Podcasts about kobo writing life

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we were joined by USA Today best-selling author Talia Hibbert, who has written over 15 romance novels, many of which have been opted for film and television. Talia joined us on this episode to discuss her Kobo Originals novel, a holiday romance between featuring two childhood best friends and lots of holiday mishaps. Best-selling and award-winning author Talia Hibbert joins us on the podcast this week to discuss her career, her writing process, and her newest Kobo Original, Wrapped Up in You. Talia writes sexy, diverse romance and she talks about how indie publishing is more accessible for diverse authors. We also discuss how she works from initial story idea to the finished novel and where she thinks indie publishing is going next.  Learn more on Talia's website and be sure to check out Talia's books on Kobo.

Why do some romance authors build decades-long careers while others vanish after one breakout book? What really separates a throwaway pen name and rapid release strategy from a legacy brand and a body of work you're proud of? How can you diversify with trad, indie, non-fiction, and Kickstarter without burning out—or selling out your creative freedom? With Jennifer Probst. In the intro, digital ebook signing [BookFunnel]; how to check terms and conditions; Business for Authors 2026 webinars; Music industry and AI music [BBC; The New Publishing Standard]; The Golden Age of Weird. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How Jennifer started writing at age 12, fell in love with romance, and persisted through decades of rejection A breakout success — and what happened when it moved to a traditional publisher Traditional vs indie publishing, diversification, and building a long-term, legacy-focused writing career Rapid-release pen names vs slow-burn author brands, and why Jennifer chooses quality and longevity Inspirational non-fiction for writers (Write Naked, Write True, Write Free) Using Kickstarter for special editions, re-releases, courses, and what she's learned from both successes and mistakes – plus what “writing free” really means in practice How can you ‘write free'? You can find Jennifer at JenniferProbst.com. Transcript of interview with Jennifer Probst Jo: Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. So welcome, Jennifer. Jennifer: Thanks so much, Joanna. I am kind of fangirling. I'm really excited to be on The Creative Penn podcast. It's kind of a bucket list. Jo: Aw, that's exciting. I reached out to you after your recent Kickstarter, and we are going to come back to that in a minute. First up, take us back in time. Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing. Jennifer: This one is easy for me. I am one of those rarities. I think that I knew when I was seven that I was going to write. I just didn't know what I was going to write. At 12 years old, and now this will kind of date me in dinosaur era here, there was no internet, no information on how to be a writer, no connections out there. The only game in town was Writer's Digest. I would go to my library and pore over Writer's Digest to learn how to be a writer. At 12 years old, all I knew was, “Oh, if I want to be a famous writer, I have to write a book.” So I literally sat down at 12 and wrote my first young adult romance. Of course, I was the star, as we all are when we're young, and I have not stopped since. I always knew, since my dad came home from a library with a box of romance novels and got in trouble with my mum and said, basically, “She's reading everything anyway, just let her read these,” I was gone. From that moment on, I knew that my entire life was going to be about that. So for me, it wasn't the writing. I have written non-stop since I was 12 years old. For me, it was more about making this a career where I can make money, because I think there was a good 30 years where I wrote without a penny to my name. So it was more of a different journey for me. It was more about trying to find my way in the writing world, where everybody said it should be just a hobby, and I believed that it should be something more. Jo: I was literally just going back in my head there to the library I used to go to on my way home from school. Similar, probably early teens, maybe age 14. Going to that section and… I think it was Shirley Conran. Was that Lace? Yes, Lace books. That's literally how we all learned about sex back in the day. Jennifer: All from books. You didn't need parents, you didn't need friends. Amazing. Jo: Oh, those were the days. That must have been the eighties, right? Jennifer: It was the eighties. Yes. Seventies, eighties, but mostly right around in the eighties. Oh, it was so… Jo: I got lost about then because I was reminiscing. I was also the same one in the library, and people didn't really see what you were reading in the corner of the library. So I think that's quite funny. Tell us how you got into being an indie. Jennifer: What had happened is I had this manuscript and it had been shopped around New York for agents and for a bunch of publishers. I kept getting the same exact thing: “I love your voice.” I mean, Joanna, when you talk about papering your wall with rejections, I lived that. The only thing I can say is that when I got my first rejection, I looked at it as a rite of passage that created me as a writer, rather than taking the perspective that it meant I failed. To me, perspective is a really big thing in this career, how you look at things. So that really helped me. But after you get like 75 of them, you're like, “I don't know how much longer I can take of this.” What happened is, it was an interesting story, because I had gone to an RWA conference and I had shopped this everywhere, this book that I just kept coming back to. I kept saying, “I feel like this book could be big.” There was an indie publisher there. They had just started out, it was an indie publisher called Entangled. A lot of my friends were like, “What about Entangled? Why don't you try more digital things or more indie publishers coming up rather than the big traditional ones?” Lo and behold, I sent it out. They loved the book. They decided, in February of 2012, to launch it. It was their big debut. They were kind of competing with Harlequin, but it was going to be a new digital line. It was this new cutting-edge thing. The book went crazy. It went viral. The book was called The Marriage Bargain, and it put me on the map. All of a sudden I was inundated with agents, and the traditional publishers came knocking and they wanted to buy the series. It was everywhere. Then it hit USA Today, and then it spent 26 weeks on The New York Times. Everybody was like, “Wow, you're this overnight sensation.” And I'm like, “Not really!” That was kind of my leeway into everything. We ended up selling that series to Simon & Schuster because that was the smart move for then, because it kind of blew up and an indie publisher at that time knew it was a lot to take on. From then on, my goal was always to do both: to have a traditional contract, to work with indie publishers, and to do my own self-pub. I felt, even back then, the more diversified I am, the more control I have. If one bucket goes bad, I have two other buckets. Jo: Yes, I mean, I always say multiple streams of income. It's so surprising to me that people think that whatever it is that hits big is going to continue. So you obviously experienced there a massive high point, but it doesn't continue. You had all those weeks that were amazing, but then it drops off, right? Jennifer: Oh my goodness, yes. Great story about what happened. So 26 weeks on The New York Times, and it was selling like hotcakes. Then Simon & Schuster took it over and they bumped the price to their usual ebook price, which was, what, $12.99 or something? So it's going from $2.99. The day that they did it, I slid off all the bestseller lists. They were gone, and I lost a lot of control too. With indies, you have a little bit more control. But again, that kind of funnels me into a completely different kind of setup. Traditional is very different from indie. What you touched on, I think, is the biggest thing in the industry right now. When things are hot, it feels like forever. I learned a valuable lesson: it doesn't continue. It just doesn't. Maybe someone like Danielle Steel or some of the other big ones never had to pivot, but I feel like in romance it's very fluid. You have genres hitting big, you have niches hitting big, authors hitting big. Yes, I see some of them stay. I see Emily Henry still staying—maybe that will never pause—but I think for the majority, they find themselves saying, “Okay, that's done now. What's next?” It can either hit or not hit. Does that make sense to you? Do you feel the same? Jo: Yes, and I guess it's not just about the book. It's more about the tactic. You mentioned genres, and they do switch a lot in romance, a lot faster than other genres. In terms of how we do marketing… Now, as we record this, TikTok is still a thing, and we can see maybe generative AI search coming on the horizon and agentic buying. A decade ago it might have been different, more Facebook ads or whatever. Then before that it might have been something else. So there's always things changing along the way. Jennifer: Yes, there definitely is. It is a very oversaturated market. They talk about, I don't know, 2010 to 2016 maybe, as the gold rush, because that was where you could make a lot of money as an indie. Then we saw the total fallout of so many different things. I feel like I've gone through so many ups and downs in the industry. I do love it because the longer you're around, the more you learn how to pivot. If you want this career, you learn how to write differently or do whatever you need to do to keep going, in different aspects, with the changes. To me, that makes the industry exciting. Again, perspective is a big thing. But I have had to take a year to kind of rebuild when I was out of contract with a lot of things. I've had to say, “Okay, what do you see on the horizon now? Where is the new foundation? Where do you wanna restart?” Sometimes it takes a year or two of, “Maybe I won't be making big income and I cut back,” but then you're back in it, because it takes a while to write a few new books, or write under a pen name, or however you want to pivot your way back into the industry. Or, like you were saying, diversifying. I did a lot of non-fiction stuff because that's a big calling for me, so I put that into the primary for a while. I think it's important for authors to maybe not just have one thing. When that one thing goes away, you're scrambling. It's good to have a couple of different things like, “Well, okay, this genre is dead or this thing is dead or this isn't making money. Let me go to this for a little while until I see new things on the horizon.” Jo: Yes. There's a couple of things I want to come back to. You mentioned a pen name there, and one of the things I'm seeing a lot right now—I mean, it's always gone on, but it seems to be on overdrive—is people doing rapid-release, throwaway pen names. So there's a new sub-genre, they write the books really fast, they put them up under whatever pen name, and then when that goes away, they ditch that pen name altogether. Versus growing a name brand more slowly, like I think you and I have done. Under my J.F. Penn fiction brand, I put lots of different sub-genres. What are your thoughts on this throwaway pen name versus growing a name brand more slowly? Jennifer: Well, okay, the first thing I'm goign to say is: if that lights people up, if you love the idea of rapid release and just kind of shedding your skin and going on to the next one, I say go for it. As long as you're not pumping it out with AI so it's a complete AI book, but that's a different topic. I'm not saying using AI tools; I mean a completely AI-written book. That's the difference. If we're talking about an author going in and, every four weeks, writing a book and stuff like that, I do eventually think that anything in life that disturbs you, you're going to burn out eventually. That is a limited-time kind of thing, I believe. I don't know how long you can keep doing that and create decent enough books or make a living on it. But again, I really try not to judge, because I am very open to: if that gives you joy and that's working and it brings your family money, go for it. I have always wanted to be a writer for the long term. I want my work to be my legacy. I don't just pump out books. Every single book is my history. It's a marking of what I thought, what I put out in the world, what my beliefs are, what my story is. It marks different things, and I'm very proud of that. So I want a legacy of quality. As I got older, in my twenties and thirties, I was able to write books a lot faster. Then I had a family with two kids and I had to slow down a little bit. I also think life sometimes drives your career, and that's okay. If you're taking care of a sick parent or there's illness or whatever, maybe you need to slow down. I like the idea of a long-term backlist supporting me when I need to take a back seat and not do frontlist things. So that's how I feel. I will always say: choose a long, organic-growth type of career that will be there for you, where your backlist can support you. I also don't want to trash people who do it differently. If that is how you can do it, if you can write a book in a month and keep doing it and keep it quality, go for it. Jo: I do have the word “legacy” on my board next to me, but I also have “create a body of work I'm proud of.” I have that next to me, and I have “Have you made art today?” So I think about these things too. As you say, people feel differently about work, and I will do other work to make faster cash rather than do that with books. But as we said, that's all good. Interestingly, you mentioned non-fiction there. Write Free is your latest one, but you've got some other writing books. So maybe— Talk about the difference between non-fiction book income and marketing compared to fiction, and why you added that in. Jennifer: Yes, it's completely different. I mean, it's two new dinosaurs. I came to writing non-fiction in a very strange way. Literally, I woke up on New Year's Day and I was on a romance book deadline. I could not do it. I'll tell you, my brain was filled with passages of teaching writing, of things I wanted to share in my writing career. Because again, I've been writing since I was 12, I've been a non-stop writer for over 30 years. I got to my computer and I wrote like three chapters of Write Naked (which was the first book). It was just pouring out of me. So I contacted my agent and I said, “Look, I don't know, this is what I want to do. I want to write this non-fiction book.” She's like, “What are you talking about? You're a romance author. You're on a romance deadline. What do you want me to do with this?” She was so confused. I said, “Yes, how do you write a non-fiction book proposal?” And she was just like, “This is not good, Jen. What are you doing?” Anyway, the funny story was, she said, “Just send me chapters.” I mean, God bless her, she's this wonderful agent, but I know she didn't get it. So I sent her like four chapters of what I was writing and she called me. I'll never forget it. She called me on the phone and she goes, “This is some of the best stuff I have ever read in my life. It's raw and it's truthful, and we've got to find a publisher for this.” And I was like, “Yay.” What happened was, I believe this was one of the most beautiful full circles in my life: Writer's Digest actually made me an offer. It was not about the money. I found that non-fiction for me had a much lower advance and a different type of sales. For me, when I was a kid, that is exactly what I was reading in the library, Writer's Digest. I would save my allowance to get the magazine. I would say to myself, “One day, maybe I will have a book with Writer's Digest.” So for me, it was one of the biggest full-circle moments. I will never forget it. Being published by them was amazing. Then I thought I was one-and-done, but the book just completely touched so many writers. I have never gotten so many emails: “Thank you for saying the truth,” or “Thank you for being vulnerable.” Right before it published, I had a panic attack. I told my husband, “Now everybody's going to know that I am a mess and I'm not fabulous and the world is going to know my craziness.” By being vulnerable about the career, and also that it was specifically for romance authors, it caused a bond. I think it caused some trust. I had been writing about writing for years. After that, I thought it was one-and-done. Then two or three years later I was like, “No, I have more to say.” So I leaned into my non-fiction. It also gives my fiction brain a rest, because when you're doing non-fiction, you're using a different part of your brain. It's a way for me to cleanse my palate. I gather more experiences about what I want to share, and then that goes into the next book. Jo: Yes, I also use the phrase “palate cleanser” for non-fiction versus fiction. I feel like you write one and then you feel like, “Oh, I really need to write the other now.” Jennifer: Yes! Isn't it wonderful? I love that. I love having the two brains and just giving one a break and totally leaning into it. Again, it's another way of income. It's another way. I also believe that this industry has given me so much that it is automatic that I want to give back. I just want to give as much as possible back because I'm so passionate about writing and the industry field. Jo: Well, interestingly though, Writer's Digest—the publisher who published that magazine and other things—went bankrupt in 2019. You've been in publishing a long time. It is not uncommon for publishers to go out of business or to get bought. Things happen with publishers, right? Jennifer: Yes. Jo: So what then happened? Jennifer: So Penguin Random House bought it. All the Writer's Digest authors did not know what they were going to do. Then Penguin Random House bought it and kept Writer's Digest completely separate, as an imprint under the umbrella. So Writer's Digest really hasn't changed. They still have the magazine, they still have books. So it ended up being okay. But what I did do is—because I sold Write Naked and I have no regrets about that, it was the best thing for me to do, to go that route—the second and the third books were self-published. I decided I'm going to self-publish. That way I have the rights for audio, I have the rights for myself, I can do a whole bunch of different things. So Write True, the second one, was self-published. Writers Inspiring Writers I paired up with somebody, so we self-published that. And Write Free, my newest one, is self-published. So I've decided to go that route now with my non-fiction. Jo: Well, as I said, I noticed your Kickstarter. I don't write romance, so I'm not really in that community. I had kind of heard your name before, but then I bought the book and joined the Kickstarter. Then I discovered that you've been doing so much and I was like, “Oh, how, why haven't we connected before?” It's very cool. So tell us about the Kickstarters you've done and what you know, because you've done, I think, a fiction one as well. What are your thoughts and tips around Kickstarter? Jennifer: Yes. When I was taking that year, I found myself kind of… let's just say fired from a lot of different publishers at the time. That was okay because I had contracts that ran out, and when I looked to see, “Okay, do we want to go back?” it just wasn't looking good. I was like, “Well, I don't want to spend a year if I'm not gonna be making the money anyway.” So I looked at the landscape and I said, “It's time to really pull in and do a lot more things on my own, but I've got to build foundations.” Kickstarter was one of them. I took a course with Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle. They did a big course for Kickstarter, and they were really the ones going around to all the conferences and basically saying, “Hey guys, you're missing out on a lot of publishing opportunities here,” because Kickstarter publishing was getting good. I took the course because I like to dive into things, but I also want to know the foundation of it. I want to know what I'm doing. I'm not one to just wing it when it comes to tech. So what happened is, the first one, I had rights coming back from a book. After 10 years, my rights came back. It was an older book and I said, “You know what? I am going to dip my foot in and see what kind of base I can grow there. What can I do?” I was going to get a new cover, add new scenes, re-release it anyway, right? So I said, “Let's do a Kickstarter for it, because then I can get paid for all of that work.” It worked out so fantastically. It made just enough for my goal. I knew I didn't want to make a killing; I knew I wanted to make a fund. I made my $5,000, which I thought was wonderful, and I was able to re-release it with a new cover, a large print hardback, and I added some scenes. I did a 10-year anniversary re-release for my fans. So I made it very fan-friendly, grew my audience, and I was like, “This was great.” The next year, I did something completely different. I was doing Kindle Vella back in the day. That was where you dropped a chapter at a time. I said, “I want to do this completely different kind of thing.” It was very not my brand at all. It was very reality TV-ish: young college students living in the city, very sexy, very angsty, love triangles, messy—everything I was not known for. Again, I was like, “I'm not doing a pen name because this is just me,” and I funnelled my audience. I said, “What I'm going to do is I'm going to start doing a chapter a week through Kindle Vella and make money there. Then when it's done, I'm going to bundle it all up and make a book out of it.” So I did a year of Kindle Vella. It was the best decision I made because I just did two chapters a week, which I was able to do. By one year I had like 180,000 words. I had two to three books in there. I did it as a hardback deluxe—the only place you could get it in print. Then Vella closed, or at least it went way down. So I was like, “Great, I'm going to do this Kickstarter for this entire new thing.” I partnered with a company that helps with special editions, because that was a whole other… oh Joanna, that was a whole other thing you have to go into. Getting the books, getting the art, getting the swag. I felt like I needed some help for that. Again, I went in, I funded. I did not make a killing on that, but that was okay. I learned some things that I would have changed with my Kickstarter and I also built a new audience for that. I had a lot of extra books that I then sold in my store, and it was another place to make money. The third Kickstarter I used specifically because I had always wanted to do a writing course. I go all over the world, I do keynotes, I do workshops, I've done books, and I wanted to reach new writers, but I don't travel a lot anymore. So I came up with the concept that I was going to do my very first course, and it was going to be very personal, kind of like me talking to them almost like in a keynote, like you're in a room with me. I gathered a whole bunch of stuff and I used Kickstarter to help me A) fund it and B) make myself do it, because it was two years in the making and I always had, “Oh, I've got this other thing to do,” you know how we do that, right? We have big projects. So I used Kickstarter as a deadline and I decided to launch it in the summer. In addition to that, I took years of my posts from all over. I copied and pasted, did new posts, and I created Write Free, which was a very personal, essay-driven book. I took it all together. I took a couple of months to do this, filmed the course, and the Kickstarter did better than I had ever imagined. I got quadruple what I wanted, and it literally financed all the video editing, the books, everything that I needed, plus extra. I feel like I'm growing in Kickstarter. I hope I'm not ranting. I'm trying to go over things that can help people. Jo: Oh no, that is super useful. Jennifer: So you don't have to go all in and say, “If it doesn't fund it's over,” or “I need to make $20,000.” There are people making so much money, and there are people that will do a project a year or two projects a year and just get enough to fund a new thing that they want to do. So that's how I've done it. Jo: I've done quite a few now, and my non-fiction ones have been a lot bigger—I have a big audience there—and my fiction have been all over the place. What I like about Kickstarter is that you can do these different things. We can do these special editions. I've just done a sprayed-edge short story collection. Short story collections are not the biggest genre. Jennifer: Yes. I love short stories too. I've always wanted to do an anthology of all my short stories. Jo: There you go. Jennifer: Yes, I love that for your Kickstarter. Love it. Jo: When I turned 50 earlier this year, I realised the thing that isn't in print is my short stories. They are out there digitally, and that's why I wanted to do it. I feel like Kickstarter is a really good way to do these creative projects. As you say, you don't have to make a ton of money, but at the end of the day, the definition of success for us, I think for both of us, is just being able to continue doing this, right? Jennifer: Absolutely. This is funding a creative full-time career, and every single thing that you do with your content is like a funnel. The more funnels that you have, the bigger your base. Especially if you love it. It would be different if I was struggling and thinking, “Do I get an editor job?” I would hate being an editor. But if you look at something else like, “Oh yes, I could do this and that would light me up, like doing a course—wow, that sounds amazing,” then that's different. It's kind of finding your alternates that also light you up. Jo: Hmm. So were there any mistakes in your Kickstarters that you think are worth sharing? In case people are thinking about it. Jennifer: Oh my God, yes. So many. One big thing was that I felt like I was a failure if I didn't make a certain amount of money because my name is pretty well known. It's not like I'm brand new and looking. One of the big things was that I could not understand and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall about why my newsletter subscribers wouldn't support the Kickstarter. I'm like, “Why aren't you doing this? I'm supposed to have thousands of people that just back.” Your expectations can really mess with you. Then I started to learn, “Oh my God, my newsletter audience wants nothing to do with my Kickstarter.” Maybe I had a handful. So then I learned that I needed longer tails, like putting it up for pre-order way ahead of time, and also that you can't just announce it in your newsletter and feel like everybody's going to go there. You need to find your streams, your Kickstarter audience, which includes ads. I had never done ads either and I didn't know how to do that, so I did that all wrong. I joined the Facebook group for Kickstarter authors. I didn't do that for the first one and then I learned about it. You share backer updates, so every time you go into your audience with a backer update, there's this whole community where you can share with like-minded people with their projects, and you post it under your updates. It does cross-networking and sharing with a lot of authors in their newsletters. For the Write Free one, I leaned into my networking a lot, using my connections. I used other authors' newsletters and people in the industry to share my Kickstarter. That was better for me than just relying on my own fanbase. So definitely more networking, more sharing, getting it out on different platforms rather than just doing your own narrow channel. Because a lot of the time, you think your audience will follow you into certain things and they don't, and that needs to be okay. The other thing was the time and the backend. I think a lot of authors can get super excited about swag. I love that, but I learned that I could have pulled back a little bit and been smarter with my financials. I did things I was passionate about, but I probably spent much more money on swag than I needed to. So looking at different aspects to make it more efficient. I think each time you do one, you learn what works best. As usual, I try to be patient with myself. I don't get mad at myself for trying things and failing. I think failing is spectacular because I learn something. I know: do I want to do this again? Do I want to do it differently? If we weren't so afraid of failingqu “in public”, I think we would do more things. I'm not saying I never think, “Oh my God, that was so embarrassing, I barely funded and this person is getting a hundred thousand.” We're human. We compare. I have my own reset that I do, but I really try to say, “But no, for me, maybe I'll do this, and if it doesn't work, that's okay.” Jo: I really like that you shared about the email list there because I feel like too many people have spent years driving people to Kindle or KU, and they have built an email list of readers who like a particular format at a particular price. Then we are saying, “Oh, now come over here and buy a beautiful hardback that's like ten times the price.” And we're surprised when nobody does it. Is that what happened? Jennifer: Exactly. Also, that list was for a non-fiction project. So I had to funnel where my writers were in my newsletter, and I have mostly readers. So I was like, “Okay…” But I think you're exactly right. First of all, it's the platform. When you ask anybody to go off a platform, whether it's buy direct at your Shopify store or go to Kickstarter, you are going to lose the majority right there. People are like, “No, I want to click a button from your newsletter and go to a site that I know.” So you've got that, and you've got to train them. That can take some time. Then you've got this project where people are like, “I don't understand.” Even my mum was like, “I would love to support you, honey, but what the heck is this? Where's the buy button and where's my book?” My women's fiction books tend to have some older readers who are like, “Hell no, I don't know what this is.” So you have to know your audience. If it's not translating, train them. I did a couple of videos where I said, “Look, I want to show you how easy this is,” and I showed them directly how to go in and how to back. I did that with Kindle Vella too. I did a video from my newsletter and on social: “Hey, do you not know how to read this chapter? Here's how.” Sometimes there's a barrier. Like you said, Joanna, if I have a majority that just want sexy contemporary, and I'm dropping angsty, cheating, forbidden love, they're like, “Oh no, that's not for me.” So you have to know whether there's a crossover. I go into my business with that already baked into my expectations. I don't go in thinking I'm going to make a killing. Then I'm more surprised when it does well, and then I can build it. Jo: Yes, exactly. Also if you are, like both of us, writing across genres, then you are always going to split your audience. People do not necessarily buy everything because they have their preferences. So I think that's great. Now we are almost out of time, but this latest book is Write Free. I wondered if you would maybe say— What does Write Free mean to you, and what might it help the listeners with? Jennifer: Write Free is an extremely personal book for me, and the title was really important because it goes with Write Naked, Write True, and Write Free. These are the ways that I believe a writer should always show up to the page. Freedom is being able to write your truth in whatever day that is. You're going to be a different writer when you're young and maybe hormonal and passionate and having love affairs. You're going to write differently when you're a mum with kids in nappies. You're going to write differently when you are maybe in your forties and you're killing your career. Your perspective changes, your life changes. Write Free is literally a collection of essays all through my 30 years of life. It's very personal. There are essays like, “I'm writing my 53rd book right now,” and essays like, “My kids are in front of SpongeBob and I'm trying to write right now,” and “I got another rejection letter and I don't know how to survive.” It is literally an imprint of essays that you can dip in and dip out of. It's easy, short, inspirational, and it's just me showing up for my writing life. That's what I wish for everybody: that they can show up for their writing life in the best way that they can at the time, because that changes all the time. Jo: We can say “write free” because we've got a lot of experience at writing. I feel like when I started writing—I was an IT consultant—I literally couldn't write anything creative. I didn't believe I could. There'll be people listening who are just like, “Well, Jennifer, I can't write free. I'm not free. My mind is shackled by all these expectations and everything.” How can they release that and aim for more freedom? Jennifer: I love that question so much. The thing is, I've spent so many years working on that part. That doesn't come overnight. I think sometimes when you have more clarification of, “Okay, this is really limiting me,” then when you can see where something is limiting you, at least you can look for answers. My answers came in the form of meditation. Meditation is a very big thing in my life. Changing my perspective. Learning life mottos to help me deal with those kinds of limitations. Learning that when I write a sex scene, I can't care about my elderly aunt who tells my mother, “Dear God, she ruined the family name.” It is your responsibility to figure out where these limitations are, and then slowly see how you can remove them. I've been in therapy. I have read hundreds of self-help books. I take meditation courses. I take workshop courses. I've done CliftonStrengths with Becca Syme. I don't even know if that's therapy, but it feels like therapy to me as a writer. Knowing my personality traits. I've done Enneagram work with Claire Taylor, which has been huge. The more you know yourself and how your brain is showing up for yourself, the more you can grab tools to use. I wish I could say, “Yes, if everybody meditates 30 minutes a day, you're going to have all blocks removed,” but it's so personal that it's a trick question. If everybody started today and said, “Where is my biggest limitation?” and be real with yourself, there are answers out there. You just have to go slowly and find them, and then the writing more free will come. I hope that wasn't one of those woo-woo answers, but I really do believe it. Jo: I agree. It just takes time. Like our writing career, it just takes time. Keep working on it, keep writing. Jennifer: Yes. And bravery, right? A lot of bravery. Just show up for yourself however you can. If “write free” feels too big, journal for yourself and put it in a locked drawer. Any kind of writing, I think, is therapeutic too. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jennifer: The best place to go is my website. I treat it like my home. It's www.JenniferProbst.com. There is so much on it. Not just books, not just free content and free stories. There's an entire section just for writers. There are videos on there. There are a lot of resources. I keep it up to date and it is the place where you can find me. Of course I'm everywhere on social media as Author Jennifer Probst. You can find me anywhere. I always tell everybody: I answer my messages, I answer my emails. That is really important to me. So if you heard this podcast and you want to reach out on anything, please do. I will answer. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jennifer. That was great. Jennifer: Thanks for having me, Joanna.The post Writing Free: Romance Author Jennifer Probst On A Long-Term Author Career first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we were joined by best-selling author Nalini Singh, who writes in multiple genres, from romance to thrillers. This discussion focused on her experiences becoming a hybrid author, writing thrillers after a long romance-writing career, and much more. New York Times best-selling author Nalini Singh joins us on the podcast this week to talk about her long standing career as a romance author and why she decided to try her hand at writing thrillers. Nalini chats to us about her publishing journey, why she decided to give indie publishing a try and become a hybrid author, and she tells us what it was like to be included on Oprah's list of Best Romances to Read in this Lifetime. Learn more on Nalini's website and check out Nalini's books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we spoke to prolific indie author Dale Mayer, who has written dozes of books over the years of her successful career. We talk to her all about how dictating her books helps her write more, misconceptions about overnight success in indie publishing, how to find your own success as an indie author, and much more. Dale Mayer, USA Today bestselling author, gives advice to listeners on how to develop a long and successful career in indie publishing. She also explains how dictating her books helped her become one of KWL's most prolific authors. Be sure to visit Dale's website and check out Dale's books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we spoke to USA Today best-selling author of many a mystery book, Sara Rosett! Sara shared some great tips with us when it came to plotting mystery novels, marketing long-running series books (a challenge many mystery authors face), and more. Sara Rosett, USA Today bestselling author, gives her tips for plotting mystery novels, discusses the psychology of why readers choose cozy mysteries, and explains the challenges that come with marketing a long-standing series. Learn more on Sara's website and check out Sara's books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we spoke to best-selling Scottish author Skye MacKinnon, whose many books are inspired by folklore and mythology, no matter the genre. We had a great conversation about incorporating elements of myth and folktales in fiction, co-writing with other authors, and much more. Skye MacKinnon is an international bestselling author who writes across multiple genres, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal romance and even children's books. Skye joins us on the podcast this week to discuss writing in different genres and how she manages to incorporate her love of Scottish folklore and mythology into her work, no matter what she's writing. She also talks about her experience co-writing series with authors she admires, and why she decided to go wide.  Learn more on Skye's website and check out Skye's books on Kobo.  

Mark Leslie Lefebvre is the author of more than thirty books that include the award-winning humorous urban fantasy Canadian Werewolf series— hailed by readers as “the thinking man's werewolf”—and his award-nominated ghostly explorations such as Haunted Hospitals and Tomes of Terror. He is also the editor of more than ten anthologies that include titles in the Hugo Award Nominated Pulphouse Fiction Magazine and the Aurora Award-winning Tesseracts series, which showcases the best in Canadian speculative fiction. His work has been translated into French, Italian, and German. While choosing the shorter and easier-to-spell moniker of Mark Leslie for most of his writing, Mark leverages his full name for work in inspiring, informing, and assisting other authors. Mark's first short story was published in 1992, the same year he began in the book industry. He is a tireless advocate for libraries, bookstores, and other authors and has held the roles of president of The Canadian Booksellers Association, board member for BookNet Canada, chair of the Professional Advisor Committee for Sheridan College's Honours Degree in Writing and Publishing, and Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations for Rakuten, Kobo, Inc. where he launched Kobo Writing Life. A pioneer in digital publishing, Mark has embraced both traditional and self-publishing routes and continues to look for new ways that technology and innovation can improve the industry for all authors. He has appeared on countless podcasts, television, and radio programs and has spoken on stages across Canada and the United States as well as in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Mark's weekly podcast, Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing—launched in January 2018— takes an unflinching look at the reality of the publishing world with a balanced take on the pros and cons of various publishing routes. One of his greatest passions is helping writers navigate the bold new realms and opportunities that continue to unfold as the industry evolves. Mark Leslie Lefebvre became a Writers of the Future judge in 2024. “Fantastic fiction has long been considered the herald of possibility. If so, then writers are the pioneering champions of inspiring the world in creative and imaginative ways that can bring form and reality to that raw potential. One of the most significant things we can do as writers is to inspire others to dream well beyond the limits and constraints of our world—to imagine the infinite potency and wonders that lie just on the other side of ‘what if.' Those whose mission is to seek out and celebrate new imaginative voices, to offer them a platform to launch their words, dreams, and stories, and to provide guidance as they navigate a complex and ever-changing publishing industry are the purveyors of possibility in the finest sense. And that is what Writers of the Future has always been. I am proud and honored to join the prestigious panel of world-class writers, artists and all of the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes in continuing L. Ron Hubbard's magnificent vision of paying it forward to the creative minds of tomorrow.” —Mark Leslie Lefebvre Find out more at: markleslie.ca markleslie.ca/about/

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode, we spoke to writer and director of the Alliance of Independet Authors, Orna Ross! Orna joined us to talk about having a global approach to book sales, making business desicions that can expand your writing career, and much more.  Novelist, poet, and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors Orna Ross joins us on the podcast this week to discuss taking a global approach to your indie publishing business. Orna talks about what business decisions authors should consider and how to get into the right mindset before going global, and she gives us some great advice for new and veteran authors alike. To learn more, visit Orna's website.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode featuring Brenna Aubrey is all about translations and how to find success in a foreign language market. Brenna had great advice about being a globally conscious author, translation rights, and more! Breakout star in France, Italy and Germany, Brenna Aubrey gives listeners tips on translations. She advises on how to decide if translations are right for you, how much money an author should budget for translations, picking which market to target and selecting which backlist titles to translate. Brenna also discusses how she fell into her niche (writing “geek romance”) and why ultimately, she decided on self-publishing rather than traditional publishing. To learn more, visit Brenna's website.  

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. Today, we're bringing you a recording of a live Q&A event with Maria Fesz, team lead of collection development at OverDrive! This Q&A is full of great information on how to get your books onto those (digital) library shelves. In this episode, we spoke to Maria Fesz, who is team lead of collection development at OverDrive. Kobo and OverDrive are companies with a combined passion for readers and reading and by working together, we have developed a way to make it easy for KWL authors to opt their titles directly into OverDrive's library marketplace. This conversation consisted of great conversation and plenty of helpful information, including: The importance of selling to libraries BISAC codes Preorder titles How to opt in your books to OverDrive via KWL And much more! Check out OverDrive's website to learn more.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. Today, we're bringing you a great conversation about writing dark romance with best-selling author Autumn Jones Lake. We loved chatting to Autumn about all things motorcycle romance and the misconceptions about being an author writing in this sub-genre!  USA Today bestselling author,Autumn Jones Lake explains the misconceptions associated with motorcycle romance, how she plots her Lost Kings MC series (fifteen books and counting!) and shares her tips for aspiring romance writers. In this episode: Autumn tells us about her publishing journey from trying out traditional publishing, working with a small press, and her decision to go indie She explains why she enjoys writing MC romances and the common misconceptions people have about the genre Autumn breaks down her writing process from planning an outline to keeping track of all of her various characters to how she's influenced by her readers, and she tells us about the challenges that come with writing a long-standing series She shares some tips for writers looking to get into romance writing, including the best things she's done for her writing business Autumn discusses how she markets such a long-standing series and how she utilizes her newsletter to not only stay in touch with her readers, but to also introduce new material And much more! Learn more on Autumn's website and check out her books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode features two former Kobo employees, Simon Collinson and Ben Dugas! These two experts share everything authors need to know about EPUBs and eBook files, and offer some great advice to indie authors looking to avoid common formatting and file-making errors. Join Chrissy as she sits down with EPUB experts Simon Collinson and Ben Dugas from Kobo. They teach us everything we need to know about eBook files. They explain the different types of EPUB files, the tools available to authors to make their own EPUBs and common errors to watch out when creating your own file. They also discuss the future of eBooks and accessibility. In this episode: Simon and Ben tell us what the difference between different EPUB formats is. Simon talks about the different ways authors can go about creating their own EPUB files. Ben chats about the common issues he encounters when looking at EPUB files. Ben recommends trying out your EPUB on different devices to make sure it will be readable on all platforms. They talk about accessibility and the future they see for EPUBs. And much more!

Radish Fiction is officially shutting down by December 2025. NetGalley just launched a consumer-facing discovery site called Booktrovert. And ACX is testing voice replica AI for audiobook narration. In this week's news update, I cover the latest shifts in the self-publishing world—including a deepfake interview warning, AI narration breakthroughs, and a major indie publishing milestone from Spoken.press.  Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp  Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships  Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. News Sources: Now in Beta: Narrator Voice Replicas on ACX - https://www.acx.com/mp/blog/now-in-beta-narrator-voice-replicas-on-acx Radish Fiction is shutting down in December 2025 - https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/radish-fiction-is-shutting-down-soon-in-december NetGalley Launches New Consumer Marketing Site Called Booktrovert - https://publishingperspectives.com/2025/06/netgalley-launches-booktrovert/ When an Interview Isn't Exactly What It Seems: NewYox Media and Its Suite of Magazines - https://writerbeware.blog/2025/07/11/when-an-interview-isnt-exactly-what-it-seems-newyox-media-and-its-suite-of-magazines  Spoken Beta: V0.9.4 Release Notes: Natural Cadence, Emotional Precision, and Massive MCMV Level Up - https://www.spoken.press/the-spoken-chronicle/spoken-beta-v094-release-notes-natural-cadence-emotional-precision-and-massive-mcmv-level-up Miblart - https://DaleLinks.com/Miblart (affiliate link) - use promo code MIBLART15 to get 15% off your order (good through July 18) Self-Publishing Made Simple with April Cox - https://www.youtube.com/@SelfPubMadeSimple BookLinker presents: Your Book Deserves Readers: 3 Steps to Smarter Book Marketing - https://booklinker.mykajabi.com/registration-page ALLi Membership - https://DaleLinks.com/ALLi (affiliate link) ALLi Member Q&A: Marketing Your Books Using Video with Dale L. Roberts - https://selfpubconnect.mn.co/events/member-qa-marketing-your-books-using-video-with-dale-l-roberts The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast: Building Your Author Platform in 2025 - https://selfpublishingadvice.org/podcast-author-platform/ Kobo Writing Life presents: Busting Indie Publishing Myths with Dale Roberts - https://www.youtube.com/live/6oPXIhuzROg?si=YE7mPAAzFYvuYMCq Author Nation - https://DaleLinks.com/AuthorNation (affiliate link) Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. We're excited to bring back this episode featuring best-selling romance author and trauma therapist Adriana Herrera, whose approach to "unapologetic happy endings" is key to writing her romance novels! In this episode, we are joined by USA Today bestselling author and trauma therapist Adriana Herrera, author of romance novels with “unapologetic happy endings.” One of her most recent release and first in a new series, A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, published on May 31st 2022. Join us for an invigorating discussion about Adriana's journey to writing romance, representation in romance, how her work as a trauma therapist informs her writing, the writing workshops she teaches, fanfiction, and more. Learn more on Adriana's website and check out her books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode highlights our conversation with Maria Riegger, author, attorney, and champion of authors who want to get educated on their legal rights and liabilities. This interview with Maria is full of great advice on legal issues to consider and more and is definitely worth another listen! In this episode, we spoke to Maria Riegger, attorney, self-help writer, and author of fiction and non-fiction titles such as the best-selling Legal Issues Authors Must Consider, a book that provides information on starting your self-publishing business, legal liability considerations, advice on how to protect your copyrights, how to safely use copyrighted material, and more. We learned a lot from Maria and found this discussion of the legal aspects of being an indie author very interesting and informative! Content note: Nothing discussed in this episode of the podcast should be use as legal advice. This episode is meant to be informative, educational, and entertaining – if you have questions related to copyright law and other legal issues surrounding your books, independent publishing, and publishing in general, please contact a legal representative in your area for more information. Learn more on Maria's website.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode features our conversation with best-selling author of "kissing books," Alexis Hall, who describes himself as a "genrequeer writer," is the author of Murder Most Actual, Boyfriend Material, Rosie Palmer Takes the Cake, A Lady for a Duke, and many, many more. Alexis, Rachel and Tara have a wonderful time chatting about Alexis' books, her Kobo Originals title, Murder Most Actual, their writing process, and much more! Best-selling author Alexis Hall joins us on the podcast this week to discuss his Kobo Originals title, Murder Most Actual, and what it was like writing her first cozy mystery. Alexis talks to us about their career as a hybrid author, the inspirations behind Murder Most Actual, and how she tries to normalize queer relationships in his writing.  Learn more on Alexis' website, follow Alexis on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and check out Murder Most Actual on Kobo.

In this episode, we are joined by Canadian-born, UK-based debut author Grace Flahive, whose humorous and heart-warming speculative fiction novel, Palm Meridian, was recently published by Simon & Schuster Canada. Palm Meridian is described as "a rollicking, big-hearted story of long-lost love, friendship, and a life well-lived, set at a Florida retirement resort for queer women, on the last day of resident Hannah Cardin's life." We were so excited to be joined by Grace to discuss her writing career, her previous work in publishing, and more. Be sure to grab a copy of Palm Meridian, available on Kobo now! We spoke to Grace about her journey to becoming an author, what inspired her to write this story, how she depicted death and mortality in her novel alongside levity and humour, why she chose to focus her story on the queer community, what makes this novel speculative fiction, and much more! Follow Grace on Instagram to learn more.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode features our conversation with author of mysteries, thrillers, and romantic suspense novels, Rachel Grant, and acclaimed narrator of many of her titles, Greg Tremblay. Rachel and Greg have a great conversation that illuminates much of the author and narrator relationship in this interview. Author Rachel Grant and her narrator Greg Tremblay shed some light on the process of creating an audiobook. Rachel discusses the working relationship she has with Greg and how his narration has influenced her future work. Greg shares his experience as a narrator, and the process for creating audiobooks. Learn more on Rachel's website and Greg's website, and check out Rachel's books on Kobo as well as Greg's books on Kobo.

In this week's episode, we take a look at the major self-publishing platforms that I use, and examine the pros and cons of each. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: DOOM50 The coupon code is valid through June 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 253 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 30th, 2025, and today we are looking at the current major self-publishing platforms and what they offer indie authors. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects.   So let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress (book number eight in the Dragonskull series, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is DOOM50. And as always, we will have the coupon code and the links to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June 24th, 2025. So if you are setting out on summer travels this summer and you need an audiobook to listen to while you're in the car or plane, we have got you covered. So now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Ghost in the Corruption (as I mentioned last week) is now out and available at all the ebook stores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. It is selling well. So thank you all for that. Now that Ghost in the Corruption is finished, what am I working on next? Well, back in 2023, I finished the Dragonskull and The Silent Order series back to back, so I declared Summer 2023 to be my Summer of Finishing Things. Well, it looks like Summer 2025 is going to be the Super Summer of Finishing Things because I intend to finish three series back to back.   First up is Shield of Power, the sixth and final book of The Shield War series. As of this publishing, I am 26,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 29. So I think it's going to end up being around 100,000-110,000 words long, and I am hoping it will be out in June, though it might slip to July depending on how things go. Once that is done, the next one up will be Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, which will be the third and very definitely final book of the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. Believe it or not, I have been working on Final Quest on the side for so long that I passed the 100,000 word mark in that book this week. In fact, it's been a side project for so long that I don't remember how long I've been working on it, and I had to look up the metadata to check that I indeed started chipping away on it on October 18th, 2024. So I am very pleased that I'm nearly done with the rough draft and because of that reason, if all goes well, it'll come out very quickly after Shield of Power, since I think the rough draft will end up at about 125,000 to 130,000 words or in that neighborhood. Once Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest is finished, I will then write Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series. I am 1,500 words into that and hoping for that to come out in August or September, if all goes well. Once The Shield War, Stealth and Spells Online, and Ghost Armor are finished, I will finally be free to return to the Rivah and Nadia series. I realized that through all of 2024 and the first half of 2025, I had five unfinished series at the same time, and that was just too much for me to keep track of as a writer, and I think it may have been too much for the readers because it was too much of a wait between the different series as I worked my way through them. So five series at the same time is too much, so hence the Super Summer of Finishing Things. Going forward, I've decided that three unfinished series at the same time will be my maximum, which after the Super Summer of Finishing Things will be Cloak Mage, Half-Elven Thief, and a new epic fantasy series that I will set in the realm of Owyllain.   In audiobook news, Brad Wills started working on Shield of Battle this week and Hollis McCarthy started working on Ghost in the Corruption, so hopefully before probably about July or thereabouts, we will have those audiobooks available for you to listen to. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:03:49 Main Topic of the Week: Self-Publishing Platforms for Ebooks [Note: Information in this Episode is Very Likely to Change]   So now let's move on to our main topic for the week, which is the main self-publishing platforms for ebooks. Today we will do a brief overview of the self-publishing platforms I currently use: Amazon/KDP, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Draft2Digital/Smashwords. The reason I wanted to do this is because there are many scammy platforms for self-publishing out there, but fortunately there are also many legitimate ones. Today we'll compare several of the most popular ones for ebooks. Just to make things easier for comparison, we'll be using the term platform to discuss both retailers and aggregators and we're not going to talk about options for self-publishing print or audio formats today. We're going to focus solely on ebooks.   First of all, what should you look for in a publishing platform? The first thing is to make sure you retain complete ownership of your content in all formats. Some of these scammer ones try to claim all rights to anything you try to post or sell through them, so that is definitely a red flag to watch out for. Make sure that you understand any exclusivity requirements of any programs that you sign up for such as KDP Select, such as if other formats like audio are also included in their requirements, how long exclusivity lasts, et cetera. If the platform requires exclusivity, that is definitely something to pay attention to. Make sure you do your research carefully to understand how pricing, royalties, and payments work on each individual platform. Sometimes some of them will pay quarterly, some of them pay monthly, and some of them pay you last month's royalties at the end of the month. Some of them like Amazon run like two months behind.   Finally, and this is a big one, you should not have to pay any money in order to upload your work. If they are asking for money upfront, it is probably a scam. Now, there are some aggregators that don't take a percentage and instead charge you a yearly fee. I'm not talking about them in this podcast episode because I don't use them, but they are out there. One example would be Book Funnel, which does charge a yearly fee for you to use but provides a valuable service in being a backend for running your own store on like Payhip or Shopify, and there's a couple of other useful services in that way, but they're not a storefront and they don't take a percentage of any royalties. They just charge a yearly fee. So they're not the topic with this episode.   All the platforms I've talked about today do not have any fees in order to upload. Reputable sites like Amazon or Kobo will instead take a percentage of each book's sale. It's also good to have a few realistic expectations before you start using self-publishing platforms, and one of them is that the platform is not a marketer. For example, many people complain that KDP doesn't showcase their books and they get lost in the millions of books available. However, none of these services are promising that you'll make the front page of their site just by publishing there. It's a common delusion among new indie authors that when you publish your first book, that's all you have to do and people will flock to it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.   In fact, since Amazon makes a small fortune off book ads, it's not in their interest to give away screen space for free, and this isn't to knock on Amazon, that's just the way the retail industry works. For example, if you go into a Target or a Walmart or another big box retailer, note the products that are prominently displayed on the aisle displays or the endcaps of the aisles. They didn't just get there randomly. The manufacturers of those products paid big money to Amazon and Target and Walmart and the other big box retailers to have their products featured there. In many cases, online commerce is no different.   Getting your book uploaded onto a platform is just the first step. Promoting and marketing the book is up to you and strategies for those will vary based on which ones you choose to use. For example, if you choose to make your work exclusive to just one platform, it's not a good idea to run Facebook ads in countries where that platform either doesn't exist or where it's not terribly popular. Today we're going to be just focusing on comparing the platforms, not how to best to market from them. So what are the options?   #1: First up is the most common platform people use and it's the 800 pound gorilla in the self-publishing space, and that is Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. And what are the pros and cons of KDP?   Pro: They are the biggest force in ebook publishing in many countries, including the United States. Some authors find that as much as 80 to 95% of their ebook sales come from Amazon, even if they are not exclusive with Amazon. For myself, it's usually about 50 to 60% of my sales on any given month are from Amazon and the rest come from the other retailers.   Heavy readers are generally very familiar with the Kindle Store interface and Library setup, and many readers are kind of locked into Amazon because they own Kindle devices, subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and have large Kindle Libraries. So those are all the pros of publishing with KDP.   Cons: If you're expecting a large portion of your sales to come from the print version of your book or if print sales are very important to you, be aware that many bookstores and libraries either can't or won't buy print books from Amazon, so you should find an additional platform for the print version such as Ingram Spark or maybe Barnes & Noble's print division. One big concern about going exclusive with Amazon is that you're losing readers who don't have Kindle books in their countries, people who are boycotting Amazon for a variety of reasons, people who are locked into another platform such as Apple or Kobo, or people who want to self-archive their ebooks since Amazon doesn't allow that anymore. If you're already wide, you'll have to look carefully at what percentage of your sales are non-Amazon and if this percentage is an amount you'd be comfortable risking losing in order to be exclusive. Occasionally authors do complain about the customer service available to KDP, especially if it's urgent. For myself, I've not personally had any huge problems with KDP customer service. That said, I think you should expect a lead time of about one to two business days on anything you ask because I usually go through the email form.   Does KDP offer a subscription service? Yes. Kindle Unlimited (KU) readers pay a set amount and can read an unlimited number of books each month, although they're limited as to how many they can have in their library at any one time. Promotions happen regularly, usually based around big sales like Prime Day, and it can make a subscription as cheap as $0.99 for a three month period. Some also receive free subscriptions by buying certain Amazon products such as a new Kindle or Kindle Fire.   The downside of being in Kindle Unlimited is the exclusivity. You can't be in KU without being exclusive with Amazon, or at least the specific book in question has to be exclusive. Not all of your books have to be exclusive, and many authors such as myself will usually put one series in KU and then make sure everything else is wide. You must agree to be exclusive with them for ninety days and that time period is renewable.   What does KDP pay in terms of royalty? For $2.99 to $9.99, they give you 70% of the sale price. Under $2.99 and above $9.99, it's 35%. So that is sort of an encouragement from Amazon to price your ebooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. Currently I price new novels at $4.99 and do short stories at $0.99 cents.   What do I do? I have all of my titles available through KDP. I have a smaller portion of my collection exclusive through KDP Select/KU, and I have only recently increased that amount of Select titles due to the economic downturn. I suspect that KU users are likely to hold onto their subscriptions while cutting other expenses because honestly, KU is a pretty good deal for readers and the monthly subscription costs is about the same as one tradpub frontlist ebook, but with a KU subscription, they could read thousands of books for the same price. The value of KU is really very strong for frequent romance, LitRPG, science fiction, and fantasy readers. There's a strong population in the KU subscriber base often referred to as binge readers. They care more about variety, discovering new books, and the ability to read a lot over the ability to read specific authors or stories.   So overall, I think if you are self-publishing and even if you don't like Amazon very much or don't plan to go exclusive, it's still in your best interest to publish your ebook with them, even if you are wide and intend to do all the other retailers just because Amazon really is the biggest ebook platform out there at the moment. #2: Now, the next self-publishing platform we're going to look at is Barnes & Noble Press, which as the name implies, belongs to Barnes & Noble. The Pros: some people are never, ever going to let go of their Nooks or they already have a large personal ebook library through the Nook so they feel locked into that platform. These readers are the majority of people buying ebooks through Barnes & Noble, but fortunately that group tends to read a lot. There's also a lot of trust in Barnes & Noble as a brand, and that inspires people to continue buying from them.   In fact, for a while in the indie author space at the end of the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, it was a regular prediction that Barnes & Noble was going to go out of business soon, but then the company was bought by a private equity firm, and while private equity firms often have a deserved bad reputation for stripping a company of assets and then selling it off at a bargain basement price (such as the fate of Red Lobster), that does not seem to be the case of what happened with Barnes & Noble and the company really has been strengthening in recent years. So they may be here to stay for a while.   The downsides of publishing with Barnes & Noble Press is that Barnes & Noble is relatively a minor player in the ebook market, though usually in the top four of most indie author ebook sales if they're wide. They have shifted their focus to selling print books instead of Nook devices, especially in the retail space.   Do they offer a subscription service? They do not. However, nothing about Barnes & Noble requires exclusivity, which is nice, and the royalty structure is pretty good. It's 70% over all titles over $0.99. So if you want, you could price your ebook at $0.99 or $19.99 and still make 70%, which you couldn't do with those prices on Amazon.     #3: The next self-publishing platform we'll look at is Kobo Writing Life, which is the ebook platform to publish on Kobo, which is owned by Rakuten. Pros: Kobo is strong in the international market and will help you to reach readers in many countries. Based on my sales data, in Canada and Australia, Kobo is significantly bigger than Amazon for ebook sales. Kobo has also had a surge of recent media attention in the US as people seek out alternatives to Amazon and Kindle devices.   The Con of Kobo, and this is a fairly small one, is that their US market share is still fairly small compared to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some of the others. But as I mentioned, they're a lot stronger in Canada and Australia, and they do reach a lot of different countries, more than Amazon does.   Does Kobo have a subscription service? Yes, Kobo Plus. Kobo Plus is significantly less expensive than Kindle Unlimited, and there's an additional tier that allows you to add audiobook content to the plan. The library isn't quite as extensive as KU though, though. I should note that in the years since Kobo has been introduced, I'd say about half of my revenue from Kobo (sometimes 60% of my revenue from Kobo) comes from Kobo Plus and not from direct ebook sales. So it's getting to the point where the majority of their ebook revenue I suspect, is coming from Kobo Plus and not direct Kobo sales.   Do they require exclusivity? No, which is another strong selling point for Kobo Plus. For their royalty structure, ebooks over $2.99, you get 70% and any books over below $2.99, you get 45%, which is a more generous term than Amazon in terms of the royalty rate for below $2.99 and above $9.99.   So what do I do? I currently use it as one of the platforms for my ebooks. It's been a pretty strong seller for me consistently over the years, and every Kobo book that I have is also available in Kobo Plus, which probably explains the revenue split I was talking about earlier. #4: The next platform we'll look at is Draft2Digital/Smashwords, which we'll do as one because Draft2Digital and Smashwords are in the process of merging. Draft2Digital is technically what's called an aggregator, where you upload your book and then they can publish on a variety of different platforms for you, and in exchange, they take a small cut of the sales. Draft2Digital is, in my opinion, probably the most effective way to get your ebooks through Apple and Smashwords. Apple does have its own direct uploading service, but I've never used it because there are a bit too many hoops to jump through.   Draft2Digital does, as I mentioned, have a way to publish on multiple storefronts at once while managing uploads and sales reporting through just one interface. They're not a storefront in and of themselves, although since Draft2Digital does own Smashwords, Smashwords essentially acts as their storefront for them. Although Draft2Digital lists Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble as an option, most authors will upload to these sites separately, and in fact, that's what I do for myself.   The Pros of Draft2Digital is that it's a definite time savings using Draft2Digital to publish across multiple platforms, especially with platforms like Apple that are more difficult or time consuming to learn. This is also a convenient way to make your work accessible to library platforms like Overdrive/Libby, Hoopla, and Bibliotheca, if that is important to you. Library sales have never been a huge priority of mine, but I've never been opposed to them either, so I usually just flip those switches on and then don't think about it again.   The Cons for Draft2Digital are that there was a period after the Smashwords migration where they received complaints about customer service and difficulty in setting up tax information, though I think that is mostly ironed out now.   One potential hazard for Draft2Digital with a very specific subset of writers is that if you are a writer of, shall we say, very hard erotica, the sort that ends up in very restricted categories on most stores, you will probably have trouble publishing through Draft2Digital. This is not, however, a problem that's unique to Draft2Digital. Amazon has what is called the “erotica dungeon”, where if you publish certain kinds of, like we said, very harsh erotica, your book isn't searchable on the Amazon store. You can link to it directly, but it will never show up on any search results. Kobo in particular has had problems with erotica.   Back in the 2010s, Kobo was also distributing ebooks to some British retailers, and these British retailers suddenly got upset when they noticed that these kinds of hard erotica were showing up on their store pages, which was not a good look for the company. And so there was a kerfuffle until that was all sorted out. My frank opinion with that is if you are writing these kinds of erotica, the big stores and Draft2Digital will never be on your side, and so you are better off pursuing a sort of a Patreon/running your own store on Shopify or Payhip strategy, but that is a bit of a digression.   So in terms of royalties, Draft2Digital takes 10% of the book's retail price per copy sold, which is in addition to whatever amount is taken by the specific storefront. So you are paying a bit of money in exchange for convenience for just uploading your book to Draft2Digital and having it push out the book to all the different stores for you.   What I do is I use Draft2Digital for Apple mainly because for a while I was using Smashwords, but Smashwords in the 2010s was a bit more persnickety than is now, and you needed to prepare a specially formatted doc file to publish on Smashwords and sometimes getting it through the Smashwords processing onto Apple was a bit of a pain. Draft2Digital took epub files, which are much easier to work with, and after a while I switched over all my Apple publishing to Draft2Digital entirely. So that's why I use Draft2Digital for Apple and for various library services that tend to be a minor amount of sales. Because of the difficulties on publishing direct to Apple, I do find that that 10% is good trade off in terms of selling books on Apple for me.   #5: Now onto Google Play's ebook self-publishing platform, which is, I think its full name is the Google Books Partner Center, which lets you publish books to the Google Play Store for sale on Android devices.   The Pros are that for writers interested in the international market, Google Play is another strong choice for a platform since the international mobile device market is very Android heavy. The iPhone (Apple) tends to be concentrated mainly in the US and a few of the wealthier countries like the UK and Canada, but Android has a much more international reach in general than the iPhone. Google Play also has some interesting promotional options for ebooks, such as offering the buyer a chance to subscribe to a specific series.   The cons are that some authors report that their sales reporting doesn't always consistently generate reports, and others are annoyed that it only generates a CSV file, (which isn't that much of a hardship for people who are familiar with Excel).   For myself, I found that there is a bit of a reporting lag on Google Play where it will sometimes take as long as five or six days for sales to show up on the dashboard, though usually it's only a delay of two days, though sometimes during the month you'll get these bigger lags and sometimes processing new material on the Google Play Store can be slow, and it can sometimes take two to three days for things to appear, though it usually gets worked out in the end. Does Google Play have a subscription service? It does not, nor does it require exclusivity, which is another point in its favor. And the royalties, the data is quite nice here. It is 70% for all price points in the countries listed on their support page, which only excludes a handful of countries like India, South Korea, and Japan (because of currency conversion regions or other local laws).   So those are the ebook publishing platforms that I currently use, and because I use them myself, I would recommend them. Hopefully that is helpful to you as you are looking for places to self-publish your book as you set out to become an indie author.   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 a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

In this episode, the Kobo Writing Life team attended the Toronto Indie Author Conference and recorded a live podcast with speculative fiction author and conference founder Tao Wong! We had a great time interviewing Tao in front of a live audience and getting to answer listener questions in real time. We're excited to present the complete interview to you now (with all the ambient sounds you might expect from a conference… it's as if you're really there)! We spoke to Tao about his writing career, why he started the Toronto Indie Author Conference, his thoughts on book marketing, the challenges Canadian indie authos face, and much more! Thanks again to Tao and all of the organizers involved in making a wonderful weekend of indie author-led talks, workshops, and roundtables happen – the KWL team had a great time and we are looking forward to next year. If you are a Canadian indie author interested in learning more about the Toronto Indie Author Conference, there's no better place to start than an interview with Tao! Learn more on Tao's website and check out Tao's books on Kobo.  

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. This episode features our conversation with best-selling SFF author Gail Carriger. Gail discusses her writing career, her non-fiction title, The Heroine's Journey, and how she started out as a traditionally-published author before going indie (and finding much success in the indie space)! Bestselling author Gail Carriger joins us on the podcast this week to discuss her writing career and her new non-fiction book, The Heroine's Journey. Gail started out as a traditionally published author, but once she got a taste of indie publishing she absolutely loved it. Her newest book, The Heroine's Journey, takes a look at the storytelling device by the same name and how it appears throughout the literary canon and pop culture. Gail also talks to us about her writing process, the fate of the publishing industry, and what happened when she stopped running ads for three months.  Learn more on Gail's website, check out Gail's Resources for Writers, and grab a copy of The Heroine's Journey!

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. Way back in July 2015, we were joined by Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware, a SFWA-sponsored organization whose mission is to “track, expose, and raise awareness of the prevalence of fraud and other questionable activities in and around the publishing industry." Whether you are a new indie author or have a decade of experience on your side, don't miss out on this helpful episode! This week's podcast is essential listening for all authors: Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware is joining us to share her most important advice for how writers can avoid being scammed. Writer Beware was co-founded by Victoria and Ann Crispin in 1998, is sponsored by SFWA, and its mission is to “track, expose, and raise awareness of the prevalence of fraud and other questionable activities in and around the publishing industry.” Visit Victoria's website and learn more at Writer Beware!

In this episode, we are joined by best-selling legal thriller author and fellow podcast host, Aime Austin! Aime's latest thriller, His Last Mistress, is described as a “nail-biting social thriller with a heartbreaking twist.” We spoke to Aime back in 2021, and we were so excited to have her join us on the show again and hear more about what she's been writing since then. We spoke to Aime about her author career, what she's been up to in the last four years, heard more about her move from romance to thriller authors, got some insight into her experience with the indie author community, learned more about His Last Mistress, were given great advice for other thriller and mystery authors, talked about her podcast, A Time to Thrill, and much more! Once more, be sure to listen to our previous episode with Aime as well! Visit Aime's website to learn more, take a listen to her podcast, A Time to Thrill, grab a copy of His Last Mistress, and check out the rest of Aime's books on Kobo!

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. In this episode from September 2021, we spoke to Katee Robert, who is a best-selling author of books inspired by myth, fairytales, and folklore, all about how her inspirations influence their writing process! Best-selling author Katee Robert joins us on the podcast to talk about their writing process and why she's drawn to retellings of myths and fairytales. Katee tells us about the research that goes into her reimagined classics and how they keeps them fresh and original, and she talks to us about how her book going viral on TikTok has changed her marketing approach. To learn more, visit Katee's website and follow Katee on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

What are the different ways you can distribute and monetise your ebooks and audiobooks through Kobo Writing Life? How can you market them more effectively and reach more readers? With Tara Cremin. In the intro, the potential impact of tariffs and what to do about it [Self Publishing Advice]; Pep talk for authors during chaotic […] The post Ebook Sales, Subscriptions, Audiobooks And Book Marketing With Tara Cremin From Kobo Writing Life first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For National Poetry Month here in North America, we're re-releasing this episode from April 2020 with poet, spoken word artist, and creative writing facilitator Jasmin Kaur. Writer, illustrator, and poet Jasmin Kaur joins us on the podcast this week. Jasmin's work has been celebrated globally, and has been shared by celebrities and activists such as Jennifer Lopez, Tessa Thompson, and Reese Witherspoon. She talks to us about her journey as a writer and what it's like to know her work has had such a wide reach, how she ensures she maintains her original intentions when sharing her work, and why she feels it's so important for her to share and protect her authentic voice. Learn more on Jasmin's website and be sure to follow Jasmin's Instagram!

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For the fifth episode of this series, we're happy to share this interview featuring the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize winner in the Romance category, Julie Evelyn Joyce, for her book Steeped in Love. Julie Evelyn Joyce talks to us about the inspiration for prize-winning novel Steeped in Love. Julie shares how writing Gilmore Girls fan fiction taught her about craft and how a chance meeting at RWA led her to entering and winning Kobo's Emerging Writer Prize! Learn more on Julie's website and be sure to check out Julie's books on Kobo.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For the fifth episode of this series, we're happy to share this interview featuring Canadian thriller author Samantha M. Bailey from 2022. Watch Out for Her is a contender for Canada Reads 2025. Don't miss the debates, which take place March 17th-20th, 2025. In this episode, we are joined by Samantha M. Bailey, USA Today and #1 nationally bestselling author of Woman on the Edge. Today, Samantha discusses her second book, the recently released domestic suspense novel/psychological thriller, Watch Out for Her. We discussed Samantha's experiences finding a traditional publishing platform, following up a successful debut during a global pandemic, how curiosity can drive the creative process of writing a thriller, the importance of editing, of community, of her readers, and much more! Find out more on Samantha M. Bailey's website and follow Samantha on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In this week's episode, we continue our discuss about how seeking prestige can be dangerous for writers, specifically in the form of traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller list. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book #2 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: DRAGONSHIELD50 The coupon code is valid through March 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 241 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 28th, 2025. Today we are continuing our discussion of how to escape the trap of prestige for writers, specifically traditional publishing and The New York Times Bestseller List. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week.   This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book Two in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONSHIELD50. As always, I'll include the coupon code and the link to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 21st, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook as we start to head into the spring months, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report I am done with the rough draft of Ghost in the Assembly. I came in at 106,000 words, so it'll definitely be over a hundred thousand words when it's done. I'm about 20% of the way through the first round of edits, so I am confident in saying that if all goes well and nothing unexpected happens, I am on track to have it out in March. I am also 10,000 words into Shield of Battle, which will be the fifth of six books in the Shield War series and I'm hoping to have that out in April, if all goes well.   In audiobook news, recording for both Cloak of Dragonfire and Orc-Hoard is done. I'm just waiting for them to get through the processing on the various stores so they're available. There is also an audiobook edition of Half Elven Thief Omnibus One and Cloak Mage Omnibus Three that hopefully should be coming in March. More news with that to come.   00:01:55 Question of the Week   Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite subgenre of fantasy, high fantasy, epic fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, LitRPG, cultivation, or something else? No wrong answers, obviously.   Cindy says: Epic fantasy or those with a good history for that world. The Ghost Series are fantastic at this.   Thanks, Cindy.   Justin says: I enjoy all those sub-genres, if they are done well. In times past I would've said comic fantasy, but that is because Terry Pratchett at his best was just that good.   Mary says: High fantasy.   Surabhi says: I'd honestly read anything fantasy that's written well and has characters I'm attached to, given that it's not too gritty. Bonus points if there's humor! Also, I love your books so much and they're the perfect blend of fantasy, adventure, and characters. Your books were what really got me into Sword and Sorcery.   Thanks, Surabhi.     Matthew says: See, that's difficult. I love my sabers, both light and metal. I would say urban fantasy crosses the boundary the most. If it's a captivating story, it will be read.   John F says: I can't choose one- Lord of the Rings or LWW, The Inheritance Cycle, The Dresden Files, Caina, Ridmark, or Nadia. I think what draws me is great characters who grow. The setting/genre is just the device. That's why I keep coming back to your books. You create great characters.   Thanks, John F.   John K says: I think I'm partial to historical fantasy. I enjoy all genres, but when I think of my favorites, they tend to be derivations of historical settings. Think Guy Gavriel Kay or Miles Cameron. That said, I was weaned on Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, Jack Vance, so a strong sword and sorcery second place.   Juana says: High fantasy. Belgariad, Tolkien, dragons, et cetera.   Jonathan says: Sword and sorcery in space! Prehistoric sword and sorcery, sword and sorcery always.   Quint: says Sword and sorcery!   Michael says: Sword and sorcery.   For myself, I think I would agree with our last couple of commenters and it would be sword and sorcery. My ideal fantasy novel has a barbarian hero wandering from corrupt city state to corrupt city state messing up the business of some evil wizards. I'm also very fond of what's called generic fantasy (if a fighter, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard are going into a dungeon and fighting some orcs, I'm happy).   00:04:18 Main Topic of the Week: Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2   Now onto our main topic for the week, Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2, and we'll focus on traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller List this week. As we talked about last week, much of the idea of success, especially in the United States, is based on hitting certain milestones in a specific order. In the writing world, these measures of success have until fairly recently been getting an MFA, finding an agent, getting traditionally published, and hitting The New York Times Bestseller List. Last week we talked about the risks of an MFA and an agent. This week, we are going to talk about two more of those writing markers of prestige, getting traditionally published and having a book land on The New York Times Bestseller List. Why are they no longer as important? What should you devote your energy and focus to instead?   So let's start with looking at getting traditionally published. Most writers have dreamed of seeing their book for sale and traditional publishing for a long time has been the only route to this path. Until about 15 years ago, traditional publishing was the way that a majority of authors made their living. Now that big name authors like Hugh Howie, Andy Weir, and Colleen Hoover have had success starting as self-published authors (or in the case of authors Sarah J. Maas and Ali Hazelwood, fan fiction authors) and then are getting traditional publishing deals made for them for their self-published works. It's proof that self-publishing is no longer a sign that the author isn't good enough to be published traditionally. Previous to the rise of the Kindle, that was a common belief that if you were self-published, it was because you were not good enough to get traditionally published. That was sort of this pernicious belief that traditional publishing was a meritocracy, when in fact it tended to be based on who you knew. But that was all 15 years ago and now we are well into the age of self-publishing. Why do authors still want to be traditionally published when in my frank opinion, self-publishing is the better path? Well, I think there are three main reasons for that.   One of the main reasons is that the authors say they want to be traditionally published is to have someone else handle the marketing and the advertising. They don't realize how meager marketing budgets and staffing support are, especially for unknown authors. Many traditionally published authors are handling large portions of their own marketing and hiring publicists out of their own pocket because publishers are spending much less on marketing. The new reality is that traditional publishers aren't going to do much for you as a debut author unless you are already a public figure.   Even traditionally published authors are not exempt from having to do their own marketing now. James Patterson set up an entire company himself to handle his marketing. Though, to be fair to James Patterson, his background was in advertising before he came into publishing, so he wasn't exactly a neophyte in the field, but you see more and more traditionally published authors who you think would be successful just discontented with the system and starting to dabble in self-publishing or looking at alternative publishers like Aethon Books and different arrangements of publishing because the traditional system is just so bad for writers. The second main reason authors want to be traditionally published is that they want to avoid the financial burden of publishing. This is an outdated way of thinking. The barrier to publishing these days is not so much financial as it is knowledge. In fact, I published a book entirely using free open source software in 2017 just to prove that it could be done. It was Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, the fourth book in my science fiction series. I wrote it on Ubuntu using Libre Office and I edited it in Libre Office and I did the formatting on Ubuntu and I did the cover in the GIMP, which is a free and open source image editing program. This was all using free software and I didn't have to pay for the program. Obviously I had to pay for the computer I was using and the Internet connection, but in the modern era, having an internet connection is in many ways almost a requirement, so that's the cost you would be paying anyway.   The idea that you must spend tens of thousands of dollars in formatting, editing, cover, and marketing comes from scammy self-publishing services. Self-publishing, much like traditional publishing, has more than its fair share of scams or from people who aren't willing to take the time to learn these skills and just want to cut someone a check to solve the problem. There are many low cost and effective ways to learn these skills and resources designed specifically for authors. People like Joanna Penn have free videos online explaining how to do this, and as I've said, a lot of the software you can use to self-publish is either free or low cost, and you can get some very good programs like Atticus or Vellum or Jutoh for formatting eBooks for very low cost.   The third reason that writers want to be traditionally published is that many believe they will get paid more this way, which is, unless you are in the top 1% of traditionally published authors, very wrong. Every so often, there's a study bemoaning the fact that most publishers will only sell about $600 worth of any individual book, and that is true of a large percentage of traditionally published books. Traditional publishers typically pay a lump sum called advance, and then royalties based on sales. An average advance is about the same as two or three months of salary from an office job and so not a reflection of the amount of time it typically takes most authors to finish a book. Most books do not earn out their advance, which means the advance is likely to be the only money the author receives for the book. Even well-known traditionally published authors are not earning enough to support themselves as full-time authors. So as you can see, all three of these reasons are putting a lot of faith in traditional publishers, faith that seems increasingly unnecessary or downright misplaced. I think it is very healthy to get rid of the idea that good writing comes from traditional publishers and that the prestige of being traditionally published is the only way you'll be accepted as a writer or be able to earn a living as a full-time writer. I strongly recommend that people stop thinking that marketing is beneath you as an author or too difficult to learn. Whether you are indie or tradpub, you are producing a product that you want to sell, thus you are a businessperson. The idea that only indie authors have to sell their work is outdated. The sooner you accept this reality, the more options you will have. Self-publishing and indie publishing are admittedly more work. However, the benefits are significant. Here are five benefits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing.   The first advantage of self-publishing is you have complete creative control. You decide what the content of your book will be; you decide what the cover will be. If you don't want to make the covers yourself or you don't want to learn how to do that, you can very affordably hire someone to do it for you and they will make the cover exactly to your specifications. You also have more freedom to experiment with cross-genre books. As I've mentioned before, publishers really aren't a fan of cross genre books until they make a ton of money, like the new romantasy trend.   Traditional publishing is very trend driven and cautious. Back in the 2000s before I gave up on traditional publishing and discovered self-publishing, I would submit to agents a lot. Agents all had these guidelines for fantasy saying that they didn't want to see stories with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures because they thought that was passe. Well, when I started self-publishing, I thought I'm going to write a traditional fantasy series with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures just because I can and Frostborn has been my bestselling series of all time in the time I've been self-publishing, so you can see the advantages of having creative control.   The second advantage is you can control the marketing. Tradpub authors often sign a contract that they'll get their social media and website content approved by the publisher before posting. They may even be given boilerplate or pre-written things to post. In self-publishing, you have real time data to help you make decisions and adjust ads and overall strategy on the fly to maximize revenue. For example, if one of your books is selling strangely well on Google Play, it's time to adjust BookBub ads to focus on that platform instead of Amazon.   You can also easily change your cover, your blurb, and so forth after release. I've changed covers of some of my books many times trying to optimize them for increased sales and that is nearly impossible to do with traditional publishing. And in fact, Brandon Sanderson gave a recent interview where he talked about how the original cover of his Mistborn book was so unrelated to the content of the book that it almost sunk the book and hence his career.   You also have the ability to run ad campaigns as you see fit, not just an initial launch like tradpub does. For example, in February 2025, I've been heavily advertising my Demonsouled series even though I finished writing that series back in 2013, but I've been able to increase sales and derive a significant profit from those ads.   A third big advantage is that you get a far greater share of the profits. Most of the stores, if you price an ebook between $2.99 (prices are USD) and $9.99, you will get 70% of the sale price, which means if you sell an ebook for $4.99, you're probably going to get about $3.50 per sale (depending on currency fluctuations and so forth). That is vastly more than you would get from any publishing contract.   You also don't have to worry about the publisher trying to cheat you out of royalties. We talked about an agency stealing money last episode. Every platform you publish your book on, whether Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Smashwords and Apple will give you a monthly spreadsheet of your sales and then you can look at it for yourself, see exactly how many books you sold and exactly how much money you're going to get. I have only very rarely seen traditional publishing royalty statements that are as clear and have as much data in them as a spreadsheet from Google Play or Amazon. A fourth advantage is you don't have to worry about publishers abandoning you mid-series. In traditional publishing, there is what's called the Publishing Death Spiral where let's say an author is contracted to write a series of five books. The author writes the first book and it sells well. Then the author publishes the second book and it doesn't sell quite as well, but the publisher is annoyed enough by the decrease in sales that they drop the writer entirely and don't finish the series. This happens quite a bit in the traditional publishing world, and you don't have to worry about that in indie publishing because you can just publish as often as you want. If you're not happy with the sales of the first few books in the series, you can change the covers, try ad campaigns, and other strategies.   Finally, you can publish as often as you want and when you want. In traditional publishing, there is often a rule of thumb that an author should only publish one book a year under their name. Considering that last year I published 10 books under my name, that seems somewhat ridiculous, but that's a function of the fact that traditional publishing has only so much capacity and the pieces of the machine involved there are slow and not very responsive. Whereas with self-publishing, you have much more freedom and everything involved with it is much more responsive. There's no artificial deadlines, so you can take as long as you want to prepare it and if the book is ready, you don't have to wait a year to put it out because it would mess up the publisher's schedule.   So what to do instead of chasing traditional publishing? Learn about self-publishing, especially about scams and bad deals related to it. Publish your own works by a platform such as KDP, Barnes and Noble Press, Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and possibly your own Payhip and/or Shopify store.   Conquer your fear of marketing and advertising. Even traditionally published authors are shouldering more of this work and paying out of their own pocket to hire someone to do it, and if you are paying your own marketing costs, you might as well self-publish and keep a greater share of the profits. The second half of our main topic, another potential risk of prestige, is getting on The New York Times Bestseller List. I should note that I suppose someone could accuse me of sour grapes here saying, oh, Jonathan Moeller, you've never been on The New York Times Bestseller List. You must just be bitter about it. That is not true. I do not want to be on The New York Times Bestseller List. What I would like to be is a number one Amazon bestseller. Admittedly though, that's unlikely, but a number one Amazon bestseller would make a lot more money than a number one New York Times Bestseller List, though because of the way it works, if you are a number one Amazon bestseller, you might be a New York Times Bestseller, but you might not. Let's get into that now.   Many writers have the dream of seeing their name on the New York Times Bestseller List. One self-help guru wrote about “manifesting” this milestone for herself by writing out the words “My book is number one on The New York Times Bestseller List” every day until it happened. Such is the mystique of this milestone that many authors crave it as a necessity. However, this list has seen challenges to its prestige in recent years. The one thing that shocks most people when they dig into the topic is that the list is not an objective list based on the raw number of books sold. The list is “editorial content” and The New York Times can exclude, include, or rank the books on the list however they choose.   What it does not capture is perennial sellers or classics. For example, the Bible and the Quran are obviously some of the bestselling books of all time, but you won't see editions of the Bible or the Quran on the New York Times Bestseller List. Textbooks and classroom materials, I guarantee there are some textbooks that are standards in their field that would be on the bestseller list every year, but they're not because The New York Times doesn't track them. Ebooks available only from a single vendor such as Kindle Unlimited books, ebook sales from not reporting vendors such as Shopify or Payhip. Reference Works including test prep guides (because I guarantee when test season comes around the ACT and SAT prep guides or the GRE prep guides sell a lot of copies) and coloring books or puzzle books.  It would be quite a blow to the authors on the list to realize that if these excluded works were included on the list, they would in all likelihood be consistently below To Kill a Mockingbird, SAT prep books, citation manuals, Bibles/other religious works, and coloring books about The Eras Tour.   Publishers, political figures, religious groups, and anyone with enough money can buy their way into the rank by purchasing their books in enormous quantities. In fact, it's widely acknowledged in the United States that this is essentially a legal form of bribery and a bit of money laundering too, where a publisher will give a truly enormous advance to a public figure or politician that they like, and that advance will essentially be a payment to that public figure in the totally legal form of an enormous book advance that isn't going to pay out. Because this is happening with such frequency, The New York Times gave into the pressure to acknowledge titles suspected of this strategy with a special mark next to it on the list. However, these books remain on the list and can still be called a New York Times Bestseller.   Since the list is not an objective marker of sales and certainly not some guarantee of quality, why focus on making it there? I think trying to get your book on The New York Times Bestseller List would be an enormous waste of time, since the list is fundamentally an artificial construction that doesn't reflect sales reality very well.   So what can you do instead? Focus on raw sales numbers and revenue, not lists. Even Amazon's bestseller category lists have a certain amount of non-quantitative factors. In the indie author community, there's a saying called Bank not Rank, which means you should focus on how much revenue your books are actually generating instead of whatever sales rank they are on whatever platform. I think that's a wiser approach to focus your efforts.   You can use lists like those from Publishers Weekly instead if you're interested in what's selling or trends in the industry, although that too can be manipulated and these use only a fairly small subset of data that favors retail booksellers, but it's still more objective in measuring than The New York Times.   I suppose in the end, you should try and focus on ebook and writing activities that'll bring you actual revenue or satisfaction rather than chasing the hollow prestige of things like traditional publishing, agents, MFAs, and The New York Times Bestseller List.   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 back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For the fourth episode of this series, we're happy to share this episode featuring Robert Harris from November 2016. Originally hosted at Kobo's former headquarters in Toronto (don't worry, we're still in Toronto; we've just moved!), this interview features author Robert Harris in conversation with journalist Johanna Schneller, as well as Pieter Swinkels, former Chief Content Officer at Kobo. This interview offers some insights into Robert's research process and writing routine, and we also get to hear all about his inspiration for Conclave, amongst much more! Find out more on Robert's website, follow Johanna Schneller on X/Twitter, and check out Robert's books on Kobo.

In this episode, we are joined by Sierra Simone, author of dozens of romance novels, such as the beloved Thornchapel, New Camelot, and Lyonesse series. In her own words, Sierra “loves writing the dirtiest things that she can think of, King Arthur, sparkling water, ancient mystery cults, coffee, leggings, and fog.” Sierra's enthusiasm for erotic romance novels, marketing books, character development, and her fellow authors takes the spotlight during this interview, and we love to hear it. We speak with Sierra about her writing career, hear some great advice on writing intimate scenes, discuss the importance of social media, Tiktok, and BookTok, co-writing with fellow romance author Julie Murphy, and much more! Whether you are a fan of Sierra's books or an erotic romance novelist yourself, you won't want to miss this episode. Learn more on Sierra's website, follow her on Instagram, and join Sierra's Facebook reader group for even more!

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For the third episode of this series, we're excited to highlight this episode featuring Renee Harleston from March 2022. Our guest this week is Renee Harleston, founder of Writing Diversely, which offers sensitivity reading services that provide authors, writers, and content creators the tools and support they need to tell diverse and inclusive stories. Learn more by visiting the Writing Diversely site, and follow Writing Diversely on X/Twitter and Instagram.  

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Differences between developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, and proofreading What type of editing to invest in if you're on a budget What makes a good first line Common mistakes new authors make in story An editor's process of reviewing a manuscript Links I mentioned: Page Turner Pacing Kickstarter Girl Games: NSFW Special Edition Kickstarter Find out more about Rebecca: Instagram @beccafaithheyman rebeccafaitheditorial.com Rebel of the Week is: Gigi If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com Two new patrons this month, welcome and thank you to Lexi Le and Rasana Atreya. A big thank you to my existing patrons. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. For the second episode of this series, we're bringing back an episode featuring Sagan Morrow from April 2021. Productivity strategist and author Sagan Morrow joins us on the podcast this week. Sagan tells us how she got into productivity strategy and what habits authors can implement to better fit writing into their schedule. She also talks to us about her polyamorous romantic comedy series, Polyamorous Passions, and how she's using the romantic comedy genre to break down common misconceptions about polyamory. Learn more on Sagan's website and check out Sagan's books on Kobo.

In this episode, we spoke to romantic fantasy author Imani Erriu, author of the recently released Heavenly Bodies, the first book in her beloved series of the same name. Imani is a lover of the fantasy genre (both as a reader and a writer), and her writing rose to virality on TikTok after she shared a single scene from her unfinished manuscript! Imani's next book, Fallen Stars, is the second in this five-book series. Heavenly Bodies is available in Canada and the US via Penguin Random House. Imani told us all about her writing journey, moving from indie publishing to traditional publishing, using astrology as writing inspiration, creating her own mythology for her world, advice on world-building, and much, much more! We had a great time chatting with Imani and sharing our own interest in astrology and love of the fantasy genre. Tune in to this invigorating interview – especially if you're a fantasy fan! Learn more on Imani's website and follow Imani on TikTok and Instagram.

Welcome to the Kobo ReWriting Life Podcast! Alongside your regularly scheduled Kobo Writing Life podcast episode releases, we will also be featuring some highlights from our backlist. We're starting this new series with an episode from February 2020 all about writing retreats and writing communities! USA Today bestselling author Darcy Burke sits down with Steph and Tara to discuss the importance of having a writing group, what writing retreats are really like, and how to keep your backlist fresh to attract new readers. Learn more via Darcy's website and check out Darcy's books on Kobo.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  What does having your books “wide” mean Advantages and disadvantages of your books being wide Dealing with losing Kindle Unlimited page reads Different marketing approaches for different platforms Planning your releases when publishing wide Learn More about Erin: Erin's Website Sign up for free replays of courses Wide for the Win Courses Rebel of the Week is: Richard If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 2 new patrons this week, welcome and thank you to Erin Lynn Austin and Martha Knox. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

In this episode, we are joined by author, animator, director, and co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, Michael Dante DiMartino! We were excited to talk to Michael about his latest self-published novel, Both Here and Gone, a coming-of-age YA novel about a fourteen-year-old boy named Jack, who “has experienced a perfect storm of grief and uncertainty with his father's sudden departure, the impending loss of his beloved home, and his best friend Alyssa's life-altering accident. But when Alyssa miraculously emerges from a coma with no memory of the incident, she turns to Jack for answers, forcing him to confront the painful truth he has been avoiding.” Michael is also the author of the middle grade fantasy series, Rebel Genius, and much more! We asked Michael about his career, his approaches to storytelling, the creation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, how Michael develops his fantasy worlds, what it's like self-publishing vs. traditional publishing and working on other forms of media, and so much more! We had a wonderful time talking to Michael and are looking forward to seeing what he is working on next. Learn more on Michael's website, and follow him on Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to find out more about Both Here and Gone and check out Michael's books on Kobo.

In this episode, we are joined by Kobo's own CEO, Michael Tamblyn! MT has been in the book business for much of his career, and he was directly involved with the founding of Kobo and its launch in 2010. MT is our “content guy” and is passionate about books and bookselling – including indie publishing. In this illuminating interview, we get to hear all about MT's career, his thoughts on reading and publishing, insights into bookselling, and so much more. We talked to MT about his start in the book business, his part in the creation of Kobo Writing Life, where he thinks the book business and publishing industry is going, the twenty-five year digital reading revolution, climbing mountains of death, the importance of indie authors and publishers, and, of course, a mention of MT's boxing match with Rachel. For those looking for more insight into Kobo and Kobo Writing Life, don't miss this episode. Visit Kobo, Kobo Writing Life and the Kobo blog for more! And don't miss out on listening to MT and Nathan host Kobo in Conversation.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Breaking into the US market as an international author In-person and virtual signings  Main benefits of attending book signings Logistics of attending international book signing events Balancing travel time with your writing schedule Tips for energy management Links I mentioned:  Order House of Crimson Curses direct from me Order House of Crimson Curses on all platforms Find out more about Jacqueline: JacquelineHayleyAuthor.com HaileyJay.com Rebel of the Week is: Rachel If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Gina. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack  THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

In this episode, we spoke to Jennifer L. Armentrout, best-selling author of over seventy books in multiple genres from fantasy to contemporary and suspense and back again – but all of her books contain strong elements of romance within their pages. Jennifer's romantasy series, Blood and Ash, is a TikTok favourite and beloved book series all around! The latest from JLA is her expansion of the Blood and Ash world – the Flesh and Fire series. It was great to sit down with Jennifer and talk about all things romantic fantasy and her nearly fifteen-year-long publishing career. The final instalment in the Blood and Ash series, The Primal of Blood and Bone, is available for pre-order now. We previously featured Jennifer on the podcast in 2021 – don't miss that episode either! We are very excited to have Jennifer join us again to discuss all things romantic fantasy, indie publishing, her writing journey, her thoughts on the publishing industry, what's next for her, and much more. For more, visit Jennifer's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and X/Twitter And, of course, find Jennifer's books on Kobo!

In this episode, we are joined by Barbara Kellyn, winner of the Kobo Originals Holiday Rom-Com Writing Contest for her novella, Polar Opposites! Barbara is the author of five novels and two novellas, and has been dubbed by her readers as “the queen of banter.” This was Barbara's first foray into writing contests – and she was delighted to have won! There was so much excitement this episode for the release of Polar Opposites, which is out now – exclusively from Kobo Originals! We spoke to Barbara about starting her writing career in her late thirties, her inspiration for entering the contest, and her writing process behind Polar Opposites We also hear about how she crafts her characters, and learn more about the polar bear capital of the world, the setting of Polar Opposites, and much more! We also hear from Jessica Khadoo, whose recent live Q&A with us illuminated our audience to all things Kobo Originals! Jess is the manager of Kobo Originals, Kobo's in-house publisher of original content. We had a great conversation with Jess about all things Originals, so if you're interested in learning more (and perhaps working with the team), don't miss out. For more, check out Barbara's website and follow Barbara on Instagram and Threads.

BrandStack Podcast - 008 | Video | Show NotesMark Leslie Lefebvre shares how direct selling increases authors' profits. Lefebvre is the author of "Wide of the Win," creator of Kobo Writing Life and director of business development at Draft2Digital. Learn more: https://rossbrand.substack.com. It's the BrandStack Podcast with Ross Brand. Dale L. Roberts co-hosts.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Using the consumer journey to build your author business How to start building an author brand Balancing a brand promise with experimentation and growth Considerations for creating repeat readers Social media's effect on the author-reader relationship Links I mentioned:  Preorder House of Crimson Curses direct from me Preorder House of Crimson Curses on all platforms Find out more about Celeste: Celeste Barclay Facebook Instagram @celestebarclayauthor Sabine Barclay Facebook Instagram @sabinebarclayauthor Rebel of the Week is: Ciara If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack  THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

In this episode, we spoke to Golden Angel, USA Today best-selling author of “heart-and bottom-warming romance,” whose series include Masters of Marquis, Desire and Discipline, the Bridal Discipline series, and more! Golden's publishing journey began back in 2012 (but she's been writing even longer), and she became a full-time indie author in 2020. As the author of dozens of books across several series, her successful career spans over a decade, and she has so much great advice and insights to offer! Golden has also presented her marketing advice and shared her expertise at InkersCon, Romance Author Mastermind, and more. She hosts a marketing and publishing advice series on her TikTok – aptly titled “Just the Tip.” We had a great time discussing all things indie publishing, writing kinky romance, marketing tips and tricks, the importance of your newsletter and so much more. Follow Golden on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X/Twitter and be sure to check out her website for more.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  The importance of humour in fiction Different types of humour The principles of writing funny fiction Making humour work on page Funny vs. offensive – where is the line? Embracing the rebel mindset Find out more about Dave: Bluesky @daveiswriting.bsky.social Funny Up Your Fiction: How to Add Light, Shade and Laughs to Your Novel Rebel of the Week is: Krista If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 2 new rebels this week, welcome and thank you to Bethany Hensel and Jo Narayan. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

In this episode, we spoke to award-winning women's fiction and romance author Anna Gomez, whose publications (and accolades) are many! She has written numerous romance novels under the pen name Christine Brae, and is one half of the best-selling series co-authored with Kristoffer Poloha, From Kona with Love. This swoon-worthy series is in development for film and television and has been mentioned in People Magazine, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Home & Family, and Publishers Weekly. We spoke to Anna about her new release with Kobo Originals, Somewhere Along the Way, her writing career, her experience working in finance as well as authoring her many books, how travelling inspires her writing, her personal connections to her main characters, writing under a pen name, and more! We had a wonderful time talking to Anna and can't wait to share Somewhere Along the Way with long-time fans and new readers alike. Learn more on Anna's website, and follow Anna on Facebook, Instagram, and X/Twitter.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  How to use the enneagram in your work Infusing your personal experiences into your worldbuilding Fully embracing the “you” in your stories Steps for worldbuilding and story development Balancing an immersive universe with multidimensional characters Why stories have the power to change the world Links I mentioned:  Follow my Kickstarter Find out more about Dani: Instagram @daniabernathyauthor Untapped Writing Superpower Quiz Rebel of the Week is: Poornima If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Julia Gandrud. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.  

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  The journey from indie to trad Tips for pitching and querying Biggest differences between trad and indie publishing Common mistakes when approaching traditional publishing Craft lessons learned from ghostwriting Find out more about Helen: Threads @HelenGlynnJones Instagram @HelenGlynnJones TikTok @helenglynnjones Read The Last Raven Rebel of the Week is: Lisa  If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Utilizing Instagram reels as an author Strategies to engage your audience on Instagram What an ‘audio bank' is and how to build one Using the ‘remix' feature to expand your reach The importance of consistent posting How to craft a book hook Links I mentioned:  Order House of Crimson Kisses at books2read.com/crimsonkiss or direct from me at rubyroe.co.uk Find out more about Lara: Instagram @lemon.friday Rebel of the Week is: L.M. Dodds If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack  THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.