Podcasts about Smashwords

Story-Eater, Spin a Yarn of Chaos ep.701 Climber, tattoo collector, and peanut-butter connoisseur, Xan van Rooyen is an autistic, non-binary storyteller from South Africa, currently living in Finland. They are the author of several short stories, novels, and are part of the Sauuti Collective. Find Xan online @xan_writer   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

In this episode, Greg Richter and Laura J. Axelrod sit down to share exciting updates on Greg's new Patreon project. From thought-provoking columns and the launch of the C. Husal Utes video series to an upcoming book project, we talk about what's in the works, why we're creating it, and how you can follow along and support these efforts. If you've ever wondered what goes into sustaining independent writing and creative projects — and how you can be part of the journey — this episode is for you.Here are links to topics discussed in the episode:Greg's Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/GregRichterLaura J. Axelrod: Author and Playwrighthttps://www.lauraaxelrod.com/Greg's book: The Bee Attitudes And Other Spiritual Lessons From Everyday Life99 cents on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/Bee-Attitudes-Spiritual-Lessons-Everyday-ebook/dp/B07L3C4ZNZFree at Smashwords and Dropbox:https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/910775https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d8qy4wbb82t85akxytk0d/The-Bee-Attitudes-by-Greg-Richter.pdf?rlkey=qzaleexynudsep3w3wufreirk&e=1&dl=0Farm house and land for sale in Cullman, Alabama:https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7364491680743370752/Finders Keepers, Cullman, Alabama:https://www.facebook.com/finderskeeperscullmanllc/Copyright (c) 2025 Pharaoh's Drawers Media

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 8 (book 1 NEW) ep.790 But Brig Saw it First NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

In the much-delayed final episode of our series on mindset for writers, we take a look at when writers should change course, and talk about the importance of mental flexibility. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store: AUGUSTFROST The coupon code is valid through September 8, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 265 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 22nd, 2025, and today we are considering when a writer should change course. This is a new episode. It's the third and final one in the mindset series that I had hoped to finish in June, but it was a very busy summer, and so I ran quite a few reruns of old episodes over the summer, but today I have time to record a full length episode, so we're going to do that and wrap up this series on mindset that we've been doing this summer. We will also do Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon will get you 25% off ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store, and that code is AUGUSTFROST. As always, the coupon code and the store links will be available in the show notes for this episode, and this coupon code will be valid through September 8th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read as we wrap up summer and head into fall, we have got you covered. Now let's do an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report to that Ghost in the Siege, the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, is out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. And with that, my Super Summer of Finishing Things is finally complete because I have finished the Shield War series, the Stealth and Spells trilogy, and now the Ghost Armor series. So now that those three series are done, what is next? Right now my main project is Blade of Flames, the first book in a new epic fantasy series that will be set in the Kingdom of Owyllain from my Sevenfold Sword series and I am 29,000 words into that. My secondary project right now is Cloak of Worlds, the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series, and I am 1,000 words into that. So hopefully we will have Blade of Flames come out towards the end of September and Cloak of Worlds come out towards the end of October, if all goes well. So my plan now that I have only three unfinished series is that the Blades of Ruin series (of which Blade Flames is the first one) will be my flagship series, and I'll do one of those every other month and then the month in between I will alternate between writing a Cloak Mage book and a Half-Elven Thief book. I will continue that schedule until one of those series is completed and then I will start a new one because what I learned through 2024 and the first two thirds here of 2025 is that having five unfinished series at the same time is too many. It's hard to keep up in my head and it makes for a really long wait for the readers between the individual entries in the series. So I'm going to stick to just three from now on and as I said, I'll have a flagship series and then two that I will alternate back and forth between in the months between the releases for the flagship series. So that is probably what I'll be doing for the rest of 2025 and hopefully most of 2026, if all goes well. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Power, which will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills. I've been listening to some chapters from that. Work has just started by Hollis McCarthy on recording Ghost in the Siege, so that will hopefully be an audiobook before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:03:29 Main Topic: Mindset Series: Changing Course And now to our main topic, the final episode in our mindset series and we talk about changing course. In previous episodes on this topic, I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastinating, and managing time wasters. In this episode, I'm going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective. Today we're going to wrap up this series by talking about mental flexibility, knowing when to change course, and how to make those types of decisions without spiraling out. First, we'll discuss a few reasons why mental flexibility is an important attribute to possess and then provide you with five examples of times it has been important for me in my writing career. First, why is having mental flexibility and the ability to change course important? With how fast things change in publishing, you have to be willing to change strategies or discard a strategy that's not working for you. An example is that many people who are familiar with Amazon ads swear by using Amazon keyword ads. After much experimentation, I concluded they weren't very helpful for fiction. The reason for that is I found that for most books that are sold off Amazon, people will sit down and type, for example, “Brandon Sanderson latest book” or “J.D. Robb latest book” or “Stephen King latest book” and so on. If you bid high enough, you can get top of search for those where if you pay $2 a click or $2 for the bid and someone types in “Stephen King latest book”, you can get your book to appear at the top of the page with the ad. However, in practice, what actually happens is the person who sat down to look for “Stephen King latest book” isn't looking for your book, he's looking for Stephen King's latest book. So he or she will simply scroll past the ad result with your book and then click on Stephen King's book. The only way I found that keyword advertising works for fiction is if you write towards very specific tropes and are willing to pay a lot of money for those clicks. For example, you write a romance that's a “slow burn, no spice, enemies to lovers romance”, and there are people who search for exactly those tropes, and if you use keyword ads to bid for that, you could get it, but it's very expensive and it's very difficult to turn a profit. Because of my experiments with this, I saw that although many people say keyword ads are essential, I didn't cling to that piece of advice and switched my Amazon ad focus to having a few more category ads and Audible ads for each title, and that has been pretty nearly profitable most of the time, certainly more profitable than just relying on keyword ads would be. I should note the one exception for that would be that keywords ads do work very well for nonfiction where, for example, my Linux Command Line book, I can pretty easily run ads to it for search terms like “Linux Command Line” or “Linux Command Prompt.” And because people are looking for a nonfiction book on that topic without looking for a specific author, that can work. In keyword ads, I found that for fiction, people are looking for a specific author and want that specific author, whereas for nonfiction, they're looking for the topic and don't care so much about the author, so long as the book has good reviews and looks like the author knows what he or she is talking about. Another reason to be mentally flexible is that something new might actually make things easier for you. I used to work in IT support, and so I fairly often encountered someone who stubbornly clings to the way they learn something. I knew numerous people who memorized a specific way to do a task on their computer and then just stuck to that and avoided doing anything easier, such as, for example, not learning to use keyboard shortcuts. And as you know, if you do a lot of office work, learning keyboard shortcuts like Control + C for copy, Control + V for paste, or Control + Z to undo can save you a whole lot of time over compared to very laboriously clicking through the menus with your mouse. People like that very frequently resist a learning curve in favor of a slower approach because it's working for them, but then they lose out on a faster and easier way to do something. Change is not always good, but sometimes change can be good. And the thing about indie publishing is that change is constant. In a field where change is constant like indie publishing, you can't cling to something that first worked when you started out. Trying new software, learning new skills, and keeping up with changes in ebook platforms is something self-published writers must do. Another reason to retain mental flexibility is you might be missing out on a source of revenue. If you're not willing to change sales strategies when the market changes, you might be missing out on potential readers. For example, as people are tightening their budgets in these times of economic uncertainty, they might be less likely to buy individual books and focus their book spending on a subscription like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus. If you don't have content on those platforms for readers, you're missing out on readers who have shifted their spending. For myself, I only have some of my books on Kindle Unlimited because of the exclusivity requirement, but everything I have on Kobo should be available through Kobo Plus, and typically on any given month on Kobo, at least 60% of my revenue tends to come from Kobo Plus instead of Kobo direct book sales. So that was a place where it was necessary to have the mental flexibility to make a pivot. Another good reason to be mentally flexible is that you might be missing out on something important that the data is showing you. One of the big advantages of being self-published is having access to complex and real-time data instead of having to wait for biannual royalty statements that don't provide information. There are some criticisms that can be leveled at Amazon for how much data they show authors. However, this is light years ahead of the kind of sales data that comes out of traditional publishing for writers where royalty statements were often quite arcane and difficult to understand by design, so the publishers could get away with paying the authors as little as possible. And because you have access to this data, you have basis for solid information, solid decision-making. For example, if one of my series is starting very strong in the UK in its first week of release, I can shift some of my ad spending to UK specific ads. Looking at sales and ad data gives you an opportunity to respond and change your approach. And sales data, even more than reviews, tells you if a book, series, or genre is working for you or if it's time to try something new. It's important not to fall prey to what's called the sunk cost fallacy, where you throw even more time and money on something that isn't profitable in hope of recouping the money that you've already spent. Sometimes it's wise to know when to cut your losses and run. It's probably a better use of your time to focus on the next book or series. Data can tell you which book or series that readers are most excited to see from you. Now that we've talked about the various good reasons that mental flexibility is important, I thought it'd be helpful to show you five times that I've had to use mental flexibility and change course over the course of my career as a writer. #1: Self-publishing. For all that I've been a proponent of self-publishing for the last 14 years, that wasn't always the case. I started out with the goal in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s of being traditionally published. Demonsouled actually was traditionally published along with some short stories. However, for a variety of reasons that I've talked about before, this turned out to be a dead end. Traditional publishing at that time was not interested in fantasy series like mine. I felt like traditional publishing was a dead end, and then I changed my efforts to blogging on computer-based topics. I'm still quite proud of the fact that in 2010, I made a good bit of money from Google Ad Sense off my tech blog, a feat which was difficult then and would probably be impossible now. Then I started to hear about self-publishing through Amazon, which at the time was a very new phenomenon. I started hearing about that in 2009/2010, thereabouts, and I initially wasn't very impressed and I wasn't very impressed with the idea of ebooks altogether. At the time, I had a huge collection of paper books and well, I don't have as many now. I still do have a fair bit of paper books, but at the time, I didn't think that ebooks could be a substitute for traditional paper books. Then at the end of 2010, in fact, the week after Thanksgiving, I bought my first Kindle, a third generation Kindle that was famously called the Kindle Keyboard because they had that little keyboard at the bottom, and I was very impressed with the device. I thought there has got to be a way to make money off this. As I started reading various writers groups, I came across Kindle Direct Publishing, and finally in April of 2011, I decided to give it a go and republished Demonsouled through it, and that's where it all began for me. #2: Learning new skills and adapting. I think one of the biggest parts of why I've been fortunate enough to be able to do this for as long as I have is the willingness to take the time and effort to learn or try something new. I've had to teach myself how to format ebooks in several different programs, how to start first the LLC and then a S Corp, which finally involved realizing I couldn't do it myself and hiring people familiar with the appropriate documentation to do it for me, how to hire narrators and proof audio, how to file 1099s for narrators (that was a whole experience, lemme tell you), how to create a direct sales platform on Payhip, how to create my own book covers in Photoshop, how to make various 3D images myself for those book covers, how to maintain and update my website, how to do Amazon ads, how to do BookBub ads, how to do Facebook ads. So in the past 14 years I've been doing this, I think it's fair to say I've acquired quite a few new skills along the way. Each time I weighed out if not having this skill was holding me back. For example, creating my own covers became an absolute necessity for me after a while because even the most experienced cover designers could not create covers at the pace I published. Well, they could, but it's more accurate to say that the cover designers, the really good cover designers, the ones I wanted to hire, worked so far out in advance that you had to book them nine months to maybe a year in advance. And I eventually came to find that very rigid and constraining to my writing process. A couple of my books have titles that are totally unrelated to what the book is about, just because I had to pick the title like nine months, twelve months out in advance. And while they were very good covers, I did find it a little bit constraining that I had to try and keep the book at least close to what the cover was. If I hadn't changed course and learned how to do it myself, it would've limited how many books I could publish in a year, and likely it would've cost me many thousands a year in lost revenue. Therefore, having the mental flexibility to learn new things is a major skill in self-publishing. And the thing I'm contemplating learning right now is something with video, because short form video seems to be a good way that many authors are connecting with their readers and their audience. It's just that I don't personally use short form video a lot, so I'm wondering if it'd be worth the effort to learn. I think it'd probably be worth the effort to learn, but I haven't decided on how to do that and need to do some more reading, which is another aspect of mental flexibility. #3: Changing pricing strategies. Permafree pricing book for free on ebook platforms was not as common of a strategy when I first started self-publishing in 2011. I mean, people were doing it, but not as many as now. At the time (and to this day, in fact), many people were outraged that thought of giving out an ebook for free and opine that it would devalue their work. The argument was that if you take a year to write a book and then people should at least be willing to pay as much as they would for, for example, a fancy Starbucks coffee. However, this overlooks the reality of economics where that something is only as valuable as people are willing to pay for it. And that in fact is, a good way to get people to pay for your remaining books is if they read the first one for free and then they like it enough that suddenly the remainder of the books in the series will have value for them and hopefully they will buy it. But back in 2011, I decided to give permafree a try because I had series instead of standalones, and it has been one of the most significant ways that people have found my work. If I listened to the sort of old school traditional thinking about pricing ebooks, I would've missed out on this opportunity. #4: Doubling down on audio. At one point, towards the end of, actually towards the middle of 2023, I was considering and had almost decided to give up on producing my own audiobooks due to the significant expense and how much time having to proof them was taking away from my writing. Instead, I thought about ways to make the workload easier. I hired someone to proof the audiobooks for me and then found ways to promote them through deals on platforms like BookBub and Chirp. I started to create more Amazon ads for them and focus on making audiobook anthologies because these are very attractive to people trying to get the most out of their Audible credit each month. Although it's still mainly a tax deduction for me at this point in terms of business value, I would've lost out on a growing revenue source and a big piece of the publishing market if I had given up on audiobooks. #5: And fifth and finally, as I've talked about before, the Stealth and Spells series. This series really challenged me because I had a very specific plan for a multi-book series (I was thinking like seven or eight books originally) and enjoyed writing the first one. However, there were a few problems with it that forced me to take a hard look at the series and change my original plans quite drastically. The series was originally called Sevenfold Sword Online, which confused fans of the original Sevenfold Sword series. I made the choice to change the title to Stealth and Spells Online to make the separation clearer, even though it's a pain to change titles, and that came with some confusion of its own. I also changed the covers to resemble some of the other LitRPG books because it was originally closer in look to some of my epic fantasy covers. These changes did help, but I had to take a cold hard look at the data. Sales and ad data clearly showed that it was time to cut my losses and focus on more profitable series. So I changed my series plans to wrap everything up in the third and final book rather than a multi-book series as I had originally planned and based on reader reception to the third book, I think it went pretty well. Ultimately, you can only plan so much as a writer, and you have to accept that those plans might need to change. One of the best gifts you can give yourself as a writer is the ability to be mentally flexible and not stick with plans, books, or attitudes that aren't working for you. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this mindset series and found it useful to your own situation. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pul Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes athttps://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.      

The Samophlange ep.789  The Samophlange was a quest in early World of Warcraft located in Bilgewater Harbor. I took that quest, including all the dialogue, and turned it into an embellished short story. As far as I know the quest no longer exists, so this is my way of keeping it alive! I originally published this years ago, but had to take it down when YouTube changed some guidelines. Those guidelines are now clearer, so I recorded this again and decided to publish it anew.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Triton Dinosaur Park Post-Mortem ep.788 Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, James Hobbs is currently working on a PhD in history at the University of York. His work has previously been published in Dusty Attic.    ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

For secen days and whatever comes after ep.787 Isaiah Williams is a 24 year old author from Atlanta, Georgia who has been writing for twelve years. His main social media is his instagram account Vammy777. https://www.instagram.com/vammy777/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

The Driver ep.786 Emma Rather (She/They) can be found kayaking, or in racing sims when she isn't at work or writing down her many tales. Inspired by cosmic horror, paranormal and fantasy stories along with truck driving music and Emma's own experience from long hours on the road. She aspires to one day have a published novel to call her own.    ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Garg the Good ep.785 Dominic Bowers-Mason would like to keep his information private, but he hopes you enjoyed the story! Listen to the original release here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_JWHpMKF4w&t=94s&ab_channel=TallTaleTV   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 7 (book 1 NEW) ep.784 Parasitic Zombie Spores NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

In this week's episode, we look at five ways writers can avoid the self-destructive mindset trap of "comparisonitis", and five ways that comparing oneself to other writers can be useful. Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: WOLVES50 The coupon code is valid through August 5th, 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 259 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 11th, 2025, and today we are looking at why comparing yourself to other writers is a bad idea. Before that, we will do Coupon of the Week and have an update on my current writing progress. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store, and that is WOLVES50. This coupon code is valid through August 5th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to listen to during your travels this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Shield of Power is 100% done, completing the Shield War series. You can get Shield of Power at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords and my own Payhip store. It's been selling briskly and it's gotten good reviews so far, so thank you very much to everyone who has bought and enjoyed the book. Now that Shield of Power is done, the first third of my Super Summer of Finishing Things is complete. So what's next? My next main project is Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest. It was originally going to be named Reactant, but I changed the title to Final Quest to emphasize really and truly and definitively that this is the final book in the trilogy. In fact, I'm already done with the rough draft and I am done with the first phase of editing it as of this recording. If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know how I frequently say that if you keep chipping away the novel over a long enough time, sooner or later you'll finish it. That is exactly what happened here. Since October of 2024, I've been writing 500 words a day on Final Quest, and this piled up over time enough so that after Shield of Power came out, I only had 3,000 more words to write to finish Final Quest, and I did that in an afternoon. One more phase of editing on that and then I would like to have Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest out before July 22nd, if all goes well. I'm also 21,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will be my main project once Final Quest is finished. Ghost in the Siege will be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series and will hopefully cap off my Super Summer of Finishing Things. In audiobook news, Shield of Battle (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is now out. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Apple, and Google Play as of this recording. Because of some difficulties with Findaway Voices, it's going to take a little bit longer to get into the other stores, but I'm working on a way to do that and as I mentioned before, Ghost in the Corruption (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy ) is done and just has to finish processing on the various stores, and so hopefully that should be out before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:52 Main Topic: Comparison Now let's move right on to our main topic, The Dangers of Comparison. In Episode 257, we started a series on mindset for writers. In some of the previous series I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastination, and managing time wasters. In this series, we're going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective because as we know with any endeavor in life, mindset is something like three quarters of the battle where if you convince yourself that you're going to fail before you start, you're probably going to fail. So that's why it's important to have an appropriate mindset to the task at hand. Today we're going to focus on comparing yourself to others, and I will share five reasons it's not a great idea to compare yourself to others aimlessly and how to shift your focus to five more constructive ways to compare your work to other authors. Comparisons are a constant of the reading world. Librarians and Goodreads reviewers talk constantly about “readalikes” or finding books that have similar themes or settings. Book displays and shops and libraries love to group similar books or authors together. People look at the bestseller lists like they're sports scores. Dollar amounts in publishing deals are a constant source of gossip and jealousy. Sometimes comparison is useful, especially when creating ads or finding the right demographics to market to. Other times, it can lead to limiting or self-destructive thoughts. So let's start off with five reasons not to compare yourself to others. #1: It can limit you creatively. It can be easy to look at the bestseller list and try to think of ways to write a similar book. Following publishing trends keeps you from your most creative work and frankly isn't as enjoyable to write and most likely for your readers to read. Also, unless you're a fast writer, the publishing world might have moved on by the time you finished that book. In fact, I just saw a thread on social media about that where the commenter was bemoaning the fact that she used to enjoy what's now called cozy fantasy, but that as the genre has evolved, it's developed established tropes and the writers of it are not willing to variate from those tropes. So you have what she said in her words were dozens of clones of Lattes and Legends and Bookshops and Bone Dusts floating around, which is a tricky thread to balance, I do admit, because you want something that'll appeal to the reader, but then the readers like familiarity. What they really seem to like is familiarity presented to them in a way they've never seen before, which can be a challenge when you are trying to look at the bestseller list and limit yourself creatively. #2: What other people are doing is out of your control. You can't control if a book you think isn't as good as yours is suddenly the runaway hit of the year or an author who isn't experienced as you suddenly gets a movie deal. You can't control their success, so don't worry about it or get upset by it. You can control if you're wasting time online mocking those people or complaining about it, for example. That's a waste of your time and energy and doesn't actually make you feel better in the long run (and possibly in the short run as well). I believe in psychology and in military theory for that matter, there's something called the locus of control where you identify the things that you can control and then you drill in and focus in on the things you can control rather than worrying about the things you can't control. As we said, if an author who wrote a book you don't think is very good or you don't personally like has had a massive amount of success, there's nothing you can do about that and worrying about it is a waste of time and comparing yourself to that writer is also a waste of time. So that's why it's a better idea to focus in on what you can control. #3: You're not being fair to yourself. Comparing yourself to other authors, especially as an aspiring or new author, isn't being fair to yourself. They have years (if not decades) of experience that you don't have. It's like comparing yourself to an ultra-marathoner when you're someone who's just starting to jog and struggling to get all the way around the block, which is some of the tricky parts of someone like me giving advice to new writers because Shield of Power was my 163rd book and Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest will be my 164th. I've been doing this for a long time, which means I probably know what I'm talking about, but that not everything I do is immediately reproducible by someone who hasn't been doing it as long as I have. If you're writing something that's not as marketable or in a smaller genre, it's not fair to compare yourself to people in the biggest genre or even your own previous work. For example, I can't compare the amount one of my technical books earns to one of my fantasy books. If I did that, it'd be a disappointment. But in reality, my technical books have had steady success and have even been used as textbooks at times (which is always surprising when I discovered that's happened because my Windows Command Line book and my Linux Command Line book have both been used as textbooks at various times, which was a surprise to me because that's not what I expected when I set out to write them, but I'm glad that they've been able to be useful for people). #4: And point number four, which I think is a really important one, someone's online life is only the highlight reel of someone's actual life. Looking at someone's social media accounts isn't a great way to know what they're actually doing or how they're actually doing. Just because they're posting pictures of tropical vacations, speaking at conferences, or showing off shiny new stuff doesn't mean you're seeing the full picture of how they're actually doing. As I said in a recent episode that when I was applying for disability insurance (just in case I need it someday), I learned that writers are actually one of the hardest professions to insure due to their high rates of mental illness and substance abuse. You might see the good stuff, but they might not be posting the challenges that come with their success: increased stress and anxiety, more criticism, the need to hire people and how much time it takes to manage them, more complicated taxes, increased business expenses, and relationship problems from the demands of success. These are all things that can accompany success. You're not getting the whole picture. You need to keep that in mind when you compare yourself to people online. The best fictional example out of this that applies to so many situations is Lord Denethor and the Palantir from Return of the King. If you read the book, Denethor has been using the Palantir for years to spy on Sauron and give advantages to his forces and the soldiers of Gondor. But Sauron is able to manipulate what Denethor sees in the Palantir and has been gradually using this to create an edited version of what Denethor sees in the Palantir, and that drives Denethor to despair and eventual suicide. People talk about the increased rates of mental illness related to social media. Sauron did that deliberately to Denethor through the Palantir. It's a sign of how good J.R.R. Tolkien was a writer that he managed to anticipate the effects that Facebook would have on some people by like 60 years. So always bear that in mind when you're looking at someone online and feeling jealous of them. You are not getting the whole picture and there are more than likely things going on that are difficulties in their life that they just don't talk about. #5: Your time is better spent writing than comparing yourself to other writers. And this is back to our old friend, the locus of control. Looking at other authors' sales ranks and reviews is not a productive use of your time. As I mentioned in the writing adjacent activities series, you need to be purposeful in non-writing tasks that take up your time and make sure you're not pretending they're writing related. If you need to compare sales ranks or some other data point with other authors or something you're actively working on like ad targeting, schedule that time and don't let it turn into an Internet spiral of time wasting. And now to avoid those Internet spirals of time wasting, here are five ways to use comparisons positively and constructively. #1: Number one, getting keywords or demographics for marketing purposes. For sites like BookBub or when creating keyword ads, knowing authors who are similar to you is incredibly helpful and can help you structure your ads. And this doesn't even necessarily require you to read the other author's books to see if they actually compare. There are tools that let you expedite this process. For example, if you look on Amazon at the Also Boughts, you can scroll through some of that and see which other authors and which other books people have bought in addition to your own and then you can test using those for keyword targeting. On Goodreads, people put books in lists or compare books. You can use that data to generate keywords for ad targeting. You can test them very easily. With BookBub ads in particular, if you build a campaign around just a single author and keywords and test the results. You can quickly see whether a specific author generates an appropriate click-through rate for you to use or not. #2: A second way is to find authors you might want to do a promo with. Some authors, especially in the romance genre, do really well with group promotions. Finding other authors that write similar books and are at a similar level of success may be a way to take advantage of that. I've never actually set up a group promo, but I have participated in several of them from time to time with pretty good results. #3: A third way is to better understand reader preferences in a genre. My best story for this is I've gone through six different variations of cover design for the Silent Order series. When I started out, I was using GIMP and stock photo images. GIMP is the free Linux version of Photoshop essentially. After I learned Photoshop, I upgraded to characters on the covers, but they never quite sold quite as well until finally I saw a Penny Arcade comic where they were commenting how they just want to buy books where they have spaceships in close proximity to planets on the covers. And I thought, huh, that makes a lot of sense. So I redesigned all the covers to have a spaceship in close proximity to a planet, and the series immediately started selling a fair bit better with those covers. I would say that was not so much a comparison thing, just a genre preference I stumbled across and then had sort of the moment of enlightenment that I did. But if I had looked at the bestseller list for various science fiction categories, I would have realized that most of the bestsellers had spaceships and planets in close proximity to each other on the cover. So I redesigned all the covers. It was just that I was too fond of the character based covers to give them up until I had that moment of revelation. So all the main books in the series were redesigned to have the spaceship covers, though for the free short stories, I did keep the character covers just because I was giving away the free short stories and I did like the character covers, so I got to have my cake and eat it too, which was nice. #4: Learn from the successes and failures of others. You can learn from what another author does well. For example, Brandon Sanderson is very good at communicating his writing progress and other updates to his fans through weekly video messages on YouTube. Other authors are good at collaborating with other authors, while others make engaging and funny videos that make people more interested in their work. Knowing your own strengths is an important first step. If you're just trying to follow everyone who is a success without first reflecting on that, you'll chase too many options and then can't excel at any of them. You can also learn from when an author responds poorly and how the Internet reacts to it. Understandably, I'm not going to give specific examples here. For myself, I tend to focus on what I do best, which is writing really fast and doing social media updates. I never got into video because I kind of have a face for radio and I just don't enjoy doing video. I don't enjoy editing them. It's a lot of work that I don't really enjoy, so I don't do it. #5: Being informed makes comparisons less emotional. Knowing, for example, that an author was hired to write a book based on an existing outline created by the publisher, and then promised a future book deal with a big marketing budget in a preferred genre as part of the contract makes their cross-genre success seem less surprising and makes you feel less guilty for not being able to do the same on your own as an indie author. It's not a fair comparison because they have advantages that you can't understand without some industry knowledge. For people that compare themselves to me, for example, they should know that I've been writing since I was a teenager a very long time ago. I was an early adopter of self-publishing when it was less competitive and I usually work more than eight hours a day and I generally keep to a very rigid writing schedule. Some authors like me were able to get the rights back to their earlier published works and then self-publish them early on in order to finish a series, which is much less likely to be an option in a contract for a traditionally published author now. If you're just starting out, travel frequently for work, and only have an hour a day to write (and even that is dicey because your partner would rather you spend that time on some other activity because they don't support your writing), you can't possibly compare your writing output to mine. Knowing all this about me explains why it might be harder for you and why you shouldn't feel bad about having a harder time with writing. Comparison has been called “The Thief of Joy” all over social media for many years. That can definitely be true, but like so many things in life, how you respond to something and find ways to help it make you stronger is what really matters. Comparison has its place in the writing world, but it's important to keep it in perspective and not to let it overwhelm you emotionally or keep you from your writing goals or plans. So that is it for talking about comparison. I hope that was helpful and offered some useful tips on how to avoid the trap of comparison-itis. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

The 17th annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale is upon us! This is a chance for authors to get the most bang for their buck while traffic is increased at Smashwords. The D2D team discusses tips and tricks to get the most out of your advertising efforts and maximize results.//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Wekka's Gold ep.783 Wekka has gone to claim the cavern's gold. Liaro must find her before it is too late. Too late for what? G. W. Thomas is all about monsters. He writes Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror but thinks of himself as "a Monster writer". Lately he has been doing his monster thing with Sword & Sorcery and Occult Detectives, both subgenres that pit individuals against monsters. You can learn more about him at his blog, Dark Worlds Quarterly at www.gwthomas.org.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Send us a textEp 630: # Finding Love Through Kink: A Revolutionary Dating AppEver wondered if your BDSM preferences could lead you to your perfect match? Meet Pieter, the innovative CEO who turned personal setbacks into a groundbreaking dating platform that matches users based on their BDSM test compatibility scores. This fascinating episode explores how a unique dating app is revolutionizing the way people connect by prioritizing sexual compatibility before diving into traditional dating metrics. Peter shares his journey from heartbreak to breakthrough, explaining how his platform helps users find meaningful connections through shared intimate preferences.The conversation delves into the evolution of the BDSM test as a tool for self-discovery, the importance of open communication in alternative relationships, and how understanding one's desires can lead to more fulfilling partnerships. From creative signaling methods to navigating cultural differences, this episode offers valuable insights into modern dating dynamics.Whether you're curious about alternative relationship styles or seeking a more authentic way to connect, this episode challenges conventional dating wisdom and offers a fresh perspective on finding love.

Are we witnessing the fulfillment of Bible prophecy?

The Werewolf Next Door ep.782 S.J. Walker has published many short stories in dark fantasy, including 7 with Dragon Soul Press so far, among others. She has also sold stories to podcasts including Thirteen Podcast, Creepy Podcast, No Sleep, Flash Fiction Podcast, etc. She's currently working on her debut novel. More TTTV Stories by S.J. Walker https://talltaletv.com/tag/s-j-walker/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Blessed June 2025 Solstice

Are we witnessing the beginning of sorrows as foretold by Jesus in Matthew 24? This video explores the prophetic signs that point to the nearness of the Day of the Lord, including mass animal deaths, earthquakes in diverse places, natural disasters, global famine, and the rise of false prophets deceiving many.

The Theseus Collection ep.781 Andrew Akers is a forest ranger and fiction writer from Pennsylvania, USA. He is also a full SFWA member. His work has appeared in Book XI, The Daily Tomorrow, Metastellar, and many others. His debut novel, Tapestry, is expected in April, 2026. When he isn't working or writing, Andrew runs marathons, plays Dungeons & Dragons, and raises his sons with his far more talented half, Kylie. More information about Andrew's stories can be found at www.andrew-akers.com or facebook.com/AndrewAkersAuthor.    More TTTV Stories by Andrew Akers https://talltaletv.com/tag/andrew-akers/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 6 (book 1 NEW) ep.780 A short tempered toddler in full tactical gear NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

In this week's episode, we look at five tips and tricks for optimal ebook pricing. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless Worlds series at my Payhip store: TOWER25 The coupon code is valid through June 30, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 254 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 5, 2025, and today we are looking at ebook pricing strategies. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects.   First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless World Series at my Payhip store, and that is TOWER25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to the store will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 30th, 2025, so if you need a new ebook series to read this summer, we have got you covered.   Now for an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 53,000 words into Shield of Power, which will be the sixth and final book of my Shield War series, and that puts me on Chapter 13 of 29. I feel like the book is going to be between about 105,000 to 110,000 words in rough draft, but we will see when I get there. I'm hoping to have it out before the end of June, but there's a good chance it may slip to July, so listen to this space and watch my website for updates.   I am also 104,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, which as the name implies, will be the third and final book of the Stealth and Spells trilogy. I am right in the middle of writing the climactic scenes of the story and because of the length and how far I've gotten and I've been chipping away at this since October, it will come out very quickly after Shield of Power, possibly even in the same month. I'm also 5,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, and that should probably come out towards the end of summer, if all goes well.   In audiobook news, Brad Wills is recording Shield of Battle and Hollis McCarthy is recording Ghost in the Corruption right now. I know they're hard at work at it because both of them sent me emails with questions about pronunciations today. Hopefully we'll have some exciting new audiobooks for you later this summer.   00:02:12 Main Topic: Ebook Pricing Strategies [Note: All Prices Referenced are USD]   And now let's move right into our main topic, ebook pricing strategies, which is often a contentious topic for indie authors. We're going to go over five different ebook pricing strategies to look at when they're the most effective or why you might want to try them. I'll talk about when I have used each of them and why I chose to do so or not to do so, as the case might be.   As I said, this is often a contentious topic for indie authors, especially newer indie authors who often have in their head an idea that their book is worth X amount of dollars because the amount of work they put into it, like for example, “my novel should be a minimum of $9.99 or $14.99 because of all the work I put into it. It was a year's worth of work, and if you can buy a fancy latte at Starbucks or $6 or $7 or whatever, then you should be able to pay $9.99 for this novel upon which I toiled for a year.”   And that is a nice sentiment, but in reality it doesn't work that way for a couple of reasons. For one thing, people are only willing to drop that kind of money on authors that they've known for a long time, like hardcore Stephen King or James Patterson or Jack Reacher fans dropping $20 or $30 for the novel in hardcover when comes out the first time. That kind of loyalty has to be earned over the long term, and if you're brand a new indie author or a newish indie author, charging $9.99 for your ebook is something of an ask.   For the second thing, an ebook is not a physical object, and there is a point where people blanch at paying a lot of money for an item that is essentially electronic and digital. If you're paying $9.99 for a paperback, at least you're getting the paperback, the physical object. Paying $9.99 for something utterly intangible like an ebook is a much harder sell. Because of that, the optimal price point for ebooks tends to be a bit lower than that.   For the sake of not adding too many caveats to each point based on genre and format, let's assume for each of these strategies, the ebook we are pricing is a fantasy novel of about 90,000 words without any maps or images and is not being traditionally published by an established author. In an interview, Smashwords founder Mark Coker presented data from Smashwords that showed most indie authors selling full length fiction will see the most success setting their ebook prices at either $2.99, $3.99, or $4.99 (depending on genre). That is still the case, generally speaking. However, there are some special pricing strategies that may increase your sales, and that is what we'll be focusing on this episode. #1: The first of the five pricing strategies we will look at is permafree, and permafree means that the book is permanently set to free instead of just for a short period of time. Why does this work? People like free things. People will eagerly take something that's free while something that's even $2 or $3 will lead to hesitation on their part, especially for an unfamiliar author, and that is true of $0.99 as well.   However, permafree is a strategy only makes financial sense if the book is the first book in a series and there are at least a few books in the series already published. If you have one book and make it permafree, that's fine if you want to give away the book to readers so it's read, but it will not make you any money. It makes more sense to make the first book in a series free when there are like four or five or more books in the series. Just setting a book to permafree is not enough on its own. You still need to spend money on ads and marketing, so you're relying on sales from the next several books in the series to subsidize the free book and marketing cost. Very often I will advertise the free first book in one of my series and then calculate whether the ad was successful or not based on how many copies of the rest of the books in the series that I have actually sold.   There also needs to be a strong hook at the end of the first book to lure readers on to the second book to inspire readers to continue, but not an outright cliffhanger, which will annoy most readers and could hurt your reviews. If you're going to make your first book in the series free, it is a generally bad idea to end that book with a cliffhanger or to end that book with an unresolved main plot. People will get mad at you and accuse you of trying to nickel and dime them on the rest of the series.   It's also a good idea to put the link to the second book right at the end of the first book in order to help the reader continue on in the series. You also need to accept that most of the attention for permafree titles often comes from so-called book hoarders. This strategy is not a great one for trying to get reviews as there is a significant segment of readers who blindly grab whatever is free and then they never get around to reading it, much less finishing it.   In the same vein, you have to accept that the percentage of readers converting from the free ebook to the rest of the paid series will be much lower than the conversion from a paid book to the next paid book in the series normally would be. What kind of conversion rate am I talking about? If you have say, a conversion rate from the free first book to the paid second book of 5-10%, you are doing very well.   How have I used the strategy? I've made almost all of my series starters permafree, and since I write fairly long series, it's easier for me to do that than for people with a series with only two or three books. Making books permafree has been a major part of my indie publishing efforts over the last 14 years, and I found it's pretty much the most consistent low effort thing I can do to drive sales. It's like a constant trickle, though it does work better on the non-Amazon stores than it does with Amazon today.   #2: So now we will move on to our second pricing strategy, which is the $0.99 price. Some authors will temporarily set the $0.99 price at launch in order to gain some reviews and then raise the price once that has happened. Others will price the first book in the series at $0.99 and then price the subsequent books in the series higher, in a similar strategy to permafree. This strategy gets a higher percentage of the people reading the book than permafree and authors have reported a higher percentage of read through continuing to the next book as well.   This price does well with BookBub deals and could be used temporarily for that. BookBub customers are extremely price sensitive and they expect steep discounts. The biggest downside of the strategy is that on sites like Amazon, you'll be paid a lower royalty rate of 35%, so any ads or marketing costs will effectively eat most of your profits. However, if your book is wide in all the stores, many of them offer better royalty rates than Amazon for books at $0.99. For myself, what I've done for long series is that I make the first book free and then the second book $0.99, and then all the books after there are full price. Obviously, you take a bit of a hit on the first few books in the series, but if you have a long series like I do, then you can definitely make up the lost costs with sales of the rest of the books. I've also used $0.99 to pretty good results with BookBub deals over the years.   #3: The third pricing strategy we're going to look at is the box set. This strategy applies to a series since you're packaging multiple full length novels together and sometimes throwing in a short story or other special content. The important thing about pricing box sets is that it should be a substantial discount over buying the full length books in the sets separately. The price will be a bigger hook than adding special features. You might want to make the first box set less expensive than the subsequent ones in order to motivate readers to begin the series. This strategy is great for Kindle Unlimited (KU) since readers are getting multiple books but only have to take one of their allocated book spots in the KU Library. Longer books also lead to bigger payouts, since KU operates on pages per read system, which means that the longer the book is (and assuming someone actually reads it), you'll then get a bigger payout. This also applies somewhat in a more limited way for Kobo Plus, in the way that it calculates page reads. They use minutes read instead of page reads.   How have I used this? I have many box sets, and because of the limitations of Amazon pricing, most of my box sets aren't above $9.99, but if the three novels in the box set are individually $4.99, that is a savings of 33% as opposed to buying the books individually. So I mostly did the box sets to provide a base for doing the box sets in audio, but they do also generate some income on their own because of the savings.   #4: The fourth pricing strategy we're going to look at is coupons. The most common way to provide coupons in Indie Author World is either through Smashwords or a direct sales page, such as My Payhip store, which I mention frequently on this podcast. Coupons are a convenient way to make a book free to only a select group of people, such as newsletter subscribers or contest winners. It is by far the easiest and most flexible way to discount your books temporarily. For example, on Payhip, it only takes a couple minutes to set up a coupon and then it will be ready to use instantly or for whatever specific dates and times you have set the coupon to run. They are the most effective when they are short term to create a sense of urgency to buy the book, but not so short term that readers miss out on the deal. The biggest downside is that most buyers are not as familiar with using Smashwords or a direct sales page, so they may be hesitant to use a new site, especially if they have a large ebook collection on another platform like Kindle.   How have I used this strategy? For years, I've used the Smashwords coupon strategy to give away a free short story when I publish a book (with Ghost in the Corruption, it was Ghost Spells, and when I finish Shield of Power, the short story for that will be called Consort of Darkness and newsletter subscribers will get a Smashwords coupon code they can use to get a free ebook copy of the short story). I also frequently do Coupon of the Week through my Payhip store, where I offer 25% off a featured ebook or series or 50% off an audiobook. Since the royalty rate on Payhip is higher than on Amazon or Audible, I'm able to offer generous sales prices without losing money on a discounted sale. So once you have a large enough catalog, coupons through direct sales can be an effective strategy.   #5: And the fifth and final sales strategy we'll look at this episode is Kindle Countdown Deals. If your book is in Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited, Kindle allows you to run a limited time discount on it. Readers will see a countdown clock showing how long they have to buy it at the price. To be eligible to run a Countdown Deal, your book must have been enrolled in KDP Select for at least 30 days, and your book's list price must have been unchanged for 30 days before and 14 days after the deal runs. There are some other requirements, so read Amazon's documentation page very carefully before you decide to run a Countdown Deal. The biggest advantage of a Countdown Deal is the royalty rate for the book during the deal will be based on the book's regular price and not what it's discounted to during the sale, so this is a nice way to try a lower price for your book. For example, if the book is usually $4.99 and during the Countdown Deal it is lowered to $0.99, you'll still get 70% of the sale rate. Now granted, 70% of $0.99 is not as good as 70% of $4.99, but you may be able to make it up in sales volume. This strategy gets a lot more viewers than a coupon with Smashwords or your direct sales page would. However, it's not nearly as flexible as those options. It requires some advanced planning. This method is most effective when paired with a marketing push, such as an increase in ad spending or a newsletter notifying your newsletter subscribers about the deal. The biggest downside of this strategy is that you have to be exclusive with Amazon in order to take advantage of the deal. If your books are wide, you can't do a Kindle Countdown Deal for them. I've used this strategy intermittently with limited success, I have to admit, because generally I don't have that many books in KU at any given time. That said, when I have had books in KU, I've tried Kindle Countdown deals and had moderate success with them. Overall, I do think the other methods I've already mentioned on this episode are more effective, but if you have books in KU, it is definitely worth trying a Kindle Countdown Deal in combination with some ads and a newsletter push.   So hopefully these five pricing strategies will help you make sense of the pricing of books in Indie Author World and will be helpful to you as you decide how to price your own books.   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 back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we will see you all next week.  

How the Dragons Lost the World ep.779 John E. DeLaughter is a retired planetologist living on a sailboat with Samantha the Eagle. His work has taken him to all seven continents where he has always met the nicest people. But no dragons. (Yet.)   More TTTV Stories by John E. DeLaughter https://talltaletv.com/tag/john-e-delaughter/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

The Noble Sport ep.778 This Story was written by Chris Herron. Hey, that's me!  I set out to write a comedy, but some stories have a mind of their own. This story was originally published back in 2018, but I have always loved the story and wanted to record it again now that my acting skills are better.   If you would like to listen to the original version, you can find it here:  https://talltaletv.com/the-noble-sport/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

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.  

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 5 (book 1 NEW) ep.777 Tornado Ravaged Trailer Park NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Are We Witnessing Biblical Prophecy Unfolding?In this urgent video, we examine the global rise in pestilence, invasive species, and outbreaks of disease that are shaking the foundations of public health and ecosystems alike. From Asian needle ants in Georgia to the explosive return of bed bugs, the spread of tick-borne illnesses, and rat surges in major cities — the signs are everywhere.In this video, we cover:The painful sting and anaphylaxis caused by Asian needle ants

Time Heals ep.776 Andrew Newall is from Scotland and he hopes you enjoyed listening to “Time Heals”. Tall Tale TV also adapted another two of his stories, "Misterioso" and "Writer's Block". Since then, his work has appeared online in the magazines "Fictional Cafe" and "Kinda Weird" with comic strips published in "Oddball Magazine".  "Time Heals" is a flash fiction piece which first appeared in the magazine "Theme of Absence" back in 2021. More TTTV stories by Andrew Newall: https://talltaletv.com/tag/andrew-newall/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Canines, Reptiles and Other Biological Anomalies ep.775 Gareth D Jones is unofficially the second most widely translated science fiction short story author in the world, having been published in 35 languages. He's a father of five, two of whom are also published authors, and lives in the UK where he writes science fiction, fuelled by copious amounts of tea. Author Website: www.garethdjones.co.uk More TTTV stories by Gareth D Jones: https://talltaletv.com/?s=gareth+d+jones   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

In this week's episode, we take a look at four different ebook formatting tools for indie authors. We also discuss the phenomenon of Star Wars day. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Malison: The Complete Series at my Payhip store: MALISON25 The coupon code is valid through June 3, 2025. So if you need a new book for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 251 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 9, 2025, and today we are looking at ebook formatting tools. Before we get into our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week, a progress update at my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week. We'll also close out the show with a preview of my new audiobook Ghost in the Assembly (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy).   This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Malison: The Complete Series at my Payhip store, and that is MALISON25. As always, we'll have the coupon code and the links in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through June the 3, 2025. So if you need a new ebook for spring, we have got you covered. Now here's where I'm at with my current writing projects. I am 87,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption and I'm hoping to hit 90,000 words by the end of today. So if all goes well, I will finish it up later this week and then begin editing. I am also 9,000 words into what my next project will be, which is Shield of Power, the final book in The Shield War series. I'm also 91,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and that will be my main project after Shield of Power is finished. So my writing goals for the next couple months will be Ghost in the Corruption, Shield of Power, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and then the final book in The Ghost Armor series (the title of which I should really decide since I'm getting close to being finished with the fifth book).   In audiobook news, recording of Ghost in the Assembly (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is finished. That should be turning up on all the various audiobook stores before too much longer. Shield of Deception (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is finished and available at all the audio stores: Audible, Apple, Google Play, Spotify, Chirp, and all the others. You can get that right now. Brad should be starting a recording of Shield of Battle sometime in the second half of May, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:02:09 Question of the Week   And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite Star Wars? The inspiration for this question is the fact that May the Fourth has become Star Wars Day (in a very tongue in cheek manner). And as you might expect, we had a variety of responses to this question. Justin says: I have not seen any Star Wars TV series, but your other choices are mine as well. I have the Trawn Trilogy in the box set and got a PC joystick just for playing TIE Fighter again. Jonathan D. says: Empire Strikes Back is still the best film. I cannot get into the Disney canon after they destroyed the Expanded Universe. I watched The Force Awakens and that killed any interest in watching Disney Star Wars for me. Books is either Heir to the Empire Trilogy or the Darth Bain trilogy. A well done film adaptation of the Darth Bain books would be the only thing that would make me want to watch any new films. Video games would have to be Knight of the Old Republic 1 or 2, with Jedi Academy coming in third. The original Battlefront games were also great.   John Paul says: Loved the Mandalorian and the Book of Boba Fett, especially when they had the characters from each other's show guest starring in them. I saw somewhere they aren't making another series, but [there] was talk about a TV movie to finish it off, but [they are] now showing Series 4 on IBMD with no date. I grew up with the original trilogy though some of the later films are good, especially the special effects, though Jar Jar Binks spoiled the first three movies. Maybe they should reedit the character out since Lucas has spent some money on adding new effects to the trilogy to bring in line with the new movies. Skeleton Crew made me think of the movie Flight of the Navigator with Star Wars added, so I enjoyed that even though it's mainly for kids. I have fond memories of Space Invaders with the sidekick from the original Fall Guy TV show. Again, made for kids though adults can enjoy if they watch tongue in cheek.   Andrew says: There are only three Star Wars movies, of which Empire Strikes Back is my favorite. I really enjoyed Mandalorian Season One. Now Star Wars is dead to me, except for lightsaber battle videos. I really like the Princess Bride Battles. I played TIE Fighter, Dark Forces, and Knights of the Old Republic.   Tom says: Favorite film, Rogue One. With you on Mandalorian Season Two as favorite TV show. Favorite game, Rogue Squadron.   Tracy says: My favorite was Return of the Jedi.   Jenny says: Thrawn Trilogy for sure! Dark Forces was my very first computer game, so it's always going to hold a special place in my heart.   William says: The unofficial remasters of the original trilogy from preserved reels are a godsend.   MG says: Knights of the Old Republic was quite good and Knights of the Old Republic 2.   John K. says: I'm a grim dark sort of guy. Really liked Rogue One but it's slightly edged out by the original Episode IV. I absolutely love Andor but honestly, have not hated anything. Enjoyed them all. I was a nut for the original X-Wing game. Got good enough to one shot TIE Fighters with one quad shot and rarely missed and learned how to solo Star Destroyers pretty easily, though it would take forever. Having played the game that John K. is talking about, I can agree with him that you could take down Star Destroyers in your X-Wing if you knew what you were doing, but it really would take forever.   Dave says: Book wise, I really enjoyed the Thrawn books by Timothy Zahn, also the X-Wing series by Michael A. Stackpole was a personal favorite.   And finally Michael says: I agree on Empire Strikes Back though as a kid, I disliked the lack of upbeat movie. Also really liked the Solo movie. I confess I found the Thrawn books underwhelming, though the original Star Wars novelization is pretty good. And finally, I got to agree on TIE Fighter, such great game. Also, I have a soft spot for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2.   For myself, I would have to break it down into four categories because Star Wars media covers so many different formats now. For favorite movie, I would say Empire Strikes Back, with Return of the Jedi as the runner up. For the favorite TV series, Season 2 of The Mandalorian. For my favorite book, The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, with Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover, Darth Plagueis by James Luceno, and The Darth Bane Trilogy by Drew Karpyshyn coming in as strong runners up. Seriously, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably enjoy reading books, so these five are definitely worth your time.   For my favorite video games, I would say TIE Fighter, with Knights of the Old Republic as a very close runner-up. But TIE Fighter was definitely my favorite. In the game, you play as an Imperial pilot, and the designers had the clever idea of making the Empire sympathetic by having the player spend most of the missions hunting ruthless pirates, suppressing alien civil wars, and fighting renegade Imperial warlords who are trying to overthrow the Emperor. In the last two expansion packs for the game, the player is flying as Grand Admiral Thrawn's elite pilot against the renegade Grand Admiral Zaarin, and finally defeating Zaarin after like forty missions was VERY satisfying.   So those are my favorite Star Wars media items. As we can see.  there is quite a range of opinion in the answer to that question.   00:06:54 Main Topic: Ebook Formatting Tools   Now let's move on to our main topic, which is ebook formatting tools. And this is an important thing for indie authors to discuss because if you do want to self-publish your books, it is one of those foundational skills you have to master. You need to know what kind of file format the platforms you're publishing to you take and how to produce it. Now this is something you can hire out but you really, really shouldn't in my opinion, especially because some ebook formatting services charge as much as $2,000 to turn a Word document into files ready to upload for ebook stores. Considering that it is something you can easily do yourself with free tools and a little bit of practice, spending any amount of money on it is probably a waste. I mean, there's a difference between the kind of intricate formatting you would need for say, a full color medical textbook with illustrations and a 60,000 word romance novel. Fortunately, all the major software programs are nowhere near as expensive as $2,000 a book and don't have as much of a learning curve as you might expect. Both video and written tutorials are plentiful for all of these options, making it easy to learn at your own pace. Today we're going to go over four software options for formatting ebooks and discuss their pros, cons, and the best uses for them. Although some of these products have word processing functionality and other features built in, today we'll focus on just the ebook formatting part of the software. #1: The first option we will look at is Atticus. Atticus is from the same company that makes Publisher Rocket, which is a software program I've spoken of very favorably of on the show over the years. The company has made an effort to understand the needs of authors over the years and added new features to Publisher Rocket consistently as time went on. The company Kindlepreneur has also made significant enhancements to Atticus since it launched. As of the time of this recording, it is a one-time purchase option that has free ongoing updates and the current cost is $147 (in United States dollars). Expensive, but the founder of the company Dave Chesson has said frequently he doesn't like software subscriptions. So hopefully this will continue to be a one-time fee and not become a subscription thing.   So here are the pros to using Atticus. It is less expensive than Vellum and has the same features. It works on operating systems other than Mac. In theory, since it has a web client, it can work on any platform. Reviewers say it is very pleasant to use and those who want a lot of customization options are generally happy with it and it has a nice tool for creating and reusing the template for things like author bios or link pages.   The con is that it does require an Internet connection to use and you have to have a computer connected to the Internet. Some people also prefer not to have their work stored in the cloud like Atticus does. Some users report slowness while opening or closing or when saving a file, especially if it's a book with a high word account. Because of the online requirement, there can be issues related to syncing. It does not support .mobi as a file export option. However, that's not a big deal anymore because Amazon is officially phasing out the .mobi file extension and is requiring people to use .epub. So this is not a major point and it's only for people who have a customer base with very old e-readers that can't handle .epub.   And finally, Atticus does not offer a free trial period if you just want to try it out, but does offer a refund within the first 30 days if you try it and decide that you don't like it. So what users would find Atticus the best? It's probably best for PC or Linux users who don't want a Mac and also want to have lots of fine control of your formatting or customizing your layout. Atticus is also heavily built around collaboration, where different people can work on the same file. So if you do work with a team (and many indie authors do) or are co-writing a book, then Atticus might be a good tool for you to use.   #2: The second program we're going to look at is called Vellum.  Vellum has been seen as the default option for ebook formatting for a lot of writers for a while now. As of the time of recording, there is a one-time purchase option that has free ongoing updates. The current cost is $199 for the ebook only version or $249 for the version that includes paperbacks. Vellum has gone on sale occasionally in the past, usually for Cyber Monday in November. The pros for Vellum are that many reviewers consider it the best option for ebook formatting and say it delivers professional results without too much work and a minimal learning curve. Vellum lets you try out the software for free, but you won't be able to export the files you're publishing until the software is purchased. Like Atticus, it offers a 30 day window for a refund.   Vellum is not cloud-based software and it can be used offline. So if you are, for instance, working on a laptop on the road with spotty internet connectivity, this can be a lifesaver. Now for the cons and the biggest con is a big one- that Vellum is Macintosh only. You need to have a Mac to use it and it is not currently available for Windows and Linux. The developers have said that presently they have no plans to port it to either Windows or Linux. It will also not work on iOS, so that means you can't run it on your iPad or your iPhone. You can in theory use it on a PC with a Mac OS virtual machine, but people have reported very mixed success with that. The other con is that it is the most expensive option. So the users this is best for I think would be if you already have a Mac or you are willing to buy a Mac for just one piece of software. #3: The third software program we're going to look at is called Jutoh. Jutoh is a labor of love, mainly created by two people in the UK and has been around for a long, long time. As of the time of this recording, there is a one-time purchase option that costs $45 (US dollars) and a Plus version for $90 that supports some additional features. It currently offers a free trial that you can download and install, but functionality is limited in the trial version. The pros of Jutoh is that it works on Windows, Mac, and most versions of Linux. It is not cloud-based software/is local to your computer. It does not need a constant Internet connection to function. Reviewers frequently praised how responsive their customer support is and of the paid options we are discussing, it will be the least expensive of all of them. The cons are the interface is a bit dated. It does kind of look like something from the early 2000s in terms of the buttons and where they are. Because of that, it can be more difficult for some users to use than Atticus or Vellum. It does not create PDFs or print ready files, so you would not be able to use it to format your files for print books, which is something both Atticus and Vellum offer. I think this is best used for users who want a less expensive option than Atticus or Vellum or a PC user who wants a non-cloud based option.   #4: The fourth and final program we're going to look at is called Kindle Create. And as of this recording, it is the only one of these four options that is free. It is a free download. This software is created and maintained by Amazon. The pro? It's free and you can use the .epubs it creates to upload your books onto other platforms. Just because you've made your ebook in Amazon Create, that doesn't mean you can't use the file for Barnes & Noble and Kobo and Apple and so forth. You can go ahead and do that. However, because it is free software, there are quite a few cons to it. The functionality is pretty limited and only a few fonts are available. It is not good with complex layouts and Amazon's own documentation recommends not using it for books with tables, footnotes, or complex text formatting.   The program doesn't handle edits well. There are people who write books in Vellum even though the developers don't exactly recommend that. And Atticus is designed to have books written in it. However, Kindle Create definitely cannot handle that very well. Windows and Mac are supported, but you can't install it on Linux. Kindle Create no longer supports .mobi as a file export option since Amazon is moving away from that option and most other vendors haven't used it ever. That is a minor point.   I think Kindle Create is best used by users who are just starting out and don't have much in the way of budget and have books that don't require a lot of complex formatting. Kindle Create is actually quite good for novels because novels in general don't have a lot of complex formatting and because it's free, it has a little bit of a steeper learning curve, but that can be advantageous as well.   So looking at those four options, what do I use and why? Well, for the first seven or so years I was self-publishing, I didn't use any of these. I used a program called Sigil, which is an .epub editor. And if Kindle Create has a high learning curve, Sigil's is much higher because you're essentially editing the raw guts of the .epub file.   I was content using that for a number of years, but what I needed was a program that would make uploading print books and formatting print books much easier because at the time I was using Create Space and Create Space required a specialized Word template that was just an enormous headache to use. And the reason that many of the Frostborn books have exactly 24 chapters is because I had a template that worked really well with 24 chapters for print books and I wasn't going to mess that up by trying to add a chapter or have one fewer chapter. So for some of the Frostborn books, I made sure there were 24 chapters.   Obviously this was not a tenable situation for the print books, even though I was happy using Sigil for the eBooks. So I eventually heard good things about Vellum. In 2018 (I believe) I got a used Mac and installed Vellum and started using that for print books. I was much happier with that.   Because the books looked so good in print, I eventually switched over to using Vellum for formatting my ebooks as well and I've been using that ever since. So my main ebook format writing program (as of May 9, 2025) is Vellum and I have a Mac specifically for that purpose. However, I also has high praise to say about Jutoh. I got started using Jutoh because for a while, Smashwords required you to upload a book using a specialized Word format. They didn't accept .epubs for the longest time and formatting a book in that proper Word format for Smashwords was a large headache, I have to admit. I never managed to get it automated quite right. And I had frequent problems with Smashwords rejecting the Word document I uploaded and so forth. Eventually, I discovered that Jutoh also had an export option for creating Smashwords-friendly Word documents. So I tried it out and that was just a godsend, I have to admit. It saved me so much time. So for about seven years as well, I used Jutoh for Smashwords formatting. However, in 2024 after Smashwords was acquired by Draft 2 Digital and the two companies became more and more merged, Smashwords changed and now accepts properly formatted .epubs. They don't do that specialized Word document thing anymore, which has made it much easier to upload files to Smashwords, I must say. But that also means that I've used Jutoh less and less in favor of Vellum because I no longer need those specially formatted Word documents. However, I do have nothing but positive things to say about Jutoh; it is a very good program. If you don't want to shell out the $249 for Vellum or if you don't have a Mac, I think Jutoh is an excellent option for you to use. I have never actually used Atticus, but it's popular enough that I wanted to talk about it on this show. I do know a lot of people who have used it to good effect. Just bear in mind the pros and cons we mentioned. And as for Kindle Create, there's nothing wrong with it. I think it's good starting point, especially if you're just starting out and want to format your book without paying a lot of money or having to pay $2,000 to someone on the Internet to do it. I do think it's a good starting point, even though it's very basic and for your first couple of books, it would be good. But as you get more experienced and want to branch into things like print books, you'll probably want a program with greater functionality like Jutoh, Vellum, or Atticus. So myself, I use mostly Vellum (with Jutoh occasionally), and that is what I use for ebook formatting.   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 back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.   00:19:53 Audiobook Excerpt   And now we'll close out the show with a short excerpt from Ghost In the Assembly, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. [Remainder of podcast is audiobook except]

A Faulty Dissertation ep.774 Raine Fallfish is a poet and storyteller currently developing two collections of poetry and a video game. Her first poetry project, The Apocalypse of Cassandra, is a sonnet sequence chronicling the end of the world. Her second, an untitled collection of mini-epics, weaves together classical mythology and modern folklore to capture the essence of loss and desperation. One of these pieces, The Death of the Asphodel, is available to read for free on her website. She is also part of the creative team behind Owlrabbit, an indie metroidvania that examines the interactions of death, legacy, and ruin. You can find more of her work at rainefallfish.com, especially if you're drawn to stories steeped in melancholy and tragedy.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Chinese Eye ep.773 Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over four hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages.  He is a member of Codex and a Full Member of SFWA. He has published six science fiction novels including one trilogy, four monster books, a dark military fantasy and a thriller. His short fiction is collected in Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019), Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011). In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest. His website is at www.gustavobondoni.com More TTTV stories by Gustavo Bondoni: https://talltaletv.com/tag/gustavo-bondoni/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords  

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 4 (book 1 NEW) ep.768 Gummy Bears! NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Power Unlimited ep.771 Master storyteller and linguist Joseph Carrabis (was/could be/might have been) weaves wildly imaginative stories. With a sharp sense of humor, he creates multi-dimensional characters, reaching beyond the boundaries of the laws of physics by combining advanced mathematics, quantum physics, cybernetics, and neuroscience. Outside of writing, Joseph spends his time with his wife, Susan, reading, listening to and playing music, and walking his dog. He runs a monthly forum, Roundtable 360º, with creatives discussing their journeys. His work has appeared previously on Tall Tale TV.   Contact info for Joseph Carrabis Website - https://josephcarrabis.com/ Amazon - http://nlb.pub/amazon   More TTTV stories by Joseph Carrabis https://talltaletv.com/tag/joseph-carrabis/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

The Shrieking Horror ep.770 Andrea M. Pawley lives and writes in Washington, D.C.. She plans to start her own city quadrant as soon as the space-time continuum rips, and a new direction becomes available. Andrea attended Clarion West in 2017 and currently volunteers as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Mentorship Program Coordinator. Her stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. Andrea's slightly odd takes on writing, art, and Washington D.C. can be found at www.andreapawley.com.   This story was originally published in The Nameless Songs of Zadok Allen and Other Things That Should Not Be, a March 2023 anthology edited by JayHenge Publishing.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

On the Surface ep.767 Linda Griffin knew as soon as she learned to read that she wanted to be a "book maker" when she grew up and wrote her first story at the age of six. She retired as fiction librarian for the San Diego Public Library to spend more time on her writing and has had stories published in numerous journals and ten novels published by the Wild Rose Press. Website: https://www.lindagriffinauthor.com/index.htm   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

It's been three years since we shook up the indie publishing industry and merged Draft2Digital and Smashwords into one big player in the indie space. Now that we've had three years and most authors have been migrated into Draft2Digital, Kris Austin and Mark Coker join Jim to look back on the last three years and forward to our plans to come. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 3 (book 1 NEW) ep.768 Best Day Ever NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or Listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ Listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   Listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

The Soldier and the Dragon ep.767 Julius is a writer located in Cleveland, Ohio. He loves three things in this world more than anything else, his wife, his dog, and writing in that order. Although, his wife would argue the dog comes first.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

The month of April brings in new opportunities and the energies of East on the Medicine Wheel. Spiritual practice, divine guidance and perspective, as well as keeping in touch with all your realities in a grounded way is highlighted for April as well as the second quarter of the year Apr-June. We also take a guided drum journey vision quest with the Spirit keepers of the East to gather knowledge and insight to the next 3 months ahead.

Send us a textEpisode 586: Claiming Sierra, Age Gap Baby Making Breeding Sex by December Drake. He's been obsessed with his son's ex, and now that they've broken up, he intends to make the sexy young woman his, especially since she's hungry to be bred.Story Tropes: MF Sex, Claiming, Male Domination, Baby Making Breeding KinkAbout the Author:December writes stories about aggressive men claiming, breeding, and using women for their pleasure. Her sweetest stories are on Amazon and other major retailers, while the darkest can be found on Smashwords, Ream, and Eden Books.Connect more with the author December Drake: https://www.decemberdrake.com/Get the spicy book! Erotica excerpt from: the charity anthology fiction book Not So Guilty Pleasures: 45+ Filthy Stories for a Cause, ALL PROCEEDS GO TO WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN FOR HELP WITH HURRICANE & DISASTER FIRE RELIEF https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/charityanthology (any money made from my affiliate link usage to buy the anthology will also be donated to the same charity). It is also in Kindle Unlimited (for a limited time).Not-So-Guilty Pleasures is a charity anthology benefiting World Central Kitchen (for help with the hurricane and other disaster relief). The anthology is only available for a limited time so act now!Enjoy storytelling erotic audio about spicy romance relationships, swingers, hot erotica stories, erotica romance, and self care for you! Take time to pay attention to your mental health sexual health. Pleasure is your birthright!Get Podcast Host Ruan's new spicy open door Romantasy Novella: Overcoming Heartache https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/overcomingheartacheRuan's smut, erotica, erotic romance fiction books and audiobooks: http://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/Support the showSubscribe for exclusive episodes: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1599808/subscribeSign up for Ruan's newsletters: https://subscribepage.io/ruanwillowhttps://linktr.ee/RuanWillowI Dare You book https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/idareyouthesaturdaysexchallenge

Five Finger Stories ep.765 Rick Danforth is an author from Yorkshire, England, where he works as a Systems Architect to fund his writing habit. His short fiction can be found in Hexagon, Translunar Traveller's Lounge, and many other places. Three of his stories have been shortlisted for BSFA awards. He one day hopes to introduce himself as an author without feeling awkward about it.   More TTTV stories by Rick Danforth: https://talltaletv.com/tag/rick-danforth/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Time Transfusion ep.764 Y. Len's spoken English is barbed with foreign accent and writing needs second look due to often missing/misplaced articles and imposter words from several other languages.  In 2020, Y. Len received an honorable mention from the Writers of the Future contest and, in 2021, saw the first story published on paper in the Wight Christmas: Holiday Horror and Seasonal Subversion collection. In 2022, another short story appeared in The Bull magazine. Five more short stories appeared in the Some Things Are Universal, Trigger Warning: Cursed and From the Yonder Volume IV anthologies as well as the Reader Beware and Twenty-two Twenty-eight magazines in 2023.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 2 (book 1 NEW) ep.763 Over-Sized Pizza Toppings NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

The Binder Room ep.762 Tony Rauch has four books of short stories published – “I'm right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press), and "What if I got down on my knees?" (Whistling Shade Press). He has been interviewed and/or reviewed by the Prague Post, the Oxford Univ student paper in England, Rain Taxi, the University of Cambridge paper, MIT paper, Georgetown University paper, the Savanna College of Art and Design paper, and the Adirondack Review, among other publications. He is looking for a publisher for titles he has finished and ready to go. Find him at: http://trauch.wordpress.com/   Other TTTV Stories by Tony Rauch https://talltaletv.com/?s=tony+rauch   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Amazon officially closed down Kindle Vella this past week. Smashwords is running their annual Read an Ebook Week, find out how this is an incredible promotional opportunity. The Kindlepreneur Dave Chesson just rolled out updates for his Book Description Generator. Barnes & Noble Press shared details about their partnership with the audiobook platform Author's Republic. ProWritingAid rolled out a new feature called Manuscript Analysis. And so much more for the self-publishing news this week. Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) 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. Sources: Smashwords' Read an Ebook Week - https://DaleLinks.com/Smashwords Bestseller Book Launch Plan - https://DaleLinks.com/BestsellerBook  Kindle Vella Update FAQ - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GUJHP3574Z3DLPZD  Kindlepreneur's Book Description Generator - https://DaleLinks.com/HTML (affiliate link) ProWritingAid's Manuscript Analysis - https://help.prowritingaid.com/article/318-what-is-the-manuscript-analysis?afid=6615 (affiliate link) Author's Republic + Barnes & Noble Press - https://crm.authorsrepublic.com/bnpress March Authortunities Newsletter by Angela Yuriko Smith - https://authortunities.substack.com/p/5-legacy-mags-acquired-by-1-paragraph Streetlib on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@streetlib-us 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

Of Monsters and Mushrooms, Ch. 1 (book 1 NEW) ep.753 Paragon of Manliness NOTE: This is a rewrite of book 1. Originally, 'Of Monsters and Mushrooms' was supposed to be a multi-part short story that transformed halfway through into a novel. This left the plot (and the voice acting, to be honest) lacking. We decided to go back and completely rewrite book one to fix any plot holes and bring the quality in line with the rest of the series. Listen to the new book one playlist here https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ or listen to book one (NEW!) https://talltaletv.com/series-of-monsters-and-mushrooms-new/ listen to book two http://talltaletv.com/series-of-tyrants-and-teakettles/ Listen to book three http://talltaletv.com/series-of-bandits-and-bad-magic/ Listen to book 3.5 https://talltaletv.com/series-an-interlude-of-intrigue/ Listen to book four https://talltaletv.com/series-of-portals-and-portents/ Listen to book five https://talltaletv.com/series-of-risk-and-relativity/   listen to the original book one http://talltaletv.com/series-monsters-mushrooms/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

The Climb and the Fall ep.760 A man finds himself climbing the same structure over and over again in different lives. Andrew Akers is a forest ranger and fiction writer from Pennsylvania, USA. His work has appeared in Book XI, Black Cat Weekly, Stupefying Stories, Black Hare Press, Fabula Argentea, and Cloaked Press. When he isn't working or writing, Andrew is running marathons, playing Dungeons & Dragons, or raising his son with his far more talented half, Kylie. Learn more at www.andrew-akers.com.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Launch Today, Begin Again ep.759 R.L. Farr, the author of LAUNCH TODAY, BEGIN AGAIN, lives in a fishing community on a small island that often appears closer to realms of drakons and seal-women than to the mainland of the present-day world. Recently one of Farr's short stories has appeared in The Writers' Journal and an ecological essay in From The Ground Up.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Bookvault made a major announcement about box sets and slip cases for authors. The self-publishing company PublishDrive will be down for scheduled maintenance. Smashwords is having their annual Read an Ebook Week in March. The Kindlepreneur Dave Chesson updated his article about direct sales for authors and the stats are pretty surprising (in a good way)! Laterpress leaked some insider info you will want to know. And, hear about other relevant news in the world of self-publishing. Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link)  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. Sources: Bookvault: Introducing Box Sets and Slipcases: Available now! - https://bookvault.app/introducing-box-sets-and-slipcases-available-now/ Use code BVDALE to waive your first three upload fees. PublishDrive - https://DaleLinks.com/PublishDrive (affiliate link) Smashwords: Read an Ebook Week 2025 - https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos  Selling Books Direct: Insights from 500+ Authors [2025 Update] - https://kindlepreneur.com/the-truth-on-selling-books-direct-insights-from-authors/  Laterpress - https://Laterpress.com 120 Author Opportunities + Some Hope (I hope...) - https://authortunities.substack.com/p/over-100-author-opportunities-some  Getting started with MailerLite - https://mailerlite.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RV0gFn6CQw-pE4vxT39bAw#/registration  MailerLite - https://DaleLinks.com/MailerLite (affiliate link) Authors Meet Author Assistants: Streamline Your Publishing Journey at Our Virtual Hiring Event - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/F1qcpvnDSuGrzc68puegXg#/registration  Master Amazon Ads: Live Ad Audits for Authors - https://www.youtube.com/live/a0snbVjJEPw?si=0MyTn_iQxYQL69yV  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

Perchance to Dream ep.758 James Rumpel is a retired high school math teacher who enjoys spending some of his free time trying to turn a few of the odd ideas circling his brain into actual stories. He has had nearly 200 different works published in one form or another but still enjoys the process of writing the most. His pirate adventure/escape room in a book, ESCAPE, is currently available on Amazon through DarkMyth Publishing. James lives in Wisconsin with his wonderful wife, Mary.    More TTTV Stories by James Rumpel https://talltaletv.com/tag/james-rumpel/   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords