Welcome to Hapitalist, where we’re all about helping you find the balance between the work that feeds your soul and money that pays your bills. The question we are constantly asking is “What if all this business stuff was fun and rewarding?”
Our ““Puritan Work Ethic” tells us that the things that “work” are the things that you suffer doing, but the reason you suffer is because the things you’re doing aren’t working.
If they worked, they would be working. At the end of the day, there’s only two things that need to happen before you love doing something; you have to like the thing your doing and you are able to create a positive feedback loop that rewards your actions.
So, why are we so focused on doing things we hate when the things we love are the things that work? Hapitalist is designed to help you find your path to frictionless growth and help you build a successful, sustainable, thriving business without hating your life.
Most people don’t fail because they’re untalented, undisciplined, or unmotivated. They fail because they’re building the wrong way for who they are. They force strategies that weren’t built for their instincts, their energy cycles, or their strengths, and then they blame themselves when everything feels harder than it should.
Your path of least friction sits at the intersection of how you grow, how you operate, how you evolve, and where you get blocked. Once those layers line up, the same amount of work produces ten times the output, momentum becomes predictable, burnout drops, and the path forward finally makes sense.
Our goal here is to help you maximize your return on energy investment, wherein you get the most growth for the least effort.
What Is Your Path of Least Friction?
There are four parts to plotting your path of least friction.
We start by identifying your SCALE path, which will show your natural route to exponential growth. Our goal here is to help you maximize your return on energy investment, wherein you get the most growth for the least effort. Maybe your quickest path to success is to build an army of evangelists, or maybe you come alive in collaboration. Maybe you’re wired for rapid-fire execution, explosive launches, or deep emotional resonance. Wherever you fall, that path is your first clue. It shows you the rhythm your business should have been following this whole time.
Then we move into your Evolution Track, because it’s not enough to know how to navigate the path, you also need to triangulate where you are right now on it. Every business passes through stages of expansion, consolidation, stagnation, reinvention. When you finally understand your stage, you stop beating yourself up for not being in a chapter you aren’t in anymore and can chart your next steps.
Next, we identify your base Ecosystem, the internal landscape you operate from that foster your natural tendencies. Your ecosystem determines the environment in which you can actually thrive and how to build for growth.
Finally, we’ll calibrate your HAPI Compass to reveal your real blocks so you can match them with them with the right solutions to overcome them.
Businesses exist to serve their owners, not the other way around.
Piece by piece, we build the internal map you’ve been missing. Only when we’ve uncovered who you are, how you grow, where you are in your journey, what environment sustains you, and what’s been holding you back, do we introduce the strategies that work to build your business.
Strategies for growth need to match your path because there is no “best strategy.”
There is only the best strategy for you.
You’re not here to fit someone else’s mold. You’re here to find your own path of least friction, and finally walk it without apology.
The Philosophy Behind Hapitalist
At the heart of Hapitalist is a set of simple principles.
🔐 Everyone Comes with Locks. Everyone Comes with Keys.
Every entrepreneur joins with something holding them back, whether that’s a mindset block, a marketing problem, a confidence issue, or a missing skill. That’s your lock. But everyone also shows up with keys from things they’ve already solved, overcome, or mastered. You might not have the key for your own lock, but you absolutely have one that can open someone else’s. And in doing so, you often find the clarity to open your own. The real magic happens when we use our keys and start unlocking each other’s locks.
🤝 Success Is A Trailing Indicator
Most entrepreneurs believe success is a leading indicator that shows they’ve arrived, but it’s really the inverse. Success isn’t the beginning of something. It’s the evidence of something that already happened internally, often months or years before the external world caught up. Honestly, it’s true, but it’s also something that only really makes sense after you see it play out as many times as we have, with a diverse case of success stories.
⚙️ Easeful Doesn’t Mean Easy
“Why can’t this be easy?” is something we hear a lot, but we’re not actually after easy, or we would do something else. Easy means “without difficulty”. What we are after is easeful, which means “without friction”. Easeful is the kind of flow that happens when you remove unnecessary struggle, align with your strengths, and stop trying to brute-force your way through everything. Most people say “this is so hard” when what they really mean is “this feels stuck.” We help you get unstuck not by eliminating effort, but by making your effort matter more.
🧶 The Magic Is in the Messy Intersections
Few things worth doing fit neatly into a single framework. Growth rarely follows a clean, linear path. It lives in the sticky, overlapping spaces between mindset and marketing, craft and commerce, systems and soul. That’s why we embrace intersectional and integrative knowledge, the kind that honors complexity and blends what actually works across disciplines, backgrounds, and lived experience. The real breakthroughs happen in the gray areas, not the checklists.
🥇There Is No Competition
Success is a blue ocean, and we need to start thinking like it. You win by shifting the rules of the game, by offering unique value that feels obvious once people see it, but invisible to everyone else still stuck brawling in the red ocean. Define your own stage, build your own axis, and create a game where you are the obvious, inevitable choice because you’re the only one playing it.
🎲 Planned Serendipity is Our Operating System
We embrace chaos, but we don’t leave it up to chance. Hapitalist is built on planned serendipity, the idea that if you set strong intentions and stay open, the right people, conversations, and opportunities will emerge at just the right time. Like at a great convention, the most meaningful breakthroughs rarely happen on the schedule. They happen in the hallway, over lunch, during an unexpected moment of connection. Here, we design the container for those collisions to happen more often. Our goal is to create permission for that serendipity to bear fruit.
🌀 Success Requires Nurturing Two Selves and We Help Cultivate Both
Being a creator means living in tension. You need the audacity of someone who has never been hurt before and the empathy of someone who’s been hurt too much. Most people lean into one and suppress the other, but to create anything meaningful, you have to hold both: boldness without arrogance and compassion without collapse. Inside Hapitalist, we honor both parts of you. We help you nurture the self that dares to be seen, and the self that sees others just as clearly.
🛡️ Building Our Margin of Safety Gives Us Freedom
Too many creators swing for the fences on an empty stomach. At Hapitalist we believe risk is essential, but only when it’s planted in a bed of slack: extra time, extra cash, extra emotional bandwidth. A margin of safety isn’t a luxury; it’s a creative nutrient. When your rent is paid three months ahead, when your launch calendar includes white space, when your energy reserves aren’t scraping the barrel, you make braver art, give more generously, and recover faster when experiments flop (because some always do).
How Does it Work?
We’ve covered the philosophy behind Hapitalist. Now, let’s look at how our 🦄Unicorn membership is built to turn that philosophy into real, lasting transformation. Our 🦄Unicorn membership is the top level membership around here, and it’s designed around the three main pillars of Hapitalist teaching:
Bi-monthly breakthrough sessions to make sure you’re on track and to course correct.
A digital brain trained on over 2 million of my teaching modalities to give you feedback between sessions and show you what to do next in real time.
A collection of world-class resources to help you make the most of the path you choose to achieve the most frictionless growth possible.
The key to creating lasting success revolves around constructing an integrated sales ecosystem that:
Works as a unified whole instead of a pile of disconnected tactics.
Uses your time, energy, and resources efficiently.
Grows steadily without demanding constant handholding.
Generates predictable, sustainable revenue.
Lets you focus on the work only you can do, instead of living in perpetual marketing mode.
An integrated sales ecosystem maintains two principles above everything else: leverage and sustainability.
Leverage is about doing something once and letting it create value over and over again. In business terms, it’s the difference between trading hours for dollars and building assets that keep producing results long after the initial effort.
Sustainability means building a business infrastructure you can actually maintain without going feral. Your systems should be repeatable, automated where possible, and supportive of the time and energy you realistically have, not the fantasy version of you who wakes up at 5 a.m. journaling about KPIs. If your ecosystem can’t scale as you grow and stay manageable when life gets messy, it’s not sustainable.
This integrated system is built in six parts across the modalities of subscriptions, crowdfunding, retailers, website sales, and live events. You can deep dive on the elements of this system here.
Your path of least friction will lead you to prioritize certain elements first using the 4 P’s of prioritization, which you can read about here.
This is where Hapitalist can really help, because it has a deep well of resources, small group breakthrough sessions, and a digital brain trained on it all that can help individualize everything to your situation. Learn more about the resources.
The HAPI Compass
This triangulation manifests in what we call the HAPI Compass you can carry into any market shift. Point it at your work and four coordinates come into view:
H – Heart: the projects and inspiration that give you goosebumps and will resonate deeply with your customers.
A – Audience: the people orbiting those ideas, ready to champion them, amplify your reach, and fall deeply in love with what you create.
P – Prioritization: Deep focus on one high-leverage move at a time, letting it pay off, then reinvesting the space and cash it creates to widen your runway and buy yourself time for what matters.
I – Income: Generating the money that sustains your ideal life while fueling the creative work that lights you up.
Plot those four points, and you have more than a framework. You have a living compass. When you start to drift in one of the four points, our resources are built to help you get back in alignment.
Membership Price:
Basic membership: $80/yr
🦄Unicorn membership: $300 per year
We built our pricing to do two things:
Be premium enough that we could devote enough resources to make it transformational.
Be reasonably priced enough that renewing your subscription every year can an easy yes.
We also understand that people find us at two different places in their careers. The first is toward the beginning of their career. They haven’t quite gotten their footing or know how to make their business work. That’s where our basic membership comes into the picture. It’s set up to give you a ton of great resources to get you on your way.
If you’re a little further along, then our 🦄Unicorn membership might be right for you. This is meant specifically for people who have got a foothold on their business, but they still aren’t where they want to be. They’ve tried a lot of stuff, been told a lot of bad advice, and aren’t getting much from reading new books with the same information.
Because of a powerful combination of our small group breakthrough sessions and our digital brain, “Russellbot”, that can personalize and customize our vast library of resources, we are set up to get you back on track and off in the right direction no matter where you are on your journey.
Our 🦄Unicorn membership isn’t one-size-fits-all It’s a system for real humans doing work in an unpredictable world. It’s for entrepreneurs who don’t just want to survive the grind, but want to build something that lasts.
Most people consider a program and think “I wonder if I can make it do this specific thing”, and while our digital brain can help you personalize and localize anything to any area, I think if you come into Hapitalist with one specific goal mentality, then you’re going to be disappointed.
There is no wrong way to business, except the ways that don’t work for you. It’s time to build like you’re built and take control of your career today.
Who Is This For?
You might see yourself here if:
✍️ You’re an entrepreneur who’s tired of burnout culture.
You’ve tried going faster. You’ve tried jumping on trends. You’ve done the “just post more” dance on social media. And you’re exhausted. You want a sustainable rhythm, not another productivity hack that melts your brain.
🤹 You’re stuck in the messy middle.
Maybe you’ve started building a platform or selling your work, but it still feels like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. You’re past the beginner stage, but you’re not yet where you want to be. You need a roadmap through the uncertainty.
🧩 You’ve got big dreams, but life keeps interrupting.
The job. The kids. The mental health days. The unpredictable mess of being a human in 2025. You need a plan that fits around your actual life, not someone else’s perfect routine.
🧠 You’ve read the advice. You’ve taken the courses.
What you’re still missing is the bridge between strategy and reality. Whether you’re just starting out, pivoting after years in the game, or trying to re-center your creative life after burnout, this system meets you where you are and helps you build forward, on your terms.
If you’re still on the fence about joining us behind the paywall, here is what others are saying about us.
“Thank you for creating this space where those of us who never quite fit the mold can find resources for bringing together our love of creating and desire to serve a purpose larger than ourselves. Can’t wait to dive in! “ -Annie Slade
“Thanks for the transparency. It’s what I’ve been searching for--someone I could compare facts and figures with.” -K.P. Davis
“You seem to have the path to success on Substack and you make it look fun. That’s what I want. “ -Rob M. Thompson
“I support your work because you are already doing all the things I wish I knew how to do. I am looking forward to learning how to write and publish the right way! LOL!” -Debbie McMannis
“You’ve helped me so much. Thank you, Russell!” -Tiffany Chu
“I really appreciate the realistic advice and content of substance. “ -Edwin Earl
“Russell is a fount of knowledge, a bit edgy with a sense of humor to go with it. I want to run amuck with my highlighter when I receive his articles. So much great stuff, some controversial thinking (which is always good for me) and genuine caring…Happy to support him supporting us.” -Crasser
“Stumbled upon your post about ai narrated books. Such useful information that is really difficult to find on google searches apparently…Absolute love it and looking for ways to leverage that to publish audiobooks. I just tried the google play auto narration and i dont think its as good. Anyway, love your posts. Thanks. “ -S Pathak
“Discovering I was a ‘Forest’…[it] might be the most important thing I’ve learned as a professional creative. I’m excited to learn more about different ways to publish and succeed. Thanks, Russell, for making this info accessible!” -Kel E Fox
“You are providing solid, actionable guidance…Thank you for both the guidance and the inspiration on multiple levels!” -Donn King
“There is no better place to learn comprehensive real world marketing. Learn from his experience instead of trying to do these tests on your own. Saves years.” -Robert C. Worstell
I just went on a walk with your last comment, and I think my brain just cracked open. Maybe I should say, “A lock was opened.” But it feels more explosive than that. I need to mull this over, but I think shyte might be about to get real here. ~Cracked Brain. Thanks, Russell. You are so good at helping with clarity. -Julia Ashley
Frictionless growth is my new mantra. -Sydney J. Baily
“Russell has years of unparalleled experience writing and selling his work…and the value of his insights and knowledge are incredible “ -Kaj
“There are so many things I don’t know, and the way you approach business resonates with me in a way that I need. Thank you for that. “ -Mary E Thompson
“I support your work because you are an honest hard working writer I admire and I believe I can learn a lot from. I love your transparency, your courage to test new things, to fail forward fast, and your effervescent creativity.” -Sylvia Becker-Hill
“…so many amazing and entertaining resources! You have made me a better and more business-savvy writer. Thank you!” -Rey Katz
I went and noted all the ones that fit best for me (Spotlighter). It feels wonderful to have a strategy for next year instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall! -Amanda Aaron
“After reading the tutorial ‘How to Get Over Your Sales Phobia,’ my mindset has completely changed. There’s one particular section that convinced me to upgrade to the paid version: ‘If you’ve been at this for a while with very little success, then there’s a good chance you think that nobody is interested in what you sell.’ This resonated deeply with me. I hope my work will be that good one day🙏😊” -Jana
“I have taken advice from Russell since following him on FB years before I actually began publishing my work. He was encouraging. I’ve watched him be successful and use no-nonsense methods along the way. So, I’m very curious to learn more. “ -Rachel D. Adams
So what do you think? Are you ready to join us behind the paywall and get over 600 paid posts, including exclusive interviews, articles, courses, and more?
🦄UNICORN LEVEL RESOURCES
Our 🦄Unicorn membership is the highest level at Hapitalist, and you get access to all the below resources. Some of these resources are available to paid members, but they are all available to top level 🦄Unicorn members.
MY “DIGITAL BRAIN”
As a hapitalist member, you have access to my “digital brain” I’ve uploaded all my interviews, course transcriptions, podcast interviews, books, and just about everything I’ve ever said about building a creative career into a Delphi brain that allows you to chat with “me” any time day or night, in any language, about anything related to your creative blocks.
While we have regular calls, and you should think about booking a 30-minute session with me every quarter, this brain is available to you any time.
TRANSFORMATIONAL WORKBOOKS
Strategic and tactical workbooks to help you master and overcome every creative business block. We will go through one workbook per quarter together, but you have access to the lot, with more added throughout the year.
BREAKTHROUGH SESSIONS
This is where the real breakthroughs happen. Twice a month, you’ll have the opportunity to join live group calls with other creatives building their own sustainable lives. These aren’t big group chats where everyone introduces themselves and you sit around waiting your turn. Instead, we drop you into small groups of 3–5 people so everyone gets focused time to work on their business.
Each person brings their biggest block—sales, mindset, marketing, whatever—and the group works together to break through it. No judgment. Everyone is welcome, as long as they’re constructive. You’ll learn just as much from helping others as you will from your own time in the hot seat.
We’ll send you an email every month with links to join, and reach out a couple hours before to remind you. You can come to one, both, or none depending on what you need.
GROUP CHAT
The group chat gives you direct access to other members between calls to get real-time feedback and support on your most pressing creative questions. Whether you’re stuck on a launch, burned out from chasing algorithms, or just need someone to remind you, “No, you’re not bonkers for trying this,” we’re here for it.
Combine that with access to my 24/7 digital brain (trained on everything I’ve ever made), bi-monthly live calls, tactical workbooks, and high-impact courses, and you’ve got more than just a chat. You’ve got an entire creative ecosystem designed to help you thrive.
COURSES AND MASTERCLASSES
SECRETS OF SUBSTACK BESTSELLERS
Type of resource: Masterclass
Success on Substack is not one-size-fits-all. Whether you prioritize growth or focus on monetization, the key lies in aligning your goals with the right strategies. Define your touchpoint level, understand your audience’s needs, and plan for a sustainable path forward. Your Substack can become a thriving ecosystem—if you approach it with clarity and purpose.
Russell Nohelty and Claire Venus share insights on navigating Substack, focusing on the balance between growth and monetization. They discuss the importance of understanding your goals—whether to run a low or high touchpoint publication—and tailoring strategies for sustainable success.
BUILDING AN INTEGRATED AUTHOR ECOSYSTEM
Type of resource: Masterclass
Success isn’t about picking the “best” platform, whether it’s Kickstarter, Substack, or direct sales, but about how they work together to amplify each other. The focus isn’t on chasing the next big thing or worrying about industry collapse. It’s about simplifying, optimizing, and integrating existing strategies to create a sustainable sales ecosystem.
If you’re tired of constantly adapting to new trends, this talk offers a practical, no-nonsense approach to making a living as an author.
BUILD YOUR SUPERFANDOM
Type of resource: Course
What would we go back and tell our past self that would take years off our own struggle and make me a successful creative without wasting time, energy, effort, and money?
This course was the answer to that question. It’s a practical guide to everything needed to know in order to build a six figure creative business.
Russell spent the last decade building his business from just a few thousand dollars a year into a successful six-figure business without using fan art, licensing products, or relying on public domain characters. In that time, he has become a USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR, raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter, and grown his email list to tens of thousands of superfans.
Additionally, you have access to our Build an Audience from Scratch masterclass.
THE KICKSTARTER LAUNCHPAD
Type of resource: Course
Plan, Market, and Launch Your Next Kickstarter Using the Kickstarter Launchpad Methodology that Russell Nohelty developed from running 20+ Kickstarters and raising $300,000+ on novels, anthologies, comics, and audio dramas.
The Kickstarter Launchpad is the course that broke everything open, and combined with the Fund Your Book with Kickstarter and Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter books available to paid members, will make your next (or first) campaign be your best launch ever.
Additionally, you have access to our introductory Fund Your Book with Kickstarter course.
DIRECT SALES LAUNCHPAD
Type of resource: Course
In conjunction with our direct sales books, this is a self-study course filled with material on how to build a direct sales environment through your website, and at conventions. We have other courses for subscriptions (Substack specifically) and Kickstarter available to both hapitalists and paid members, so this focuses on those three other paths.
CREATE PROFITABLE FACEBOOK ADS
Type of resource: Course
Understand your customer journey, craft ads that people want to see, and make a profit off your ads. We’ve taken lots of Facebook courses in our life and spent thousands of dollars on failed Facebook ad campaigns before finally figured out how to make them work for me, and now we’re bringing that knowledge to you. This course was created years ago, but it’s in general still relevant (though the interface has changed)
HOW TO RUN A VIRAL GIVEAWAY TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST
Type of resource: Course
Have you been stuck growing your email list with very little results? Do you want massive growth in your list in a very short amount of time? Your email list is the most important thing necessary to grow your business, and being able to run a group builder with 10-20 other creators means that you can add 1,000 new prospective customers to your list, every week, as often as you would like. If you can master this single concept, you can revolutionize your creative business and go from struggling to successful in no time at all.
HOW TO SET UP AND RUN AN ANTHOLOGY
Type of resource: Course
Build an amazing team of creators, hire a crazy good cover artist, and take over the world. Russell recorded this course in June of 2018 and used his upcoming anthology, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, as a case study to test every secret he talked about in this course. He didn’t know what would happen, but hoped it would do a little better than his first anthology, but when he launched the campaign it blew Monsters and Other Scary Shit out of the water!
WRITE A GREAT NOVEL
Type of resource: Course
Master character creation, structure, plot, prose, editing, and more in order to write a great book more quickly than ever before. Are you struggling to finish your novel? Does it take you years to write a book? Do you lack confidence in your writing? Then Write a Great Novel is for you. It’s everything Russell learned from writing his first 20+ novels. Not only does Russell give you all his secrets to creating characters and building structure, but he gives you the tips, tricks, and hacks he’s found to write better books faster. Most authors aren’t teachers, and most teachers aren’t prolific authors. Russell is both.
Publishing is broken, but it doesn’t have to break
10X YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
Type of resource: Course
Are you struggling tworko be productive? Do you wish you could get more done in a day, week, month, or year? Then join USA Today bestselling author and six-figure creative entrepreneur Russell Nohelty as he shows you how to 10x your productivity starting today. Learn how to effectively make a goal that you can measure and achieve, how to tell if you have a good idea, how to stop being caught up in idea-switching, how to say no to projects, and much, much more.
BOOKS
ON BEING HAPPY AND A SUCCESSFUL WRITER AT THE SAME TIME
Type of resource: Book
What if success didn’t have to cost your sanity?
For years, USA Today bestselling author Russell Nohelty chased the “dream” of massive book sales, bestseller lists, and unlimited creative freedom...
…but achieving it came at the cost of his health, his happiness, and even his love for writing. Now, he’s on a mission to make sure nobody else has to make the same devil’s bargain ever again.
In On Being Happy and a Successful Writer at the Same Time, Nohelty draws from hundreds of books on happiness, years of business experience, and the lived reality of chronic illness to lay out a practical, holistic framework that helps writers align their creative work with joy, abundance, and their natural tendencies.
This brutally honest, refreshingly hopeful guide offers a path forward for authors who want to thrive—not just survive.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
Rebuild your mindset to measure success on your own terms
Connect with the right audience without selling your soul
Prioritize like a pro, even when time and energy are scarce
Generate income that fuels your creative freedom, not drains it
Stop feeling broken, and start building a sustainable author business that actually feels good
Whether you’re just starting out or hitting burnout after years in the trenches, this book will help you realign with what truly matters, so you can stop chasing success and start living it.
HOW TO WRITE IRRESISTIBLE BOOKS THAT READERS DEVOUR
Type of resource: Book
Every author dreams of crafting stories that captivate readers from the first page to the last, but what makes a book truly unputdownable?
Bestselling author and publishing expert Russell Nohelty pulls back the curtain on the psychology behind compelling storytelling.
Blending insights from years of working with authors, deep research into reader behavior, and lessons from top-selling books, this guide teaches you how to craft stories that not only engage but resonate.
HOW TO BUILD A WORLD CLASS SUBSTACK
Type of resource: Book
Are you ready to start a world-class Substack? Are you interested in building your mailing list or paid subscriptions on a platform that gets great organic reach?Are you struggling to get noticed in a sea of other publications? Then How to Build a World Class Substack is perfect for you.
Written by USA Today bestselling author Russell Nohelty and Substack expert Claire Venus, this comprehensive guide dives deep into the strategies and techniques for creating a standout Substack publication. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting, this book offers valuable insights into maximizing your impact on Substack.
If you’re ready to elevate your Substack, engage with your audience, and build a publication that truly shines, turn the page and start your journey to becoming a Substack rockstar. Your path to a world-class Substack begins here and it’s full of joy!
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR
Type of resource: Book
How to Become a Successful Author is the best book you’ll ever read on building a successful author career from the ground up, packed with everything you need to know to become a successful author, starting today. It is broken up into three sections: Mindset, all about how to build focus, grit, and resilience, Writing, where Russell breaks down how to build a successful book from the ground up, and Marketing, where you’ll learn how to take your book and share it with the world.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR CREATIVE CAREER
Type of resource: Book
How to Build Your Creative Career is set up in five sections: How to Make Great Content, The Basics of Sales, Building an Audience from Scratch, Making Money at Live Shows, and Launching your Product Successfully. Every creative Russell has ever met is stuck at one of those stages of their career, and this book gives you the tools to open those floodgates, overcome those blocks in your own career, and supercharge your career. This book can’t guarantee you a successful career, but it can give you all the fundamental knowledge you need to set you up for success because it was written by a creative for a creative.
ADVANCED GROWTH TACTICS FOR AUTHORS
Type of resource: Book
Are you ready to unlock your full potential as an author? In Advanced Growth Tactics for Authors, Russell Nohelty offers a masterclass in building a thriving creative career. This isn’t just another “how-to” guide. It’s a strategic roadmap packed with real-world advice, hard-won lessons, and powerful insights that will help you navigate the challenges of publishing with confidence.
Drawing from years of experience in publishing, direct sales, and crowdfunding, Nohelty shows you how to build a career that’s not just successful but also deeply fulfilling. With clear strategies, actionable steps, and a touch of humor, this book is your ultimate guide to thriving in the ever-changing world of publishing.
If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start building momentum, Advanced Growth Tactics for Authors will show you how to turn your passion into a powerhouse career.
HOW TO CULTIVATE A THRIVING AUTHOR ECOSYSTEM
Type of resource: Book
Embrace your natural tendencies to build a sustainable author career with the power of Author Ecosystems! If you’ve been struggling to gain traction, stuck on the marketing treadmill, or feeling burnt out from chasing strategies that don’t work for you, this book is your guide to creating a sustainable and fulfilling practice.
Packed with actionable advice, this guide helps you stop wasting time on strategies that don’t deliver results. Instead, you’ll create a clear, individualized plan that works for you whether you’re starting from scratch or ready to level up an already successful business.
You’re not doing marketing wrong, you’re doing the wrong marketing. With How to Cultivate a Thriving Author Ecosystem, you’ll find the clarity, confidence, and tools to take your writing to the next level. It’s time to succeed as an author on your own terms.
PUBLISHING IS BROKEN BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BREAK US
Type of resource: Book
Publishing is broken, but it doesn’t have to break you. In this candid, no-holds-barred guide, USA Today bestselling author and small-press publisher Russell Nohelty reveals why the traditional publishing model is stacked against most writers, and how to make the industry work for you.
Drawing on decades of experience and dozens of successful book launches, Nohelty offers a blueprint for building your creative career without selling your soul or burning yourself out. You’ll learn how to break free from tired industry myths, connect directly with the readers who love your work, jettison traditional gatekeepers, construct a sustainable creative life. and leverage simple tools and strategies that actually pay off without all the needless hustle.
Whether you’re a first-time writer or a seasoned pro, this book offers real-world strategies for breaking free of the status quo. Packed with straight talk, practical insights, and actionable advice, Publishing Is Broken Publishing, But It Doesn’t Have to Break Us doesn’t pretend there’s a one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, it hands you the keys to design a publishing path that fits your goals, your schedule, and your sanity. If you’re ready to build a thriving, bullshit-free writing career, this book will show you the way forward.
$10K SECRETS: PROVEN STRATEGIES TO HAVE YOUR FIRST (OR NEXT) $10K MONTH
Type of resource: Book
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for building a six-figure creative business, but there are patterns. In SIX FIGURE SECRETS, fourteen successful creators pull back the curtain on the exact strategies, systems, and mindset shifts that helped them hit $10,000+ months, without burning out or selling out.
Curated and edited by Russell Nohelty, Jari Roomer, Sinem Günel, and Philip Hofmacher, this book is a tactical, honest look at what it really takes to grow your income as a modern creator. From monetizing Substack communities to scaling digital offers and high-ticket services, every chapter is a lived experience from someone who made it work their way.
HOW TO THRIVE AS A WRITER IN A CAPITALIST DYSTOPIA
Type of resource: Book
How to Thrive as a Writer in a Capitalist Dystopia is your essential guide to navigating and succeeding as a creative human in the challenging world of modern capitalism. This book offers practical, actionable advice to help writers not just survive but thrive in these “interesting” times.
You’ll discover strategies to overcome the systemic challenges imposed by capitalism, learn the rules of the game and how to manipulate them to your advantage, and build a roadmap for a sustainable creative business that brings you joy even in a world tailor-made to steal every ounce of happiness from you.
Whether you’re struggling with burnout or seeking to elevate your writing career, How to Thrive as a Writer in a Capitalist Dystopia equips you with invaluable tools to navigate our current capitalist landscape, ensuring your success and fulfillment as a writer from today until this whole house of cards collapses down upon itself and we rebuild something (hopefully) better in its place.
DIRECT SALES STRATEGY FOR AUTHORS
Most authors don’t have a sales problem. They have a system problem.
Direct Sales Strategy for Authors gives you proven, repeatable systems to sell more books, keep more of your revenue, and build a real business around your writing without relying on luck, platforms, or chasing the next trend.
Whether you’re looking to increase your website sales, crush your next crowdfunding campaign, build your membership, or sell better at conventions, this book will give you the results-driven approaches that helped build thousands of author careers.
Whether you’re just getting started or ready to scale, Direct Sales Strategy for Authors gives you the systems, structure, and strategy to build a business that works without burnout, guesswork, or gatekeepers. Direct sales works. Here’s how to make it work for you.
HOW TO LAUNCH YOUR BOOK ON KICKSTARTER
Launch your book like a pro. Get paid up front. Build readers for life.
Looking for more control over your book launches? Tired of relying on algorithms to reach your readers? Ready to turn loyal fans into your most valuable launch partners?
Kickstarter makes all that possible, and more. In this practical, no-fluff guide, USA Today bestselling author Russell Nohelty, veteran of over 50 successful campaigns, shares the exact strategies he’s used to raise over $650,000 for his own projects, along with the tactics that have helped others raise millions more. You’ll learn how to plan, price, and launch your campaign, avoid common pitfalls, and use Kickstarter to build long-term momentum for your career.
Whether you’re launching your first project or leveling up your next one, this book walks you through every step. If you’re ready to stop gambling on algorithms and start launching with purpose, this is the playbook you need.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
INCOME REPORTS
Type of resource: Blog posts
We reveal the numbers and strategies behind our publishing company, Wannabe Press, and ancillary endeavors going back to 2018, with data as far back as 2017.
THE COMPLETE CREATIVE ARCHIVE
Type of resource: Blog posts
When Russell was running his previous blog, The Complete Creative, he ran a lot of experiments and wrote a bunch about running a creative business that are still relevant, but dated.
SCRIPT LIBRARY
Type of resource: pdfs
A collection of scripts Russell has written for TV, movies, comics, and audio dramas, along with story bibles and pitch packets. While a lot of these have been produced, especially the comic and audio dramas, Russell decided to upload a whole collection so you could see evolution over time. A lot of these stories that weren’t products, like The Facilitator, ended up becoming key components of other books, like Magic where Ollie is basically a facilitator just like in the original script.
