space, your rules. Don't be shy about blocking people or deleting comments, especially from spam accounts. Remember that it's your space, not theirs. The flip side of that is turning off comments altogether will limit your reach on Instagram. Although engagement with other accounts matters on Instagram, not every single comment or DM needs a reply, and it would be a waste of precious writing time to even try. Many authors find a compromise in liking non-spammy, well-intentioned comments instead of replying to each one. Although it's important to post regularly, putting out a public schedule for what you'll post is an invitation for people to get upset when you miss a day.     #3: Captions matter. Although Instagram is about images and video, substantial captions are important for helping people to find your content. The algorithm rewards decent size but not overly long captions with good hashtags, even if people don't read them. The more specific you make your hashtags, the more effective they will be. Broad ones like "writing" and "author" won't be as effective as "Arthurian Fantasy" or "Enemies to Lovers Historical Romance." There are also a lot of genre specific abbreviations, especially in romance such as "HEA" (which stands for happily ever after) or the pepper emoji to suggest that the romance is a spicy one (which is a euphemism for saying that it gets explicit). Take the time to learn these by following other authors or accounts in your genre because it'll help others find your posts.   #4: Try Instagram Reels. The algorithm for Instagram Reels (the short videos on Instagram) rewards interaction more than videos on TikTok. So it's best to watch videos in your genre, post regularly, and expect that you won't get a lot of views starting out or the views might come much later after the initial post than they would on TikTok. Some authors report that it took months of regular posting before they saw success, or that videos would take off weeks after posting. So keep on posting consistently, even if you're not seeing a lot of followers and engagement at first. Some authors use Reels for off topic things like memes and lighthearted content so their posts remain completely about their writing. Pick a strategy of things you can consistently post Reels about two to three times per week because the algorithm rewards frequent posting of Reels.   #5: Don't pay influencers or accounts to promote your content. If someone approaches you to pay for reviews or promotion, it is 99.9% likely that it is a scam. Delete and move on. When in doubt, assume it is a scam. Even if that person or account who wants to be paid to promote you is magically legitimate (which is, as I mentioned, very unlikely) the Bookstagram community is very savvy and distrustful of paid reviews. It's not good strategy. Real reviews from real, unpaid people take time, but the results are far more effective. You could try a raffle giveaway of your book to get reviews instead of paying an influencer or offering a special Smashwords coupon code just on your Instagram account.   Above all, Instagram will work if you're authentic, post regularly, and are patient in building up a following. Taking shortcuts like buying followers or spamming other accounts is not an effective strategy. Like so many things, there isn't a magic pill that substitutes for hard work over time, which if there was an overwhelming theme of this podcast over the last 290 episodes, I think that hard work over time is probably the lesson we want to take away here. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

My guest this episode is Mike Carden. He's an author from England who came to writing in midlife. He has independently published six books. Many of them are humorous cycling travelogues. They mix history, conversation, and self-deprecating humor. Readers connect with his warmth and honesty. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest Mike Carden lives and works in Dorset on the south coast of England and began his writing career around the start of the millennium, after years in marketing and sales for the textiles industry. He has since independently published six books, starting with a series of quirkily funny cycling travelogues, including The Full English: Pedalling through England, Mid-Life Crisis, and Truly Rampant Man-Flu. He later returned to a long-delayed project, a trilogy of historical novels based on the life of Alfred the Great, and successfully brought it to publication on his own terms. He is currently working on a new whodunnit set in the English Lake District.

Send a textThis week, Big Rich sits down with Todd Ockert—a 26-year U.S. Navy veteran turned oil-and-gas professional, land-use leader, NAMRAC facilitator, and indie author. From small-town Michigan to Top Gun-era Miramar, Todd shares how vocational electronics led him into Naval aviation, working on EA-6B Prowlers, a rough stint in recruiting, and later a long chapter at Lemoore before transitioning to Chevron and moving to West Texas.Todd dives into his off-road journey: early Bronco days, discovering advocacy through Del Albright's volunteer training, and leadership roles with UFWDA and the BlueRibbon Coalition. As facilitator of NAMRAC since 2018, he champions collaboration among Cal4, CORVA, ORBA, BRC, UPLA, and others—crediting that unity for recent land-use wins, including Moab route reopenings and improved coordination on Oceano Dunes.In Texas, Todd supports TMTC's mission at Barnwell Mountain and Escondido Draw, and previews the Rio Bravo acquisition near Houston. He explains RTP funding, Texas OHV sticker requirements, and why public land is scarce in the Lone Star State—making managed parks critical. Support the show

It's official! Draft2Digital and Bookshop.org have announced our partnership to bring indie ebooks to Bookshop.org! Join us as we talk to Bookshop.org. CEO Andy Hunter and D2D CEO Kris Austin about this exciting new partnership. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!It's critical to understand the dynamics of book distribution, the advantages of ebooks, and strategies for increasing sales, especially as an indie author. So in this conversation, I discuss recent updates in the self-publishing world, focusing on distribution platforms for authors, particularly the new option for ebook distribution through Bookshop.org. The conversation also touches on the challenges indie authors face in getting their books into physical bookstores and how I suggest indie authors best utilize various distribution platforms for maximum effectiveness.RESOURCES MENTIONEDVideo: How to Update Your Fonts if KDP Rejects Your ManuscriptEpisode 98: Going Wide Vs. Amazon Exclusivity (KDP Select) Getting Your Self-Published Book Into Bookstores Author Email Toolkit: 30+ Templates for Building Buzz, Selling More Books, and Growing Your Reader ListREADY TO FINALLY BE IN THAT "CAN'T STOP WRITING" FLOW?Grab the free nonfiction or memoir kickstart that's helped hundreds of authors get out of their heads and into the flow: 

Many literary fiction authors feel caught in the middle, shut out of a traditional literary establishment that foregrounds their genre, but also out of indie advice urging marketing methods that feel misaligned. Orna Ross explores the psychology of literary writers who feel uneasy about selling their work, shares her own marketing shifts as a literary novelist and poet, and explains why literary fiction is not a special case—simply another genre with its own reader psychology and buying behavior. Sponsor This podcast is proudly sponsored by Bookfunnel. Do you have reader magnets, ARCs, and direct digital sales? Want to join multi-author promotions? Thousands of authors trust BookFunnel for seamless delivery and real human support. Visit BookFunnel.com. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller's "100 top people in publishing". She also publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is greatly excited by the democratizing, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website.

In 2020, Bookshop.org disrupted the bookselling space with a mission to support independent bookstores while enabling readers to buy print books online. That mission has now expanded to ebooks, with titles distributed through Draft2Digital. In this conversation, Orna Ross is joined by Kris Austin of Draft2Digital and Nick Hunt of Bookshop.org to examine what this shift means for authors. Indie authorship is not the same as indie bookselling. Where do those interests overlap, and where do they diverge? And how can self-publishers make the most of this opportunity?

Orna Ross is co-founder and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and a passionate advocate for self-publishing and author empowerment. Her motto is: “When in doubt, be braver.” Orna joins us to discuss the results of the ALLi Indie Author Income Survey and what we can learn about our industry.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Send us a textHannah and Laura are so excited to be celebrating the release of Adam Bassett's new book, Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs, by chatting with the author himself! Adam talks about his inspirations for this unique, YA fantasy, blending magic with technology, and finding joy in difficult times. You can follow Adam Bassett online at:Website: Adam Bassett | Author, Illustrator, DesignerInstagram: Adam Bassett (@adamcbassett) • Instagram photos and videosThreads: Adam Bassett (@adamcbassett) • Threads, Say moreBluesky: Adam Bassett (@adamcbassett.com) — Bluesky**This video is the inspiration for Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs: Tautumeitas - Bur Man Laimi | Latvia

[Expertpanelen] Avsnitt 153 med David Larsson, chief strategy officer och partner på byrån Trickle, om de viktigaste nyheterna och trenderna inom paid social i början av 2026. Allt från LinkedIns aggressiva produktutveckling med Reserved Ads och Thought Leader Ads till hur Reddit har blivit en allt mer intressant annonskanal. Plus hur AI-agenter börjar ta plats i det dagliga arbetet med annonsering. Du får dessutom höra om: Partnerships läggs till i Thought Leader Ads Boostning av personliga inlägg på LinkedIn LinkedIn-artiklar som källa för AI-modeller AI-agenter som optimerar kampanjer självständigt Hur David strukturerar Meta Ads-konton 2026 Varför long-form text ads fungerar på Reddit Metas "Less Personalized Ads" och Threads Ads Om gästen David Larsson är chief strategy officer och partner på performance marketing-byrån Trickle och en av Sveriges vassaste på LinkedIn Ads. Han är med expertpanelen med fokus på paid social. Utöver sin expertis inom performance marketing och paid social så är David också utbildad journalist samt har jobbat med YouTube och sociala medier på TV4. Han är också föreläsare, kursansvarig och gästföreläsare på bland annat Medieinstitutet och Berghs. Tidsstämplar [00:02:04] LinkedIns tillväxt och nya annonsformat. Allt från releasen av Reserved Ads och utvecklingen av Thought Leader Ads till möjligheten att boosta personliga inlägg. [00:19:06] LinkedIn-artiklar och synlighet i LLMs. Överraskande data från SEMrush visar att LinkedIn-artiklar är en av de största källorna för citeringar i stora språkmodeller. [00:24:39] AI och AI-agenter i paid social. Hur arbetet utvecklas mot agentiska verktyg som kan optimera kampanjer självständigt, med exempel från svenska Epiminds och deras AI-agent Lucy. [00:34:50] Meta Andromeda och kampanjstruktur. Det nya sättet att strukturera Meta-konton där man går från detaljerad målgruppsstyrning till att låta kreativa signaler styra vem som ser annonsen. [00:37:59] Reddit som annonsplattform 2026. Varför Reddit är en "sovande jätte" för annonsörer och vad som fungerar bäst, där long-form text ads ofta slår traditionella bildannonser. [00:49:48] Lightning round om Meta och EU. Snabb genomgång av Metas "Less Personalized Ads", TTPA och den globala utrullningen av Threads Ads. Länkar David Larsson på LinkedInTrickle (webbsida) The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study - Semrush (rapport) Digital Marketing Trends 2026 - Brandwatch (rapport) Claim Your Top Spot in the Feed: LinkedIn Reserved Ads - LinkedIn for Marketing (artikel) How New LinkedIn Features Help You Scale Personalized Creative and Boost Awareness - LinkedIn (artikel) Nimt.ai: AI search platform (verktyg) Fibbler: LinkedIn Ads Attribution & Activation (verktyg) Dreamdata: B2B Activation and Attribution (verktyg) Adam Holmgren: Fibbler (person) The fastest growing startups are betting big on employee-led content right now – Peter Wong (LinkedIn-inlägg) Epiminds: agentic AI for marketing (verktyg) Inside Meta's AI-driven advertising system: How Andromeda and GEM work together - Search Engine Land (artikel) My practical guide to mastering Meta Andromeda - /FacebookAds (Reddit-inlägg) The Indie Author's Guide to Meta Ads in 2026: The Era of Algorithmic Creative – Medium (artikel) The Hidden Gem: Your Guide to Reddit for B2B Marketing - Hubspot (artikel) Meta commits to give EU users choice on personalised ads under Digital Markets Act – European Commission (artikel) Digitalenta (sponsor)Paloma (sponsor)Check (sponsor)Klingit (sponsor)

In this week's episode, we look at five business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson's recent Apple TV deal. Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store: CALASKAR25 The coupon code is valid through February 9, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 288 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 30th, 2026 and today we are discussing five additional business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson in the aftermath of his recent Apple TV deal. Before we get into that, we will have a Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and publishing progress. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is CALASKAR25. And as always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes of this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February the 9th, 2026. So if you need a new science fiction ebook to read for this winter, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. Now that Blade of Storms is out and is doing well (thank you all for that), my main project is now Cloak of Summoning, and I am 34,000 words into it as of this recording, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 23 in the outline. I think it's probably going to come out in March because February is a short month and Cloak of Summoning is going to be a long book. So hopefully it should come out early in March. I'm also 1,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, which will be the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. That will be my main project once Cloak of Summoning is done. So hopefully that will come out in probably April or thereabouts. In audiobook news, recording is very nearly completed for Blade of Shadows, the second book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and that will be narrated by Brad Wills. Hollis McCarthy is currently working on the audiobook of Cloak of Titans, and I think she's about halfway through. So hopefully we should have some new audiobooks for you to listen to before much longer. And that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:04 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Business Lessons For Indie Authors From Brandon Sanderson Now onto our main topic this week, five additional business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson. And I think it is objectively factual to say that Brandon Sanderson is probably the most successful fantasy author who is currently publishing. Beyond the sheer number of sales, what many find most impressive about what he's achieved is his company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, that he has been able to create. It consists of Kickstarter campaign work, special book editions, a successful convention, merchandising (including an RPG), and a whole slew of other things. Even for authors like me operating on a much smaller scale, there are a few things to learn from his success at publishing and creating a specialized empire. Now what's amusing is the notes for the show were prepared a couple of weeks ago, but a few days ago, the news was announced that Brandon Sanderson entered into a licensing deal with Apple TV to produce adaptations based on his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series. As the author himself said on Reddit, "The decision to pick Apple was due to two factors. First, the levels of approvals and control. Apple wants to be a true partner with me and they feel like they really get what I want to do. Second, their track record. Apple does fewer things, but higher quality than some other studios. I find virtually everything of theirs I watch is excellent and creator driven." So that and an impressive degree of creative control he wrung out of Apple for this and if you are at all familiar with the history of movie adaptations, you know that the author getting any degree of creative control does not happen all that often. Usually what happens is the studio cranks out the adaptation that butchers the book and then it disappears into obscurity. So this actually happens to tie in quite well with the original theme of today's episode, which is the Five Business Lessons from Brandon Sanderson. He was able to reach this level of success by following these five business lessons consistently over a period of decades. So we will go into that now. #1: Find a way to meet fan demand and find gaps in the market. Sanderson was ahead of traditional publishing when it came to responding to fan requests for high quality letter bound or other enhanced special editions. By focusing on this gap in the market, he was able to meet a need expressed by his most passionate fans and get an additional round of sales from existing customers who already have the mass market paperbacks or ebook versions. Even in an age with ebooks and audiobooks, physical copies are still important to many readers, partly because they can't be deleted off your ereader. This is even more true of special editions being gifted or displayed like decor. He further cemented the respect of his fans by spending a great deal of time and effort adding elaborate details like gilding and full color illustrations to the premium editions. He listened to fan demand and exceeded their expectations without pricing out or alienating fans by only offering the premium versions. It's also been long been a complaint of readers that they can't buy bundles of the physical book, ebook, and audiobook at the same time. There's a wide variety of reasons it's not easy or even possible to bundle these formats together, but Brandon Sanderson found a way to make it work with books from his largest Kickstarter campaign because he was controlling the production of all three formats. He found a gap in the market by addressing this need and made fans feel like they're getting a more complete experience by getting the formats all at once. #2: Take advantage of an opportunity. One of the most surprising parts of Brandon's largest Kickstarter campaign is how one of the Secret Project books, Tress of the Emerald Sea, took off on BookTok and became popular with readers who haven't read other Brandon Sanderson or even fantasy books before. Tress also gave potential readers who are intimidated by how prolific he is and how long and interconnected the books in his series are a chance to try his writing in a less intimidating way. Dragonsteel responded to this development by commissioning special editions of Tress, Mistborn, and The Emperor's Soul in a Sanderson starter pack on the TikTok shop, which did extremely well. Authors who are prolific would do well to think about entry points in a similar way. What are your "starter pack" books? How can people feel more comfortable trying out your work and sampling from your books in your different genres? For myself, one way I do this is making the first book in almost all my series permafree. This gives people a chance to try my work without making a financial commitment, and usually the second book is $0.99, which is a little bit of a financial commitment, but not very much. And if someone has read the first two books in the series, odds are they are probably going to continue on to the full price rest of the series. #3: Be transparent. Brandon uses weekly update videos and his podcast to update readers on his writing and publishing progress as well as new merchandise releases. If there is a delay or an unexpected development, he can use this outlet to explain what happened in more detail. For example, when there was a delay in the printing of the premium hardcover of Tress of the Emerald Sea, he posted to Kickstarter, social media, and his weekly video to explain what happened and what Dragonsteel was doing to address it. For myself, I include writing updates at the beginning of each of my podcast episodes and also post updates to my website and Facebook page on a regular basis. He also posts a State of the Sanderson every year on his website and YouTube channel that summarizes the status of his various projects in a more collected form so more casual fans can catch up on his news there. This level of transparency builds trust with your readers. Some authors hide from failed promises about publishing dates or future books, but it's better to be transparent when something changes than to act like it never happened or keep giving vague answers. For example, very recently, I'd hoped Cloak of Summoning was going to come out in February, but like I explained at the start of the episode, it's a long book, February is a short month and I've got a bunch of stuff to do in February that's not related to writing, so it's probably going to be early March that the book comes out. #4: Keep creative control. One of the reasons that even during the era of peak streaming, we did not see an adaptation of a Brandon Sanderson book (besides Wheel of Time, which doesn't really count because it mostly belongs to Robert Jordan and the series didn't last long enough to get to the final books in the series that Sanderson authored). It was in part because creative control of the work is important to him. He wants to find a production company that respects his work and is at least reasonably faithful to the original books. As anyone who has been disappointed by a show or movie that was created by people unfamiliar with the work or uninterested in following the original plot knows, that is not as simple of a request as you might think. Like of all the books I've read that have had TV or movie adaptations, I think I can think of only three adaptations that were better than the original book: Goldfinger (because Goldfinger's plot in the movie made more sense than it did in the book), The Godfather (because The Godfather movie frankly eliminated some unnecessary and frankly weird subplots from the book), and I think the show adaptation of Wolf Hall (because I've been reading the Wolf Hall books this year and while the books are good, I think the show kind of gets to the point in a better way and avoids some of the long internal monologues that Cromwell has that seem to kind of not be necessary, but that could be a matter of taste). So, but back to the main point, out of all the adaptations I've seen, I think I've only encountered three that were better than the original source material. So you can see how having creative control of the adaptation will be very important for an author. Even though most books will never become movies or shows, keeping as much creative control as possible is extremely important as a writer in general and indie publishing allows you to do that, which I found has been very useful to me in my writing career, especially after I started doing my own audiobooks because then I can move the audiobooks to different stores and make bundles of them as I want without having to fight with the rights holder about that. #5: Find good people you can trust and treat them well. One of the most underrated elements of Sanderson's success is that he has built a strong and loyal team at Dragonsteel headed by his wife, Emily, who is co-president of Dragonsteel Entertainment. The company has over 50 employees that work on merchandise, the podcast, the convention, and all of Sanderson's various projects, which baffles my mind because I don't think I talk to 50 different people in a month, let alone every day. Many of the employees are longtime friends (some going back as far as college) or family members, but Emily says that it's still important that each employee is qualified for their role. Treating employees well is a stated priority of Sanderson. One specific example is how he structures his major annual sale, which is called Light Day, early in November to not take place over the American Thanksgiving holiday, and the Dragonsteel Shop has earlier Christmas holiday ordering deadlines than most online stores do so his employees can have more time off around that holiday. Another example of treating others well is although many people have offered to volunteer at the Dragonsteel Nexus Convention, he hired temp employees instead. I hope that one of the reasons I've been able to keep employees like a cover designer and narrators for so long is that I try to treat people well. I try to act professionally, not make unreasonable quote requests, and pay people promptly. You can get away with a lot if you pay people on time as agreed. I'm not saying this is an excuse to act like a jerk, however, you will find that people are much more patient with you and much more willing to accommodate reasonable requests when they know that you will in fact pay on time when they are done. So finally, although you and I may never manage a media empire like Dragonsteel Entertainment, you and I can still learn from Sanderson's success and take lessons and apply them to our own businesses from what he has done well. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and interesting. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.    

The First episode of the New Year - 2026 - is here! Happy (belated) New Year and happy listening!This time, the team dives into a great read with a lot of potential and promise - Lost Fantasy by Curt Piles. Decently new to the field - It's fast, it's bloody, it's artsy, and a light representation of many more IPs out there. If you like killing monsters, you'll definitely love this! Lost Fantasy - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lost-fantasy-volume-1-curt-pires/11473844370-0-8 Studios - https://0-0-8studios.com/Spirits of the Month: https://www.wildturkeybourbon.com/en-us/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1687936318&gclid=Cj0KCQiA7fbLBhDJARIsAOAqhsfYcFQ-29_VhFQM_0TBeawY0sScktl6GfgyKB31C5PDfVsY3xYe10oaAiMDEALw_wcB

My guest this episode is Jacqx Melilli. She is an Australian author, playwright, and writing coach. Her work grows out of a long connection to performance and storytelling. Her novel, When the Glitter Fades, explores Australian entertainment history through fiction. That same interest led her to create memoir-writing workshops. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest Jacqx Melilli is an author, playwright, and writing coach who helps people tell the stories they have carried for years. She holds a Master of Arts in Writing and Literature from Deakin University and has worked across film, television, theatre, and youth drama education. Her award-winning stage plays led to the Lights, Camera, Action educational drama series, and she later produced and directed two of those plays as short films. She is also the author of the Australian historical novel When the Glitter Fades, inspired by showbiz history. Through memoir and creative writing workshops, Jacqx helps writers find their voice and leave a record of their lives. Learn more at https://www.jacqx.com.

Lee Wind joins us to talk about the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) Boot Camp for Author Publishers, and how to bring all the pieces together when publishing to find your success.Lee Wind is the Chief Content Officer for the IBPA. He is also an author, who writes the books that would have changed his life as a young Gay Jewish kid. Lee was recently awarded BISG's Industry Champion Award for co-founding We Are Stronger Than Censorship, a program that buys and donates two books to offset every one book challenge.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway opens with news that early bird tickets are now available for the Indie Author Lab, taking place alongside London Book Fair in March. He then looks at TikTok's launch of short-form serial video drama as a new outlet for episodic storytelling, before turning to fresh legal developments as major publishers move to intervene in the ongoing lawsuit against Google's Gemini AI, signaling a push toward collective licensing talks. Sponsor Self-Publishing News is proudly sponsored by PublishMe—helping indie authors succeed globally with expert translation, tailored marketing, and publishing support. From first draft to international launch, PublishMe ensures your book reaches readers everywhere. Visit publishme.me. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.

Welcome to 2026! Each new year brings the opportunity to begin anew, yet that can be daunting. Rather than start the new writing year feeling overwhelmed out of the gate, Mark Leslie Lefebvre provides encouragement on how to set realistic goals to keep you and your book publishing aspirations on track in 2026.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

My guest this episode is Diana Colleen, a Canadian-born, Seattle-based writer whose work is shaped by a life of activism, public service, trauma, and healing. Drawing on her experience with meditation and psychedelic-assisted therapy, her fiction explores climate responsibility, wealth, power, and the possibility of personal and societal transformation. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest Diana Colleen is a Canadian, Seattle-based psychedelic facilitator and writer whose work blends consciousness, healing, and social change. After a profound personal transformation through psychedelic-assisted therapy, she committed to storytelling as a way to challenge entrenched systems of power. Her fiction explores the climate crisis, billionaire-ism, and the inner work required for meaningful change, asking what humanity could become if empathy, accountability, and contribution replaced ego and competition. Diana Colleen can be found at her website, dianacolleenauthor.com, and on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.

EPISODE 662 - JMD Reid - Ghost Writer and Fantasy Indie Author - What Masks Hide, The Storm Below Series and moreHi, I'm JMD Reid, a fantasy indie author working on my third fantasy series, What Masks Hide. I have published the widely praised The Storm Below Series and a releasing my second series, Secret of the Jewels.For my day job, I'm a ghostwriter. It gives me great deal of freedom to work on my fantasy. It's my passion, and I hope that will shine through.I have a lot of stories in my head and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you.https://www.jmd-reid.com/Support the show___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca

Send us a textJoin us for a thoughtful and faith-centered conversation about AI and the indie author. In this episode, the hosts of the Christian Indie Writers Podcast explore how artificial intelligence fits into the modern self-publishing workflow, from brainstorming and drafting to book formatting tips, metadata, and indie author distribution. We'll discuss what AI can do well, where caution and discernment are needed, and how Christian writers can steward technology without compromising creativity, calling, or integrity. Whether you're curious, cautious, or already experimenting, this episode will help you navigate AI as a tool—not a replacement—for the author God created you to be.Support this ministry on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/christianindiewriters30 Days of Writing Sprint Prompts:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MGR7431Our Facebook Group!https://www.facebook.com/groups/listenersofciwp

Autumn A. Arnett joins us to talk about the EFA and what you should keep in mind when looking for the right editor for your book.The Editorial Freelancers Association is a nonprofit organization that advances excellence among a dynamic community of freelance editorial professionals by providing opportunities for business development, learning, and networking. EFA members are editors, writers, indexers, proofreaders, researchers, desktop publishers, translators, and others who offer a broad range of skills and specialties.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

In this week's episode, we share five tips for effectively using Amazon Ads for indie authors. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Sevenfold Sword series at my Payhip store: SEVENFOLD25 The coupon code is valid through January 19, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 285 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 9th, 2025 and today we are discussing five tips for Amazon ads for authors. We will also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and publishing projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Sevenfold Sword series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SEVENFOLD25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through January the 19th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this winter, we've got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am about 68,000 words into Blade of Storms, which will be the third book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I think the book will be about 100,000 words, give or take, so that means I'm 68% of the way through. And I'm really hoping I can finish the rough draft by the end of the week of the 12th, if all goes well. So hopefully finishing up the rough draft by the 16th or the 17th, if all goes well, but we'll see if I can get there or not. I am also 9,000 words into Cloak of Summoning, which will be the 14th book in the Cloak Mage series. Hopefully that will come out a month or so after Blade of Storms. I'm hoping Blade of Storms will come out in January, but it might be tight. And then Cloak of Summoning will come out the month after that. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Shadows, the previous book in that series and Hollis McCarthy will start recording Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series, at the end of this month. And a few people asked if Wizard-Assassin was going to have an audiobook. It will. Leanne Woodward will record it in March, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:12 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Tips for Amazon Ads for Indie Writers And now let's move on to our main topic of the week, five tips for Amazon ads for indie writers. And let's not beat around the bush here. Amazon ads for writers can be extremely difficult to figure out, especially when you're just starting out. The advice you'll find online can be contradictory or confusing, and it doesn't help that books tend to act very strangely in terms of advertising compared to other products. A while back, I was chatting on Facebook with someone else who does Amazon ads, and he mainly does cosmetics reselling, and he was shocked by how much a click for an ebook would cost compared to a click for say like a six pack of shampoo or whatever. And that's just the nature of the market category that ebooks are in. Because of that, the advice you'll find online can be contradictory or confusing. Some Amazon ad experts insist that you devote at least an hour or even two a day to managing your ad results and then have intricate formula-filled spreadsheets for doing so, while others advise you to set them and forget them. Advice about the bids and spending vary wildly. It can be very easy to get overwhelmed or overspend starting out, but that doesn't have to be the case. I will say that compared to Facebook ads or BookBub ads, it is a lot harder to accidentally lose a lot of money on Amazon ads because regardless of how you configure your Facebook ads or your BookBub ads, Facebook in particular will cheerfully spend your ad budget and give you nothing in return if you haven't configured or targeted your ad correctly. By contrast, an Amazon ad that doesn't work tends not to display and therefore doesn't spend any of your money. So when I'm talking ad platforms for beginners, I tend to recommend that beginners start out more on Amazon ads just because it's much harder to lose money, but it's not impossible, which is something to keep in mind as we get into that. I'm not going to get into the individual specifics of how to set up Amazon ads today, since there's many other people out there who provide that information and probably do a better job than I would. That said, I'm going to just focus on broad principles based on things I've learned instead of providing a specific step-by-step guide for the topic. So without further ado, here are five lessons I've learned about Amazon ads for writers in the last eight or nine years that I've been learning them. #1: Do your research before you start. It can be tempting to dive in right away, but before you spend a single cent on Amazon ads, you should take the time to learn how the bidding process works and how keyword and category ads work. You should also familiarize yourself with other books and trends in your categories. Your book and its ad copy should feel like it belongs with the others in your category and genre. For example, having a neon pink, high heel boot, and flowers [on a cover] in the political thriller category doesn't match the colors since most political thriller books tend to have a solitary dark figure walking in the opposite direction of the camera and many, if not most of the books in the genre have that kind of cover design. Optimizing your book cover for the category before you start doing ads can make a huge difference in the ad results you see. And this is true on many levels as well since when indie authors ask, "Why isn't my book selling?", the number one thing to fix in like 90% of the cases is a bad cover that looks like it was done in Canva or was slapped out of an AI like Copilot or ChatGPT or something that is immediately off-putting to the reader because it's not attractive. You should also make a set budget before you start out and make sure that your daily budgets for your campaigns reflects that budget instead of using whatever daily budget or bids that Amazon suggests for your ad campaigns. Amazon likes to suggest pretty high suggested bids in daily spending limits, which isn't a great use of money if you're just starting to learn how the ads work. And as always, in business it is very, very, very good advice and a very good idea not to spend money that you don't actually have. #2: Targeting is everything. We've all seen baffling book results when browsing on Amazon. For example, once when I was searching for space opera books, a book on visiting Wisconsin Dells as a tourist showed up as a sponsored result in my search, which is insane because I was searching for space opera books. Sometimes an author will choose to advertise in too many categories or choose ad keywords that don't represent their book well. That's the most likely reason why you see things like that Wisconsin Dells book in search results that don't match it. I've told this story before on the podcast, but our transcriptionist once was taking a class on Amazon ads and heard someone say that they wanted to advertise their gritty memoir in every possible category because everyone should read their book. And I think that is a small-scale example of hubris because someone shopping for children's picture books or Spanish language technical manuals is very unlikely to buy that book. Someone looking for a romance novel might be actively annoyed if they start reading that gritty memoir expecting a happily ever after love story and might leave a negative review since they didn't get the book content that they expected. One of the foundational principles of book marketing is that your book is not in fact for everyone. Your book is for a subset of the reading population. The key to successful advertising is to find a way to advertise that book to the subset of the reading population that would actually be interested in reading your book. There's a reason that when you are publishing your book through Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon wants you to pick three categories for your book and that is in part because they know books do their best when they're paired with other books in the specific topic or genre. It's not a bad thing to focus your desired audience for a book when marketing it. In fact, ad targeting will save you time and money and help people to find your book. Your goal isn't to find every possible reader for your book. It's to find the readers who are most likely to be interested in your book in the subset of the reading population that I was talking about earlier. The more focused that your category targeting is, the better this process will be. For example, picking romance as a category is so broad and so competitive that you might not get any traction at all on a small bid. Choosing a more targeted category like "Amish romance" or "clean and wholesome romance with a happily ever after ending" that is more targeted is better both for helping readers to find your work and for getting good results on your ads. #3: Start small. My best advice is to ignore Amazon's suggested bid amounts and start out with a small per click bid and daily budget. It may take a few weeks to see results using that method, but it's best to start small and gain some understanding of Amazon ads before you spend lots of money that you may not be able to earn back. Some smaller categories like children's books and technical manuals actually do pretty well with very small bids. Aggressive bids make more sense when you have the data to know that they're going to work well and reach the exact audience that you want to see them. As a new author, it's not your best bet to chase the biggest authors in your category as keyword targets. Bids for those authors will be extremely high and competitive. It's most likely better to find comparable authors in your categories with less expensive bids starting out. Amazon will suggest you advertise in a wide variety of countries (in fact, every country in which they currently offer the Amazon ads platform), but it's probably wisest to start out with just the US before expanding to other countries. Starting with Amazon's largest market will provide you with a lot of ad result data that you can use to refine your ads before you try them in other countries. If you're based outside the US, it may make more sense to start out with the country you're most familiar with. For example, if you're a UK author or a German author, you might have better luck starting advertising your books in Amazon Germany or Amazon UK than in Amazon US. #4: Be patient. And I have to admit this is the hardest one, whether you are just starting out or like me, if you've been self-publishing for almost 15 years because you want to see results now, now, now, but that's often not the case and the best results usually come with applied effort over a span of time. If you're just starting out and your bids are small, it will most likely take at least a few weeks to see a significant amount of impressions on your ads. Don't adjust for anything for at least a couple of weeks unless an ad is spending more than you'd like or is getting a lot of poorly targeted searches to it, which can frequently happen with autotarget ads. #5: Check your Amazon ads dashboard regularly. It's important to review your ad spending regularly and to keep an eye on it, not to maybe obsessively deep dive into it but to keep an eye on it. Sometimes an ad can go a bit haywire and start spending more than you want, seemingly at random. It's good to go into ads that are doing this and see if they need some negative targeting added to them or something needs to be adjusted. The reverse of that is to not check the dashboard obsessively. It can be tempting to do that, but it's what I call a writing adjacent activity that can take too much time away from your actual work of writing. For myself, what I do to check Amazon ads is I just glance at the dashboard at least once a day to make sure that the spending isn't out of control or there isn't something big and obvious that I need to fix. And then at the midpoint of the month and the end of the month, I do take about an hour to do a deep dive into each of the campaign groups I have running to make sure that they are turning a profit, which is the main point after all, and to make sure that nothing is going wrong. And I've been doing that schedule for a couple of years now and that works pretty well for me. Check the dashboard once a day and then a deep dive twice a month to make sure that nothing is going berserk or that something is broken that I need to fix. Now, your ad results can also teach you how people are searching for your books and what other topics and authors are searching for, and this can be a great source for creating keyword ads. I found in the last few years that keyword ads really work a lot better with nonfiction books. And if you're going to use them for fiction books, you need, at least in my experience, at least a very focused keyword ad list with like less than 10 keywords. But as always with anything in Amazon ads, your mileage may vary. So those are my five broad lessons for creating Amazon ads for your book. It can be a frustrating process and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it can also teach you a lot about your potential readers and how they are trying to find your books or what appeals to them about your books specifically. Like many things in life, there are many ways to do it and succeed, but these are a few of the things I've noticed make a difference when working with Amazon ads and I hope you will find them helpful. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.

Send us a textJoin us for an exciting look into host Christina Catane's freshly created game plan for moving her writing career forward! This episode is sure to provide hints, tips, and inspiration for you to get your own writing career back on track for 2026!Support this ministry on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/christianindiewriters30 Days of Writing Sprint Prompts: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MGR7431Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/listenersofciwpVisit our website: https://christianindiewriters.net/Learn more about the hosts...Jamie: https://writingshorts.net/Jenifer: https://jenifercarlltong.com/Tina: https://christinacattane.com/Sprint Prompt: quarrel, unfair, remember, bird. breakfast

Thomas Dean Donnelly has been a professional screenwriter for over 30 years. In that time he has written on major projects, from Voltron to Uncharted, and from Marvel's Doctor Strange to The Walking Dead. During the Hollywood writers strike he wrote his first novel: YEAR OF THE RABBIT and just release its sequel YEAR OF THE HORSE, both spy thrillers. T.D. Donnelly joins us to share practices he has used in his writing to build memorable characters and stories for the screen.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Ready to make 2026 your best publishing and book marketing year yet? In this essential guide, host Juliet Clark dives deep into the hottest trends shaping the publishing world. From the explosion of genre-bending fiction (think Sci-Fi Mystery and Romantic City!) and the ongoing demand for authentic, human-written content, to leveraging cutting-edge AI tools for editing and marketing—we've got your roadmap. Discover the genres set to dominate, tech trends you can't ignore, and monetization strategies that work! If you're an author looking to lead, connect with readers, and reach your publishing goals, you need to hear this now. Tune in and get your 2026 strategy locked down!Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://superbrandpublishing.com/podcast/

What does 2026 hold for indie authors and the publishing industry? I give my thoughts on trends and predictions for the year ahead. In the intro, Quitting the right stuff; how to edit your author business in 2026; Is SubStack Good for Indie Authors?; Business for Authors webinars. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. 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. (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability (3) The start of Agentic Commerce (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events — and more companies like BookVault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you! Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026, it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word Media survey from Dec 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, meaning that you have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than 5 books, and 46% have more than 10 books. Of course, you can start with the something small, like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale, but if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects. Selling direct is not a silver bullet. It's much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon, whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign, or Shopify/Payhip or other online stores, or regular in-person sales at events/conferences/fairs. You need a business mindset and business practices, for example, you need to pay upfront for setup as well as ongoing management, and bulk printing in some cases. You need to manage taxes and cashflow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing, as you won't sell anything if you don't bring readers to your books/products. But selling direct also brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still only upload ebooks to Amazon, or maybe add a print on demand book, and in an era of AI rapid creation, that number is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data and you can reach those customers next time, through your email list. If you don't know who bought your books and don't have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change — and they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that “45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists,” with “a clear, positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income — with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20X more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers.” Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases, or a few weeks after a campaign finishes, as with Kickstarter. And remember, you don't have to sell all your formats directly. You can keep your ebooks in KU, do whatever you like with audiobooks, and just have premium print products direct, or start with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, or a table at a local fair. Lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/selldirectresources/ I also recommend the Novel Marketing Podcast on The Shopify Trap: Why authors keep losing money as it is a great counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify! Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn't match how most authors make money from books which is more in spikes, the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money if you pay for help, and it can reduce sales on Amazon and weaken your ranking. Basically, if you haven't figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you.All true for some authors, for some genres, and for some people's lifestyle. But for authors who don't want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm and who want more diversity and control in income, as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct, then I would say, consider your options in 2025, even if that is trying out a low-financial-goal Kickstarter campaign, or selling some print books at a local fair. Interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, the new CEO of Harper Collins notes in The Bookseller's 2026 trend article, “we are seeing global success with responsive, reader-driven publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok Shop and – crucially – developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader.” She also notes, “AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting – finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love, innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content.” (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability From LinkedIn's 2026 Big Ideas: “Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.” Google has been rolling out AI Mode with its AI Overviews and is beginning to push it within Google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. I first posted about GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) in 2023, and it's going to change how readers find books. For years, we've talked about the long tail of search. Now, with AI-powered search, that tail is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex, conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. Someone might ask, “What's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a journalist investigating a cold case?” and get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content, and your online presence need to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowen has said, “Consider the AIs as part of your audience. Because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice.” We're in the ‘organic' traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for ‘free,' but paid ads are inevitably on the way, and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT. By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic, rather than blocking and protesting them. For now, I recommend checking that your author name/s and your books are surfaced when you search on ChatGPT.com as well as Google.com AI Mode (powered by Gemini). You want to make sure your work comes up in some way. I found that Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn searches brought up my Shopify stores, my website, podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even my Patreon page, but did not bring up links to Amazon. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear in AI search at all? Do you need to improve anything about what the AI search brings up? Traditional publishers are also looking at this, with PublishersWeekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in early 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents, and book marketing. In a 2026 predictions article on The Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted, “The boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers.” “AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimisation and SEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online.” (3) The start of Agentic Commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus, I predict that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. In September 2025, ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorised by the human with the credit card. VISA is getting on board with this, so is PayPal, with no doubt more payment options to come. In the USA, ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface, with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon. Shopify and OpenAI have also announced a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT. I am insanely excited about this as it could represent the first time we have been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the 7 keywords and 3 categories we have relied on for so long! I've been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non-fiction books as I find the Amazon interface is ‘polluted' by ads. I've discovered fascinating books from authors I've never heard of, most in very long tail areas. For example, Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby, recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses, and The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. I don't think I would have found either of these within a nuanced discussion with ChatGPT. Even without these direct purchase integrations, ChatGPT now has Shopping Research, which I have found links directly to my Shopify store when I search for my books specifically. Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, and you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing? In Nov 2025, Amazon signed a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, and even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room together might also be working on other plans … I'm calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign a commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year. This will enable at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores (presumably using an OpenAI affiliate link), or perhaps even Instant Checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon. It will also enable a new marketing angle, especially if paid ads arrive in ChatGPT, perhaps even integrating with Amazon Ads in some way as part of any possible agreement, since ads are such a good revenue stream for Amazon anyway. The line between discovery, engagement, and purchase is collapsing. Someone could be having a conversation with an AI about what to read next, and within that same conversation, purchase a bookwithout ever leaving the chat interface. This already happens within TikTok and social commerce clearly works for many authors. It's possible that the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats. This will likely stratify the already fragmented book eco-system even more. Some readers will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem and (maybe) use their Rufus chatbot to buy, and others will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books (and other products and services). If you haven't tried it yet, try ChatGPT.com Shopping Research for a book. You can do this on the free tier. Use the drop down in the main chat box and select Shopping Research. It doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or product, for example, our microwave died just before Christmas so I used it to find a new one. But do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements. Go far beyond what you would search for on Amazon. In the results, notice that (at the time of writing) it does not generally link to Amazon, but to independent sites and stores. As above, I think this will change by the end of 2026, as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019, and over the years, I've tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non-fiction. It also super-charges accessibility, making audio available in more languages and more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors, and indeed many small traditional publishers, for all books. If it costs $2000 – $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell a lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models have made it harder to recoup the costs. Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience may still be worth investing in, as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. AI voice/audio models are continuing to improve, and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI's new device, designed by Jony Ive who designed the iPhone, will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch. In 2026, I think AI-narrated audio will go mainstream with far-reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks, with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books, and then mass market, affordable AI-narrated audio for the rest. AI-narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous, and just as (almost) every print book has an ebook format, in 2026, they will also have an audio format. I straddle both these worlds, as I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human-narrated Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition (free audiobook) and The Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection. I also use AI narration for some books. ElevenLabs remains my preferred service and in 2025, I used my J.F. Penn voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage, while using a male voice for Catacomb. I clearly label my AI-narration in the sales description and also on the cover, which I think is important, although it is not always required by the various services. You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo Writing Life, YouTube, ElevenReader, and of course your own store if you use Shopify with Bookfunnel. There are many other services springing up all the time, so make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio, as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files. If they are just using ElevenLabs models in the back-end, then why not just do that directly? (Most services will be using someone's model in the back-end, since most companies do not train their own models.) Of course, you can use Amazon's own narration. While Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice (AVV) in November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories in 2025. If your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard. With just a few clicks, you can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents, and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours. They are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them direct yourself. But they are also free, so of course, many authors, especially those in KU, will use this option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books as Penny Appleton and I will likely use them for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Traditional publishers are experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook narration as well. MacMillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. PublishersWeekly reports that PRH Audio “has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Ely Callaway's posthumous memoir The Unconquerable Game,” when an “authorized voice replica” was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio “embrace artificial intelligence across business operations—my entire department [PRH Audio] is using AI for business applications.” And while indie authors can't use AI voices on ACX right now, Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships, as reported by The Guardian with “two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology: “Audible-managed” production, or “self-service” whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible's AI technology.” In 2026, it's likely that more traditional publishers — as well as indie authors — will get their backlist into audio with AI narration. (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters Over the years, I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian) for some fiction and non-fiction books. But of course, to get these kinds of deals, you have to be proactive about pitching, or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between! There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide, and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a LOT of blue water for books in translation, even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. I did my first partially AI-translated books in 2019 when I used Deepl.com for the first draft and then worked with a German editor to do 3 non-fiction books in German. While the first draft was cheap, the editing was pretty expensive, so I stopped after only doing a couple. I have made the money back now, but it took years. In 2025, AI Translation began to take off with ScribeShadow, GlobeScribe.ai, and more recently, in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available. Kindle Translate is (currently) only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English, but in 2026, this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human-edited translations, but the cost is prohibitive even just for proof-reading, and if there is a cheap or even free option, like Kindle Translate, then of course, authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, they can just un-publish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI-translated genre fiction sales (in series) in under-served markets like Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. I was around in the Kindle gold-rush days of 2009-2012 and the AI-translation energy right now feels like that. There are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English, so inevitably, the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are under-served by traditional publishers in those markets. Yes, some of these AI translated books will be ‘AI-slop,' but readers are not stupid. Those books will get bad reviews and thus will sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again. The AI translation models are also improving rapidly, and Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most, for books specifically, since they will be able to get feedback in terms of page reads. Amazon is also a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude.ai, widely considered the best quality for creative writing and translation, so it's likely that is used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI-assisted translation, with Harlequin France reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders, as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations in December 2025. Academic publisher Taylor and Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting: “Following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor & Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership.” “Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed, without compromising on accuracy.” (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI-generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2, and YouTube announced new Shorts creation tools with Veo 3, which you can also use directly within Gemini. There are tons of different AI video apps now, including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it's much easier to create. I am not a fan of short form video! I don't make it and I don't consume it, but I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media. I made a trailer for The Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and then animation of those images, and Canva to put them together along with ElevenLabs to generate the music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. I can't just upload my book and say, “Make a book trailer,” or “Make a short film.” This may change with generative video ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026, as video turns specifically commercial. Video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, with an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands (using something like Cameos on Sora), in the same way that some AI-powered clothing stores do virtual try-ons. This might also up-end the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI's Sora app, “OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things …” “The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, “engagement”—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive.” In 2026, there will be A LOT more AI-generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video. While you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you using tools like HeyGen or Synthesia, live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand-out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events primarily for direct sales might be a thing in 2026. Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas Live in December 2025 with a 45 minute live shopping event with special guests, described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza. Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books, so this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It's certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer ‘no face' video, or no video at all! On other aspects of the human side of social media, Adam Mosseri the CEO of Instagram put a post on Threads called Authenticity after Abundance. He said, “Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked—is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools.” “Deepfakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think happens.Creators matter more.” It's a long article so just to pick a few things from it: “We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content … we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.” I've talked to my Patreon Community about this ‘tsunami of excellence' as these tools are just getting better and better and the word ‘slop' can also be applied to purely human output, too. If you think that AI content is ‘worse' than wholly human content, in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools. Back to Adam's post: “Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, …The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity [even when it can be simulated] …” “The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is: “unpolished; it's blurry photos and shaky videos of people's daily experiences … flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real… Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore—it's proof. It's defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it's imperfect.” While I partially love this, and I really hope it's true, as in I hope we don't need to look good for the camera anymore I would also challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages, and/or told they are ugly and/or fat when posting anything unflattering. I've certainly had both even for the same content, but I don't expect Adam has been the target for such posting! But I get his point. He goes on:“Labeling content as authentic or AI-generated is only part of the solution though. We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?” This is exactly what I've been saying for a while under my double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram @jfpennauthor as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. You can do both of course, but increasingly, you need to make sure your accounts at places have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves. Adam finishes: “In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.” For other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt's SubStack which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 article, she notes: “We have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the goal; authenticity and creativity should. She also says, “In-person events are important again,” and, “Social media marketing takes a nosedive… we have reached a saturation point … What publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out. If they remain somewhat uninspired, the money spent on social ads won't convert into book sales.” I think this is part of the rise of live selling as above, which can stand out above more ‘produced' videos. Kathleen also talks about AI usage. “AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing.” “A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load: they can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pitches for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it.” On that note … (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention Many authors will be very happy about this as marketing is often the bane of our author business lives! As I noted in my 2026 goals, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an “AI book marketing assistant” where I can upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,' then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible, because we are on the edge of it already in some areas. Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional-quality ads. I've also been working with Claude in Chrome browser to help me analyse my Amazon Ad data and suggest which keywords/products to turn off and what to put more budget into. I'll do a Patreon video on that soon. Meta announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. For authors who find ad creation overwhelming or time-consuming, this could be a game-changer. Of course, you will still need a budget! (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of ‘AI slop' but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans, or humans using AI tools. As ever, our competition is less about other authors, or even authors using AI-assisted creation, we're competing against everything else that jostles for people's attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially. I've never been a fan of rapid release, and have said for years that you can't keep up with the pace of the machines. So play a different game. As Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, If you have 1000 true fans, (also known as super fans), “you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.” [Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about Excellent Advice for Living.] Many authors and the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to try and keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans. If you only make $2 profit on an ebook, you need to sell 500 ebooks to make $1000, and then do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com/thecreativepenn where people pay $2 (or more) a month, so even a small revenue per person results in a better outcome over the year, as it is consistent monthly income with no advertising. But what if you could make $20 profit per book? That is entirely possible if you're producing high quality hardbacks on Kickstarter, or bundle deals of audiobooks, or whole series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1000. What about $100 profit per sale, which you can do with a small course or live event? You only need 10 people to make $1000, and this in-person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection. I've found the intimacy of my live Patreon Office Hours and also my webinars have been rewarding personally, but also financially, and are far more memorable — and potentially transformative — than a pre-recorded video or even another book. From the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article: “In an AI-optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury.” The 1000 True Fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products (and maybe services if that's your thing). As ever, its about niche and where you fit in the long long long long long tail. It's also about trust. Because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas, and as Adam Mosseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important. Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently, and delivering a high quality, and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. Back in 2010, I read Trust Agents: by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that's worth a read/listen. Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, here's a quick excerpt, where I have (lightly edited) his response to my question on this topic back in 2017: Jo: The principle of know, like, and trust, why is that still important or perhaps even more important these days? Chris: There are a few things that at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that come, you know, there's nothing unique about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer — gone. And the bottle could have nothing in. You know, it could be Kool-Aid. And so, the idea of trying to understand what's behind the business though, one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand. I really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can that you remember them for that phrase. But I would say that, we have so many media available to us — the plural of mediums — where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the ‘you' behind the scenes, and some people get immediately terrified about this, ‘Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me,' but I think we have such an opportunity. We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We were all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access. And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility, not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that you can say, this person stands with their product and their service and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them and I wanna be part of that.” That's from Chris Brogan's interview here in 2017, and he is still blogging and speaking at writing at ChrisBrogan.com and I'm going to re-listen to the audiobook of Trust Agents again myself as I think it's more relevant than ever. The original quote comes from Bob Burg in his 1994 book, Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” That still applies, and absolutely fits with the 1000 True Fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says in 1000 True Fans, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.” “On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you'll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.” In 2026, I hope that more authors (including me!) let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking, gross sales (income before you take away costs), subscribers, followers, and likes, and consider important business numbers like profit (which is the money you have after costs like marketing are taken out), as well as number of true fans — and also lifestyle elements like number of weekends off, or days spent enjoying life and not just working! OK, that's my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree? Am I wrong? What have I missed? The post 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

My guest this episode is Dale Rogers, an indie author, illustrator, and former assistant professor who retired after eighteen years in higher education to focus on his creative work. Based in Nashville, Dale blends poetry, visual storytelling, design, and spirituality in what he calls Poetry Comics, a genre he's developing as an indie publisher. We talk about his early creative life, his years as an educator, and what it means to start something new later in life. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest Dale Rogers is an independent author and artist whose work explores creator-owned storytelling shaped by a background in music theory and years spent teaching scripting and storyboarding, with a focus on how stories move from concept to experience. That process led him to develop Poetry Comics, a hybrid form where poetic language, visual composition, and pacing work together to share the narrative load. Publishing through his own imprint, eDrawingBoard LLC, Dale approaches self-publishing from the inside out, combining craft, technical literacy, and accessibility, while also serving as an Invited Expert with the W3C on digital publishing standards that affect indie creators. After an eighteen-year academic career, he is now doing for himself what he spent years teaching others. You can find Dale on his website, and learn more about his imprint at edrawingboard.com.

This special Christmas Day 2025 episode is a pre-recorded one with Mark Leslie Lefebvre who introduces a series of clips that highlight just 14 of the amazing episodes that have been brought to you every week in this past year.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

What does it take to turn a passion for writing into a sustainable, income-generating career? In this week's episode of Fully Booked, we sit down with Maria Secoy, founder of All Write and an experienced book coach, who shares a clear and practical path for writers ready to take control of the business side of publishing. From managing production costs to building a publishing schedule that works with Amazon's algorithm, she offers a grounded approach to balancing creativity with strategy. Drawing on her background in education and research, Maria outlines her four-stage model of author development and explains how to align writing goals with long-term growth. In addition, she breaks down key financial concepts, including return on ad spend and series readthrough value, giving authors a framework for making data-informed decisions while staying connected to the heart of their work. Regardless of where you are in your publishing career, today's insights will help you move forward with confidence and a clear path to success.   Maria Secoy www.allwritewell.com   Hidden Gems Need our help publishing or marketing your book?  https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/author-services/   All episode details and links:  https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/podcast

In this special episode of Novel Spirits, the boys celebrate the holiday season with another great, humorous session of camaraderie:The votes were in for the Battle of the Genres, revealing our first, unanimous victor. And we reviewed 'The Last Christmas' by Gerry Duggan, a very Deadpool-ish take on a Zombie-filled Christmas - highlighting themes, characters, and artistic style, as always. The drinks were flowing, the boys were rolling, and all-in-all it was just a good time. We even scheduled our next few episodes for you!We also may have mentioned One Piece and AI at some point, but dive into those at your own discretion. Cheers! Book of the Month: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Christmas-Brian-Posehn/dp/1582406766Topics of the Month: One Piece - https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GRMG8ZQZR/one-piece?srsltid=AfmBOor1DiP7YLr6r5YGNozS_Fka6ek28I_TtDnpKFt3kRKYVgqrBmiaDispatch (episode coming soon!) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2592160/Dispatch/Spirits of the Month: Nothing specific. Anything that makes you jolly lol 

My guest this episode is Joe Walters. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review, a platform devoted entirely to indie and self-published books. He's spent years working in book marketing for small presses. He recently published The Truth About Book Reviews, a practical guide for indie authors on making sense of reviews and using them well. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest Joe Walters is the founder of Independent Book Review, a platform celebrating the best in indie books. He has worked on the marketing teams of indie presses including Sunbury Press, Paper Raven Books, and Inkwater Press, and is the author of "The Truth About Book Reviews: An Insider's Guide to Getting and Using Reviews to Grow Your Readership". When he's not writing, assigning, or editing reviews in a Pennsylvania Panera Bread, he's playing with his daughters or reading indie books by Kindle light.

The way readers search for their next book is changing dramatically. With Google's generative search and Amazon's upcoming AI-driven recommendation engine, authors face a completely new landscape for book discovery. But how exactly will these changes affect your books' visibility? Reedsy's Ricardo Fayet joins us to share practical steps to make sure your books remain discoverable and compelling to readers in this rapidly shifting landscape.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!This episode starts with a question that's been tapping me on the shoulder all year: What would it look like to choose ease without giving up momentum?I'm reflecting on the past year in book writing and publishing, and sharing what I'm carrying forward into 2026. Less hustle-for-hustle's-sake. More sustainable progress that feels livable.I talk about why consistency in book sales matters more than viral spikes, and why realistic goals tend to outperform ambitious ones you can't maintain. There's an honest look at marketing, too. It takes time. It's rarely linear. And there's no shortcut that replaces steady effort and experimentation. Finally, I dig into the quieter side of growth: building community, focusing on connection over vanity metrics, and staying open to adapting your approach as the market (and your life) changes.READY TO FINALLY BE IN THAT "CAN'T STOP WRITING" FLOW?Grab the free nonfiction or memoir kickstart that's helped hundreds of authors get out of their heads and into the flow: 

Cameron Sutter is a sci-fi/fantasy author and the inventor of Plottr – the popular visual story planning software. As a friend of the show, he joins us again to talk about new Plottr features, their Virtual Beta Readers, and the charity work they are supporting with their Plot for Good campaign. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

In this week's episode, we take a look at six software tools for indie authors to help them write and improve their workflow. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Blades, Book #4 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: BLADES2025 The coupon code is valid through December 15, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT [This episode's content is not sponsored. Jonathan has not received any compensation for these reviews and has not received any free products or services from the companies mentioned in this episode. He does not currently use affiliate links for the products mentioned.] 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 280 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is a very snowy December 5th, 2025, and today I'm discussing six software tools that are useful for indie authors. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So first up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Blades, Book #4 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. And that is BLADES2025. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through December the 15th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for this winter or for your Christmas travels, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. As I mentioned last week, Blade of Shadows is out and it's available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store, and it's been doing quite well and gotten a good response from everyone. So thank you for that and I am looking forward to continuing that series. Now that Blade of Shadows is done, my main project is the fifth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, which is Wizard-Assassin. I had originally planned to name it Elven-Assassin, but decided Wizard-Assassin sounded a bit punchier, so I went with that instead. I am 46,000 words into it, which puts me on chapter 10 of 16. The final draft will have more chapters because one of the chapters is 11,000 words. I'm going to have to cut it up. I've also noticed that readers in general these days seem to prefer shorter chapters, so I've been trying to lean more into doing that and having books with shorter chapters. I think the rough draft is going to be about 70 to 75,000 words, give or take. So I'm hoping I can finish that next week, and I am cautiously optimistic I can have the book published before Christmas. If I can't get it published before Christmas, it is going to slip to my first book of 2026. But at the moment, and of course, barring our old unwelcome friend unexpected developments, I am cautiously optimistic I can have it out by Christmas 2025. So watch my website and listen to this space for additional news. My secondary project is Blade of Storms, which will be the third book in the Blades of Ruin series and the direct sequel to Blade of Shadows. I am about 6,000 words into that, and once Wizard-Assassin is done, that will be my main project. I'm hoping to have that out at the end of January, but if Wizard-Assassin slips to January, then Blade of Storms will [of necessity] slip to February. In audiobook news, Blade of Flames, the audiobook of the first book in the Blades of Ruin series, is now out and you can get that at Audible, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Google Play, my own Payhip store, Spotify, and all the other usual audiobook stores. So if you're looking for something else to listen to during your Christmas travels this year, I suggest checking out Blade of Flames (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). Cloak of the Embers, the 10th book in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy)…the recording of that is done and it is being proofed right now, so I am hopeful we can hopefully have that out before Christmas (if all goes well). In fact, after I record this podcast episode, I'm going to have to convert the ebook cover of Cloak of Embers into an audiobook cover for Cloak of Embers. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. There is definitely a lot going on. 00:03:40 Main Topic: 6 Helpful Writing Tools for Indie Authors in 2025 [All Prices referenced are USD.] Now we're going to move on to our main topic this week, which is six helpful writing tools for indie authors in 2025. Last year in 2024, I did a roundup of popular software tools for writers and I thought I would give a quick update for it. Some of these tools like Calibre and LibreOffice I use, while others like Scrivener and Notion just aren't great fit for my workflow, I still want to talk about them anyways since just because I don't use them doesn't mean that they're not good and a lot of writers do in fact use them. Many writers also have complex systems for organizing their files and would benefit from tools like that. Without further ado, here are six pieces of software used for writing and writing adjacent tasks. I should mention before we get going as well that none of these tools are explicitly generative AI tools because as you know, if you've listened to the podcast over the years is my opinion of generative AI remains mostly negative. I have and continue to do some marketing experiments with generative AI elements, but I remain overall unimpressed by the technology. So with that in mind, none of these software tools I'm going to mention are explicitly AI tools. Some of them do have AI elements that you can plug in and use if you want to, but they aren't part of the core functionality of the application unless you specifically seek it out. With that in mind, let's get to it. #1: The first one we will talk about is Scrivener. Scrivener is of course essentially a word processor and project management system specifically designed for creative or nonfiction writing, unlike a traditional word processor like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, or Apple Pages. It features tools for outlining, for breaking documents into chapters, tracking word count goals and et cetera. One of the major benefits of it is a one-time cost instead of as a subscription because it seems like everything is a subscription nowadays, but Scrivener is still $60 a pop. They also offer a free trial and student discount and occasionally [it will] go on sale during peak times like the holidays. The downside of this is that Scrivener has a sharp learning curve. For myself when I write, I write either in Microsoft Word or Libre Office and I just sit down and write. When I write an outline, it's one Word document and the rough draft is another document that I write until I'm done. Scrivener is definitely a more complex software application, which I have to admit is funny to say because Microsoft Word is ridiculously complicated and has, in my opinion, far more functionality stuffed into it than it really needs. But Scrivener is a different kind of functionality and therefore the learning curve could be quite high for that. Additionally, this may not be the right software tool to work with your style of writing or how you organize your files. A couple extra thoughts with that is it's important to know yourself. Will you actually use the extra features included with Scrivener or do they just look cool and shiny? Scrivener probably is best for those who take extensive notes on their work, especially if trying to organize research based on chapters where it's needed. So if you're a nonfiction writer or if you're a historical fiction writer or a thriller writer who is very concerned about accuracy in your books, this may be useful for you so you can put in notes about the proper way to address a duke in 19th century England or what caliber of ammunition your thriller hero's preferred firearm takes. It's maybe the best for the kind of people who enjoy curating their Notion and Trello accounts and are able to think about their book in a very visual way without letting that process be an excuse to keep them from writing. I'd also say it's good for people who extensively revise blocks of text within a chapter and move chapters around a lot. #2: Canva. Canva has been around for a long time and it is a platform that makes it easy to create visual content using a drag and drop interface that provides a variety of templates, fonts, and designs to use for things like social media posts. They currently have two tiers for individuals, a limited free option, and Canva Pro, which is $12.99 a month. Some of the pros for Canva are it is well-suited for using templates for writers to create images for social media posts and book marketing material. The learning curve is not very steep, especially compared with something like Photoshop. If you've used PowerPoint before, you can definitely handle Canva. The cons: although some people use it to create book covers, many books have been flagged by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and some of the other publishing platforms for doing so. I would advise you to avoid Canva for creating book covers because of the potential for issues that could keep your book out of ebook stores. At the very least, read Canva's terms of use and the rules of KDP and the other ebook publishers very, very carefully before you would even begin to consider using Canva for this purpose. Many of the free features have been folded into the pro version such as sharing template links. The editing and design features are basic compared to something like Photoshop, though that may change as we're going to discuss a little bit here. Because Canva is so popular, there's a certain amount of snobbery out there about using its designs without significant modification. You may have encountered on social media or the Internet people who react very negatively to the presence of AI generated images and this exists to a lesser extent with Canva templates. "Looks like it was made in Canva" is sometimes used as an insult. If you want a unique style and look for your images, you'll have to work a little more to achieve that using Canva. Canva is quick for great one-time things like Facebook or BookBub ads, but I wouldn't recommend using it for book creation or book covers at this time because of the potential problems that can arise from that. For myself, I don't usually use Canva. I've had enough practice with Photoshop that I'm pretty confident in making whatever I want in terms of ad images or book covers in Photoshop, and I use Photoshop for that. However, since I organized the notes for this episode, there is a major caveat to that. Recently, Canva acquired a program called Affinity Photo Editor, which is essentially a much lower cost alternative to Photoshop. When this happened, there was a great deal of negativity around it because people thought Canva was going to jack up the price or make it into an overpriced subscription. But what Canva did surprised a great many people in that they made Affinity totally free and essentially are using a freemium model with it where you can use Affinity Photo Editor for free. It used to be, I believe like $79, possibly $69, and then any of the other features like downloading additional content from Canva would cost part of your Canva subscription. So I have to admit, I'm sufficiently curious about this, that when I write the tie in short story for Wizard-Assassin, I may use Affinity Photo Editor to assemble the cover for it just to see if it would work for that or not, because as I've said, I use Photoshop, but Photoshop is very expensive, Adobe frequently does business practices that are a bit shifty, and the idea of a freemium alternative to Photoshop is not necessarily a bad idea. So when I write a tie in short story for Wizard-Assassin later this month, I think I will attempt to make the cover in Affinity Photo Editor and see if that is something that would be good for my workflow or not, and I will report on that later. #3: Number three is Notion, which can be used to organize information, links, calendars, and reminders into one central dashboard. They have two plans for individuals, a free plan and a Plus plan, which is currently $10 to $12 per month (depending on whether you want a monthly or an annual plan). The Plus version offers unlimited file uploads, greater customizations, and integrations with Slack and Google Drive. The pros for using Notion is that it is popular with writers and content creators for being able to have project planning tools, notes, lists, links, trackers, and reminders all in one dashboard. If you enjoy customization and getting something set up exactly the way you want, you might enjoy setting up your lists, calendars, trackers, and notes through Notion. You can add images and adjust the layout and colors for a more "aesthetic" experience. It is easy to find customized templates [online], especially for writers and for things like storyboarding, word counts, and keeping tracks of sources for nonfiction writing. These Notion templates are shared by individuals, not the company and can be free or paid. Now, some of the cons with Notion. It didn't used to use very much AI, but the company is leaning increasingly heavy into AI, both as a company and in its features on the boards, if that is a concern. The amount of customization options and detail can be absolutely overwhelming. Someone who gets decision fatigue easily or doesn't want to customize a lot and might not enjoy using it. Some people are increasingly complaining that the software is getting too overloaded with features and is slow. For people who value being organized and love having complex and highly visual systems, Notion might be helpful. The downside is that maintaining your Notion boards can easily turn into what I call a "writing-adjacent activity" that gives you the illusion of productivity because of the time you spend managing and updating it aside from the business of getting actual writing done. So once again, this is a good example of "know thyself." If this is something that would be helpful for you, go ahead and pursue it. But if it's something that could turn into a tool for procrastination, it's probably better to avoid it. For myself, I am old enough that when I need to make lists and keep track of things, I have a yellow legal pad on my desk that I write things down on. #4: The next piece of software we're going to look at is LibreOffice. It is an open source piece of software that closely matches Microsoft Office, including Microsoft Word. Pros: It's free and open source. There's a minimal learning curve for those already familiar with Microsoft Word. The interface is a little different, but it's pretty easy to figure things out if you're familiar with Word or Excel. Some swear that that LibreOffice is faster than Word. It depends on the kind of document you're working on and the kind of computer you're using. So that's an area where your mileage may vary. It is also the best word processing option for privacy advocates, especially for those who are concerned about Microsoft and Google storing their work and possibly harvesting it for AI because by default, LibreOffice doesn't work with any AI elements. If you want it to work with any AI elements, plugins are available but they are not included. It's great for the writer who doesn't want to support Microsoft for any reason but still wants to be able to easily save documents in Microsoft file formats like .docx. It works. I've written entire books using it. I wrote all of Soul of Serpents and Soul of Dragons in it, and that was 13 years ago now, and the software has only improved since then. I wrote Silent Order: Eclipse Hand [using it] in 2017 and was very happy with the results, and I still use it for various projects every week, and I found a couple times if something was screwed up in the formatting of Microsoft Word, if I opened it up in LibreOffice, I could fix it pretty easily and much easier than I could in Word. It does have a few cons. The user interface compared to Word or something like Apple Pages does look a bit dated, but it's still navigable. It doesn't have any cloud storage functionality. You would need to piece it together with another storage option if you want to be able to backup stuff to the cloud. But overall, if you can't afford the Microsoft Office Suite, don't want to support Microsoft, and value your privacy, this is your best bet for word processing. Some people may not like its interface, but it's still an extremely solid piece of free software. #5: And now let's move on to our fifth software tool, which is Calibre. Calibre is a tool for ebook management. It can be used for file formatting, changing your books' metadata, or changing file formats. Many use it to create a custom ebook library. Pros include: the product is free and open source. It is easy to generate different file formats for book publication. Do you want to categorize and organize your books in a very specific way? Calibre works for that. The cons: some people find the interface a little clunky and it comes with a bit of a learning curve. To be honest, the interface does look like it came from Windows 2000 and some of the features rely on knowledge of HTML and CSS. Editing and formatting of the book itself is better done using other software. Final thoughts on that? The software is trustworthy, reliable, and has been maintained over the years. It does exactly what it says it does, without any real style but plenty of substance. And I've been a regular Calibre user for like 15 years now, and whenever I get a new computer Calibre is usually one of the very first things I install on it. #6: And now for our sixth and final tool, Inkarnate. Inkarnate is a very useful piece of software that is designed for creating maps. I believe it was originally intended to create maps for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder and so forth. But it's also very useful for creating maps for fantasy novels. As I may have mentioned on the podcast a few times before, I really don't like making maps. I find it constraining and it makes the writing feel a bit crabbed at times. That said, I write primarily in the fantasy genre and people in the fantasy genre love maps, so I'm kind of on the hook for making maps. I used to draw the maps by hand and then import it into Photoshop and add all the locations and add colors and so forth. But that is a lot of work, I have to admit. Inkarnate makes it a lot easier, and I've used it for the last couple of maps I've made. The map of the city of Tar-Carmatheion in the Half-Elven Thief books came from Inkarnate. The map of Owyllain for Blades of Ruin came from Inkarnate, and the map of New Kyre and adjoining regions for Ghost Armor also came from Inkarnate. It's very affordable too. The subscription, I believe, is only $30 a year, and I've been using for a few years now and have never regretted it. So I'd say all the pros are all the ones I've already listed. The cons are that the learning curve is a little bit sharp, but there are excellent YouTube videos and tutorials for that. So, final thoughts. If you find yourself needing to make maps and don't enjoy the process of making maps, then Inkarnate is the software product for you. So those are six tools, software tools for indie authors that I hope will make you more productive and make your work easier. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backup episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

My guest this episode is Jonathan Posner, an indie author who writes historical action-adventure set in the Tudor period. After years of self-publishing, he used what he learned to build his own imprint, which has grown into a publishing company that guides new authors through the indie process. His goal is to give writers the support he wished he had when he started. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest After a thirty-five-year career in marketing and advertising, Jonathan Posner became a full-time writer and publisher based in Exeter, UK. He has written seven action-adventure novels set in the sixteenth century, along with two collections of short stories and articles, and he teaches the craft of writing through the Writing at the Edge collective. In 2023, he founded Winter & Drew Publishing to guide authors who choose the self-publishing route and want experienced support. When he isn't writing or publishing, he presents two radio programs on Phonic FM: The Thursday Book Club and Lights Up!.

Send us a textDuring an episode at the end of October, 2025, Jen mentioned her plan to complete one writing sprint per day. Jamie and Tina thought they might jump in as well, and this was the beginning of the first ever Christian Indie Writers' Podcast 30 Days of Writing Sprints challenge! Patreon Supporters and Indie Authors joined us for the journey, and today we celebrate the sprinting, shenanigans, and support we experienced all month long. Join us on this episode to celebrate the successes of our supporters and to find out the answer to the burning questions, “how did we do?” and, “Will we repeat this challenge?” Support this ministry on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/christianindiewriters30 Days of Writing Sprint Prompts: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MGR7431Our Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/listenersofciwpVisit our website: https://christianindiewriters.net/Learn more about the hosts...Jamie: https://writingshorts.net/Jenifer: https://jenifercarlltong.com/Tina: https://christinacattane.com/Sprint Prompt:: estate, left, spell, craft, member

Becca Syme, founder of the Better-Faster Academy and Host of The Quitcast, joins us to talk about what habits and practices we need to focus on in this brand new day of publishing, and which don't serve us anymore. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

In this episode, Matt & Lauren look back on this year in publishing. We review some of our predictions from 2024 and how those trends impacted the industry in 2025, including: How AI continued to dominate the conversation Why more and more authors and publishers are exploring direct salesHow traditional publishers are adopting print-on-demand solutionsWhy building community is more important than everListen now, or watch the full episode on YouTube! Dive Deeper

Let's get into the micro of scenes and learn about the essentials you can look at when deciding which scenes stay in your book.Grab the cheatsheet here. https://katcaldwell.com/288Get on my writers' newsletter to learn more about the craft of writing, know when my workshops are and be the first to get exclusive information on my writing retreats. https://katcaldwell.com/writers-newsletterWant more information on my books, author swaps, short stories and what I'm reading? Sign up for my readers' newsletter. https://storylectory.katcaldwell.com/signup You can always ask me writing questions on instagram @author_katcaldwell

My guest this episode is Suzanne Barratt, who writes as S. J. Barratt. She blends her background in agriculture and environmental communications with her love of Scotland and Shetland to create eco-adventure stories for middle-grade readers. We talked about her childhood surrounded by books and nature, how she shaped her writing through research and collaboration with an illustrator and editors, and why the indie path gives her the creative freedom she values. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of 2,000+ blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. We invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn, and X. About the Guest S. J. Barratt is a self-published children's author whose eco-themed stories explore the connection between people and the natural world. Rooted in her English countryside upbringing and shaped by a career in agriculture and environmental communications, she brings a practical understanding of rural life to her work. Now based in Lyon, France, she writes middle-grade adventures that encourage young readers to step away from screens and rediscover the outdoors. Her Living at the Edge of the World series reflects this mission. Learn more at S. J. Barratt.

Send us a textIn this enchanting episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome the talented author Bria Rose, known for her captivating dark romance fairytale retellings. Bria shares her journey from a high school writer to a self-published author, detailing her debut novel, "Her Dark Promise," a unique twist on the classic Beauty and the Beast story where Belle takes on the role of the beast. She discusses her creative process, the challenges of indie publishing, and how her experiences working at Disney have influenced her storytelling. Bria also opens up about her love for dark romance, the depth it brings to characters, and her upcoming projects, including a spicy Pinocchio retelling and an exciting collaboration with a publishing company. Tune in for a delightful conversation filled with inspiration, creativity, and insights into the world of writing. Discover more about Bria and her work at www.authorbriarose.com.

Orna Ross and Joanna Penn sit down for a candid, back-and-forth debrief on Author Nation and SelfPubCon 2025, and some of the bigger creative questions raised by the conferences. They unpack the benefits and challenges of physical versus online events, then broaden the conversation into creative courage and change. Discover Drew Davies's "kill two things" rule, why Orna pressed pause on her Go Creative! series, and how Joanna is stepping into a new season with her Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture. As ever, you'll enjoy honest reflection, practical takeaways, and permission to step boldly into your own next creative chapter. About the Hosts Joanna Penn writes nonfiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F.Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller's "100 top people in publishing". She also publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is greatly excited by the democratizing, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website.

Text the Bookcast and say "hi"!It's always a blast when Jamie (JL) Hyde joins us on YNGR! In addition to some fantastic mysteries and thrillers, we also manage to go on about Grady Hendrix, Tiger King, Indie Authors, how much reading we did during COVID, tons of other books, and the bookish bullet I dodged when Hannah was about 9 years old (you can hear the fear in my voice as she tells this story!). Settle in and get ready to build that TBR tower even higher!Sign up for the Read LOKal NewsletterConnect with Jamie: website | Instagram | TikTokConnect with Hannah: website | Twitter | Instagram | TikTokHuge thanks to Self Publish Me for sponsoring this episode! Books Discussed on the Show:JamieThe Kidnapping of Alice Ingold - Cate HolahanWitchcraft for Wayward Girls - Grady HendrixYou'll Never Know - Caleb StephensAll the Missing Girls - Megan MirandaHannahFamily of Liars - E. LockhartThe Chain - Adrian McKintyLook Closer - David EllisThe Guest List - Lucy FoleyJThe Silent Patient - Alex MichaelidesBy the Fire We Carry - Rebecca NagleThe Andromeda Evolution - Daniel H. WilsonThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg LarssonConnect with J: website | TikTok | Twitter | Instagram | FacebookShop the Bookcast on Bookshop.orgMusic by JuliusH

This week and next week we are going to review scenes. Today we'll be looking at the macro of scenes. What scenes are needed in genre fiction as well as what the difference is between Character Arc Scenes and Plot Scenes.Grab your free download here and let's go! https://katcaldwell.com/287Get on my writers' newsletter to learn more about the craft of writing, know when my workshops are and be the first to get exclusive information on my writing retreats. https://katcaldwell.com/writers-newsletterWant more information on my books, author swaps, short stories and what I'm reading? Sign up for my readers' newsletter. https://storylectory.katcaldwell.com/signup You can always ask me writing questions on instagram @author_katcaldwell

Mark interviews Florin Bulgarov, co-founder of Manuscript Report.  Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word about this episode's sponsor. This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK10 at checkout and save 10% off your own personalized report. In their interview, Mark and Florin talk about: Florin's background with a PhD in A.I. and how he ended up evolving into creating the toolset of Manuscript Report How Manuscript Report was initially created as an assessment tool for publishers when going through their slush piles What assets Manuscript Report offers for authors to use in their marketing strategy approaches The additional assets from the reports including the visual pie-chart of the genre split/breakdown as well as the themes and the tropes associated from the manuscript The social media posts, blog posts, and book bible assets that authors can request in a higher level report The fact that Manuscript Report does not store the manuscript and does not train any AI on their manuscript. Within 30 days all traces of the author's manuscript is deleted from their servers How the system is optimized to run for one book at a time and the 1 million word limit on manuscripts run into Manuscript Report The "Narrative Crossroads" suggestions that an author might be able to use in a quick pitch/log line for the book An author who did A/B testing with her own written ads and the Manuscript Report ads and was able to reduce her cost by half and increase her sales by 60% An example of a report using Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray How Manuscript Report is a Swiss Army Knife for marketing And more... Links of Interest: YouTube Video of Interview (with visual walk-thru) EP 443 - Strategies for Short Fiction EP 442 - Writer You Still Need to Quit with Becca Syme EP 441 - A Bookstore for Indie Authors with Donovan Scherer EP 438 - A Personal Conversation with Malorie Cooper EP 437 - Nerding Out Over History, Science, and Maps with Malorie Cooper EP 429 - A Post-Mortem on Co-Hosting the 2025 Aurora Awards with Liz May Anderson Draft2Digital Self-Publishing Insiders: What to Quit, What to Keep, and What to Question with Becca Syme (YouTube) Manuscript Report (Mark's affiliate link) Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections Mark's YouTube channel ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation - Affiliate link) Mark's Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup) An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries The Relaxed Author Buy eBook Direct Buy Audiobook Direct Publishing Pitfalls for Authors An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores Wide for the Win Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books This Time Around (Short Story) A Canadian Werewolf in New York Stowe Away (Novella) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles Fright Nights, Big City Lover's Moon Hex and the City Only Monsters in the Building The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation   The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast ("Laser Groove") was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0