Having lived in an upstate New York small town briefly as a teenager, I’d pretty much do anything to avoid returning. One of the few upsides of reality is that we can sometimes avoid things we don’t want to do. Fictional characters aren’t so lucky!

So, let’s look at how FX’s 2010 series Justified uses the return-to-small-town trope. To do that, I’m using an example from the recently released The Trope Thesaurus Mystery and Thriller, co-written by Sara Rosett and me. It’s available now from D2D and Amazon.

Justified, a character-driven show with elements of mystery and thriller, has become a fan favorite. If you haven’t watched it, it’s available on streaming services, and trust me, this is an enjoyable assignment!

In Justified, disgraced U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is sent back to his Kentucky small town to apprehend his former friend, turned criminal, Boyd Crowder. The series was based on an Elmore Leonard short story, which I also recommend.

First, read my summary of Justified, with the identified tropes below. Notice how well tropes play with others-- it’s the trope superpower.

Justified, Season One (American, 2010)

Raylan Givens is a US Marshal (loner, profession, protector) based in Miami who is sent back to his home state of Kentucky (return to a small town) after embarrassing his bosses.

Unhappily, he returns to the Lexington, KY office, where he learns the Chief, Art Mullen, was his former instructor (boss). Givens grew up in Harlan County, KY, which is home to a local criminal the US Marshall Service seeks—Boyd Crowder (antagonist, suspect). Years earlier, Crowder and Givens worked together as miners for one summer before Harlan went to college and Boyd joined the army (forced proximity). When questioned by his boss about whether the two men are friends, Raylan says ‘We dug coal together” (found family).

The Season One arc involves the US Marshals trying to get evidence that Boyd (suspect) is targeting other drug traffickers to eliminate the drug-selling competition. Raylan is assigned to protect Ava (ticking time bomb), the widow of Boyd’s brother. She killed her husband after years of abuse (victim). Raylan and Ava have an affair even though Raylan still cares for his ex-wife, Winona, who is now married to a scheming local real estate agent (love triangle, politics, secrets). Boyd, who has long been in love with his brother’s wife, stalks Ava (violence).

Boyd’s criminal father has a grudge against Raylan’s shifty father, Arlo, for a previous deal gone bad (antagonists). These two men actively undermine their sons (suspects, politics). Arlo and Raylan have a poor relationship based on Raylan’s childhood and abuse from Arlo. After Raylan’s mother’s death, Arlo married her sister. She and Raylan are close; she paid for his college, providing him an escape from Harlan County (protector).

The first season is all about the shifting alliances Raylan struggles to navigate. He has help from his two Marshall colleagues, Tim and Rachel (found family, profession), as he tries to neutralize the Crowder clan.

• Tropes that work well with Return to Small Town: Found Family, Ticking Time Bomb, Quest, Secrets, and Scars.

• Other examples of stories with Return to Small Town: In the Woods, Hell or Highwater, Winter’s Bone, Burn Notice, and Grosse Pointe Blank.

  ---

Jennifer talks a lot more about this in her new book with mystery legend Sara Rosett, out now.

Get the book

3 Reasons Why I Love the Return To Small Town Trope

1. It provides motivation. Marshall Raylan Givens is the Justified protagonist who only goes back to his hometown, Harlan County, KY, to keep his job. His return is a demotion from his Miami office. What I love about this setup is that, right away, Givens is focused on getting back to Miami. We know his motivation, and the series provides plenty of obstacles to his return.

   When using this trope, think about why your protagonist wants to be there? What are the factors at play, and how can you make it even more difficult for your character? How can you increase the story tension by making it impossible for them to leave? If your character doesn’t want to leave (often the case in a romance as the relationship progresses), what obstacles can you introduce to them?

2. It provides a built-in backstory. Raylan’s habit of shooting bad guys, telling his boss he pulled first, is why he is sent back to Kentucky. We learn that this isn’t the first time Raylan has killed a criminal with his deadly accurate aim. His bosses, who want the accused alive, are not happy with him. Raylan’s boss, Art Mullins, expresses concern at his new hire’s hotshot reputation explaining, “It’s a small office, I get nervous when we change the coffee filters.”

   The return to the small town has a backstory built in, which is why it’s such a popular trope. There’s no need to dump info when the character will be forced to relive it in that environment! It’s the forced proximity trope built into the character’s past.

   When using this trope, think about what scars and secrets you can gradually reveal about your character. This is not a fresh start but a return, which means the character returning carries all misunderstandings and disappointments (given or received) back with them.

3. It provides forced proximity. There’s no way to outrun a small town! Raylan returns to Harlan County to find his ex-wife working at the courthouse and his estranged father skulking around. His work requires him to interact with both of them, causing all kinds of buried feelings to resurface.

   That’s the magic of the forced proximity in that characters have to keep bouncing off each other, generating conflict. Think about how, in using the small town trope, you can create more tension by limiting resources and time. Characters make decisions when they are not at their best and face the consequences, creating story conflict.

Next time you are working on a story involving the return to a small town trope, think about if you have mined all the possibilities for your story. There’s a lot of conflict in this unassuming concept.

Calling All Sleuths, Spies, and Serial Killers! Love red herrings, hidden identities, and secrets? Want to indulge your armchair detective instincts?

Check out The Trope Thesaurus: Mystery & Thriller by USA Today Bestselling authors Jennifer Hilt and Sara Rosett.

Join us as we unlock the storytelling DNA behind forty-plus tropes that power the most gripping tales of suspense.

From domestic thrillers to serial killer hunts, femme fatales to police procedurals, and spy sagas to cozy whodunits, we reveal how each subgenre uses familiar frameworks to keep readers guessing—and gasping.

Packed with examples from books, series, and movies, this guide goes beyond surface patterns to explore how goal, motivation, and conflict intersect with tropes and genre expectations.

Discover how secrets, scars, and hidden identities drive character relationships and create emotional stakes that turn simple puzzles into heart-pounding revelations.

Whether you’re crafting your next twisty thriller, historical mystery, or private detective tale, The Trope Thesaurus: Mystery & Thriller will help you transform tropes into tools—showing relationships in action, heightening suspense, and keeping your readers up long past midnight.

Get the book

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

The first time I saw a post by I reached out to see if I could interview him. He said no because his focus is on writing, and not speaking. “A funny thing happens when you become successful doing something.” He said. “The world tends to conspire to pay you lots of money to do everything but that thing.”

I laughed. He continued. “I don’t want to be a speaker. I want to be a writer.”

He told me that he was about to release a book with HarperCollins called Unhinged Habits and that he built a Substack called as a way to both hold him accountable and attract other writers and authors into his orbit.

Then he sent me the book, and I loved it.

Check out the book

It’s fascinating to watch Jonathan, who has made over $40 million selling products and services online as an entrepreneur, deploy the same methods into launching a book.

Since I’m very interested in this kind of thing, I asked if he’d write for us. He said yes, and asked if he could share the animal school story from his book, which is officially out this week.

Here’s Jon:

Animal School

A rabbit, a fish, a bird, a squirrel, and a bunch ofother animals start a school.

Arguments began when they sat down to write the curriculum. Rabbit wanted running to be included; fish wanted swimming; bird wanted flying; and the squirrel insisted there be a class on advanced tree-climbing techniques.

To appease the group, a well-intentioned mediator added each animal’s specialty into the programming. Then they made the mistake of insisting that all animals take all classes.

The rabbit cruised through the running lessons, but the instructors said it was good intellectual and emotional discipline for it to also take flying lessons. So the rabbit did what it was told, climbed up onto a ledge, and jumped off, flapping its arms just as it was taught.

The poor thing fell and broke a leg. It could never fly, but now it can’t run well either. Instead of getting an A+ in running, it got a C.

The fish had a similar experience. It did well in the swimming class. But then it was time for vertical tree climbing... and, well, you can guess how that went. The teachers gave the fish a D in climbing (because the fish asserted itself), but it had become dehydrated in the process and lost all motivation to swim, receiving a C-.

At the end of the year, the valedictorian of the class was an intellectually disabled salamander.

English came naturally to me in high school. All A’s. Math, on the other hand, was a struggle. Solid C’s. In order for me to get accepted into a good university, my average needed to improve. My parents got me a math tutor.

What happened next was a real-life version of animal school. Math, a subject I showed no natural aptitude for, became the focus. English got ignored because I was already good at it. The strategy worked. I got into a good university.

But does any of this make sense?

I don’t think so.

I should have had an English tutor, perhaps a writing coach.

You may be a genius. You may be a great writer. But you can’t get into a university unless you can also figure out the cos angle of a triangle. That makes no sense.

Growing up, external validations in the way of grades—averaged out across a wide array of opposing aptitudes—are what you’re judged on. But then you get into the real world, and it doesn’t matter if a rabbit can fly, because the rabbit’s fast. And fish don’t need to climb trees; they swim.

You have a thing. A thing that comes natural to you. A thing that you just seem to get. Where you wonder why, even if it’s hard, you have boundless energy for it. A thing that makes sense to you in a way that disables you from having conversations with people you know about it because it’s so clear to you, and foreign to them.

How do you know what your thing is? Here’s a three-part test:

1. What seems easy to you, yet hard for others?

2. What do you have boundless energy for?

3. What can you consume an unlimited amount of content about?

Once you find your thing, obsess over it. Accept the tradeoff that nothing you could work on matters as much as it does.

I write every morning for two hours before my family wakes up. I don’t like to wake up early. But early morning is when my brain works best. So I wake up early.

Waking up early is a constraint (like packing a small backpack for a trip) that has downstream effects on the rest of my life.

Because I wake up early, I go to bed early. I don’t drink alcohol because it wrecks my sleep. I rarely accept invites to social events at night or attend concerts because they end late.

I’d love to see more live music. But I’m not willing to sacrifice my writing for it. I’ve also turned down advisory board invitations. In order to maximize, you must minimize. Identify the tradeoffs. Accept them gladly.

I don’t read a lot of books on writing, but I do read a lot. And everything I read, I read with the goal of improving my writing. I wish I could read for pure pleasure. I’m simply unable.

Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, I’m studying. The title of the introduction of my previous book The Obvious Choice is “Business Was Great, Once.” The first line of Elantris by Brandon Sanderson is “Elantris was beautiful, once.”

I’ll steal like an artist, stealing that phrase from Austin Kleon. For example, “He’s the type of guy who wears a bike helmet while grocery shopping.” I didn’t come up with that. I don’t quite know what it means. But it’s great. I’ll use a version of it somewhere at some point, probably.

The primary goal of my social media is to test passages and use the feedback I get there to improve them.

Everybody’s got a thing. Most never pursue it fully and therefore never thrive. “Bring up your average,” you’re told. Fly, if you’re a fast runner. Climb, if you’re a good swimmer.

Being average isn’t fun. If you follow that path, your energy will ebb and flow: feeling motivated for brief periods before burning out again.

Burning out isn’t the result of working too hard for too long. It happens when you work on the wrong things, or too many things.

You’ve got your thing. You know what it is. The more you design everything else you do to maximize it, the better. The less of everything else, the better.

There’s nuance to this conversation though. A but.

The corollary to the animal school parable is that mastery over one thing is great and fun and absolutely something to go after. But if you want to be conventionally successful with it, your thing needs to be supported by a mediocre-to-just-okay level in what I call “Leapfrog Skills.”

Leapfrog Skills are transferable. They can be combined with any industry expertise to make you more valuable. With them, you’ll have an advantage in any entrepreneurial venture or become indispensable to your employer, allowing you to command a higher salary. If you change industries, you’ll take them with you.

The five biggest Leapfrog Skills are:

1. Business writing: Get to the point. Hook the reader. Tell a story. Write simply. Offer an actionable takeaway.

2. Behavioral psychology: Recognize, navigate, and take ethical advantage of the major cognitive biases.

3. Conversation: Ask the types of questions that encourage others to talk about themselves.

4. Sales: You get what you want by helping others get what they want.

5. Wealth management: Make money with money. With patience, even a little bit of money is enough money to make meaningful money.

The following is a good guideline for how the most successful people in their fields focus their professional development over time:

• Year 1: 75% industry skills / 25% Leapfrog Skills

• Year 2: 50% industry skills / 50% Leapfrog Skills

• Year 3 onward: 25% industry skills / 75% Leapfrog Skills

Industries have different baseline levels of knowledge required for results. Your ratio might be different, but even if it is, it’s probably not by much.

Focus is the key to skill acquisition in a world determined to distract us. Nothing’s new about that advice. You hear it all the time. “The art of focus.” “The secret to success is to be more focused,” they say. Well, how do you decide on your focus? Then, how do you stay focused?

Leapfrog Learning has two parts:

1. Sixty-day focused sprints

2. Teach

The best way to stack skills is to choose one at a time and focus for sixty days of dedicated effort.

Why sixty days?

It’s long enough to develop a mediocre level of skill yet short enough to feel doable.

Once you learn a skill, having it becomes your new normal. Like building muscles or riding a bike, if you don’t use it for a while it’ll get rusty but come back quickly.

Now onto the second part of Leapfrog Learning: teaching it.

A lot of work these days includes listening and reading. That’s where most people stop.

Teaching helps you retain more than 90% of what you’re learning as opposed to listening and reading, which generally sits around 20% knowledge retention rates. These numbers aren’t scientific. Whether they’re technically accurate or not isn’t as important as the pattern: Teaching is the best way to learn and retain what you learn.

Here’s three examples of Leapfrog Learning:

• Get better at social media by choosing one platform to master, listening to podcasts, reading blog posts, and studying the top accounts. After sixty days, build a slide deck, invite three friends over, feed them pizza (without pineapple—pineapple on pizza is gross), and present what you’ve learned.

• Build your personal wealth management philosophy by studying topics like greed and envy, interviewing financial advisors, reading books about investing, and listening to case studies where knowledgeable people share honestly what they do with their own money. After sixty days, teach a loved one about your philosophy or record a podcast episode about it.

• Figure out what to do about artificial intelligence by reading books and listening to experts speak about how it’s going to redefine job roles in the future. Once done, compile a report for your industry and send it to five colleagues.

What’s useful about focus is that a little bit goes a long way. Every time you do a leapfrog period, you’ll find yourself not just a little bit ahead of where you were previously, but a lot.

Look at the unspoken assumptions in your field. The “must-dos” that everyone accepts as gospel.

Most aren’t universal or mandatory.

Find the true top performers. They’re not doing everything. They’ve identified the vital few things that matter and become exceptional at those while merely appearing competent at the rest.

Basic arithmetic undoubtedly matters. But beyond a certain point, if a person isn’t going to go into a career that requires complex mathematics, its importance falls off a cliff.

Specialization isn’t limitation. It’s leverage. The more focused your energy, the more impact you create.

Yes, this is unhinged. However, I tend to think that’s a good word.

-Jon

--

Jonathan Goodman is the author of the newly released Unhinged Habits: A Counterintuitive Guide for Humans to Have More by Doing Less. It’s full of helpful frameworks to break bad habits and build your rich life by mastering the art of strategic subtraction.

If you liked Atomic Habits or Essentialism, you’ll love this book. Same lane, but a contrarian spin with more focus on the deeper values of relationships, health, and purpose.

Check out the book

Unhinged Habits is a practical and philosophical examination of why modern success feels so exhausting—and how to step out of the middle. Rather than promoting discipline, optimization, or hustle, Jonathan Goodman argues that lasting change comes from designing habits, environments, and expectations that reflect how people actually live.

Written for those who are busy, capable, and quietly dissatisfied, the book offers a framework for doing less, choosing deliberately, and designing a life you don’t need to escape from.

These are the core ideas explored in Unhinged Habits and Jonathan Goodman’s work:

• Strategic Subtraction: Why doing less—intentionally—is often the fastest path to clarity, momentum, and sustainability.

• Getting Out of the Middle: The hidden cost of indecision, half-commitment, and chasing conflicting definitions of success.

• Building for Humans, Not Algorithms: How trust, specificity, and consistency outperform visibility and optimization over time.

• Redefining Success: Designing personal metrics that reflect values rather than social comparison.

Habits as Alignment, Not Discipline: Why consistency emerges naturally when habits fit real life.

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I’m always thrilled when “traditional publishing” conferences, like AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), turn out to be filled with more progressive ideas on how to move the industry forward than I expected.

For most of my career the industry has been stuck in the 19th century (yes, I mean the 1800s). For that reason, AWP wasn’t on my radar for a long time, but this year it was in Los Angeles, and I was asked to be on a panel by Jane Friedman, so I went and am glad I did.

I was pleasantly surprised by how forward-thinking the presses and publishing houses had become in the last few years.

After decades being stoned and flogged for talking about self publishing, Kickstarter, and direct sales, it was refreshing to finally be able to lower my defenses and engage without having to be on guard constantly.

One of the most charming people I met at AWP this year was Lee Wind, chief content officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). I really love IBPA and what they are doing. Aside from ALLi, where I serve on the advisory board, it’s my favorite singular publishing organization.

In fact, I love it so much that I’ll be doing a keynote conversation with Jane Friedman at IBPA and BookLife’s Boot Camp for Author Publishers on Jan 30, 2026, and you can get a $20 discount off registration.

That drops the regular price of $99 for IBPA members to $79, and the regular price of $199 for nonmembers to $179 (which includes a full-year membership in IBPA).

Just use the code: BootCampRussellPeeps

I really appreciate anyone who’s willing to stand up and say “I messed up so you don’t have to”, and so this article is right up my alley. That’s the crux of what Lee talks about in this article, and now I’m going to turn the floor over him.

Here’s Lee.

It’s been twenty-one years since I started writing books for kids and teens – a shift that happened after years of writing screenplays that weren’t being produced anyway.

I crowdfunded and published my debut title (a YA novel) in 2018. My eighth book (a picture book) was published by an independent press in November 2025. Book nine (another YA novel) will be published by a different indie press in May 2026.

Do I also have a day-job? Yes, as Chief Content Officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). That’s where I help our more than 4,000 members with education about publishing, coordinate our cooperative book marketing programs, and run our freedom to read project, We Are Stronger Than Censorship, that buys and donates two books to offset every one book challenge.

With that context, here are the seven publishing mistakes I’ve made, so you can avoid them:

Mistake #1: I thought self-publishing was a last resort. It’s not.

Let’s start with the misnomer: “Self” publishing tricks people into thinking they can do it all themselves. That they just need to download the right software and they don’t need anyone else’s input or expertise.

That’s not true. Publishing well requires a team.

“Author Publishing” is a much better term, and the one we use at IBPA. Because even if you’re the author, if you’re publishing, you need to do the things a publisher does. Including hiring professionals to do what you can’t do at a professional level.

If no one is going to pay me to design the cover of their book, I have no business designing the cover of my book! I don’t care how fancy your AI is, you need a professional designer to make sure your cover is professional, has the correct hierarchy of information, and meets genre expectations. (People do judge books by their covers, all the time.)

When I crowdfunded my first book back in 2018, I’d been trying to get traditionally published for years. The only way it seemed I could make it happen was to be the engine of it happening. To be my own publisher.

I rallied my community to cover the costs of putting out a professionally published book (and donating hundreds of copies to empower LGBTQ+ and allied teens). But I went into it with a lot of shame. Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill got lots of accolades (including being a Publishers Weekly “Indie Success Story”), but that sense of ‘I’m publishing this myself as a last resort’ stayed with me.

I talk to a lot of writers, and my sense of author-publishing has really shifted. Far from a last resort, for many authors who decide to publish themselves, it’s a strategy!

One friend who has a sizable platform in his field said to me, why would I give up my I.P. to some publisher when I can own the whole thing?

He’s right. There’s no reason he needs to go with a traditional publisher, as long as he’s willing to put in the work (and hire people for the stuff he can’t do at a professional level.)

He has the Intellectual Property (IP) and he has the audience, and those are the essentials for successful publishing.

Mistake #2: I didn’t do a P&L. I should have.

A Profit and Loss Statement (P&L) is Publishing 101. It helps you map out what your book will cost to produce and what you can realistically expect in return.

While I did a lot of math figuring out the different levels of my first Kickstarter campaign, I never did a P&L for that book. Part of my day-job was—and is—helping publishers (author publishers and indie publishers alike) with their book marketing, and yet I didn’t plan a budget for marketing my own debut novel!

You need a basic P&L that includes all formats, sales channels, a marketing budget, funding sources, what you’re going to charge by format, how and if you’re going to handle returns, and how many books you need to sell to make the numbers work.

Yes, you can still trust your gut. And you don’t have to be data-driven. But at least be data-informed.

Mistake #3: I misinterpreted my resistance to AI.

Tools (including AI) might give me more time to do what I love.

I’ll acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable with how many of the large language models (LLMs) are trained on stolen copyrighted works – including my books, without my permission or compensating me (or anyone else).

But I also know that certain tools can help. The word processing program I’m writing this on helped me spell-check “misspelling” in this paragraph. Could I have turned to my bookshelf, grabbed a dictionary, and looked up the word? Sure. But clicking on the red-underlined word and choosing the correct spelling from a drop-down list saved me two minutes.

That adds up.

For over a year, everyone from my day-job boss to my father was urging me to experiment with LLMs, and I just didn’t do it. I recently learned about Apertus, an ethically sourced LLM trained on open-source and licensed works only. Now I’m experimenting. (Be assured I wrote this piece without AI – 100% human effort. Because I’m hoping you’ll spend your human time reading it.)

But I’m keeping an open mind about how new tools might be able to free up my time from administrative stuff so I can do more of the human creative stuff.

Mistake #4: I thought consumers cared who published a book.

It is a very inside-baseball kind of thing to turn to the copyright page to see who published a book.

What readers do care about is if the book is well-written and edited. Is it well-designed? Is it indistinguishable in quality from a book put out by a major publisher?

If so, you’re in luck, because consumers don’t care who published a book.

This is an incredible opportunity for authors who want to publish their own work. But like I mentioned above, you have to hire professionals to do what you can’t do at that professional level.

Even if you’re an English teacher, you will need to hire an editor. Most of us can’t find all the typos in our own resumes, so how could we expect to professionally edit an entire book?

And pay attention to the ‘tells’ that indicate a book has been professionally published and make sure your book includes them too. For example, books by new author-publishers often miss including a colophon. It’s that little logo of the imprint/publisher at the bottom of a book’s spine. (IBPA puts out a free Industry Standards Checklist for a Professionally Published Book – a handy guide to make sure you’re not missing anything important.)

Bottom line: Know your editing and design essentials, and get it right so your book has a chance to find its readers.

Mistake #5: I thought getting published by a publisher meant all I had to do was write. Ha!

Whether you publish your own work, are published by a hybrid publisher, or are published by a traditional publisher, this truth stays the same:

You are responsible for driving demand.

My second YA novel came out from Interlude Press/Duet/Chicago Review Press in 2024. Because the publisher was only releasing the book in paperback and ebook, I pitched them on my crowdfunding a special edition hardcover that would fund buying hundreds of copies of the paperback—from them—to donate to empower Queer and allied teens. (Yup. It’s definitely my author brand, and something that resonates with my community.)

The publisher said yes, the Kickstarter succeed, and we raised enough to give away over 700 copies of A Different Kind of Brave. I also have a really beautiful special edition hardcover sitting on my desk.

All that attention helped boost sales… and the publisher agreed to publish the sequel!

How do you drive demand? I believe you do it through branding and building community.

Mistake #6: There are six ways your book can be vetted. I missed three of them.

You need someone besides you (ideally someone whose opinion isn’t seen as biased) to say your book has value. Here are six ways to do so:

1. Blurbs by known authors (or other notable people) who share your ideal reader audience. Corporate publishers are making news saying they’re not going to be asking for these any more, but it’s still very much of value for authors publishing their own work.

2. Trade reviews (a book review from outlets like Foreword Reviews, Kirkus Reviews, and BookLife/Publishers Weekly.) These ‘Editorial Reviews’ appear on your book’s listing on online retailers, and even if you’ve paid for the review (like with Kirkus) they’re known for being tough. A good blurb from a trade review can be golden for your marketing.

3. Awards. Apply. The news comes late, but being able to say you’re an “award-winning author” is nice. The seals on your book cover if your book wins are helpful too! Take advantage of resources like the Alliance of Independent Authors’s (Alli’s) Book Award and Contest Ratings to avoid being taken advantage of. Keep in mind awards are incredibly subjective, and your book can still be awesome even if it doesn’t win. Sometimes my publishers don’t want to pay the entry fee to enter an awards program. But if I think it’s a good fit, I pay the entry fee myself.

For my debut book, I vetted my book with the three ways above. My mistake was missing these three:

4. Other editorial coverage and reviews. There is a whole world of media that covers books (and the topics books cover.) Be sure to pitch your book (and you as the book’s subject matter expert) to media folks including relevant podcasts, blogs, newsletters, and local media. Keep in mind local media coverage can lead to bigger media outlet interest. I was fortunate to have my picture book Red and Green and Blue and White get a glowing review in the New York Times, who called it “beautiful,” thanks in part to illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky’s fame. But I’ve also been a guest on a ton of podcasts, and collectively those have probably reached a lot more readers.

5. Reader Reviews. Consumer reviews don’t necessarily happen unless you ask for them. Remind folks they don’t need to do a book report or summarize the plot. Just a star rating and one sentence on what they thought was great will work!

6. Word of Mouth. Even with all our technology, the thing that really sells books is someone telling someone else how much they enjoyed your book. Ask for this – including in the back of your book. (They got to the end so they probably enjoyed it!)

Use all the available ways to vet your book.

Mistake #7: I didn’t know that every channel needs its own marketing strategy.

Want Library sales?

Make sure you’re set up for success. Often librarians need a strong trade review to back up their acquiring a book for their collection. And know that the data (here, here, and beyond) shows that libraries drive discovery and book sales!

Want Bookstore sales?

Does your book have the consumer demand to make it worthwhile for the store to give it shelf space? How are you going to handle returns? And don’t be fooled – while indie bookstores are tastemakers, many established independent publishers see only 10% or less of their total sales from physical bookstores.

Want Consumer Sales?

What’s your marketing, advertising, and events mix? What’s online, what’s physical (like a postcard or bookmark), what’s in-person?

How are you finding your readers – and how are your readers finding your book?

Are you selling direct? Through third-party platforms? What’s your strategy for building your email list so you can nurture your audience – and let them know about your next book?

When I started publishing, I had one strategy and too many channels I was trying to reach. But now I get that every channel needs its own strategy.

Don’t Make My Mistakes.

Hopefully my hard-earned lessons will help smooth your journey!

If you’d like to dig in further, we used these seven points as a rough outline when designing IBPA’s upcoming Boot Camp for Author Publishers. It’s a one-day virtual conference on Jan 30, 2026 built for authors who are planning to publish their own work, who have published their own work, or who are working with a hybrid publisher.

We’ll start the day with a keynote conversation between Jane Friedman and this platform’s very own Russell Nohelty on The New Author Opportunity.

That’s followed by six 40-min presentations (with time for Q&A) to cover:

• Business Model Basics

• Technology

• Editing and Design Essentials

• Driving Demand through Branding and Community Building

• Vetting Your Book

• Market Strategies by Channel

Plus, from top to bottom it’s a day of networking with other author-publishers. (We also offer attendees year-long access to a private channel on IBPA’s Slack workspace.)

IBPA is putting on this Boot Camp for Author Publishers in partnership with BookLife (from Publishers Weekly), and we’re happy to offer Russell’s readers a $20 discount off registration. That drops the regular price of $99 for IBPA members to $79, and the regular price of $199 for nonmembers to $179 (which includes a full-year membership in IBPA).

Just use the code:

BootCampRussellPeeps

at checkout.

Find out more about the Boot Camp for Author Publishers at: https://bit.ly/BootCampAuthorPublishers26

To learn more about Lee Wind’s books, visit his website at leewind.org and you’re invited to sign up for his monthly newsletter here.

And you can learn more about IBPA here.

What do you think? What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your publishing journey that can help others? Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I don’t publish a lot of comic content on The Author Stack, but more and more authors are talking about making comics from their work. Since I grew up in comics, had my first success in comics, and used comics to build my “empire”, I love when creators write guest posts for The Author Stack that can be actionable and relevant to novelists.

Recently, my friend TJ Sterling asked if I would be interested in having the co-creator of his series, MUSA: Lion of Mali, write about how they went about creating this wholly original piece that blends history and fantasy. The campaign is over, but late pledges are up for this Kickstarter book.

MUSA: Lion of Mali is a historical fantasy epic centuries in the making. Join us in this legendary tale of family, magic, and empire-building.

Mansa Musa, the wealthiest man in history, steps off the pages of legend in an epic tale of family, magic, and empire-building, as he embarks on a journey that will shape the destiny of an entire continent and quite possibly the world!

Check out the campaign

Writing historical fiction is always an act of translation.

You’re taking the past, filtered through incomplete records, political agendas, oral traditions, colonial distortion, and outright erasure, and translating it into a narrative language modern readers can understand. But what happens when the history you’re adapting isn’t just incomplete, but contradictory? When primary sources disagree, timelines blur, and the subject of your story exists more as legend than documented life? When you’ve got more fiction than fact to build off of?

That was the challenge I faced while writing the 100-page graphic novel Musa: Lion of Mali, a sword-and-sorcery tinted historical epic centered on the early life of Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire and widely regarded as the wealthiest individual in recorded history.

Most people know Mansa Musa as a finished figure: a middle-aged emperor whose (in)famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 disrupted entire regional economies, who commissioned mosques and universities across West Africa, and whose reign helped solidify Mali as a center of learning, culture, and global trade for Africa and the rest of the world. But the man before the crown, the young Musa Keita, still forming his worldview, values, and ambitions exists largely in his own massive shadow.

This article is about how I approached transmuting that shadow into a living, breathing protagonist while navigating three core challenges:

1. Very little hard, verifiable historical information

2. Conflicting reports across African, Arab, and European sources

3. The responsibility to remain respectful to the cultures, past and present, native to the story’s region

Instead of treating these obstacles as barriers, I treated them as creative constraints. These were the “guardrails” that guided my choices instead of limiting them outright.

Accepting That “Accuracy” Is Not the Same as “Truth”

One of the first lessons any historical fiction writer has to internalize is that accuracy and truth are not synonymous.

Accuracy is all about facts: dates, names, places, recorded events, etc.. Truth is about context, motivation, and human experience. When historical records are scarce or contradictory—as they often are for pre-colonial African empires where a heady mix of oral tradition and colonial interference muddle the records—the pursuit of accuracy alone can become paralyzing. You find yourself frozen, afraid to invent, afraid to offend. Honestly, you just end up afraid to get it “wrong.”

I had to let go of the idea that there was a single, correct version of Mansa Musa’s early life waiting to be uncovered. I really didn’t have much of a choice.

Instead, I reframed the question:

What version of this story could plausibly exist within everything we know about the world that shaped him…with some magic thrown in?

That shift from reconstructing events to reconstructing conditions became the foundation of my process.

Researching the World Before the Man

When you can’t fully know the individual, you settle for getting to know the ecosystem.

Before writing a single line of dialogue, I immersed myself in the known cultural, social, religious, economic, and environmental realities of 13th–14th century West Africa, particularly the Mali Empire and its predecessor states. This included:

• Islam as practiced in West Africa, which blended scholarship, mysticism, and local traditions rather than mirroring Middle Eastern orthodoxy

• The numerous spiritual systems and customs that predated Islam’s rise in the region and somehow managed to coexist with the highly influential and codified religion

• Trade networks connecting Mali to North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the broader Islamic world through gold, salt, and scholarship

• Social hierarchies and governance, including the roles of griots, nobles, warriors, and scholars

• Geography and climate, from the Sahel to the Niger River, shaping travel, warfare, and settlement

• Oral storytelling traditions, where history, morality, and myth coexisted without rigid separation

This research didn’t give me a definitive portrait of young Musa, but it gave me something nearly as valuable: boundaries.

I now knew what couldn’t happen without breaking cultural logic. I knew which motivations would feel alien, which behaviors would ring false, and which themes would resonate authentically within the world he inhabited.

Within those boundaries, invention became permissible. And I still got to add my sword-and-sorcery.

Reverse Engineering a Legend

Most historical protagonists are written moving toward their legacy. In this case, I had to work backwards.

We know what Mansa Musa became: a ruler synonymous with wealth, learning, faith, and influence. The challenge wasn’t inventing greatness, but explaining how a man grows into it.

Rather than asking, “What did young Musa do?” I asked:

• What kind of world produces a ruler who values scholarship?

• What formative experiences would instill both humility and ambition?

• How does a man learn to wield power responsibly before he has it?

• What failures would temper the legend we know?

The Musa of Lion of Mali is in his early twenties. He is capable, intelligent, aware of his strengths, but mostly untested. He exists in a moment of transition, both personally and politically. The narrative doesn’t aim to canonize specific historical events where we can’t prove anything. Instead, it really just tries to dramatize pressures: expectations of lineage, the burden of the faith others have in you, the weight of empire, and the cost of leadership long before a crown is placed on your head.

This is what I mean by “reverse engineering.” The known endpoint informs the arc, but doesn’t dictate the steps.

Navigating Conflicting Sources Without Choosing Sides

Another major challenge was the presence of conflicting historical accounts, particularly from medieval Arab chroniclers whose writings are invaluable in setting the stage.

But the last thing I’d call them is “infallible.”

Instead of christening one source as “correct,” I treated contradictions as narrative texture.

History isn’t a courtroom transcript. It’s a conversation across centuries, shaped by perspective, politics, and proximity. When two sources disagree, that disagreement itself reveals something important about who was writing, why they were writing, and for whom they were writing.

In the graphic novel, this approach manifests in subtle ways:

• Characters may have relationships or roles in the story that they didn’t in real life

• Rumors and reputation carry as much weight as facts

• Myth and reality blur, especially around figures of power

By acknowledging uncertainty within the story world, the narrative mirrors the historian’s dilemma instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

Respect as a Creative Imperative, Not a Disclaimer

Writing about cultures that aren’t your own, especially cultures that have been historically misrepresented or erased, demands more than good intentions. It demands discipline.

Respect, for me, meant rejecting the urge to exoticize, simplify, or flatten West African history into a backdrop for spectacle. The country of Mali and its surrounding territories needed to feel as alive and integral to the story’s plot as Musa himself when everything was said and done.

Even though Musa: Lion of Mali embraces sword-and-sorcery aesthetics, those elements are rooted in the cosmology, symbolism, and oral traditions of the region. You won’t find anything imported wholesale from Camelot, Middle Earth, or Westeros.

It also meant recognizing that this story doesn’t belong solely to the past. The cultures of Mali, West Africa, and the African diaspora are living, evolving realities. Every creative choice carries contemporary resonance.

The question was never, “Can I do this?” It was always, “How do I do this responsibly?”

Letting the Medium Do Some of the Work

Graphic novels are uniquely suited to historical storytelling under uncertainty. Visual language allows implication, symbolism, and atmosphere to carry meaning where exposition might overreach or mix up the message.

In Musa: Lion of Mali, architecture, clothing, weapons, and landscapes communicate history without footnotes. Silence can speak. A single panel can suggest legend without asserting fact.

This was not a workaround. In my humble opinion, it was a strength that needed to be leveraged to make this project the success that it became.

The collaboration with my own Giant, Killer Press and my co-creator TJ Sterling’s RAE Comics ensured that research extended beyond the script into visual design, reinforcing authenticity at every level of the work. We spent months researching before assembling a team to create the amazing concept art of people, places, vehicles, and the like that the art team took and ran with.

Why This Kind of Historical Fiction Matters

When history is fragmented, silence is usually what ends up filling in the gaps. When we’re lucky. Sometimes, sadly, misinformation becomes the gooey filling at the center of the narrative.

Writing Musa: Lion of Mali was not about claiming authority over the past. It was about inviting engagement. It was always about giving modern readers a doorway into a history too often reduced to a paragraph, a statistic, or a trivia question about wealth.

Historical fiction, when done thoughtfully, doesn’t replace scholarship. It sparks curiosity. It encourages readers to ask better questions, seek deeper knowledge, and reconsider assumptions about whose histories are worth telling in epic form.

It transforms readers into researchers.

An Invitation to the Reader

Musa: Lion of Mali isn’t presented as the definitive account of Mansa Musa’s youth. It is one plausible story (with a pinch of magic thrown in for good measure!), crafted with care, respect, and a deep love for the cultures that inspired it.

If this article resonates—if you’re interested in how history, myth, and imagination can coexist on the page—I invite you to see the work for yourself.

Visit www.musalionofmali.com to explore how Giant, Killer Press and RAE Comics have brought this 120-page sword-and-sorcery historical epic graphic novel to life for modern readers. The Kickstarter campaign ended successfully on November 28th, 2025 but that was just the start of the conversation.

Remember, while history may be fragmented, the stories are still waiting to be told.

Author Bio:

Adeatoyshe “Ade” Heru is a historian, storyteller, and multimedia creator living in Baltimore, Maryland with his beautiful wife (and project manager) Felicia and their two beautiful children. He splits his time between his “day job” in Corporate America and his “Ade job” as owner, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Creative Officer of his own publishing company Giant, Killer Press. “Musa: Lion of Mali” is just the first of many new titles he will be bringing to the independent comic and tabletop gaming markets. His big hope? To make those degrees in English, Multimedia Production, and Creative Writing pay for themselves.

What do you think? Are there any historical figures you would love to make come alive in comics? Let us know in the comments.

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Today, I am excited to bring you a new contributor from to talk about marketing your book authentically.

I first met with and her team a few weeks ago, and love the energy they bring to this work. Even though we’re at different parts of the journey, we’re seeing the same things.

If there’s one thing I’ve seen over and over again, it’s that most authors aren’t struggling because they’re lazy or untalented. They’re struggling because they’re trying to be something they’re not. They’re performing a version of success that burns them out.

That’s why I wanted to share this piece by Ceylan Gundaz.

We talk a lot about authenticity here, but these are also the pieces that tend to resonate most. People need permission to stop playing the dance, and so here’s another person giving you that permission.

I really like what they are doing with their publication, and hope you find something useful in this article. If you do, follow their publication.

One Brilliant Arc (OBA) Newsletter

OBA is the home for truth-tellers, cultural disruptors, and silenced voices ready to speak. Through bold essays, we help you find your voice, rewrite the stories that hurt you, and build narratives that fight back--personally and publicly.

When I published my first book, I did everything wrong.

(Granted, I was 15, but age is not an excuse for ignorance, only an explanation for it).

I got arrested by the story that grabbed me by the throat and demanded I write it. I cried, screamed, and laughed my way through getting the words onto paper.

I wrestled with an editor who returned my manuscript with more mistakes than I sent it in withm, paid for a self-publishing company to publish my work, and assumed their “package” deal included doing all of the networking to reach big book buyers for me.

I set up accounts on Goodreads, Gmail, and Pinterest with “Author” in the bio that I no longer have the passwords to no matter how many times I search for them.

I had only a vague concept of marketing strategies and business plans. I thought the extent of personal branding was designing a pretty Blogspot for an author website and planning for the next books I would write and how they would fit in with my style.

Then, I sat back and waited for my dedicated fans to come to me and my 15-year-old self to be asked to do interviews for being a teen author.

Surprise: they never came.

I launched my author career to cricket chirps…and I learned the hard truth every baby author must, namely that writing the book is the easy part of being a published author.

Are You an Author or an Actor?

We are incredibly lucky to live in an age where the entertainment industry is less and less gatekept. Tools like social media that were at the beginning of their inception when I was launching my career now grant us access to information and personal experiences from others who have forged their own paths to success.

When I started learning from such resources about how to use these tools successfully, I realized everything I did wrong with my debut novel. However, I also quickly gave up on the idea of ever publishing again because playing the part of a successful marketer sounded absolutely exhausting.

When you publish, you have to do way more things yourself than you are prepared for. My mistake was being fooled by these “publishing packages” into thinking that someone else would do all that work for me, and I would only have to wear the hat of the author.

I felt overwhelmed and ill-equipped realizing I actually had to wear the hats of business owner, marketing strategist, salesperson, content creator, platform builder, and networker if I wanted readers to even know my book existed. I had to embody countless different personalities with all of these opposing skillsets that go into each of these roles authors have to juggle.

Playing the role of a successful marketer in particular required being loud, assertive, and incessant, or the exact opposite of the quiet, soulful, gentle storyteller I am.

The performance polish, the constant duplication of someone else’s trends, the marketing gimmicks, and the inundation of fast content felt not only foreign to my personality, but genuinely soul-sucking to engage in for a career.

Now that I work as an editor and story coach, I’ve met countless other authors who are in the same boat. Most of us write our books because we genuinely want to say, “Sit with me awhile. Let me tell you a story that takes you away from the chaos for a minute and helps you see a different world. Hopefully my words can make you feel something.”

When we write our stories, we write with a certain vulnerability. Our souls peek out on the page because our words come straight from our hearts. Playing the part of a salesperson seems to go against the very genuine, down-to-earth personality we tell our stories with.

But! I was absolutely floored to learn, after years of trying to mold myself into a person I wasn’t in order to build my writing career, that believing I needed to put on a different personality with all of these different hats was a lie.

You don’t have to play a part that isn’t authentic to your own personality and voice as a storyteller if you want to be a successful author, either. In fact, being inauthentic is actually hurting your marketing.

Subscribe now

What Place Does Authenticity Have in Marketing?

Without a consistent foundation that connects and strengthens all the facets of your personal brand—storyteller, author, content creator, marketing strategist, business owner—not only will your brand fracture and confuse your potential audience, but you will very quickly burn yourself out trying to keep up all of the different personality masks that aren’t really you across all of these different roles.

You do not need an entirely new personality to speak the language of marketing. All you really need is just being yourself.

But that solution sounds way too easy. Maybe even a little delusional. Actually, when you look at the statistics, you’ll find that nowadays authenticity is the key to success in marketing.

This is why authenticity must be a pivotal part of your marketing plan:

1. Your authenticity makes you stand out from the noise.

We live in an age of an inescapable, global, oversaturated market. Not only that, we are entering an age of AI where there is instant, unlimited content being generated for publishing—both online and in print. What can make you stand out from this sheer volume of competition?

The only thing unique to you that no one else on this planet has ever or will ever have is your human story and your authentic voice—exactly what you (hopefully) used to write a book that stands out from the noise in the first place.

You must let the YOU that shines in your story also shine in your marketing. This is exactly what will connect with your target audience of readers who are looking for your specific story.

2. Authenticity is memorable.

Due to the onslaught of information overload we are all living with, everyone is going through their life with constant demands on their time and attention. It’s impossible to focus on everything the market asks us to focus on.

As a result, everyone is scrolling with incredibly short, distracted attention spans, and you know what they’re sick of giving their time to? Fake people.

We’re coming out of an age that was full of fake performance polish, fake personas, and fake perfection, and we are moving into an age where AI’s fake humanity is tainting everything. The system that has sold us nothing but these plastic performances has convinced us that we won’t be successful if we show up as anything real.

We are taught that genuineness in business is a weakness and our imperfect, messy humanity isn’t appealing to anyone buying. So when we try to learn how to copy marketing success, we learn to hide behind these masks that ultimately just make us sound like a carbon copy of the next person, who is also hiding behind a mask.

No one is memorable in a sea of avatars that all look and sound the same. If you show up the same way everyone else is, you will only fade away into oblivion.

3. Authenticity makes a lasting impact.

People use “marketability” to define what readers are looking to buy. Marketability is what makes you appeal to a larger audience. Industry experts are paid specifically to study the current trends and stay on top of what tropes, imagery, genres, and pacing are popular in this moment. But at the end of the day? All of this is just a trend.

The average of what sells best at the moment is nothing but a fad. You can create a second career for yourself studying how to make a perfectly marketable book, but by the time you write it the trends will have changed. You can chase what is popular now, but you’ll never catch success.

The books that endure through the ages—the stories that stick with readers long after they’ve put the book down—aren’t written for the trends of the time. They are timeless. If you want to tell a truly impactful story, you must be true to the real humanity inside of you. When you tap into those universal human emotional truths, you will find that you connect with readers across every fad. Through the ever-changing trends, authentic humanity will never go out of style, even if it is momentarily unpopular.

So knowing that authenticity is a necessary marketing strategy, how do we now turn our authenticity into a practical marketing strategy?

3 Steps to Building Your Authentic Marketing Strategy

These are the three pillars you must establish if you want to build a marketing strategy that is authentic, effective, and won’t burn you out—all genuine storytelling, no gimmicks, all YOU.

1. Define your why — purpose. Why did you tell this story in the first place? What is the message you want to share with the world? What is the reason that keeps you pushing through all of the work that goes into being an author, even when there is no payout? You need to constantly remind yourself, because you will forget. Write your “why” down somewhere you can look at it every day. Keep the stories, art, and artists who light that fire in you on rotation in your life. This purpose will keep you centered across every venture you pursue and through any challenge to your authentic brand.

2. Use your own voice — identity. Define what your individual, authentic voice sounds like. Before you face the market and online trolls that will beat you up and spit you back out again, be anchored in who you are and what you stand for. Get to know yourself so well that you will recognize when something starts creeping into the edges of your tone that isn’t you.

   You won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you are no one’s cup of tea then you probably will need to make some changes to how you present yourself so that your readers will connect with you better. The reality of the industry today is that you have to compromise between the wisdom of authentic marketing strategy and the parts of the game we have to play to break into the arena of marketability. Before you face these moments of conflict around these harsh realities, decide what you are NOT willing to compromise on.

   If you consistently sound like yourself whenever you show up in public, your audience will learn they can trust you because they know who you really are. Confused buyers don’t buy, and if your voice isn’t consistently and distinctly yours, then they will be confused.

3. Get knocked down 100 times, get up 101 — resilience. There is trial and error in every personal journey. Your path to success as an author will not look like anyone else’s. As a unique individual, you have to discover your own secret sauce for success. We can get incredible advice and insight from others who have walked their paths to the same goal before us, but what has worked for a different individual in the past won’t necessarily work for you. Learn continuously and widely. Be humble, willing to make mistakes and try again until something sticks. The only thing in common on all of our paths are setbacks and challenges. What sets apart the successful from the failed writers are the ones who refuse to stay down.

When we dream of being published authors, doing the behind-the-scenes, unglamorous work of marketing doesn’t show up in our daydreams. But marketing doesn’t have to be the bane of every author’s existence. Using your authenticity as the theme of your personal brand is a surefire way to grow your platform without dimming your soul.

Are you looking ahead to the publishing process with dread? Are you feeling lost with your current work in progress in the middle of your own words? Need a professional editor for your book who will work WITH you as your story partner, not AGAINST your authentic voice? One Brilliant Arc’s team of story coaches and editors walk you through the entire process no matter where you are: from writing, to editing, to publication, to marketing. Check out our newsletter and subscribe for weekly pro storytelling tips, insightful conversations with industry experts, and a supportive community for preserving your authentic voice while telling stories that matter!

One Brilliant Arc (OBA) Newsletter

OBA is the home for truth-tellers, cultural disruptors, and silenced voices ready to speak. Through bold essays, we help you find your voice, rewrite the stories that hurt you, and build narratives that fight back--personally and publicly.

What do you think?

• What is your why?

• How do you think about constructing your own voice?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Melissa Storm is one of my favorite humans, along with being one of the most talented author support humans on the planet.

Not to mention she’s a multi-six-figure author across different pen names, a genius, and hilarious. She is literally a force of nature.

Working as both an author of weird books and somebody who helps authors get visibility for their work, she has a unique perspective on AI and the place we are that contradicts the doom and gloom we normally hear in the author space.

So, I wanted to bring her in to talk about “The Golden Age of Weird”. She currently has two Kickstarter campaigns live. The first is for her very weird cozy fantasy series.

Check out the campaign

The second is for a Kickstarter ads course, where she uses the above campaign as a case study.

Back the campaign

As somebody who launched a Kickstarter campaign to promote a book about Kickstarter, this is very aligned to my interests. I hope it’s aligned for you, too.

I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment. I just didn’t know it would look like this. When people talk about the AI revolution, they tend to focus on what might disappear. Jobs. Skills. Stability. Maybe even the idea of what it means to be a creator. The headlines make the world feel like it’s cracking open, and not always in a good way.

But if you sit where I sit, if you watch what I watch every single day across thousands of ad sets, publishing tools, reader behaviors, algorithm shifts, and creative breakthroughs, you start to see a different story. A better one. A hopeful one.

Something extraordinary is happening, and I want you to feel it, too.

And the reason is simple. The rise of AI has made people hungry for one thing above all else. True, unmistakable humanity. Not the polished, curated kind. Not the safe kind. The weird kind. The kind that opens a door and says, here’s my odd little corner of the universe. Come on in if you’re feeling the vibes.

Readers are craving something only real humans can make. Something a little strange, a little specific, a little unapologetically itself.

Something like an autistic gnome who makes divine wishes with her talking cheese sidekick.

Something like me.

Something like you.

This is the first time in human history where deeply quirky, niche, highly individual work has an easier path to the right audience than the broad, generic, please-like-me work that used to dominate publishing.

It feels like a gift. Fuck it, it feels like justice.

It feels like the world finally figured out that being different isn’t a glitch. In fact, it’s the whole effing point.

The algorithms finally caught up to us

For so long, every creative had to play a guessing game. Throw work into the void. Hope someone might see it. Pray the right readers would stumble upon it before the wrong ones shouted it down. It was like trying to whisper your truth into a crowded stadium.

That era is finished.

The Amazon and Meta algorithms have grown sharp in ways we once only dreamed about. They understand micro-niches. They understand reader psychology. They understand that someone who wants a gnome with social anxiety will also love a sentient cheese wheel with too many opinions.

They can place my incredibly odd book into the exact hands that will laugh, gasp, or cry at the exact moments I wanted them to. I no longer have to spray and pray. I no longer speak to the masses.

I speak directly to the reader who was basically born to love my work (and probably for other reasons too, but hey!).

It still astonishes me. Every week I track how the delivery shifts, who the ads find, how the responses change, how the communities grow. Watching it feels like watching a destiny machine click into place. A weird one. A beautiful one.

Mine.

People say algorithms are cold. But they haven’t met these new ones. This new generation is something else. Something almost intuitive. Something that knows where your creative fingerprint belongs.

I’ve always believed that niche is power, but now we have proof.

Meeting the patron saint of weird

This summer I found myself in Alaska at a VIP meet and greet with Weird Al Yankovic. It felt like the universe whispered, it’s time. Face the truth of who you’ve always been.

I brought a copy of my book Bard to the Bone, handed it to him, and said thank you for making weird a viable career path. Thank you for saying, through your entire career, that oddities matter. Thank you for showing that the strange kids don’t have to hide in the back row forever.

He smiled. He accepted the book. My heart did a small somersault. And the camera went click.

Check out the book

I don’t know if he’ll ever read it. That’s not the point. The point was claiming my heritage as one of the Weird Kids Who Made It.

And realizing that this is the best possible moment in history to be weird.

I built a seven-figure agency to serve this moment

Running a seven-figure ads agency (Hi, I’m also CEO of Novel Publicity) didn’t fall out of the sky. I built it brick by brick over more than a decade. And yet it still surprises me how much the landscape continues to shift under our feet.

You’d think I’d be exhausted by it. Some days I am. But most days I feel a joy that’s almost childlike. I see the arc of the industry bending in real time, and it bends toward opportunity.

I don’t fear automation. I don’t fear AI. I don’t fear disruption.

The world doesn’t need more sameness. It needs more specificity. It needs more people willing to show up with their full strange humanity and say, here I am.

It needs your fingerprints all over your work.

The algorithms that once made everyone feel invisible can now find your people with precision I could barely imagine ten years ago.

And my cheese book prove it.

What is my cheese book? Let me tell you how strange my current Kickstarter is.

The book is about a wish-granting autistic gnome, her overly confident cosmically divine cheese wheel, a swarmless kobold slowly becoming intelligent, and a town that runs on divine bureaucracy. It’s cozy fantasy that leans into neurodivergent truth instead of neurotypical aspiration. It’s heartfelt, ridiculous, tender, and chaotic.

And readers love it.

Not because it’s normal. Not because it’s market tested. Not because it fits neatly into a mold.

Readers love it because it’s weird with intention.

Check out the campaign

Guess what? The ads work. The ads work like they were designed for this exact book. Because they were.

I’ve been training a suite of new methods that match the changing behavior of Meta’s Andromeda algorithm. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an algorithm naturally prefer the most human option in the batch. It rewards specificity. It rewards heart. It rewards originality.

The ads for this Kickstarter are performing beautifully. They’re driving the book into the hands of people who laugh out loud at the socially anxious stumbles and cry at a moment of deep and hard-won self-acceptance. They’re connecting with autistic readers, quirky readers, cozy readers, neurodivergent parents, and anyone who’s ever felt like they take up too much space or not enough.

The ads are doing exactly what the book needs. Not by accident, but by design.

The most meta project of my life

I’m running a Kickstarter right now that teaches creators how to run ads to Kickstarters. It’s the most awkwardly brilliant thing I’ve ever done…

…but it’s also completely on brand for the weirdness era.

I’m teaching best practices through a live example that’s actively hitting stretch goals as the lessons drop. I’m using the exact system I teach to run the campaign. I’m letting people watch the real time data so they can see how each decision plays out.

I built the course. I built the ads. I built the system that supports it.

Back the campaign

The best part is that it works for every niche. Not just books. I’ve done it for games, nonfiction, service offers, digital products, and art. The mechanics are universal. The examples happen to be bookish because that’s where my heart lives, but the method itself doesn’t care what your niche is.

Weird. Serious. Experimental. Traditional. Spiritual. Scientific. Cozy. Macabre. Minimalist. Maximalist.

You can join the Kickstarter for just fifty dollars. You get the entire course. All the bonuses. All the live lessons. And a front row seat to the new era of ads in publishing.

I also built an AI system that writes marketing copy the way authors actually need it

A while back I realized something. If AI is going to exist no matter what, I want it to serve the author community instead of swallowing it.

So I spent hundreds of hours training an AI workflow called Manuscript-to-Marketing.

It takes your book. It reads it. It analyzes tropes, vibe, emotional tone, audience alignment, competitive edges, and marketing angles. Then it writes your ad copy, blurb upgrades, meta descriptions, social media strategy, and launch assets without stripping out your voice.

Preview a report for The Wheel Deal

It soft-launched a few weeks ago, and already the feedback has blown me away. Authors are saying the tool helps them understand their own book better. They say the ads finally sound like them. They say the process feels human, not mechanical. One person even said it gave her hope back and helped her fall in love with writing again instead of quitting. I mean WOW.

That was always the goal.

To keep the soul of creativity at the center of everything.

If you want to try Manuscript to Marketing, use discount code WEIRDWAVE for fifty percent off (the offer’s only good for 2 weeks, so don’t wait). I want it to be accessible. I want creators to feel empowered. I want you to have tools that make your life easier and your marketing better.

Try the program

A new hope

I know it sounds dramatic, but something in the air feels familiar.

Hope is rising again.

This moment reminds me of the energy that kicked off the original renaissance of indie publishing. Except now we’re wiser. More skilled. Better supported. Better connected. And far less afraid of being ourselves.

It’s a beginning, but it also feels like… I don’t know, Episode Four. Wink.

A new hope. A strange hope. A wild hope.

The old systems are crumbling. The old rules are fading. The new era belongs to the weird, the tender, the curious, the neurodivergent, the joyful misfits, the artists who don’t fit inside neat little boxes, and the creators who once thought they were too much or too little.

This is your moment.

So, write the strange book. Build the bold brand. Start the small business. Run the odd little campaign. Say the thing that scares you. Make the work that only you can make.

Then let the new algorithms do what they do best. Let them find your people and prove what I already know is true.

We’re entering the golden age of weird.

And we’re building it together.

To your blinding and brilliant success, friends!

Melissa Storm / Luna Ryder / A Million Other Things

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

P.S. because I love getting “meta” where I can, here’s what I wrote to prompt my robot assistant (in this case ChatGPT 5.1, although I’m typically a Gemini simp) to prep this post:

I want to write a blog post about the new opportunities to be weird and make a living at it, not despite the AI revolution but because of it.

I want to talk about the rise of AI leading people to crave more authentic, quirky, uniquely human work like my autistic gnome and her talking cheese sidekick.

I want to talk about how the new super-powered algorithms on Amazon and Meta can now find the exact right reader for that weird book.

You’re not speaking to the masses anymore and hoping blindly that your message will land with somebody. You are talking to the EXACT right reader for your unique book and brand.

I’ve been tracking all these changes with amazement and just pure giddiness.

This summer I got to meet Weird Al at a VIP event in Alaska. I gave him my book, Bard to the Bone, and thanked him for making weird a viable career path. (Picture included)

Now I’m running a 7-figure ads agency (to be fair I’ve been doing that for quite a while now) and seeing the rapid shifts in the industry not as something to bemoan, but something to celebrate.

I’m running a successful Kickstarter to my strange cheese book using ads methods I created to match the shifting algo and copy I also created through an AI tool that I spent hundreds of hours programming to write great book marketing copy.

So I just wanted to let you know that hope is not lost, hope is on the rise. Some might even say there is a new hope and even though it feels like episode 4, it’s also the beginning.

Then show off some of my ads for the cheese Kickstarter, plug my Kickstarter about running ads to Kickstarter (and address the awkward brilliance in that). Share about Manuscript to Marketing, and then offer a discount code for 50% off to try it out. Invite them to back the campaign for just $50.

Aim for like 2,000 words using things we’ve talked about throughout our chats. Remember to use contractions so that you sound like a real human. Keep my warm Melissa CEO voice. Go.

I’m delighted to be here guesting for Russell’s community here at .

In case you didn’t know, we co-authored a pretty awesome book together called ‘How to Build a World Class Substack’. It came out last year and has been read by thousands of people. It’s available to buy wherever you get your books.

I hope you enjoy my observations on visibility online as an introvert and I’d love your thoughts on this topic! I’ll meet you in the comments…

Growing up online

I’ve not always had a public online presence, but I’ve always been fascinated with using social media tools for connection. When I was in my twenties, I worked at an American summer camp in the Pennsylvanian mountains for nine weeks.

Facebook was the logical next step for keeping in touch once the camp wrapped up. I adored being connected to my colleagues and seeing where their careers took them.

One is a famous actress these days. You might not believe me, but deep down in my gut I always knew she would be.

Subscribe now

Back in my festivals and events days, the internet and social media really helped us connect and get the word out there, but they didn’t do so in a bubble. They worked in concert with physical marketing.

Yes, there was online media, but at the same time we used to pay thousands of pounds to a promotions company to distribute event-specific leaflets with a short shelf life.

At the same time, I sat and scheduled hundreds of Facebook events knowing the two-pronged approach of physical and virtual promotion would see thousands of audience members pour into my events.

They were incredibly successful because people had multiple touchpoints, both online and in the physical world. It was that tactile reminder combining with the “always on” vrtual reminder that got the snowball effect working.

One year, I was managing a young people’s arts festival. It was a monstrous 10-days of events inside and outside of venues that brought a new vibrancy for my city.

In the middle of our promotional period, we had a Facebook event go “viral”.

We were hosting a finale parade called ‘The Monster’s Parade’ and inviting families and teens to parade along the river with huge bright blue papier maché ‘monsters’. I mean just look at this and tell me you wouldn’t want to come if you were in the area.

And that’s the reason behind why it went viral. We had used a compelling image of the parade from the year before to get people excited. Plus, we had a fun hook by inviting participants to rock up in their pyjamas.

It caught attention because it felt thrilling and even on the verge of breaking rules. Back then people didn’t leave the house in their PJs.

By doing something “against the rule”, the invite caught hold of something out of the ordinary, which made it exciting and fueled its virality.

In fact, it went so well that when I mentioned its success to my boss, there was slight panic because we hadn’t risk-assessed for tens of thousands of people turning up for a music fuelled river crossing.

It was the first time in my career that I really understood the power of community sharing online, of catching attention, and of being ‘liked and shared’. I’ve been pretty geeky about it ever since.

As it happened, even though we had good virality, we ended up with just over 2,000 people at the event and it all ran smoothy. It was a good crowd, but far from being overwhelming, despite how it felt online.

I’ve learnt this to be true in almost every element of online business, too. The people who say they are coming to a live online event versus the people who actually show up is probably around 5-10%.

Perhaps you’ve found the same?

What you’ll notice from that story is that “influencers” did not appear in any of that virality. Nobody “tiktoked” about it or “did a sponsored post” or “spoke from the heart on camera”.

Thousands of people showed up without doing anything viral marketers say needs to happen for anyone to care about your event.

We are taught that we need to be present, but that event went viral without me having to be on camera once.

I’ve manufactured my share of virality in my day, but I’m not an extravert. I’m an introvert who manages ‘big’ online spaces well. There’s an element of showing up that feels ‘easeful’ now that I’m a few years into doing this work. (I started in 2020). It wouldn’t be my preference, but it’s part of the job, and I have found ways to enjoy it despite it draining me.

I can feel passionate about a topic and whack out a social post, talk to Instagram stories, or go live on Substack without fretting about it. I meet my members on zoom calls, voice note in telegram groups, work in flow with my energy.

As long as I have some manner of control about the when and how, I feel confident there’ll be support and I can handle the odd non supportive or inflammatory comment.

It wasn’t always this way.

Rewind to pre-2020, I struggled to share photos of myself on my website, felt self-conscious when I was called to do presentations or speak in a group. I met lots of authors and creatives who are.

The biggest change and confidence shift wasn’t booking photoshoots and engaging fancy filters. That stuff just made me feel like I was hiding.

The biggest change came when I put myself in charge. I curated the activity, my position in it, and in some ways the outcome.

How? I made it less about me and focused on what my readers needed. Sometimes that means I need to be on camera, but it doesn’t always. It all depends on surfacng their needs.

I started to get traction when studied my readers, the participants in my classes, the people who bought my courses, the audience who showed up for me, and figured out what moved the needle for them.

I understood why they were attracted to my work, I asked them questions, I learnt more about their hobbies, their work, their passions, their values, their likes and dislikes. We bonded over milky cups of tea across the internet airwaves.

Communication felt easeful as I met them on a level as my colleagues and (sometimes) my friends online. I listened when they complimented me and noted the words they used.

I often think this is the missing piece or a block in ‘showing up’ online.

Without realising it, you are missing the connect – the piece between what you say, write, or teach and where it lands for the people receiving it.

Top Tips for understand who you meet online to increase confidence.

Here are my top 3 tips to glean the best audience insights of your life online so far…

1. Understand your most engaged people – the people who have been with you the longest, the people who reply, write comments, buy into your offers. These people are often your colleagues, your equals – people doing what you do but in a different way. You can learn a lot from them and understanding the place you meet.

2. Understand the people who lurk but open emails and read – for me these people are often inspired by me and want to better understand how to grow in confidence or they want to work with me. It can take years to build relationships.

3. Understand how and why you polarise people – for me sometimes my energy is ‘too sparkly’ – people find it unobtainable or think they have to replicate it to be successful. That’s on them not me – I’m not for everyone and polarisation is the biggest gift of your authentic self – lean into it. Don’t be tempted to dilute yourself to ‘fit’.

Above all, please know there is much space for introverts to be visible in their own way online. Self expression first, connection second.

Share

Claire Venus is an Audience Development Consultant and Substack Expert. She lives on the Northumberland Coast in the UK with her family. She’s passionate about you finding ways to grow and cultivate an audience for you work joyfully and sustainably and has many tools, courses and a membership to help you.

Sparkle on Substack

Master Substack, write, build your DREAM business with joy! Global Top 10 Publication. Twice monthly space holding (co-working, workshops, teaching). Weekly chats, podcasts. A bespoke membership to help you stay creative and grow on Substack! 💫

By Claire Venus ✨

IG - https://www.instagram.com/creatively.conscious/

Specially for you - you can access Claire’s brand-new Audience Alchemy class for free here and sprinkle magic on your audience development plans across platforms for the coming months.

FREE - Audience Alchemy Class

What do you think?

• How can you use your strengths as an introvert to get attention?

• How often do you really dive into your audience and see what they need on a deep level?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Hi,

Have you ever met a human you had such an instant connection with that you wondered how your life ever existed before meeting them? It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s magic, and that’s exactly what happened when I met Heather Hildenbrand at our Writer MBA conference earlier this year.

I think we talked for like an hour the first night we met, and for hours over the next couple of days. We read all the same books. In fact, I last time I talked to her she had just finished a book I had recently finished, and I was just reading a book she had recently read.

What I love about Heather is that she can get totally woo-woo in her manifestation, but if you want to get practical she’s got you there, too. She has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of how to match business and life strategies to manifestation, and how to help you heal from past wounds that are holding you back.

She is honestly one of my favorite people, and she’s hosting a free, 2-day LIVE workshop called the Happily Ever After Challenge on 10/24 and 10/27 at 12/pm PT / 3pm ET. where she’ll go deeper into how to shift your mindset, change your expectations, and create space for the more you’ve been asking for.

I literally can’t recommend Heather’s work enough. Her Manifest Your HEA book is brilliant. We just recorded a second episode with her for ourSix Figure Author Experiment podcast, and hanging out with her is always a blast. If you have time, you should do it. Frankly, even if you don’t have time, you should make time.

SAVE YOUR SEAT

Hi, I’m Heather Hildenbrand. I write fantasy romance about Witches, Werewolves, and WTF, and I teach manifestation and mindset to authors who want to uplevel their success.

I’m also a friend of Russell’s—which is how I ended up owning not one but two pieces of wall art from a possum-themed art shop in New Orleans. (They’re cute, in a “why is this hanging in my house?” kind of way.)

But long before I was collecting questionable art on Russell’s recommendation, I was in the trenches of indie publishing.

I first published in 2011, during what we lovingly refer to now as the Gold Rush of self-publishing—back when Kindle Direct Publishing was brand new and the gates to the industry had just blown open. Readers wanted more books, and indie authors could finally give it to them.

That first year, I went from $20 a month in sales to $4,000 a month in just six months.

I was ecstatic. I realized: This could actually be my job.

And it was great—for a while.

Until it wasn’t.

Because the truth is, the road to success isn’t a straight shot. It’s a winding, messy, exhilarating, terrifying roller coaster of wins and wipeouts. I went from $4K months to $1,200 months and then plateaued somewhere in the middle for years. And no matter how hard I worked, it felt like the needle wasn’t moving.

No one tells you this when you publish your first book, but it’s not your cover, your story, or your ad strategy that determines if you’ll succeed.

It’s you.

Your fears, doubts, insecurities, and self-sabotage patterns? They’re running the show—far more than your marketing plan or productivity hacks.

That truth took me a decade to figure out (apparently, I like taking the scenic route). But once I did, everything about my business—and honestly, my life—changed.

And now, you get the shortcut. The Cliffs notes. The TL;DR version of a decade’s worth of trial, error, and a few resume-dusting moments where I almost quit publishing altogether.

The Hardest Lesson I Learned

At some point, my career’s performance became directly tied to my sense of self-worth.

If sales were up, I was amazing.

If sales were down, I was a failure.

It sucked, but more than that—it was unsustainable.

If you’ve ever felt like no matter how hard you work, things just won’t click, I want you to know: It’s not your strategy that’s broken. It’s your beliefs about yourself.

(Dang, I really went for the jugular there. But if anyone can take it, it’s Russell’s people.)

Your insecurities, fears, and expectations are quietly shaping your actions—and your outcomes—every single day.

Think about the thoughts that hum in the background of your brain:

• “I’m not good enough yet.”

• “Money’s hard to make.”

• “Success means hustling 24/7.”

• “The economy’s bad, so sales will probably drop.”

• “AI’s coming for all of us.”

Sound familiar?

These are the kinds of thoughts that feel like truth but are really just repeated ideas. (A belief is just a thought you keep thinking.) And the more you expect to struggle, the more evidence you’ll find for it.

You might call it woo woo. I call it science.

The Science Behind It (and Why It Matters)

In 1968, psychologist Robert Rosenthal ran a now-famous experiment that revealed something wild, namely that expectations literally shape performance. He gave an IQ test to a classroom of kids, then told their teachers that a few of them—randomly selected—were “intellectual bloomers.”

At the end of the year, those students scored significantly higher on the same test, even though they hadn’t actually been smarter to begin with.

It’s called the Pygmalion Effect, and it proves that our expectations—our beliefs about what’s possible—become self-fulfilling.

So, let me ask: What do you really expect?

Not what you say you expect. Not what you tell people in your author group chat. What do you actually believe about yourself when no one’s watching?

Do you believe you’re destined for big success? That money flows easily? That readers love your work? Or does that still feel… far away? Maybe a little delusional?

When I finally achieved the goals I’d set way back in 2011—consistent sales, dream readers, total creative freedom—it wasn’t because I wrote faster or hustled harder. It was because I changed what I believed about myself.

The Beliefs That Changed Everything

Here are the beliefs that shifted everything in my author business—and that I want you to steal immediately:

• 💸 I make money even when I’m not working. → If you believe you must hustle to earn, you’ll always be trapped in that pattern.

• ✍️ I’m really good at this. → “This” meaning writing, marketing, managing my $$, and making smart business decisions.

• 🚀 My success is inevitable—even I can’t screw it up. → This one rewires your brain for resilience instead of fear.

• 🌞 Everything is always working out for me. → Because most of the time, it actually is—you just haven’t zoomed out far enough to see it yet.

Your brain listens to how you talk to yourself. And it’s wired to answer the questions you ask it. So if you constantly ask questions like, “Why doesn’t anyone buy my book?” or “What am I doing wrong?” your brain will find answers that confirm your worst fears.

Here’s how to flip the script:

💡 What’s my #3 or #4 income stream?

Look at your top five income sources from the past year. Skip #1 (you’ve obsessed over it enough). Focus on #3 or #4—the ones that make you money without much effort or even awareness. Now ask: what if I gave that area a little more love?

💡 If I had to make an extra $300 this month, what could I do?

This question forces creativity. Could you run a flash sale? Offer signed copies? Create a reader bundle? You have more options than you think.

Example: When I first did this exercise, I realized selling print books was my #4 income stream. This was before direct stores were a big thing. I created a Google form and offered every new release up for pre-order for a signed copy to my readers, my newsletter, my Facebook group. At the end of the year, I’d doubled my income for print sales without ever leaving my house to travel to a signing.

💡 What’s making me money when I’m not even trying?

This loosens the belief that income = effort. Find the evidence that abundance can be easy.

💡 What’s going well right now?

Your brain’s default setting is problem-solving, which means it constantly looks for what’s wrong. This question rewires it to start looking for what’s right. Now do more of that!

💡 How can I compare myself to myself?

Track your data. Measure progress only against your own past performance—not anyone else’s Instagram highlight reel.

Example: When I have a Bookbub, I record the sales and downloads for day 1 and 2 in my marketing calendar. Then, later, I can go back and compare that result to, say, Free Booksy or a cross-promo Bookfunnel campaign. Now I know which one offers the best ROI. So I know which one I want to do next time I run a sale. I only know this if I’m comparing me to me & tracking my data.

Better questions create better evidence.

Better evidence builds better beliefs.

And better beliefs lead to better results.

This is the Real Work

Changing your self-concept isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s an ongoing practice of catching yourself when you spiral into self-doubt, then choosing to see things differently.

But the good news? You can absolutely rewire your brain for success. You can shift from fear and hustle to trust and expansion.

And when you do, success becomes not only easier—but inevitable.

If this resonates, you’ll love what I’m teaching later this month.

Join Me for the Happily Ever After Challenge 💕

I’m hosting a free, 2-day LIVE workshop called the Happily Ever After Challenge—where I’ll go deeper into how to shift your mindset, change your expectations, and create space for the more you’ve been asking for.

It’s where we turn “I hope this works” into “Of course it’s working.”

If you’re ready to stop chasing success and start allowing it, come hang out with me live.

SAVE YOUR SEAT

Because your happily ever after isn’t something you write once—it’s something you live, every day.

Let’s talk in the comments

• What belief has quietly been steering your results lately?

• If you had to make an extra $300 this month, what’s the easiest idea you’d try first?

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I never really resonated with dictation until recently. In the past, you had to speak too many specialty marks to get anything usable, and I don’t like saying the word “period” a billion times. Plus, I always spoke too fast for it to understand me, and I wasn’t willing to train it.

However, recently I started transcribing a lot of my previous work and realized that dictation is leaps and bounds better than where it was even a year ago, and it’s probably even better now than it was at the beginning of the year.

Being able to transcribe my random ramblings into something easier to manipulate has been a huge revelation to me.

How to Write Irresistible Books that Readers Devour was mainly written this way, and I have a book coming out next year that’s based on much of the work I did on , among other sources.

I’ve even written several articles based on courses like this one that were inaccessible until recently. Even though 2,000+ people went through my Write a Great Novel course, that article was viewed over 20,000 times, which is a scale that I never imagined for that content before I figured out how to mold dictation, transcription, and AI into my workflow.

So, when messaged me about writing about dictation, I jumped on the opportunity.

Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer is the author of 19 books (and counting), most of them written through dictation. She teaches fiction authors how to build sustainable writing habits and live their best creative lifestyles through her training programs and podcast, The Confident Fiction Author. Learn more about her work at www.fictioncourses.com.

She just happens to have a live Dictation Bootcamp kicking off October 14, 2025, for $37, so if you resonate with any of this, then maybe check it out.

“If I try to write faster, won’t the quality of my work go down?”

That’s one of the most common concerns I hear from writers when I bring up dictation.

Maybe you’ve felt the same way. You love the idea of writing more, but not if it means producing a messy, rushed draft that feels like a poor imitation of your author voice.

I get it.

As fiction authors, we care deeply about craft. We want our sentences to sing, our characters to breathe, and our stories to matter. And it’s easy to assume that writing fast and writing well are incompatible.

But after dictating more than a dozen books and teaching hundreds of authors how to do the same, I’ve learned something that might surprise you.

You can write faster without sacrificing quality if you understand how to work with your brain instead of against it.

And that’s exactly what dictation makes possible. Let’s break down how it works, and how you can get started.

The real problem with writing slowly

There’s nothing inherently wrong with writing slowly...

…unless it’s leaving you stuck.

Writers often wear “slow” like a badge of honor, as if carefully polishing every word as it’s typed is the only way to produce high-quality prose.

What they don’t understand is that for many that slow pace isn’t about intentionality, it’s about perfectionism. It’s about fear of the blank page and listening to your inner critic that refuses to let a first draft be what it’s meant to be: imperfect, exploratory, and alive.

When you write slowly out of anxiety or habit, it can:

• Stall your momentum

• Kill your excitement for the story

• Keep you endlessly rewriting chapter one

• Drain your confidence

And that’s where dictation offers a different path forward as a tool for getting your creativity back in motion.

What dictation actually does

Dictation is not about cheating the writing process. It’s about changing how you move through it.

Most authors are used to blending creation and editing into a single step. You type a sentence, backspace, rephrase it, tweak the punctuation, second-guess the tone, and never get a chance to move on to the next one.

When you dictate, you speak a scene aloud in your natural storytelling voice. There’s no backspace key. No fiddling with commas mid-sentence. You’re moving forward, telling the story, sentence by sentence.

This naturally separates your creative mode from your editorial mode—a separation that almost always results in faster progress and, paradoxically, better writing. When you stop interrupting yourself, you give your creativity space to stretch and breathe.

Before I started dictating, I typed about 1,500 words per hour. That’s a respectable pace, but I found myself constantly reworking what I’d just written, getting stuck in loops of self-editing that slowed me down and drained my mental energy.

After I trained myself to dictate, I doubled my speed to 3,000 words per hour. But more importantly, I enjoyed writing again, even the “muddy middle” of a first draft that used to make me feel like quitting.

What changed was how I approached revision. I developed a cleanup process that gets my dictated scenes into the same shape I’d expect from a first-draft typed scenes, but I get there much faster and with far less mental resistance.

The real payoff of dictation is a more joyful, sustainable process that still produces high-quality fiction.

Too often, writers evaluate their work at the sentence level as they’re writing, but that’s not the time for micro-edits. In a first draft, what really matters is:

• Is the story moving forward?

• Are the characters making decisions?

• Are there emotional beats and rising tension?

A good first draft, typed or dictated, gives you the material you need to revise. Dictation helps you get that material down faster, and often in a way that’s more emotionally resonant, because you’re not interrupting your natural voice.

We think of writing as a one step process, but it’s really two.

• Creation Mode: This is where you draft. You tell the story, explore the characters, get the ideas out of your head. It’s fast, loose, and imperfect.

• Revision Mode: This is where you refine. You shape sentences, trim scenes, clarify motivation, adjust pacing.

Most writers blur these steps, trying to perfect while creating. Dictation helps you stop doing that because when you’re speaking, it’s much harder to interrupt yourself to edit.

When you embrace this two-phase process, everything changes. You don’t feel like every sentence has to be perfect. Instead, you just get to tell the story.

Some writers think they have to choose between writing fast and writing well. But in my experience, writing faster can lead to better writing because it gets you past the part where you usually quit.

Dictation pushes you to get the bones of the story onto the page. It gives you something real to work with that you can shape, strengthen, and polish.

If you’re willing to trust the process, even just a little, you might be surprised at what your voice can do.

Are You Ready to Learn Dictation?

If you’re intrigued by dictation but nervous about the learning curve, you’re not alone. It took me multiple failed attempts before I found my flow. That’s why I’ve made it my mission to help other authors skip the frustration and get straight to what works.

This October, I’m teaching my Dictation Bootcamp for Authors—a live, 4-day training experience designed specifically for fiction writers who want to take their first steps in dictating their fiction.

Whether you’ve tried dictation before or are just curious, the Dictation Bootcamp gives you step-by-step instructions, live support, and a community of writers learning alongside you.

I won’t promise that dictation will magically solve every writing struggle. But I will say this: it’s helped me write with more joy, more freedom, and more consistency than I ever thought possible.

And it might just do the same for you.

Enroll in the bootcamp (only $37)

What do you think?

• Have you ever dictated before? If so, what did you use?

• Do you find yourself getting lost in a draft? Could you see using dictation to break that block?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

The start of a new year always feels like a fresh notebook. Blank pages. New chapters waiting to be written. But for authors, it’s not just about resolutions. We write those at the end of every book. For us, it’s about building a career, a body of work, and a life that supports our creativity.

None of that happens by accident. It happens when you set goals.

Now, I know the word goals can feel overwhelming. Maybe you’ve tried to set them before and ended up frustrated. Maybe you’ve been told to “just write more books” without any real plan behind it. But today, I want to reframe goals for you. Think of them not as rigid rules but as guiding lights. Something that helps you know where you’re headed and how to get there.

But before I tell you where to go, maybe I should tell you who I am.

Hi, I’m Ines Johnson, I write kissing books and I teach marketing and craft strategies to authors. I’m a friend of Russell’s. He’s the reason my very first Kickstarter was such a success — it earned over $50K.

How did that happen? He pushed me to focus on my goals. Not vague dreams, but real, clear goals. Then together we made a plan to reach them.

That lesson changed everything for me. It’s the same thing I want to offer you with Page Turner Planning, a 52-week system to help you set smart goals, stay consistent, and move forward in your author career without burning out.

Because at the end of the day, success isn’t about luck. It’s about knowing where you’re going, why you want to get there, and how to take the next step.

And that starts with goals. Particularly, SMART goals.

Check out the campaign

SMART Goals

A goal shouldn’t be something you just hope will happen. It should be structured and actionable — a plan that turns your writing dreams into tangible outcomes.

SMART stands for:

• Specific - Can you point to it? If your goal isn’t clear enough that you can point directly at what success looks like, it’s not specific.

• Measurable - Can you point to it? If you can’t count, track, or log your progress somehow, it’s not measurable.

• Attainable - Can you reach it? If your goal is so far out of reach that it feels impossible, your brain will shut down. You have to believe you can grab it.

• Relevant - Can you connect it? If your goal doesn’t tie into your bigger picture of your vision, it’s not relevant.

• Time-bound - Can you set a timer to it? If there’s no deadline, it’s just a wish. You need to know when you’re supposed to start and finish.

Instead of saying, “I want to grow my readership,” a SMART goal would look like: “I will grow my newsletter (attainable) by 500 subscribers (measurable) by June 30th (time-bound) by running a BookFunnel giveaway (specific) and promoting my signup link in the back of my new release (relevant).”

See the difference? One is a dream. The other is a roadmap.

The Three Types of Goals

Over the years, I’ve found that most author goals fall into three categories. If you want a balanced career, it helps to have all three.

• Income Goals: These are your financial targets. How much do you want (or need) to make? This isn’t just about “more money” — it’s about knowing your numbers so you can plan your writing and marketing accordingly.

• Performance Goals: These are measurable career milestones that aren’t directly tied to money. Things like growing your newsletter list, hitting a preorder target, or landing podcast interviews.

• Emotional Goals: These are the most overlooked. How do you want to feel as you build your career? Secure? Energized? Balanced? It doesn’t matter if you’re hitting numbers if you’re burned out and miserable. Emotional goals keep your career sustainable.

Say your income goal is $13,000 a month in order to take care of your family and yourself. Instead of leaving that as a big scary number, break it into money jobs:

• $3,000 Household Expenses

• $5,000 Business Expenses (editing, covers, ads)

• $2,000 Debt Repayment (hello, graduate degree + daughter’s undergrad)

• $2,000 Savings/Retirement

• $1,000 Self-Care & Entertainment

Suddenly, that $13,000 isn’t an abstract number. It’s a living budget that tells you what your books need to earn and why.

Backlist vs. Frontlist

One of the most useful exercises I do every year is to analyze my backlist and frontlist.

• Backlist Titles: These are your previously published books. Look at how much income they generated last year. Even small improvements matter. My personal goal is always to beat last year’s numbers, even if it’s just by $1.

• Frontlist Titles: These are your new releases. Knowing how a book performs in its first year can help you plan smarter for future launches. (And for the record, if a new release makes more than $3,000 in its first year, I count that as a win.)

Remember: every frontlist book eventually becomes part of your backlist. Your catalog is cumulative.

Setting Your Goals

So, with all this in mind, how do you set your goals for the year?

1. Define your income target. Know your number and break it into money jobs.

2. Choose 1–3 performance goals. Pick something measurable like newsletter growth, preorder numbers, or social engagement.

3. Set at least one emotional goal. Maybe it’s about balance, confidence, or protecting your writing joy.

4. Check your backlist and frontlist. Use real numbers to inform your plan.

The key here is kindness. Don’t set goals to punish yourself. Set goals that challenge you just enough to grow without pushing you into burnout.

Action Steps

Here’s your assignment this week:

1. Write down one income goal, one performance goal, and one emotional goal for your author career for the remainder of 2025.

2. Break your income goal into money jobs. (Even if it’s just “ads,” “savings,” and “coffee fund.”)

3. Look at your backlist and frontlist numbers. Where did you win last year? Where do you want to improve?

4. Turn one of your goals into a SMART goal. Make it specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Remember, your writing career is a marathon, not a sprint. Goals aren’t cages — they’re scaffolding. They give you the structure to grow in the direction you want.

If you’ve ever wished someone would just tell you what to focus on each week so you could stop spinning your wheels, then check out my Page Turner Planning Kickstarter. It’s a 52-week system for authors that’s a planner, book, course, and mastermind invite — and it funded in just 20 minutes! That’s because I’m still following Russell’s plan!

Check it out here.

Back the campaign

What do you think?

• Are your goals “SMART”, or are you flailing wildly?

• Can you turn your goals into SMART goals?

What is your SMART goal. Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I get a little giddy when people start talking about printing methods. Not book design or cover art, though those are cool, too. I’m talking ink-on-paper, plate-and-press printing. The kind of thing that makes most people’s eyes glaze over but gets me practically vibrating with joy.

Dave Sheets speaks the language of printing (and what a great name for a paper expert). So, when Dave showed up as a sponsor for the Writer MBA show, I knew immediately we were kindred spirits.

The man knows his way around paper stock the way most of us know our Starbucks order. He doesn’t just get the technical side of things, he cares about it deeply.

And that makes him a man after my own heart.

It’s not every day you meet someone who understands that choosing the right finish isn’t a vanity decision, it’s a reader experience decision.

So whether you’re a die-hard print geek like me or you’ve just started dipping your toe into the physical product waters, I hope you’ll enjoy this one.

In today’s publishing world, independent authors have more control, flexibility, and opportunity than ever before. Self-Publishing has shifted from a niche endeavor to a thriving industry, driven by new technology, global access to readers, and the entrepreneurial spirit of authors who want to own their careers.

One of the most transformative tools in this shift has been print-on-demand (POD). This technology allows authors to publish without investing in large print runs, warehouse space, or complex distribution arrangements. A single copy can be printed and shipped directly to a customer or bookstore as needed, reducing the upfront cost and risk of unsold inventory.

But here’s where many authors stop, and where they could be leaving significant money, readership, and opportunity on the table.

While POD is essential for most indie authors, it should not be your only printing strategy. To truly thrive in today’s marketplace, authors need to embrace both POD and long-run (offset or short-run digital) printing, especially for direct-to-consumer sales, special editions, events, and high-volume opportunities.

This blended approach opens doors POD alone simply can’t.

Print-on-Demand is a game-changer, but not the whole game

First, let’s acknowledge POD’s tremendous value.

• Low risk – No large upfront costs.

• No warehousing – Your books don’t sit in boxes in your garage.

• Scalability – One book or one thousand can be printed with equal ease.

• Global reach – Your titles can be ordered anywhere your distributor reaches.

For authors starting out, or for backlist titles that sell slowly but steadily, POD is unbeatable. You can focus on writing and marketing without the logistical headaches of shipping and storage.

For example, POD is perfect for:

• Test marketing a new title before committing to a big print run.

• Keeping older titles available indefinitely without reprinting in bulk.

• Serving readers outside your main geographic market.

However, if you stop here, you’re limiting your growth. POD’s convenience comes with trade-offs:

• Higher cost per unit – You’ll pay significantly more per copy than with a larger print run.

• Less flexibility for special features – Paper quality, cover finishes, trim sizes, and binding options can be limited.

• Lower margins – The cost difference can eat into your profit when you sell direct.

This is where long-run printing comes in.

Long-run printing, whether offset or high-volume digital, means producing hundreds or thousands of books at once. While this requires an upfront investment, the benefits for a well-planned sales strategy are enormous:

1. Dramatically Lower Per-Unit Cost: Printing in bulk spreads setup costs over many copies, meaning your cost per book drops significantly. This translates directly into higher profits, especially in direct sales.

2. Premium Quality and Customization: With long-run printing, you have far more options, including heavier paper, specialty finishes, foil stamping, embossed covers, sewn binding, and more. You can create books that feel like collector’s items.

3. Special Editions That Sell Out: Bulk runs allow you to create limited-edition, signed, or numbered versions that POD simply can’t replicate well.

4. Better Control Over Inventory and Branding: Your books arrive exactly how you want them, and you control the packaging, inserts, and presentation.

Authors who blend POD and long-run printing see real business results. Take these examples:

Aaron Johnson, author of the National Park Mystery Series, shares:

"I've been working with BelieversBookServices for two years and have placed multiple orders for thousands of books. I also am a member of an author community that regularly orders books from BBS. Everyone raves about the quality. The quality is a 10 out of 10, and pricing is the best I've found — and printed in the USA. I couldn't ask for more."

Aaron’s experience highlights two crucial points:

• Long-run printing delivers better quality and better pricing than POD when ordering large quantities.

• Consistently high-quality books enhance your reputation — not just with readers, but with other authors and industry peers.

Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, experienced the power of special editions:

“Sometimes you need more than print-on-demand. I did a special, full color, signed, numbered hardcover of a short book I had written with Neil Peart. We had a large fan base and a lot of interest, so we decided to do a run of 800 copies… every one of which sold out. Because this is a special project to me, I wanted someone professional who did quality work. Dave Sheets at BelieversBookServices produced an excellent, beautiful product, and I know the fans are as happy as I was.”

Kevin’s story shows:

• Special projects deserve special treatment — POD can’t deliver the same impact.

• Limited editions create urgency and exclusivity, leading to sell-outs.

• The right printing partner ensures your book is as impressive as your content.

Melisa Torres, owner and author of the Perfect Balance Gymnastics Books series, found that making the switch to professional long-run printing was a strategic business move:

"I switched my printing to BelieversBookServices over a year ago and it was a great business decision. My books print out beautifully, arriving on time and in good condition. The Believers team is accessible, friendly, and responsive, a breath of fresh air. I recommend BBS to anyone looking to streamline their business."

Her experience demonstrates:

• Long-run printing can simplify operations when paired with the right partner.

• Professional support makes all the difference in meeting deadlines and keeping customers happy.

When to choose POD and when to choose long-run printing

For indie authors, the sweet spot is knowing when each method serves you best.

Use POD for:

• International sales where shipping from the U.S. is costly.

• Small, steady trickle of sales through online retailers.

• Testing new titles and gauging reader interest.

Use long-run printing for:

• Launch events and book tours.

• Conferences, festivals, or conventions where you expect to sell in volume.

• School visits or corporate bulk orders.

• Special editions, gift editions, or bundled sets.

• Selling direct through your own website or mailing list.

Let’s look at one of these examples. Direct-to-consumer sales are one of the highest profit avenues for indie authors. Selling directly means:

• You keep all the revenue, instead of sharing with a retailer or distributor.

• You control the customer relationship, allowing for upsells, repeat sales, and personal engagement.

• You can bundle books with merchandise, courses, or events.

But to succeed here, you need inventory in hand, something POD can’t provide instantly or cost-effectively for large orders.

Imagine selling 100 copies at a speaking engagement. With POD pricing, your margin per book might be $4–$6. With long-run pricing, that margin could jump to $8–$12 or more. Over time, that difference can add thousands of dollars to your bottom line.

Hybrid printing: The best of both worlds

The most successful indie authors aren’t choosing between POD and long-run printing, they’re using both.

A hybdid strategy might look like this:

1. Launch the book via POD and online distribution to make it available everywhere immediately.

2. Simultaneously, place a long-run print order to have stock for direct sales, events, and special promotions.

3. Use POD to keep older titles available while focusing long-run investment on new or high-volume sellers.

This approach allows you to:

• Minimize financial risk.

• Maximize profit margins where it matters most.

• Keep your books available worldwide without constant reprints.

Choosing the right printing partner

Not all printers, or printing services, are created equal. Look for a partner who:

• Has proven experience with author projects.

• Offers a range of options for paper, binding, and finishes.

• Can meet your deadlines reliably.

• Understands the needs of indie authors and treats you as a business partner, not just a customer.

BelieversBookServices has built its reputation on exactly these qualities, as shown in the testimonials above. Quality, pricing, professionalism, and personal service matter — especially when your name is on the cover.

As an indie author, you’re not “just” a writer. You’re a business owner, publisher, and brand builder. The choices you make about how your books are produced and sold have a direct impact on your income, your reach, and your reputation.

Relying solely on POD is like running a store that only takes special orders. You’ll miss opportunities to sell on the spot, create premium editions, and fully leverage your fan base. By integrating long-run printing into your strategy, you unlock higher profits, better quality, and more ways to delight your readers.

Aaron Johnson’s consistent quality, Kevin J. Anderson’s sold-out special edition, and Melisa Torres’s streamlined operations all point to one truth. Long-run printing isn’t a luxury, it’s a smart business move.

POD will always have its place, but when you’re ready to scale, connect directly with your audience, and maximize every sales channel, it’s time to think bigger. A hybrid strategy combining POD and long-run printing gives you the tools to do just that.

Dave Sheets has spent almost 30 years in the publishing industry working with many of the top book publishers, distributors, and printers in the industry. He currently owns a publishing services company primarily working with independent authors – and prints for hundreds of authors each year. He can be reached at dave@believersbookservices.com

What do you think?

• Have you ever tried long-run printing for your books or are you still relying solely on POD?

• If you could create a premium edition of one of your books, what special features would you include?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Hannah Hardy-Jones, co-founder of Contented AI. She wanted to set up a time to chat, and during that conversation she mentioned that she’d recently completed a challenge where she met with 70 people for one-hour conversations over six weeks. No pitching her business or its solutions, just listening and connection.

In a world where we’re constantly being told to optimize, automate, and “convert,” Hannah focused on what people were really saying and feeling beneath the surface. Then, she used Contented, their AI-powered insight platform, to reflect on those conversations afterward, not to replace the human connection, but to deepen it.

The more we talked, the more I became enamored in this genuinely smart and human way to approach business, sales, and product development. So I asked if she’d be willing to write it up, because I think more people need to hear stories like this in a world where listening often gets overshadowed by pitching.

Here’s Hannah’s story. If you like what she has to say, make sure to check out Contented AI. I thought it was a really cool platform, focused on how to use AI to help infuse more humanity into your work.

Last year I set myself a challenge that most would call ambitious (and slightly bonkers): to have 70 one-hour coffee dates in six weeks.

No script.

No pitch.

No immediate ROI.

Just honest conversations with people- some I knew, many I didn’t- about how they work, how they think, and how they talk. But in a very condensed period of time.

At the time, we were trying to figure out how to better shape our product, Contented, a platform that turns conversations into insights. But this wasn’t market research in the traditional sense. It was about something else:

Could stepping back from selling- and leaning into listening- move the needle for our business (and the way I approached sales)?

The idea wasn’t mine originally. It grew out of something I’d witnessed my co-founder Lucy do incredibly well. Before we built Contented, she had created an ethical fashion platform, and her approach was slow and intentional. She didn’t build until she’d spent hours speaking with potential customers, getting underneath the surface and organising her insights afterwards.

I, on the other hand, had been building a mental health tech product that sold well but never really met people’s core needs. I skipped the conversations. I had a strong pitch deck and a shiny brand, but the product itself didn’t start from the ground up and it wasn’t built with the user at the centre. In fact it was based on my own mental health experience which clouded everything I did, and all I wanted to do was sell sell sell.

So, inspired by Lucy (and the book “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick), I committed to doing it differently this time.

The Rules of the Challenge

I kept it simple:

• 70 conversations, 1 hour each

• The ideal was an in person meeting but some I conducted online.

• I put a call out on LinkedIn and ended up with more that 70 people showing interest and adding their name to a Google form I had hastily put together.

• No sales, no slides, no agendas

• I used Contented to record and extract insights later

• My big focus was on asking better questions

• I challenged myself to reflect deeply on the conversation afterwards using our technology.

And for anyone wondering, yes, I drank a lot of coffee. Which eventually turned into tea and then sparkling water.

What Did We Talk About?

I asked every person a version of the same question: “Tell me about the conversations that matter most in your work.”

From there, we explored:

• Who do you meet with most? And why?

• What do you prepare before the meeting?

• How do you take notes?

• Are these meetings about money, relationships, decisions or emotions?

• What’s annoying about them? Do you have a pain point around them?

• What’s magical about your conversations?

• Do you have a “burning the house down” problem? Would you pay money for it to go away?

The conversations weren’t always neat or concise, but they were rich. People shared stories of burnout, broken systems, communication gaps, and moments of brilliance they wished they'd captured.

By recording each chat, I could go back later and look for patterns. This was key. Without recording, most of that nuance would have disappeared. In fact if I think about my previous notes I would say all of the nuance would have disappeared.

So, what did I learn? So much, but here are the highlights.

1. Most people never get asked good questions. We rush through meetings, chase outcomes, and skip the why. When someone asks a thoughtful, open question and then just listens, it’s like an emotional exhale. That’s when the good stuff comes out.

2. Recording means more presence. Knowing the conversation was being recorded meant I didn’t have to stress about remembering everything. I stopped note-taking. I stopped planning my next sentence. I just listened. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the interaction without worrying how to capture it, and I accepted my scattered brain more too. This made the conversation feel more human, not less.

3. Selling is so tempting, but curiosity builds trust and insights. As someone who spends a lot of time in founder-sales mode, it was hard to switch off that reflex. But these chats weren’t about pitching, they were about learning. Ironically, some of the most valuable business relationships came after these chats, when people followed up. Why? Because trust was already built. We did end up getting many customers out of this experiment, but not because I had sold to them during the coffee date.

4. People want to reflect but rarely get the chance. Many people told me, “No one’s ever asked me that before.” Some used the hour to process ideas they hadn’t said out loud yet. Just having a space to reflect was meaningful. One person said it felt like free therapy. Another called it the best meeting they’d had all month. Not because I was special but because I was actually listening.

5. Insights don’t arrive. They emerge. It wasn’t one conversation that held the key. It was the collective. After even 15–20, I started to notice themes:

   1. Misalignment between what people think they want from meetings and what they actually use them for.

   2. Decision-making fatigue.

   3. The silent emotional labour of managing conversations.

   4. A desire for deeper connection, not more productivity.

This helped shape our product roadmap, language, and even pricing. And more importantly it made me fall in love with our users and their problems.

It Also Built Something Else: Community

One of the most surprising outcome for me as it created a massive, interlinked web of connections. In Canterbury, where we’re based, everyone knows someone.

Each conversation led to another, like a real-world interpersonal spider web. I started mapping it out and realised: we weren’t just gathering data. We were building community and belonging.

People would say, “You need to meet this person,” or “I’d love to hear what others are saying.” Suddenly, the project had its own momentum. I had people asking to be part of the experiment when they saw the photos on LinkedIn.

Importantly, AI didn’t kill the human connection. It enhanced it.

We used our own tool, Contented, to capture, transcribe, and extract insights from every single chat. Some people assume AI tools make things feel less human.

We would argue the opposite in this case. The technology didn’t generate the words. It gave the words room to breathe and for us to make sense of them.

By offloading the mental admin (note-taking, summarising, remembering), I could show up as a better listener. Less distracted. More present. Less biased. More open.

That’s the kind of “human-first” AI that we believe in at Contented.

Want to Try Your Own Version of This Experiment?

You don’t need to meet with 70 people. Ten is enough. Even five. What matters is the intention.

Here’s how to run your own mini version:

1. Pick a theme. E.g. “10 people who work in aged care” or “5 freelancers who left corporate life.”

2. Make it public. Even if it’s just one LinkedIn post. It creates gentle accountability.

3. Write starter questions. But be willing to ditch them when the real conversation shows up. Don't be too prescriptive.

4. Record it. With consent. Focus on them- eg “I want to be able to properly listen to you so are you okay with me recording this catch up? I am happy to share the outputs.”

5. Look for patterns. Don’t just focus on what they say. Watch for tone, rhythm, hesitations.

6. Share what you learn. Even if it’s messy. Others might see something you missed.

In a world obsessed with scaling, automating, and closing deals faster, this experiment reminded me of something deeply simple:

The best products, and the best relationships, start with conversation.

No shortcuts. No dashboards of leads. Just the act of paying attention.

So here’s your challenge.

Ask someone a better question. Then let them talk. And repeat with the next person.

You will build a better product that way.

If you liked this one, make sure to check out Contented AI.

So, what do you think?

• Have you ever stopped selling just to listen—what did you learn?

• If you could ask one powerful question in every meeting, what would it be?

• What’s a conversation you’ve had recently that changed how you think about your work?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

was one of the first seven-figure authors I didn’t know personally who signed up for one of our courses. I remember thinking “Okay, if she doesn’t know me personally and believes in what I’m doing, then maybe I’m not a fraud”.

From that moment on, Jennifer became something of a guiding light for me. If I launched something and she signed up, I felt like we were on the right track.

So when she launched her Kickstarter, I was already cheering. It was a no-brainer to see if she would do a post for us. If you want to peek into the brain of what it takes to do this work for the better part of four decades, keep reading.

If you want to go even deeper, check out the campaign.

Back the campaign

Whether you’re a new or seasoned author, these actionable steps will help you adapt, grow, and succeed in your writing career.

I was really excited when Russell asked me to write a guest post for the Author Stack. I’ve always been a big fan of the work he does here, so I figured it would be fun. Then, I started brainstorming the perfect topic, and quickly got overwhelmed. I’ve been a professional writer for 35 years, so there were a million things I could write about, and my high achiever side told me to cram all of them into one amazing, must-read post that would give you everything you’d ever need!

But then I realized I’ve written multiple books on this exact topic and I’m still not even close to covering everything…

…so, I calmed that part of myself down, and took a deep, centering breath. Besides, nobody needs another 10,000+ word post. I think Russell has that kind of depth covered. What people need is my perspective, and some direction on how to take a little step forward toward their dream today.

After doing this work for the better part of four decades, I’ve learned that the good stuff always happens by taking small, actionable steps. Like when you’re on Chapter One of a new book, staring down the barrel of 100K words, wondering if you just made a huge mistake, and all you can do is type one word after another, taking a tiny bite out of that massive goal with each sentence you finish.

Once I soothed my cranky taskmaster and let my more reasonable self take over, I decided to do the only thing any of us can do and write something from my perspective instead of wondering what any other amazing writers out there might say.

Just me, my view of this career, and how I can help in a small but meaningful way.

I’ve been able to build a successful career and cross off bucket-list items such as hitting the NYT bestselling list, writing over 60 books, making seven figures, and, maybe most impressive of all, being able to keep my joy for this work across three and a half decades.

So today, I want to talk about the cornerstones of building a successful writing career. These are the foundational principles I rely on and trust to keep battling that blank page year after year, decade after decade.

It may not sound as flashy as showing you how to create perfect Facebook ads to grow your Kickstarter (thank you, Melissa Storm and Inkfluence!), or how to craft characters using the Enneagram (I adore you, Claire Taylor!), or manifesting millions (I see you, Lee Savino and Renee Rose!).

But it’s no less critical to your success. If you want to build a joyful, sustainable writing career that makes money, these are the foundational principles worth mastering. I’ve broken it down to seven essential steps I use to thrive in this changing publishing world.

Let’s get to it.

1. Authenticity should be your guiding light

Writers are spinning out these days, trying to do all the things. Sometimes, that hustle comes from a good place. We’re on fire and hungry for success, and the ideas are burning through us. We think, If I just do A, B, C, and D like so-and-so, I’ll finally get there.

The problem? The goalposts are always moving.

We tell ourselves, when I hit this goal or that milestone, I’ll finally be happy, only to find that the minute we get there, another goal pops up. And another. Goals are good, but tying your happiness to them is not.

The antidote? Be yourself. Fully.

Not the writer you think you should be. Not the writer you imagined in your dreams. Ten years from now, the only thing you’ll have to look back on is the work you put out. The money will be spent. The fame will fade. The high will wear off, and you’ll have the books, and the connections they made with your readers.

So, when you write, make sure it’s something you’ll be proud to keep touting in a decade. Don’t make something just because somebody told you it’s the hot new thing. Don’t wear somebody else’s clothes and gaslight yourself into believing you love them.

I get the impulse to dress up, believe me. I always wanted to be the “maxi dress” girl—flowy summer dresses, cute sandals, breezing through errands looking effortlessly chic. Excited for my transformation, I bought a bunch and always planned to wear them.

But I didn’t. Every time I tried, I wasn’t comfortable, or happy. I’m a yoga pants and t-shirt girl, through and through. That’s my authentic self.

It’s the same with writing.

If you truly love romantasy, write it. If you’re chasing it only because it’s hot and you think it’ll make you rich, think twice. If it takes off, you could be stuck writing it for years.

And if you show up at your desk, uninspired, trapped in this job you created like a cubicle from Office Space, have you really won and succeeded?

Maybe, but probably not. You’re probably just exchanging one chain for another, less stable one.

2. Consistency builds the pace for your career

Consistency does not mean writing every day (unless that works for you). It does not mean creating a schedule that is completely inflexible (unless it helps you thrive).

Consistency does not (necessarily) mean rigidity. You can be an extremely impulsive, flowy type of author who uses consistency to drop surprise releases, show up live on socials, or randomly entertain fans by deliberately not adhering to a schedule.

Look at Taylor Swift. She hints and teases her fans, then drops the surprise album with a BOOM. That is her consistent, authentic self. She finds great joy in the ability to be like that, and it works for her.

Consistency is simply the steady path you walk on a regular basis. You can take vacation days, sick days, and mental health days. You can veer off side paths, then wander back to the main one. But make sure to stay on the writing path, meandering as you might be, building your brand and your books.

Use at least one social media or marketing tool successfully. Invest in your readers by having a newsletter, a Substack, or a platform where you get to reach them. Keep doing the things that help create an author career.

It’s important to note here that some definitions of consistency may grow faster than others. If you post on TikTok every day, and feed the algorithms, your chances of hitting a viral post increase. If you write every day, you’ll probably finish more manuscripts than an author writing in random spurts. If you send out regular newsletters, you may grab more readers than an author sending one out whenever they feel like it. If you post one valuable Substack article per week, your followers may grow faster than one who writes content here and there.

Caveat: There are no guarantees. I’ve seen authors write one book with no social media go huge. But this article is about trying to increase our odds, which usually requires consistent action.

3. Content is king

Writing should be our main focus, especially at the beginning of your career. Each book we write gives us more earning and growth potential. The more books we have out, the more we can earn, and the more easily we can be found by readers.

But it’s not just books. Each social post we lovingly create helps us reach new readers. Each comment we respond to builds trust and authenticity in our community.

We must value all our content, even if we don’t know what we’re going to do with it yet. I save everything. Old drafts, cut scenes, and half-finished essays often resurface in new, unexpected ways. Most of it eventually becomes gold, or at least copper. Every piece of content increases our chances to be discovered.

Caveat: I mean valuable content, not endless drivel meant to game the system. Authentic content that adds something to the conversation and builds connection to our readers.

4. Invest in your career

When I went full-time, I had to start treating myself like an business owner, part publisher and part employee. For years, my writing was considered a hobby by everyone around me. This leaked into my perspective, and I began believing they were right.

Writing was my true passion, but it couldn’t be a career, right? It’s a bit silly to think about it like that now, but in 1990, writing for fun and profit was a radical idea.

I held myself back for years. Then, I attended a Romance Writer’s of America meeting, and realized that people were really doing this, and making a lot of money. On top of that, those that took their career most seriously seemed to be making the most from it.

I returned home with a new outlook and began to ruthlessly protect my writing time.

I also began paying myself.

Even when I made no money from writing, I’d reward myself with something small at the end of the month. Either that or stash a little cash in a drawer from my day-time job. It was proof my work had value. I was also honoring myself for all the time I invested on a day-to-day basis.

As I earned more, I kept reinvesting in courses, ads, websites, and marketing, but I always gave myself a paycheck. You deserve to be paid for your work, and the first person who needs to believe that is you.

5. The power of one

We’re drowning in a sea of to-dos and gurus. It’s hard to decide what’s important in all the morass. By ruthlessly limiting our focus to one thing, we can put more energy into it and move forward faster.

I filmed a module in my Write Naked Course on this concept, which is currently on Kickstarter, but it’s really important to understand that where focus goes, energy (and money) flows.

When we split our attention, we can’t build up the critical mass needed to break through our biggest blocks. Most people diffuse their energy doing a million little things, but the more energy we put into one action, the further we’ll be able to go.

This is where we start. With one story. One reader. One project. So many of us want to work on a hundred things as once, but we’re sabotaging ourselves when we do. You might think you thrive with this type of workflow, but I want you to stop and ask yourself when was the last time you felt movement in your career?

If you’re exactly where you want to be, you can ignore this, but then I would like to buy your course, because I’ve never met an author who was, no matter their level of success.

I’m an ambitious achiever. My mind pings with creative juice all the time, and I’m a course junkie. My Clifton strengths are full of developer, maximizer, and input. My poor, slower intellection usually takes a hit, but when I honor her, I find I actually get more done tackling one task with one hundred percent focus.

Here’s the magic structure that helps me:

• Focus on one thing.

• Create massive action toward that one goal.

• Analyze results.

When I wanted to run my first Kickstarter two years ago, I got stuck. I spent too much time learning every aspect of Kickstarter (I actually took Kickstarter Accelerator and bothered Russell a lot). I wanted to do it perfectly because I’m that type.

I need to feel capable before I can jump, so the learning part was important, but if I overfeed my input nonstop, I spin out, and never get to the action phase. This is a problem, obviously, because only by launching a book can we make money on that book, right? If we want people to read our work, we have to put it out into the world.

I finally realized my block, launched, and then put all my energy into supporting the Kickstarter. I did ads, networking, backer update swaps, endless posts, newsletters, etc. I lived that Kickstarter for thirty days and way beyond.

After it was done, I looked around, and analyzed my results. I asked hard questions. How could I do it better? Was the profit worth the work? Was the whole experience of learning worth the loss? What would I change?

Sometimes, a loss on paper can be a win. For me, I wanted the experience, I wanted to test out a new platform, and I wanted to make a little money.

6. Think outside the box

Is there anything more cringe than when somebody says to “think outside the box” Isn’t this term so annoying? It’s like editors, publishers, and agents urging us to “Write something fresh! Something with a new twist!”

And yet, here I am saying it, but let me give you a new perspective that might make it less trite and cliche, even if just a little.

Thinking outside the box doesn’t have to be something no one else has ever done, just something you have never done. Something that makes you a bit giddy, or starstruck. Something you’d love to do but don’t think you could pull it off.

Here’s an example from my own career that made a huge difference.

My Sunshine Sister series was set in Cape May, a small beach town I adored. The summer my book launched, I hired a plane to fly a banner back and forth over the beaches every Friday afternoon. All of those readers lounging on a blanket could hit their Kindle and order the book immediately. The local bookstore stocked the books, and I used that plane for two glorious summers.

The bookstore consistently sold out.

I also did a billboard. One day, I was driving down a highway, reading all these boring insurance and lawyer billboards and wondered why no one did anything fun anymore. Why weren’t there book billboards?

Ding, ding.

I called a billboard distributor, found a perfect one in my town, had art created, and ran it for three months. I highlighted the fact that I was a local romance author while keeping it fun and snappy. It was a great boost for my sales in the Hudson Valley. Even if I couldn’t pinpoint a number, it was an amazing branding opportunity.

We can’t be afraid to try new things, even if they fail spectacularly. These were both big-ticket actions, but creative ideas can come from any type of budget.

7. Protect the work

Your career will ebb and flow like the tides. Some years you’ll be up and others you’ll be down. The higher you rise, the more distance you can (and probably will) fall. Once you grab a taste of success, no author wants to go back to the beginning, or lose recognition. But, it’s bound to happen. Nothing goes up forever. Our books tank, we lose collaborators, personal crisis snatches our focus and time, and big projects fail. It’s all part of the ride.

Through it all, there’s a simple mantra I have posted to my computer so I’ll see it every day.

Protect the work.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on fire to write, opened up my laptop, and was immediately distracted by a notification. Suddenly, I’m answering emails for two hours, and then spend another hour scrolling through Tiktok.

I figure I’ll check just one thing, a quick task to scratch it off my endless list. I tell myself I’ll focus much better after one task is done. I click on a button, am dragged out of my safe world, and within minutes my good mood or intentions come crashing down.

By the time I open the manuscript, I’ve lost my heart. Things feel hard or hopeless. It’s easier to go back to the book later.

The outside world is just too…much.

That’s when I look at my handwritten phrase, sticky-noted to my screen. (Yeah, I really need to frame it!)

Protect the work.

And I remember my purpose. It’s to deliver great stories and radiate out my view of the world to readers. It’s to claim my space. I close my eyes and focus on my breath until I’m calm and focused.

When the world is blowing up around you, open the page.

These are my steps not only to thrive, but protect my joy, motivation, and creative spark. I’d love to know if any of these resonate with you in the comments!

And if you want to dive deeper into these concepts, I’m currently running a Kickstarter for my brand-new Write Naked course and my new book, Write Free—which isn’t available anywhere else.

The course is real, raw, and personal, with one-on-one videos that share the truths I’ve learned from decades in the industry. It’s ending soon, and I’ve got some exclusive rewards you may like.

👉 Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jenniferprobst/write-naked-the-official-course

Back the campaign

What do you think?

• Which of these steps feels most relevant to where you are in your writing career right now, and why?

• What’s one small shift you’ve made recently (or want to make) to build a more sustainable and joyful author life?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Claire Taylor has done more to improve the quality of my life that any single human who I am not related to by blood, marriage, or business partnership. Several years ago, when I was lost and frustrated, she introduced me to the Enneagram.

She told me I was an 8, which meant I was fueled by anger and lashed out in stress, which sent me down a deep, deep rabbit hole that inadvertently led to The Author Ecosystems, the single most impactful thing I think Writer MBA ever did during its existence.

Her books Sustain Your Author Career and Reclaim Your Writing Career are absolutely essential reading for any writer, and her work inspired the Enneagram chapter in How to Write Irresistible Books that Readers Devour.

So, when I heard she was writing a craft book, I was thrilled and asked if she would be willing to write an article for us.

She said yes, and so I’m so so so so thrilled to turn it over to her. If you want to write better fiction, then you have to check out this book.

Back the campaign

If you’ve ever started writing a story and felt it stall out at around the midpoint, the issue might be your inciting incident. The function of the inciting incident is to move your protagonist from a place of security into a place of massive insecurity. This interrupts the equilibrium of your protagonist’s world in a way that is undeniable to them, launching them into action as they attempt to restore the world around them to something familiar.

This inciting incident is the foundation on which the rest of the story is constructed. It needs to generate strong propulsion. If you overlook this step, you’ll feel it as you write farther into the plot. Maybe the story feels meandering. Maybe you find yourself picking the next scene by rolling a die, because you don’t know what else to throw at your protagonist. You may simply lose interest in writing the thing.

Issues like this can usually be traced back to a lack of internal tension created in the inciting incident.

Not every inciting incident works with every character. This seems obvious when we hear it, but it’s not uncommon for us to have an idea for an inciting incident and then stick a protagonist in there who isn’t necessarily destabilized by the incident to the extent that we need for our story to keep moving almost on its own.

It’s important to consider how the protagonist and the inciting incident pair together and what chemistry they have. The best way I’ve found to evaluate that is by sorting out your protagonist’s Enneagram type.

Maybe you’ve heard about the Enneagram before, or maybe not. It’s a common tool that storytellers are using more and more lately (including at least one famous animation studio that I know about), but it’s also a tool that people commonly misunderstand and misuse, to the detriment of their story.

At its core, the Enneagram is a personality system that assigns numerical types based on a person’s core motivation. The “core motivation” consists of a core fear and a core desire that are flips sides of the same coin. For example, you may fear being worthless, and you desire to have worth. (For this reason, it can be easiest to simply talk about the core fear of each type, and the core desire is implied.)

You can see why knowing a character’s core motivation could be immediately useful to a storyteller. We’re taught from the start to know their motivation, but often this stops short of going deep enough, as people confuse motivation with goals or something hyper specific to the situation rather than something fundamental to the personality.

For the purposes of crafting a powerful inciting incident, we can look at the nine core fears that the Enneagram organizes for us by numerical type.

• Type 1: Being bad, wrong, or corrupt

• Type 2: Being unloved and unwanted

• Type 3: Being without value or worth

• Type 4: Being ordinary and without identity

• Type 5: Being incompetent or incapable

• Type 6: Being without support or guidance

• Type 7: Being trapped in pain or deprivation

• Type 8: Being harmed or controlled

• Type 9: Being cut off or separated

Every character (and person) prioritizes avoidance of one of these fears above all others. In fact, we build our lives around avoiding this fear. It shows up in every corner of our life. Nowhere is safe.

None of the core fears are particularly appealing, but one will stand out as the big one that’s calling the shots. You can think of it as a business meeting where are nine are present, but one is the CEO that makes the final call, and often without listening to anyone else.

We use these fears to assign an Enneagram type. If someone is afraid of being without value or worth above all else, they’re what we would call a “Type 3.” (Each type generally has a descriptor attached to it, so for the Three, you often see “the Achiever” or “the Performer,” but those vary quite a bit from tradition to tradition while the type number remains consistent.)

Readers expect consistency in a character’s core fear, because we instinctively learn to expect that from our interactions in everyday life. Do readers have the language to say that’s what they expect? Not always, but they do know in their gut when the motivation becomes inconsistent, and it’s big points off. This is why the shorthand of the Enneagram fears is so incredibly helpful to align each character (or at least the primary and secondary ones) to a particular core fear.

When it comes to the inciting incident, assigning your protagonist a type is an easy and effective way of making sure the incident you design will sufficiently destabilize the character.

For instance, who do you think would have a stronger reaction to being fired from a high-status, high-intensity job, a Three (fear: being without worth or value) or a Seven (fear: being trapped in pain and deprivation)?

The particulars of the firing would certainly come into play, but when you learn about the Three’s need to be perceived as worthy and valuable, and how social status plays into that, you understand how a sudden firing from a position that offered them a sense of worthiness (especially if they’ve been working to get to where they are for most of their adult life) would seriously destabilize their world and catapult them into action as they attempt to regain equilibrium.

Meanwhile, the Seven might be upset by the loss of income and the sense of financial deprivation, but probably they were ready for something new anyway. Once you learn about how the Seven’s core fear manifests in common patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, you understand that Sevens often hate staying in the same job for long unless it provides a high degree of novelty and variation. Losing a high-status job may be temporarily upsetting to the Seven, but that doesn’t make it a particularly strong inciting incident to drive the rest of the story. It likely won’t destabilize them enough.

If you notice that your protagonist and inciting incident don’t create enough chemistry, there are a plenty of paths to a solution. Where you start depends on whether you’re more attached to your inciting incident or your protagonist’s type.

If the inciting incident was the original story spark that got you hooked, then maybe you change the protagonist’s type to create a more explosive pairing. If the protagonist’s type was more what brought you to the story, then perhaps it’s time to brainstorm an inciting incident that will be a stronger catapult by triggering your protagonist’s core fear more directly.

The Enneagram is a framework that allows both newbies and experts to use it. It can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be.

It’s easy to forget to pause and ask yourself what motivates your protagonist on a deep psychological level. Authors do it all the time. I’ve certainly done it, and I’m “the Enneagram lady” in the author world. There’s a lot to consider and manage when we write, and things like this slip through the cracks.

Whenever you remember to check in on those motivations, though, this reference is a quick way to ensure you’re bringing a consistent character to the pages.

If you’re struggling with the inciting incident, here is how you can get started working with the Enneagram:

1. Ask yourself which of the core fears from the list above resonate most strongly with the character you’re writing. (If you want to see descriptions of how these fears tend to manifest, www.enneagraminstitute.com is a great resource to start, and I’m diving deep into it in my Write Iconic Characters Kickstarter.)

2. Ask yourself how the current inciting incident is triggering that core fear. What elements could you add to the situation to make it even more triggering?
   OR
   If you don’t have an inciting incident in mind yet, what could happen in the story world you’re creating that would jab at the core fear of your protagonist? How could you pull the rug out from under them?

3. Ask yourself how you might be imagining what would trigger YOU rather than what would trigger your PROTAGONIST in this situation.

The last question is often overlooked. As authors, we tend to put a little bit of ourselves into our protagonists. This helps us stay engaged with the character, and we often do it subconsciously. It’s not a bad thing at all! But if we aren’t careful, we may be writing a protagonist with a different core fear from our own without recognizing that. The result is often that we blur the two types together unknowingly, so that the protagonist acts inconsistently.

When it comes to the inciting incident, it’s super common for authors to write something unsettling to them, only to wonder why their protagonist isn’t reacting strongly no matter how they poke and prod. Usually, the problem is what I’ve described. It’s totally cool and fun to write a little bit of yourself into the protagonist, but keep a close eye on whether you’re writing your same type as you are or a different one, and don’t blend the core motivations.

(Learning your type is extremely helpful in this matter, and I recommend the iEQ9 Questionnaire if you want to get accurate results; you can also simply read about the types and see which ones seems most like you, though some folks struggle with this approach.)

So, if you want to spring-load your story with conflict in the inciting incident, there’s no better way I’ve found than using the Enneagram framework.

If you want to become an expert at using the Enneagram for writing riveting, un-put-down-able fiction, I invite you to back my Write Iconic Characters Kickstarter. The campaign ends at 5pm Central on 8/8, so jump in while you can.

BACK THE CAMPAIGN

What do you think?

• Can you easily see your protagonists in one of these types?

• Does your inciting incident work in tandem with that type?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I don’t understand why people want fame. The path is long and capricious, relying more on luck more than hustle — and, therefore, almost entirely beyond a person’s control. You have to be in the right place at the right time, born under the right stars. And then, even if you do manage to become famous, the fans are capricious, too. Right now, every one of us could think of a dozen people who were the world’s darling one day, then forgotten the next.

But not too forgotten. Not forgotten enough to start over. After the world is done with you and you’re through being famous, you become infamous. It’s not like you can reset with a normal life. What must it be like for MC Hammer these days? It’s not like he could get a job selling aluminum siding without taking a metric ton of crap from every customer.

Sure, I’ll take the 5-inch vinyl in robin’s egg blue. And by the way, why aren’t your pants more baggy?

Famous people can’t do whatever they want whenever they want. They live under the world’s lens, their perceptions twisted by a life spent around sycophants, critics, and predators. You’re only as good as your last hit, with almost no loyalty to carry you forward. You have to live in fear: fear of losing what you have, of saying the wrong thing and getting publicly shamed, of stalkers and weirdoes. Everyone’s in your business, intruding when you most need privacy. Everyone — from representatives to the masses — spend their everyday telling you what to do.

In the beginning of my author career, I chased popular writing success like so many others. That was what I aimed for: to write a bestseller that everyone in the world would know by name, just like they’d know me by name. And that’s what a huge portion of authors — as a profession with an especially pernicious hive mind — tend to aim for almost by default.

But isn’t that just being famous? I don’t want that. Why the hell did I spend so much time chasing the most difficult goal to for any author to achieve — one that even if I achieved it wouldn’t give me a life I actually wanted?

The Beauty of a Cult Hit

Maybe you read the above and think I’m crazy. Maybe you want to be the next Stephen King, and damn what Truant says. Bestselling authors aren’t the same as movie stars, you’re thinking. Even the best-known authors don’t have the pressures and limitations of Hollywood. And even if they do, so what? Every book they write will be bigger than the last, no matter what they do.

Okay, maybe for Stephen King. King could spit on a napkin and top the Times list. Others aren’t so lucky — especially in self-publishing, where “bestseller” means something very different. Just like we can all name stars who fell from grace, so too can we name authors who burnt out and fizzled away — who rode a very specific road to popularity, then disappeared when their flavor wasn’t in vogue anymore.

I’ve been in this business a long time, watching popular and mega-selling authors come and go. Some of the biggest names in self publishing are gone now, but unlike movie stars on the decline, they’ve basically vanished. Nobody’s singing their praises. Nobody, really, remembers them at all.

Why does it happen? It’s because of that old adage: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Large popular success sets expectations, and those expectations can be boiled down to a quiet subconscious assumption: The way things are right now will be this way forever.

Today Paulie Shore is hilarious. Today OJ Simpson has a good public image and is loved by all. Today mullets make you look good. Then tomorrow, when those things change, the public collectively steps away and hops aboard something cooler instead. There was a day when Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks were the only movies that mattered. Do we really think that tomorrow, some of today’s biggest popular darlings won’t seem silly — and crash those empires like a dying rocket?

Big success sets big expectations, but big expectations can only be met for so long: about as long as the public’s fickle attention span. Quieter successes, on the other hand — things that never got too big, too cool, or too hip to begin with — appeal to their fans not on trendiness, but for deeper reasons. And that’s why those careers can have real staying power. That’s why cult phenomena, unlike smash hits, tend to stick.

Do you wonder, when you’re listing to that little indie band that nobody’s heard of, whether they’ll fall from fame and cause you to not like them anymore? Of course not. Because they never made it to outright fame, so there’s not far to fall. But more importantly: You didn’t adore them because everyone in the world was adoring them. Instead, you had to seek them out. People my age might have dug “Gangnam Style” simply because that song was everywhere for a few months, but dug Joy Division because their music resonated with something deep inside.

Subscribe now

If you have no idea what “Gangnam Style” is, you’ve just proven my point. Haven’t heard of Joy Division either? Well, it’s not because their radio play died off, seeing as they had none. Search around; their reputation is still sterling unlike the “Gangnam” singers, whose name I had to look up. (It’s Psy, by the way. I literally had no idea.)

Personally, I’d rather be a cult hit as an author — a quieter, less splashy sort of exposure — than blockbuster famous.

Cult hits were never media darlings, so they never have to be cut down by the public. Cult hits never hypnotize the population into adoration, so they can’t truly fall out of favor. Cult hits weren’t part of a trend, so their trendiness can’t end.

That’s why as an author, I don’t want Avengers fame anymore. I’d rather be Donnie Darko instead.

Shooting for Smaller

I acknowledge that my opinion about big fame versus cult fame (or bestsellerdom versus … well … cult fame) isn’t universal. I acknowledge that as I lay out the benefits of intentionally staying smaller as a “cult hit” author (more staying power, less-fickle attention, more devoted readers, and a lot more creative freedom because the world hasn’t put you under a microscope, demanding more of the same stuff you’ve done before), some of you will think I’m crazy.

Why not be huge? you might ask. I don’t need to be cool forever, so long as it makes me money.

I get it. Downsides or no downsides, many authors still want to be blockbusters no matter what I say. And that’s cool. It just means I’m not speaking to you. Everyone is different. This article is right for the authors it’s right for, and wrong for those it’s wrong for.

I’m okay appealing to only some of you out there because I’m not famous and don’t want to be. In the world of self-publishing, Johnny B. Truant has only ever been a cult hit. That means I can write for some people and be fine not resonating with others. Cult-hit movies like Donnie Darko are that way, too.

Cult hits can be fully and completely be themselves — true to their own unique identities — because unlike blockbusters, nobody anywhere expects them to appeal to everyone. There’s no pressure to perform. Oh, you like my weird-ass movie about a kid able to see the future? Cool. Oh, you hate it? Also fine; you’re definitely not alone. Right from the start, Donnie Darko wasn’t written for everyone.

While writing my new book for authors (The Artisan Author), the “not for everyone” issue was ironically one of the big themes. Ever since I was on The Self Publishing Podcast, I’ve had a history of inadvertently giving advice that was never intended as advice, meaning I did a poor job of alienating people who didn’t operate the way I operated. Instead, it looked like our personal experiences on the podcast were intended for everyone … but nope, they weren’t.

We only ever meant to be a cult hit. Maybe The Self Publishing Podcast should have alienated better. Like Derek Sivers said:

Pull in those people who love [the work you do]. Proudly alienate those that don’t.
— Derek Sivers

These days, I go out of my way to say that what works for me won’t work for everyone — not even close. It puts me in a very strange position because I end up discouraging as many sales as I encourage.

You want to be an Artisan Author, you say? Well, you should know first that it’s hard. And you might fail. And if you really love the idea of Rapid Release and selling books into Kindle Unlimited and don’t feel burned out or creatively stymied by it, you shouldn’t read this book. Oh, you believe in get-rich-quick? Then move along; this is not for you.

Those exact words are actually on the first page of one of my favorite books, House of Leaves — a cult hit if ever there was one. The dedication reads: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

Subscribe now

But maybe what I’ve written here is for you. And if it is, pay attention — because cult hits have one other thing going for them that blockbusters don’t, and it’s that latent middle finger: The proud, standing-up-for-what-we-are attitude that says to the world: Love this if you love it … but if you don’t love it, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

We cult hits are breaking up with you in advance, popular culture. We don’t want you involved in our worlds, so we couldn’t care less if you don’t want in.

Don’t Let Society Decide Your Goals as an Author

Okay, so what’s the point? I’ve rambled on about fame and cult hits, mullets and Gangnam Style, Derek Sivers and MC Hammer. Right about now you might be wondering what any of this has to do with writing and publishing. Am I really saying you should stop shooting for bestsellerdom and instead stay small (relatively speaking) instead?

Maybe. It depends on you.

In truth, I’m not arguing for either position. What I’m arguing for is conscious decision-making and critical thinking. I’m suggesting that no matter what goals you set for yourself as an author, you choose them yourself. Don’t just stumble into the default goals of everyone else without thinking about the consequences, the benefits, and the pros and cons.

I will say a few things that almost nobody talks about: reasons that I, personally, suggest we authors shoot for cult fame more often than we try to be everything for every reader in the world:

1. True, non-BS bestsellerdom, by the numbers, is next to impossible. It can be done, but it’s very difficult and relies in large part on luck and good timing.

2. And yet, it’s what many writers aspire to by default. Don’t believe me? Spend some time in self-publishing advice circles and tell me how often terms like six-figure author, seven-figure author, bestseller, and top of the charts are mentioned relative to expressing myself, attracting some fans, and I’m happy if I earn enough each month to make my car payment.

3. The 80/20 principle applies like a hammer. Reaching a “satisfying” (read: cult hit) level of success is much, much, much simpler than nuking the world with your novel, and yet very few people actually need to reach the nuking level for anything other than ego reasons. Many writers would be better off expending a lot less energy to reach their actual goals than working themselves to death to look like a superstar … especially when superstardom is capricious, and often requires you to keep working yourself to death to maintain it.

4. Chances are, true bestsellerdom won’t deliver what most writers want anyway. If you have huge breakout success, everyone will know your name and you’ll earn more money than you can spend. Cool. But are you factoring in the cost to get those things — to rise past the cult-hit level and all the way to popular fame? Are you considering the fact that when you’re a worldwide phenomenon, your readers’ love is part blessing, part sword of Damocles forever hanging over your head?
   
   And finally, most importantly to cult-hit heretics like me:

5. As soon as you’re famous for something, you’re trapped doing that thing forever. Meaning that as soon as everyone knows your name, that name is inexorably tied to whatever made you famous (or a huge bestseller) in the first place. If you can produce more of the exact same thing you’re known for, great. If not, they’ll mock you at best, abandon you at worst.

This Doubles In Our World of Rapid Release Publishing

Okay, sure: True superstars can pivot and take ridicule without actually tanking their careers. We all know stories of big-time authors and celebrities who tried something new and got crap for it, but who carried on and are still making bank today.

But now, try the same thing as a popular independent author mired in the world of Rapid Release. Go on, I dare you. You’re riding high, but just try doing something different from what you’re doing now and see how it goes.

Instead of writing dark romance, write space opera.

Instead of publishing a book a month, publish two books a year.

Yeah, that’s not going to go well. Your current work has set an expectation with all of your adoring fans (our indie world’s definition of “making it huge as a bestseller”), but now that the expectation is set, it’s what those fans want forever.

Tragic, career-ending story after tragic, career-ending story proves that as much as you think those mass fans will follow you to something new or different, they won’t. Because you’ve made yourself “famous” in those circles, and now you’re under the spotlight. The second you do something different from what your adoring throngs expect, they’ll tell you to get back to work on what they came here for. They’ll tell you, dear writer, to stay in your lane.

When I started publishing books in 2012, Rapid Release wasn’t a thing. You could hit it big back then because Kindle was new and there were no rules. Once people got used to ebooks and self-published authors, though, we started acting like junior versions of the trad crew. We wrote; readers read. And of course, we wanted more of them.

Soon enough people started shooting for the moon. Fast forward to 2025 and a lot of chatter seems to imply that if you aren’t trying to become The Avengers, maybe you shouldn’t bother writing. Being a cult hit like Donnie Darko isn’t usually seen as good enough, if you listen to the groupthink.

And oh, sure, plenty of authors operate at the cult-hit level and love it, but those authors aren’t the ones talking. The cult hits don’t tend to grab microphones and YouTube channels and conference stages to talk about their success. And do you know why? Because they’re cult hits.

Cult hits fly under the radar and often shun the idea of popular acclaim. I mean, look at Bob Dylan. He was booed by his own people for a long time, then was eventually given a Nobel Prize when society changed its mind and accepted him. He didn’t show up to collect it.

The appeal of a cult-hit author, ironically, comes largely from the fact that they were never that cool to begin with.

Which means they have staying power. Which means that their fans — because they’d sought out something that not everyone was into at the time — take pride in having discovered a hidden gem. The appeal of a cult hit is in the fact that it’s not a headliner; it’s not easy to find because everyone isn’t throwing it in your face.

The Punk Rock, DIY Ethos

Do you want a sustainable career that lasts as long as you want to maintain it, in whichever way you want to pursue it? Or would you rather have a brief flash of fame that you can’t control, followed by a big crash?

Do you like being part of mainstream tastes and having mass appeal? There’s no wrong answer, by the way. Plenty of people do want big popular success. I don’t, though, and maybe neither do you.

Maybe it makes me weird, but I like being an outsider. I like being small. I like that some people don’t enjoy my books because it means that people who love them truly love them. I like being a diamond in the rough: an author whom devoted fans had to discover rather than being bombarded with.

I think this is why I like Russell. His communications around How to Thrive in a Capitalist Dystopia were full of societal skepticism — a sense I got that Russell is also happy as an outsider and a rabble-rouser, and that he’d be uncomfortable if suddenly he was the whole world’s darling, just like I’d be.

Something I heard once in a documentary haunts me to this day: Kurt Cobain saying that when Nirvana got huge, he’d look into the crowds and see mostly the kinds of people who used to beat him up in high school for being different.

I’m okay not appealing to everyone. I prefer not appealing to everyone. I like that readers have to work a bit to catch the vibe of my books — to even consider weird stuff like Unicorn Western or Fat Vampire to begin with. I’ve never liked the mainstream. I was always a punk rock kid at heart.

You can and should aim for the stars (for bestsellerdom, for worldwide acclaim, for seven-figure income, for whatever sky-high metric makes your heart sing) if that’s what you truly want. You hear me? If it’s truly what you want, not what self-publishing groupthink says you should want by default.

But if you’re a weird artist type like me? If you’re happy to trade away fame and riches in exchange for a stress-free life and creative freedom?

Well, then don’t get sucked in. Don’t let the world set your goals. You might even find yourself in good company: other writers who don’t aspire to enormous popular success at all.

The biggest voices in self-publishing speak the loudest, so it sounds like those who want writerly superstardom are the majority. I doubt they are, though. I’ve spoken to so many writers for whom that particular shoe doesn’t fit … and yet everyone keeps forcing their feet into those shoes anyway.

I suspect we — those who’d be happy as cult-hit authors — might just be the silent and unserved majority.

And far happier for it.

Johnny B. Truant wrote the bestselling indie guide Write. Publish. Repeat and hosted the original Self Publishing Podcast. His new book The Artisan Author is about ditching the faster-faster “Rapid Release” approach to publishing in favor of a saner, more sustainable, and more creatively fulfilling way. You can get The Artisan Author early on Kickstarter, or here on the usual stores.

Subscribe now

Welcome to the fourth and final chapter of our branding series with , designer, mentor, writer and the voice behind , a publication exploring the rhythms of creative work and life.

When Sarah first wrote for The Author Stack, she shared her approach to branding with purpose, a grounding read for any founder or writer building a creative business or publication. She then explored crafting a strategy and creating a moodboard to bring visual cohesion and emotional direction to your brand.

At the time of her last post, Sarah had just launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the Brand Seasons Playdeck, a pocket-sized card deck of 48 prompts designed to support you with strategy, styling and storytelling, which you can still get your hands on.

She is currently preparing for Brand Camp, a summer email retreat designed to help creatives, founders and writers reconnect with their brand in a way that feels spacious and aligned. Over six weeks from Monday 14th July, you’ll travel through six trail markers — Vision, Values, Voice, Vibration, Visibility and Viewpoint — with a weekly rhythm of thoughtful prompts and simple practices. You’ll also receive early access to The Lookout, Sarah's new brand audit guide.

This is a slower experience by design — something you can ease into alongside family life, client work or a much-needed creative breather. By the end of summer, you’ll feel excited about where your brand is heading, equipped to make meaningful progress and energised in your vision, values and voice.

Join Brand Camp for £60 or if you’re a member of the Brand Seasons Clubhouse (currently 25% off for life) you can sign up for just £40.

Join Brand Camp

Now, in this final part, we turn our attention to storytelling and how it weaves essence, emotion and meaning into your brand, and why it matters so deeply for creatives, founders and writers alike. You can subscribe to Sarah’s publication below.

Brand Seasons

A space to explore the rhythms of our creative lives and work, and get curious about what it means to connect and express ourselves through branding.

By Sarah Robertson

The stories we carry

In each of us, there are many stories to tell, and they hold immense power.

They shape how others perceive our businesses or publications, how they connect with our message and whether they come along for the journey.

The founders, creatives and writers I work with often ask whether their voice is “enough” or whether it’s too small, too messy or too unremarkable to share. But here’s the thing: people don’t want polished origin stories or perfect narratives.

Storytelling as a branding practice isn't just for project launches or about pages. Your honest attempts and vulnerable experiences are what give your audience a soft place to land and help them feel seen and make sense of the world.

These stories can live in your day-to-day — in experiments, the ideas you’re turning over, in reflections. It’s less about information and more about intention. In many ways, brand storytelling is the bridge between how something looks and how something feels. No matter how insignificant it may seem in relation to your own business or practice, narratives help us connect.

Why storytelling matters

Before we get into how to build your brand story, it’s worth pausing to ask why stories matter in the first place, especially in a world where communication is fast and attention is short.

My belief is that:

• It builds trust: When you share your story, you show up as you.

• It sparks empathy: Shared struggles make us feel less alone, more attuned.

• It invites action: Stories can uplift and bring people into your world.

One of my favourite perspectives on the power of story comes from Andrew Stanton’s TED Talk: The clues to a great story. Three of his simple yet powerful storytelling principles apply beautifully to branding:

1. Make a promise: A great story hints at where it’s going. A brand makes a promise then invites us to stay as that story unfolds. That doesn’t mean revealing everything at once. It means offering just enough for someone to follow along.

2. Build in wonder: Stanton speaks about wonder as those subtle, almost magical moments that move us. In branding, this might be a surprising metaphor, a line that lingers or a simple truth that lands with a reader at just the right time.

3. Use your knowledge: The most captivating stories come from what you know. When you draw from experience — your struggles and your turning points — you create texture. And your audience feels it.

When I settled on a tagline for my design studio, These Are The Days, the words ”craft a brand that feels like home” were shaped by my approach to branding and business. They captured how I wanted my clients to feel and, over time, that simple line has informed the stories I share.

But most of all? When I work on a project and a client tells me they finally feel at home in their brand — that they love it, recognise themselves in it and are proud to share it — I know I’ve delivered on my promise. It’s a quiet but powerful example of brand storytelling in action.

Whether you’re a writer, a founder or a creative of any kind, your brand story isn’t just a tool. It’s an offering. Your lived experience is your gold and the way you choose to express it creates resonance. A chance to show what you stand for and why it matters.

Three storytelling dimensions

Just as styling can be broken down into components like imagery, palettes and typography, storytelling can be approached in parts too.

Never an afterthought, story is the thread that brings your brand to life through content, contact and character. It gives your communication texture and evokes emotion in ways design alone can’t always reach.

Here are three core considerations that shape meaningful brand storytelling:

1. Function: Storytelling colours every aspect of your communication, from the way you write a homepage to the way you respond to a message. A well-crafted narrative uplifts and inspires, creating emotional connection. It takes time, but it gives your message staying power.

2. Authenticity: Your story should feel coherent and honest across platforms. If the tone of your social feed jars with your website, or your emails don’t sound like you, it creates subconscious friction. Think of it like moving between rooms in a house. The tone should carry through, gently and recognisably.

3. Meaning: This is where a brand story moves beyond clarity and into connection. When you speak to the desires of your audience, when you share your challenges and values, you create emotional resonance. This helps people not just understand your work, but feel something through it.

Thoughtful communication is vital. If your brand messaging hasn’t been revisited in a while, or you haven’t considered how you might weave elements of your own story into your marketing and promotion, now is a good time.

Five story types to try:

• The low-to-high origin story: Share how a moment of challenge shaped your business or creative work.

• The why I chose this path story: What deeper mission or motivation drives your work? Why do you really do it?

• The human element story: Share the everyday moments, reflections, or conversations that shape your path.

• The behind-the-scenes story: Offer a glimpse into your practice, showing how decisions are made and problems are solved.

• The future-facing story: Paint a picture of what you’re building next, maybe a new direction or dream you’re working toward.

These are just some ways to build trust and make your audience feel part of the journey, not just the outcome.

Communicating your values through storytelling

Stories are universal, but the way we tell them evolves.

With each new platform comes new narrative potential. That can be overwhelming, but also full of opportunity.

We look to brands to stand for something. To offer substance. To communicate with honesty. When there’s alignment, people trust what they see and hear. When there’s dissonance, the connection is lost.

As you move forward, take a moment to ask:

• How do I want people to feel? Begin with intention.

• What stories am I telling? Think about your communication.

• Is there something I’m ready to say that I haven’t shared yet? Get curious.

• Where could I be more honest or expressive? Consider what needs attention.

• What needs to shift so my story feels more aligned? Identify next steps.

And remember: your story isn’t a script, but a thread. Just begin and explore. See where it takes you.

Join the conversation

Want more brand reflections? You’re welcome to join Sarah over at — a home for purposeful creatives, thoughtful founders and writers looking to bring more cohesion and clarity to their branding.

She writes about curiosity, creativity and connection, hosts a podcast on branding and business and works with clients through her studio, These Are The Days, helping them define their vision, craft beautiful visuals and discover their voice.

If today’s article resonated, here are five questions to carry with you:

• How do you currently use storytelling in your brand?

• Where are you finding it hard to do so authentically?

• Which of the brand story types resonates most with your creative journey?

• Where in your brand might you be missing that vital emotional connection?

• What part of your story are you ready to share next?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I met with Florin a few weeks ago to talk about a tool he’s building, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

If you know me, you know I get excited about tools—especially when they simplify the parts of the author business that most people avoid. And book marketing? That’s usually at the top of the hate list for indie authors.

Most of us just want to write. We didn’t sign up for keyword research, social media calendars, or figuring out what makes a good comp title. We do it because we have to, but almost nobody enjoys it.

Which is why this caught my attention.

What Florin’s building is one of the first tools I’ve seen that actually makes book marketing feel manageable. Not by throwing more dashboards at you, but by turning all those overwhelming, confusing tasks into something that looks…doable.

And if you’ve ever stared at a blank ad headline or tried to write your tenth version of a blurb, you know how big that is.

So let’s talk about how AI—and the right kind of automation—can actually help you build a book marketing stack that works without burning you out. Because this stuff doesn’t have to suck.

Once upon a time, indie authors dreamed of hiring a magical consultant who would handle everything—blurbs, keywords, comps, press, social media—so they could just write.

The reality? That consultant often comes with a five-figure price tag and a stack of generic templates that don’t actually reflect your book.

According to Palmetto Publishing, the cost to market a book can range from $249 to over $8,000, depending on services. PaperTrue puts the upper end for “comprehensive marketing services” at $12,000+. And those prices don’t include ongoing platform growth or content creation.

But here’s the good news: you can now replicate most of those services yourself using the right mix of AI tools. For the first time ever, authors can build their own book marketing stack powered by modern tech, without the burnout or budget blowout.

Let’s break down exactly how to do that.

Your New Assistant Has 100 Billion Neurons

Meet your new marketing team: large language models, or LLMs.

If you’ve used ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you’ve already interacted with this new wave of generative AI. What’s wild is that these aren’t just tools. They’re the sum total of a massive corpus of human knowledge, creativity, and yes, marketing strategy.

Most of today’s top-performing LLMs—ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), and others—have been trained on hundreds of billions of tokens of publicly available data. This includes books, scripts, websites, articles, and in many cases…books that were not technically meant to be in the training data.

That’s controversial, and the legality of training on copyrighted material is still being challenged in court, but while that battle plays out, these models are live, and they’ve read everything from Stephen King to Colleen Hoover to Brandon Sanderson.

That means they’re surprisingly good at:

• Identifying what kinds of blurbs hook readers in specific genres

• Understanding what tone resonates with different audiences

• Matching your story to comparable titles that have real market traction

• Suggesting keywords and hashtags that are actually trending

• Adapting your content for specific reader segments, from romantasy to cozy mystery to hard sci-fi

In short: they’ve already “seen” millions of books that sold well and can reverse-engineer what makes them work. That’s something even most consultants can’t offer without access to expensive industry databases.

⚠️ But there’s the catch…

Yes, AI can do a lot, but you have to know how to prompt it. Think of AI not like a vending machine, but like a new assistant who’s brilliant, if a little weird. It can write a great book blurb in under 10 seconds, but only if you ask the right question.

LLMs don’t magically generate perfect content. They respond to your prompt. The better your input, the better your output.

Here’s an example:

Basic prompt:

“Write a blurb for my book.”

Better prompt:

“I need you to write 5 150-word back cover blurbs for my cozy mystery. Below I’ll give you the summary of the book and the target audience. In this blurb, highlight themes of redemption and community.

Here’s the book summary: [insert summary obtained in an earlier, separate step]

Here’s the target audience: [insert target audience obtained in an earlier, separate step]”

The second version gives the AI just enough constraints to deliver something usable and on-brand. You’ll notice that it will take more than one iteration to get a good blurb so you’ll first have to get a summary and based on it, the target audience.

Learning to prompt is the skill that separates good AI results from generic filler. It’s like learning to give feedback to a junior assistant. You’ll get more from them when you give more to them.

🧠 TL;DR: These AI tools are powerful because they’ve been trained on the best—and worst—of book marketing. They know what sells, but they only perform well when you ask the right questions. Learn to prompt, stay aware of the copyright landscape, and use the tools available while they’re here.

Subscribe now

What AI Can (and Should) Do for Your Marketing

Done right, AI can completely replace many core tasks traditionally handled by consultants or agencies. In addition to the example above, here are a few more things it can handle, along with prompt examples to get you started.

Comparable Titles (Comps)

Why comps matter: They help readers, retailers, and algorithms understand where your book fits.

You can get comps using a variation of the following prompt:

“Based on the synopsis of this novel, list 5 recent books that share similar tone, themes, and audience appeal. Prioritize recent books with strong Amazon visibility.
Here’s the synopsis: [insert synopsis]”

Cross-check with Kindle categories or Goodreads Listopia for market relevance

Keywords and Metadata

This is the “boring” stuff that drives real discoverability.

Prompt:

“Based on this book synopsis, generate 10 high-volume Amazon keywords, 3 BISAC categories, and a list of niche hashtags for BookTok and Instagram. Here’s the synopsis: [insert synopsis]”

Bonus: Tools like Publisher Rocket and KDP’s own backend can help you validate these.

Want More? AI Can Help You Build…

• A press release that sounds professional and tailored to your genre

• A book club discussion guide with 10+ thought-provoking questions

• A set of email sequences introducing readers to your world, your character, and your future releases

• A personalized ad copy pack with multiple variations for Facebook, Amazon, and Google Ads

• Reader personas and audience segments for better targeting

Marketing isn’t just about the launch day anymore. It’s about building a sustainable content loop that keeps your book alive in the minds (and feeds) of readers.

AI and automation make it possible to do this without spending hours each week manually posting, repackaging, or brainstorming new content.

Create Targeted Reader Personas

Knowing who your book is for is the starting point of any solid marketing strategy. With AI, you can go beyond vague “target audiences” and generate detailed, specific reader personas based on your actual story.

Prompt:

“Based on this book’s synopsis, who is the ideal reader? What other authors might they follow? What hashtags do they browse, and where do they spend time online? Here’s the synopsis: [insert synopsis]”

The result? You don’t just know your reader is “into fantasy”—you know she’s 32, loves Tessa Dare and cozy villain redemption arcs, scrolls #Romantasy on TikTok, and subscribes to fantasy map-making subreddits.

Once you know this, everything else becomes easier: your tone, your platform, your ads, even your newsletter giveaways.

Blog Posts That Go Deeper

Blogs may feel old school, but they’re still powerful for SEO and email engagement—especially when the content resonates with readers beyond just “buy my book.”

Here’s a smart workflow: Use a high-context model like Gemini 2.5 Pro.

Prompt:

“I want to create blog content from this novel. Suggest 5 blog post ideas based on its characters, worldbuilding, and themes. For each blog post provide the title and a high level structure with all the section titles and descriptions”

• Then, adjust what you don’t like and generate each blog post separately using consistent instructions. You can even go more granular and generate each blog section separately.

• Make sure to include in the prompt the exact style and tone of the blog post. You can also provide chunks from your book and ask the LLM to replicate the style.

• Once you’ve got all sections, stitch them together and tweak as needed.

This step-by-step approach keeps the quality high—far better than asking for a full blog post in one go, which often results in generic fluff.

Memorable Quotes for Social Media & Ads

AI is also great at surfacing quotable moments from your novel that you might have overlooked.

Feed in your book chapter by chapter. A synopsis of the whole book might also help the LLM understand the context better.

Prompt:

“Extract 5 emotional, thought-provoking, or funny quotes from this chapter that would resonate with readers on Instagram or Twitter. Avoid spoilers.”

Want something more specific? Ask for:

• Quotes that reflect the main theme

• Quotes about love, fear, power, or freedom

• Quotes spoken by a certain character

Pair these with book covers or AI-generated visuals (more on that next), and you’ve got evergreen content for your socials, newsletter, or ads.

Social Media Posts (With Custom AI Images)

Not everything has to be a quote. You can also ask AI to generate posts inspired by:

• A character’s internal struggle

• A pivotal scene (no spoilers!)

• A specific trope (grumpy x sunshine, chosen one, etc.)

• A piece of worldbuilding (your magic system, your alien planet, your café menu)

Then take it one step further:

• Ask the AI to create a catchy, visual description for each extracted post.

• Feed that description into an image generation model. The best ones right now are ChatGPT, Gemini, Flux 1.1 Pro Ultra, or Midjourney v7. Know that most of these models require separate payment or subscriptions.

A few tips:

• Be specific with image prompts: setting, lighting, mood, pose, colors, time of day

• Don’t ask for text in images (AI struggles a lot with that)

• Careful when adding people in the images, AI will also struggle with fingers and faces.

• Iteration is your friend—good image prompts are part art, part science

Automate Your Content Schedule

This step is optional but if you build a bank of content—quotes, blog excerpts, character posts, image prompts—you can automate the machine.

Here’s how to keep your content flowing consistently, without manually logging in every day:

• Use scheduling tools like Buffer, Later, or Hypefury to plan posts weeks in advance

• Recycle your best posts by rewriting them in different tones or formats:

  • Tweet ➝ carousel ➝ IG story ➝ quote image

The 3 Pitfalls of AI Marketing (and How to Avoid Them)

AI is amazing. It can write blurbs, brainstorm blog posts, pull quotes from your novel, and tell you which hashtags are hot on BookTok. But like any assistant, it needs supervision.

Here are three common mistakes authors make when using AI for marketing—and how to stay on the safe side.

1. Don’t Blindly Trust the Bots

LLMs are great storytellers… which means they’re also great at making things up. Even the best models occasionally hallucinate plot points, character names, or create weird cause-and-effect leaps that don’t actually exist in your book.

The fix: Always double-check outputs. If you’re generating comps, blurbs, or quotes—give them a once-over for accuracy. Especially before hitting publish.

2. Beware the Beige Voice

Most AI outputs start with the same generic tone: kind of corporate, kind of bland, kind of not you. If your book is funny, heartfelt, gritty, or poetic, you’ll want your marketing content to reflect that.

The fix: Be specific in your prompts about the tone you want. Even better—feed the model a writing sample and ask it to match your style. Don’t settle for “AI voice” when you’ve got a book full of your voice.

3. Respect Your Work and Read the Fine Print (if you care about these things)

You wrote a whole book. That’s a big deal. Don’t just throw it into every free AI tool out there without checking where your data might end up.

Some platforms store and use your input to train future models (unless you’re on a paid, privacy-respecting plan). Others don’t let you delete your uploads at all.

Want All of This Done for You?

Meet ManuscriptReport.com

If you love the idea of AI-powered marketing but don’t want to prompt engineer for hours and create multiple subscriptions, that’s exactly why I built ManuscriptReport.com.

We create 4 powerful types of reports from your books. Some reports are delivered in minutes and they all respect privacy (no AI training, all traces of the book are deleted in 30 days). Moreover, you can get $5 off with the discount code RUSSELL5.

Below is more information on the reports we create as well as a demo for each on Russell's book, Magic: Book 1 of The Godsverse Chronicles.

1. Full Marketing Report ($35)

Includes 15 marketing sections that are already optimized for discoverability: blurbs, comps, audience profile, market positioning, keywords, back-of-the-book summary, synopsis, themes, tropes, and more.

Marketing Report Demo

2. Blog Series ($35)

Get up to 10 professionally crafted blog posts highlighting your book's key themes, ideas, and narratives.

Blog Series Demo Report

3. Social Media Content ($45)

Generates 30 ready-to-publish social media posts with images. You’ll get posts with memorable quotes, sales pitches and scene spotlights (for fiction) or facts & stats (for non-fiction).

Social Media Content Demo (this will download an excel file 3 sheets/categories of posts and images)

4. Book Bible ($49)

Generate a detailed bible for your fiction or non-fiction book, tracking characters, descriptions, locations, relationships, plot, concepts, evidence, objects, and more.

Book Bible Demo Report


Still not convinced? Check out our case studies to learn how authors and publishers are using the reports.

LSS: Book marketing doesn’t have to be this massive, painful, soul-draining thing we all dread. If you’ve ever paid thousands for “comprehensive marketing help” and ended up with a generic blurb and a few hashtags, you know what I mean.

The truth is, much of what those high-paid consultants do can now be replicated if you know how to use the right tools and give them the right input. That’s what changes the game. Not just the tools themselves, but learning how to drive them.

We’re not stuck choosing between doing everything ourselves or shelling out thousands for someone else to do it. With the right tools and a little bit of prompting skill, you can take back control of your book marketing on your terms.

This isn’t about making your work generic or turning you into a robot. It’s about getting the annoying, repetitive stuff out of the way so you can focus on what you do best: telling stories that matter.

Start with what’s in front of you. Prompt better. Test more. Build as you go. The future of book marketing isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing it smarter.

You don’t need to be a tech expert. You just need to be curious.

What about you?

1. What’s been your biggest struggle with book marketing so far—and have you found anything that actually helped?

2. Have you tried using AI tools for your author business yet? If so, what’s worked for you (or totally flopped)?

3. If you could take one marketing task off your plate forever, what would it be—and why?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I get a lot of questions about beta readers — how to find them, how to work with them, and most importantly, how to get feedback that’s actually useful (instead of the classic “I loved it!” with no follow-up).

Now, I’ve got some solid thoughts on this topic, but when it comes to running a clean, efficient, and even automated beta reader process, there’s one person who does it better than just about anyone I know: Evan Gow, the founder of StoryOrigin.

Evan is one of those rare creators who doesn’t just build tools — he builds solutions. If you’ve ever used StoryOrigin, you know what I mean. It’s a powerhouse platform for authors, packed with tools that actually solve problems — from newsletter swaps to reader magnets to, yep, beta copies.

So when Evan told me he had a proven process for getting helpful, chapter-by-chapter feedback from beta readers (without losing your mind or chasing people down via email), I knew I had to share it with you.

This post is Evan’s guide to running a smooth, feedback-rich beta process — whether you’re doing it manually or want to automate the whole thing using StoryOrigin’s Beta Copies feature.

You can try it for yourself here.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Getting feedback from beta readers is hard.

Getting HELPFUL feedback from beta readers is EVEN HARDER.

It’s also important. But also (also?) not enjoyable (to put it diplomatically). Well, while that’s true for most people, I love betas, working with betas, and getting feedback from betas. I think I’m also pretty good at it.

So, I’m going to show you how to get HELPFUL feedback from beta readers (not just “It was great! I loved it” - what are you supposed to do with that?).

(Stick around, and I’ll also show you how to automate this whole process.)

What Is a Beta Reader, Anyway?

A beta reader is someone who reads your book before it's published and gives you feedback — ideally, thoughtful, constructive feedback that helps you improve the story, tighten the pacing, fix confusing bits, and catch anything that might knock readers out of the experience.

Think of beta readers as your book’s “test audience.” They’re not editors, and they’re not proofreaders (though some might point out a typo or two). Their job is to read your book like a reader — not a grammar robot or a literary critic — and tell you what worked, what didn’t, and where they got confused or bored.

The goal? Catch and fix problems before you hit publish. That way, your book is stronger, more polished, and more likely to connect with readers (and avoid those dreaded two-star reviews that start with “I really wanted to like this, but…”).

Beta readers are one of the most valuable parts of the writing process if you know how to work with them the right way. (Which is what this article is all about.)

Where Beta Readers Fit in the Publishing Process

So, where exactly do beta readers fit into the grand scheme of turning your draft into a finished, reader-ready book?

Here’s a simple breakdown of the chain:

1. You write the book. Obvious, but we’re starting at the top. You finish your draft — yay! Now it’s time to shape it into something stronger.

2. Self-editing. You go through your draft yourself. Tighten up scenes. Cut the boring bits. Maybe scream into a pillow. Repeat. This is where you do your best to make it shine.

3. Developmental Edit (optional but ideal). This is where a developmental editor comes in. Their job is to look at the big picture stuff — plot holes, character arcs, pacing, structure. They’ll ask tough questions. They might suggest cutting or rewriting entire chapters. They’re the story architects.

4. ***Beta Readers (this is where they come in!) Once your book is in decent shape — like, it makes sense and feels mostly “done” — it’s time to bring in beta readers. These are test readers from your target audience. They’re not trained editors, but they are your readers. They help you spot things that real readers will love, hate, or stumble over. Their job is to tell you things like what confused them, what they loved, what dragged or felt boring and what characters they connected with (or didn’t) They give you real-world reactions so you can make the book stronger before it’s locked in.

5. Line/Copy Editing. Once the story is solid, it’s time to clean it up. A line editor focuses on sentence flow, word choice, tone — making sure everything reads smoothly. A copy editor looks for grammar, punctuation, consistency (is your magic system called "Fireweaving" or "Flamebinding"? Pick one).

6. Proofreading. The final polish. A proofreader catches lingering typos, formatting issues, and any weird spacing or errors that slipped through. They’re the last eyes before publication.

TL;DR:

• Beta readers = reader reactions

• Editors = professional guidance

• Proofreaders = final quality control

Each plays a different role, and using all three at the right time gives your book the best chance of succeeding in the wild.

Finding Beta Readers

Ideally, your beta readers are fans of your genre who read the kind of book you’re writing and love it. A cozy mystery reader won’t give you helpful feedback on your space opera. You want people who know the tropes and pacing expectations, along with people who don’t have a vested interest in sparing your feelings.

For this reason, friends and family usually don’t make for good beta readers (unless they are brutal, love love love the genre, and know everything about it).

The best place to find readers that know and love your genre is your own audience. Specifically, your mailing list. Even if your list is small, you’ll usually get a handful of enthusiastic readers willing to help. If your list is huge, you can still keep it manageable by creating a little sense of exclusivity:

“I’m assembling a small beta team for my upcoming book. I’ll only be accepting 7 readers this time, so if you're interested, reply to this email and tell me why you're excited about this story.”

This keeps you from being overwhelmed, filters out the fence-sitters, and adds a bit of FOMO to the process, all without sounding salesy. I won’t go into depth here, but if you don’t have a mailing list, check out StoryOrigin’s features for building your mailing list.

Other places to look for potential beta readers: Facebook Groups and Subreddits dedicated to your genre. Just make sure to read the group’s rules and avoid sounding spammy. Some groups are specifically for finding beta readers, but you’re less likely to find readers specific to your genre.

You can also search #booktok or #bookstagram, Discord channels, local or online book clubs, Meetup, or Reedsy.

Remember, you don’t need 20 beta readers. In fact, having too many can be detrimental as it can lead to analysis paralysis when you get conflicting feedback. Aim to have 5 to 7 really good ones that you can be confident will finish the book. After they’ve read the book, comes the most important part.

Subscribe now

The Beta Copy Process

First, the non-automated way that will still get you 10x better feedback than just emailing someone your Word doc.

• Split your manuscript into chunks big enough to give them an idea of the story but small enough to be manageable. This could mean chapters 1-3, Act 1, the first 10,000 words, or any segment that ends on a compelling hook.

• Email your beta readers part 1 + a questionnaire.

• They email you the completed questionnaire (after they’ve read part 1).

• Email them part 2 + a questionnaire, and so on.

There are 2 key components to this process:

1. You split the manuscript into chunks, so they have to give you progress reports while it’s still fresh in their head.

2. Your questionnaire provides the readers with “critique guidance” so they know what you’re looking for feedback on

The right questions can take a reader’s “It was great! I loved it!” and turn it into “I loved the side character, especially that scene in Chapter 8, where they…” Don’t ask all these questions (this is not school), but here are some you might consider.

🔍 Big Picture Story Questions

• What parts of the story felt the strongest to you?

• What parts felt weak or underdeveloped?

• Were there any moments where you felt emotionally disconnected?

• Did the plot feel believable and internally consistent?

• Did the story hold your attention from beginning to end?

🧭 Pacing & Flow

• Were there any points where your attention started to wander?

• Did any scenes feel like they dragged or moved too fast?

• Was the beginning engaging enough to pull you in?

• Did the ending feel satisfying? Why or why not?

👥 Character Feedback

• Which characters felt the most real or memorable?

• Were there any characters you didn’t connect with? Why?

• Did anyone feel inconsistent or act out of character?

• Were character motivations clear and believable?

• Did you root for the main character? If not, why?

🌍 World-Building & Setting (for speculative fiction)

• Did the world feel fleshed out and immersive?

• Were there any parts of the world-building that confused you?

• Were there terms, concepts, or systems you didn’t understand?

• What parts of the setting were your favorite?

📚 Genre-Specific Expectations

• Does this book feel like a good fit for the [insert genre] genre?

• Did it meet your expectations for this kind of story?

• Were there tropes you loved or hated?

• Did anything feel cliché or overdone?

💡 Clarity & Readability

• Was there any part of the story that didn’t make sense?

• Did you get confused about who was speaking or what was happening?

• Were there any terms, references, or jargon you didn’t understand?

• Were transitions between scenes or chapters clear?

✨ Reader Experience

• Did anything pull you out of the story?

• Were there moments you had a strong emotional reaction? Which ones?

• What was your favorite scene or line?

• Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

📝 Bonus (Open-Ended)

• If you could change one thing about this book, what would it be?

• Is there anything you wish had happened that didn’t?

• Do you have any other thoughts or notes?

Email + questionnaires + following up + doing this for more than 1 or 2 readers? That’s a ton of work.

If you want to automate the whole process, check out StoryOrigin’s Beta Copies feature where readers unlock each chapter of your manuscript by leaving feedback on the previous chapter. You don’t need to email or follow up with them. Just upload your manuscript, StoryOrigin will show you each reader’s progress and compile all of their feedback into one place for you.

The Editing Process

Next, use that feedback to improve your editing process. Here’s a simple framework to help you make sense of the feedback you get and turn it into actionable edits:

1. Look for patterns, not one-off comments

If one reader says a character feels flat, take note. If three readers say the same thing? That’s a signal. Patterns in feedback are where you’ll find the most impactful edits.

One person’s opinion is… well, an opinion. But when you start seeing the same note from multiple readers, you’ve struck gold.

How you run your beta process will make a difference here.

Avoid using Google Docs, where readers can see each other’s comments. You’ll end up getting a bandwagon effect. It’s better to use Word docs or StoryOrigin’s Beta Copies feature where each reader will be in their own silo.

2. Tag feedback by type

Break comments into categories like:

• Plot issues

• Character inconsistencies

• Pacing problems

• Confusing world-building

• Line-level clarity or grammar

This helps you prioritize your editing pass. For example, there’s no point fixing dialogue if your Act II has a gaping hole in the middle.

3. Decide what to fix and what to leave

Take every comment with a grain of salt. You are the author, not your beta readers.

An easy example: You might intentionally write a character that readers will dislike (perhaps to show character growth or set them up as a villain, etc.). If readers complain about the character, you’re doing your job right.

You will also get comments from readers that conflict with one another, and some may reflect a reader simply not being the right audience for your book.

Use your judgment. Keep the vision of your story in mind.

4. Apply edits in layers

Once you’ve reviewed all your feedback, make a plan for how to tackle revisions. Start with the biggest changes (plot, structure, character arcs), then move down to scene-level tweaks, then polish with line edits.

Trying to fix everything all at once is a recipe for burnout. If you make significant changes to your book, consider doing another round with your beta readers.

How Many Times Should You Go Back to Beta Readers?

The short answer: once, maybe twice per project — max. But let’s break that down.

🌀 Round 1: The First Beta Read

This is your big test run. The goal here is to find out:

• Is the story working?

• Are the characters compelling?

• Is the pacing solid?

• Are there any major plot holes or confusing scenes?

You send your (mostly polished) manuscript to 5–7 beta readers. You’re not looking for typos — you’re looking for story-level feedback. They read it, fill out your questionnaire, and you make changes based on patterns in their responses.

✅ This is the essential round that every author should do.

🔁 Round 2: The Re-Read (Optional)

If you made big changes — rewrote the ending, killed off a different character, changed major plot arcs — you might want to run it by a new group of betas, or 1–2 of the original readers if they’re game for it.

Why? Because those major changes may have unintended side effects — pacing issues, logic gaps, or new confusion you didn’t see.But this round should be faster, and you shouldn’t need as many people. Think of it like a test screening for Version 2.0.

✅ Do this only if you made major edits based on feedback.

❌ Don’t keep going back endlessly.

Beta readers are not a forever tool. They’re a checkpoint — not a revolving door.

Going back 3, 4, 5 times? That usually means:

• You’re not confident in your vision

• You’re trying to make the book perfect (spoiler: it never will be)

• Or you’re getting conflicting feedback and don’t know what to do

At that point, it’s time to bring in an editor or trust your gut.

Pro Tip:

New beta readers = fresh eyes. If you do run a second round, try not to reuse the same people unless they specifically ask to read the next version. Most readers don’t want to re-read your book three times in a row.

Still Not Getting the Feedback You Need?

If you’ve gone through a round (or two) of beta reading and you're still stuck — confused by conflicting comments, unsure if the story really works, or getting nothing but vague praise — it might be time to bring in heavier hitters.

🚨 Enter: Alpha Readers and Developmental Editors

Alpha Readers

These are your ride-or-die readers — often fellow writers or superfans — who read the rough draft before it’s polished. They're there to help you shape the story from the ground up. You might send them your book chapter by chapter as you write it.

They’re less focused on sentence structure and more focused on story logic, character arcs, and overall vibe. Think of them like co-pilots. If beta readers are your test audience, alpha readers are in the cockpit with you while you're still figuring out how to fly the thing.

Use an alpha reader if:

• You're not sure your story makes sense

• You're stuck in the middle of your draft

• You want early feedback before polishing

Developmental Editors

These are professionals who specialize in big-picture edits. They dig into structure, plot, pacing, character arcs, world-building — all the foundational stuff. If something’s broken in your story and you can’t figure out what or how to fix it, a developmental editor will find it and tell you exactly what needs work (and often how to fix it).

Yes, they cost money. But they can save you months of revision loops, confusion, and frustration.

Use a developmental editor if:

• You need expert eyes on your story structure

• You’ve gotten conflicting feedback from readers

• You’ve hit a wall and don’t know how to revise

Beta readers are valuable, but they’re not miracle workers.

They’re regular readers — not trained editors, story engineers, or book surgeons. If your book needs more than “I liked it, but I didn’t get that one scene with the goat wizard,” then it’s time to bring in an alpha reader or a pro.

Conclusion

Incorporating beta readers into your publishing process can feel like a lot of work, but the payoff is huge. You get real insights from real readers before your book is out in the world. That means fewer negative reviews, a tighter story, and a more confident launch.

The key is to treat the beta reading process like a system:

• Be intentional about who you invite

• Ask the right questions

• Organize the feedback

• And apply it strategically

Whether you’re running it manually with email and Word docs, or automating it all through StoryOrigin’s Beta Copies, having a repeatable process is what turns chaotic input into constructive feedback.

Learn more about StoryOrigin beta readers

The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress.

What do you think?

1. Have you ever worked with beta readers before? What worked (or didn’t) for you?

2. What’s one question you wish you’d asked your beta readers — or one you’ll definitely ask next time?

3. Do you prefer a small beta team or a big group with lots of feedback? Why?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

One of the best parts of running The Author Stack is connecting with writers who are actually in it building careers, not just chasing dreams. Writers who are doing the unglamorous, everyday work of showing up, creating, tracking, evolving, and finding their own version of success.

Nishka Rathi is one of those people. She left a stable job in banking to pursue a life in writing, expecting clarity, fulfillment, maybe even some peace. What she found instead (as most of us do) was chaos, reinvention, and the sharp learning curve of turning art into a career.

In this piece, Nishka breaks down what it really takes to build a sustainable writing life not in theory, but in practice. From client work to mindset shifts, spreadsheets to soul-searching, this is the stuff most people won’t tell you, but that every writer needs to hear.

Whether you’re freelancing, building your own audience, or somewhere in between, this is the work. To find out more about Nishka’ work, read her blog here.

In 2008, after spending a few years as a banker, I got completely worn out and wanted to find my way back to the things that once made me happy, namely reading and writing. Hoping to do something around the ideas that brought me joy, I started my writing career thinking I'd find:

• Consistent and well-paid work (because I was finally doing what I loved)

• A safe zone where I would just write (what else was there to do?)

• A creative life

Looking back, I realize my writing journey would have been much smoother if I had spent some time understanding what all goes into building a sustainable writing career.

Building a Sustainable Writing Career

Unlike a traditional job, a writing career requires a completely different mindset. As a writer, you navigate unpredictable income streams and forge your own career path while juggling multiple client relationships.

While corporate employees specialize within established systems, successful writers must balance creative work with business development, marketing, project management, and financial planning.

Over the years, I’ve learned a few things that have shaped my writing career:

Grow with Intent: It's easy to get caught in the daily grind— writing, pitching, managing client work, never realizing you’re creating without purpose. A writing career isn’t just about the work, it’s about building sustainability and planning for growth.

A few years ago, I started tracking more than just my work. I documented and tracked my outreach efforts, new clients, learning, along with income and expenses. It was a game changer and helped me view my progress through a wider lens by revealing patterns— what’s working, what’s not, and how my efforts build over time. I have also used the documented details as proof to demand higher rates due to scope creep.

Tip: I use an Excel spreadsheet with monthly tabs to track outreach efforts, learnings, completed work, and invoices. Updating it daily keeps everything organized. I also include an extra tab for yearly goals, giving me a clear, big-picture view of my progress in one place.

Learn rather than compare: Writing can be lonely so there is no point in making it harder on yourself with the added pressure of comparison. Focus instead on continuous learning. Over the years, I’ve taken short story courses, joined B2B writing groups, and explored creative processes to refine my skills.

Tip: Avoid the trap of chasing every new course. Set a yearly theme— like building your personal brand— and commit to mastering one skill at a time. After the course/program, set aside a few months applying what you have learned through real projects and practice before you jump onto a new idea.

Position yourself as a problem solver: A veteran publisher once told me, "Have conversations with potential clients. You know your value and rates, but having genuine conversations with potential clients reveals what they truly need while demonstrating your experience and expertise."

It was a lightbulb moment for me and it changed the way I approached potential clients.

Instead of jumping straight to pricing, I started asking thoughtful questions about their goals, challenges, and expectations. It helped me tailor my approach, share relevant work examples, and position my rates as an investment in solving their communication challenges rather than just a content expense.

Tip: Long projects can test your patience in multiple ways. Thus, during initial conversations, I also check if I can connect with the client through a shared joke or a mutual perspective. Finding small connections and common ground not only creates rapport, but it also shows that you will be able to find ways to navigate challenges with ease in the future.

Lean into your strengths: Most writers lean closer to introvert than extrovert and find it difficult to confidently voice views in verbal discussions with new clients. I learned this the hard way. In my early days, I fumbled through pricing discussions and scope negotiations.

To overcome this stumbling block, I started prepping for client calls by writing down the key points, including my value, pricing, and polite ways to say "no" or "this costs extra." Seeing the arguments in writing and practicing saying the words out loud made a huge difference.

Tip: I have created a cheat sheet on my Google Drive where I write responses to common client questions about pricing, scope, requirements etc. I usually go through them once before a meeting. It helps me get over the ‘how should I say this’ and actually navigate those conversation stoppers like ‘that’s not in our budget’ or ‘we will let you know soon.’

Find your community: For years, I believed I was the only one facing rejection and ghosting. Everyone else seemed to have their career figured out. This dismal thought chipped away at my confidence. Later, as I started stepping out of my comfort zone to meet fellow writers and joined writing groups, I had a very different experience. In those safe places, I heard stories that never made it to social media posts or blog articles.

That's when it hit me that I was not the only one. Every writer faces unanswered emails, projects that vanish, and clients who disappear after promising a deal.

Tip: Join a writing group or community— online or offline. Engaging with fellow writers will remind you that rejection and ghosting are normal, help you share experiences, and even open doors to new opportunities through referrals and collaborations.

Every writer walks their own path, yet there's a common thread that connects us all. We all face similar inner battles and demons. There are different goals that drive people, but if your view of a fulfilling life includes hours spent writing and immersing yourself in words and ideas, then spend time and effort in building a strong writing mindset. Try new ideas, learn from everyone, and slowly nudge yourself out of your comfort zones to thrive in ways that are uniquely yours.

To learn more about Nishka’s work, read her blog by clicking here.

What do you think?

• How can tracking specific metrics—like outreach efforts, new skills, and invoices—transform your approach to building a sustainable writing career?

• What are some practical ways to cultivate a supportive writer community, and how might such connections help you handle rejection and ghosting?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I’ve been self-narrating my non-fiction audiobooks since way before it was cool, and my friend Cindy Gunderson happens to be one of the most knowledgable humans I know about this specific topic. We got to talking recently and I asked her to write a primer about why people should think about self-narrating, and why it’s not as daunting as it might otherwise sound.

Cindy Gunderson is a voice actress and award-winning author. Since she has commitment issues, she writes sci-fi and fantasy, plus contemporary romance and women's fiction under the pen name, Cynthia Gunderson.

After 25+ years of performing, voiceover and commercial work, instructing piano and vocal performance, and directing children's theater, she turned to audiobook narration and production. She's narrated, mastered, and produced over forty-five audiobooks since 2020 in her home studio and has created a massive audio listener following/community on TikTok, YouTube, and other various audiobook platforms.

You can find more about her at www.CindyGunderson.com.

There’s a revolution happening in the book world, and it’s not on the printed page. It’s in the spoken word. The audiobook industry is exploding, and all the reasons indie authors have balked at audiobook production in the past (massive upfront cost, searching for narrators, lack of distribution options) are no longer relevant.

I’m not talking about AI, though that can be a great option for many. I’m talking about self-narration.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “I’m a writer, not a voice actor.” Or maybe, “I hate the sound of my own voice” or “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” But before you dismiss the idea outright, let’s discuss why self-narration is one of the most powerful moves you can make as an author in 2025.

The audiobook industry was valued at over $6.8 billion in 2023, with projections soaring to $35 billion by 2030. That’s a staggering 26.2% compound annual growth rate. In contrast, traditional book reading is in decline. In 2022, only 48.5% of adults reported reading at least one book that year, a downward trend from previous years.

But audiobooks? They’re on absolute fire. Over 52% of U.S. adults have listened to an audiobook, meaning nearly 137 million Americans are potential listeners. They’re not casual consumers, either. The average listener finishes about seven audiobooks a year, often while commuting, exercising, or doing household chores.

I realized this when I started publishing in 2019. Everyone I knew was consuming podcasts and finding audiobooks through the newly popular Libby app connected to their local libraries. I knew I wanted to do audio, but I hit the wall most new authors did. I wasn’t making any money, and it was exorbitantly expensive to hire a narrator.

However, unlike most authors, I’d been performing (musical theater, voice-over, commercial work) for thirty years. The idea of mastering and editing an entire audiobook was daunting, as was finding a way to sound-treat some non-existent space in my very busy home (I have four kids).

In the end, the numbers above were just too compelling. I had to find a way to make it happen. Now, five years later with a six-figure author business built mostly on audio (I publish audio first and have built multiple social media platforms on my live narration and audiobooks), I can tell you that it was absolutely worth the initial learning curve, and here’s why:

The Power of Author Narration

Listeners crave authenticity. In an era where people are obsessed with connection, there is no substitute for an author reading their own work. When you narrate your book, you deliver it exactly as it was meant to be heard. Your cadence, your emphasis, and your passion comes through in a way that no hired voice actor, no matter how talented, can replicate.

Take a moment to think about some of the biggest author-narrated audiobooks. When Michelle Obama narrated Becoming, it was an instant hit. Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights blew up, in part because his distinctive voice and storytelling style made it feel like he was speaking directly to the listener. Even fiction authors are jumping in and narrating their own work to critical and commercial success.

Why? Because no one understands the rhythm of your words like you do. No one else can emphasize the lines that matter most, pause at the perfect moment, or capture the emotions you poured into every page.

If you’re an author in today’s digital age, you’re also a brand. Readers don’t just want books. They want experiences. They follow authors on social media, listen to their podcasts, and engage with their stories on multiple levels. When you narrate your audiobook, you’re strengthening that personal connection.

Your voice becomes part of your brand identity. It gives you a competitive edge in a crowded market where thousands of books are published daily. Think of it as an extension of your author platform. People who listen to you narrate your book will recognize your voice in interviews, podcasts, and social media clips. I’ve had many experiences where people have stopped me in public places, asking why they know my voice and making the connection. It’s one of my favorite things!

More importantly, self-narration builds trust. It tells your audience: I care about this book so much that I didn’t hand it off to someone else. I wanted to be the one to tell you this story.

Cost-Effective and High ROI

Audiobook production doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. Sure, if you hire a professional narrator, book a studio, and pay for sound engineers, it can cost thousands of dollars. But self-narration slashes that cost significantly. With a decent microphone, some simple soundproofing, and free or affordable editing software, you can produce a high-quality audiobook at a fraction of the price.

And let’s talk about return on investment. Audiobooks often command higher price points than ebooks, and they hold their value longer. They aren’t subject to steep discounts the way ebooks are. They also open the door to new revenue streams, which I can absolutely attest to.

Initially, I went exclusive with ACX, then branched out and went as wide as possible. My YouTube channel has been an invaluable asset for bringing new readers into my brand, and Findaway Voices with Chirp deals and now access to Spotify has seen explosive growth.

Self-published and indie authors have a massive advantage when it comes to audiobook self-narration. Unlike traditionally published authors, who often have little say in their audiobook production, indie authors control the entire process. You decide how your book is read, produced, and distributed. As mentioned above, you’re not locked into one platform. You can experiment with alternative distribution channels,

In both my experience and and the collective experience of the hundreds of other authors I’ve spoken with about this topic, audiobook sales often boost ebook and print sales (and vice versa). Many audiobook listeners will grab a Kindle or paperback copy simply because they loved the audio version. It’s all about maximizing your reach and leveraging multiple formats to engage different audience segments.

Time is Money

Correct. But. What if you could improve your books by integrating self-narration into your process? Many authors know the secret that reading your book aloud during final edits is the best way to find your blind spots. Even after multiple rounds of editing, there are usually still a few typos or possibly larger errors (ie: missed character description or inconsistency) that need to be fixed. We’ve all gotten those emails from readers haven’t we?

Self-narration gives the perfect last pass. When I finish recording, I feel confident that my book is as clean as possible, and I LOVE that feeling when I press submit on that e-book and paperback file. Yes, it takes time to narrate, but it takes time to edit in general. For me, this process has produced better finished product while also giving me another revenue stream. That’s a no-brainer for me.

“But I’m Not a Voice Actor”

If you’ve made it this far, I’m guessing there’s still an elephant in the room: fear. Many authors hesitate to narrate their own books because they don’t think they have the right voice. But guess what? Neither did most of the successful author-narrators at first. I certainly didn’t, either.

Narration is a skill. Like writing, it gets better with practice. You don’t need a Hollywood voice; you need authenticity. A warm, engaging tone that makes the listener feel like they’re hearing the story from a friend. And if you’re writing nonfiction, this becomes even more crucial. If a reader picked up your book to learn from you, why would they want to hear it from someone else?

The good news? There are countless resources available to help you improve your narration skills. Breathing techniques, pacing exercises, and simple vocal warm-ups can all enhance your delivery. And with today’s technology, minor imperfections can easily be edited out…

But you have to know the imperfections before you can correct for them, which is why I spend so much time talking to authors about self-narrating their audiobook. Whether it’s to save money, build a deeper connection to your audience, give a final check to your book by reading allowed, or some combination of them, everyone seems to be excited about self-narration.

Because of this, I started formally teaching people how to narrate their own books. If all of this sounds exciting but intimidating, I have the perfect resource for you: Audiobooks for Authors. This is my course launching on March 1st, and it covers everything we’ve discussed.

• Acting and breathing techniques

• Manuscript and character prep/organization

• Studio setup and equipment recommendations at every price point

• Tutorials on DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstations, both free and paid)

• Editing and mastering made simple

• Distribution and marketing options (including ACX, Findaway Voices, YouTube, and direct sales via Bookfunnel)

It takes less than two hours to work through, and at the end, you’ll have all the information and resources you’ll need to feel confident jumping into self-narration. You can see more details on the course below.

Course link

The audiobook market isn’t just thriving. It’s dominating. More people are consuming books via audio than ever, and that trend isn’t slowing down. As an author, tapping into this market is no longer optional to maximize your book’s reach and revenue.

And while you could hire a narrator, why would you when you have the most passionate, most authentic, most real voice for your story? Your readers want to hear from you. They want your words in your voice. They want to connect with you in a way that no text on a page can replicate, and by learning from those of us who’ve paved the way, the learning curve is smaller than ever before.

So, take a deep breath, lean into the mic, and tell your story. Your audience is waiting.

Cindy Gunderson (romance pen name Cynthia Gunderson)

www.CindyGunderson.com

Cindy Gunderson is a voice actress and award-winning author. Since she has commitment issues, she writes sci-fi and fantasy, plus contemporary romance and women's fiction under the pen name, Cynthia Gunderson.

After 25+ years of performing, voiceover and commercial work, instructing piano and vocal performance, and directing children's theater, she turned to audiobook narration and production. She's narrated, mastered, and produced over forty-five audiobooks since 2020 in her home studio and has created a massive audio listener following/community on TikTok, YouTube, and other various audiobook platforms.

What do you think?

• Have you ever considered narrating your own audiobook?

• What’s your biggest hesitation about self-narration—tech setup, voice confidence, or something else?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Easily one of the best groups of humans I’ve met in the past year were the team of , , and from . I had been recommending Sinem’s publication on Sparkloop for a while, so having them come to Substack was super cool. I’ve since gotten to know them better, and now they’re launching a new Substack program.

If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend their publication.

Write • Build • Scale

Learn how to write online, build your audience, and scale your income.

By Sinem Günel

Note that there is an affiliate link in this post, it won't cost you anything and anything I receive from the affiliate goes to my coffee fund.

When I joined Substack in July 2024, I didn’t expect my publication, , to hit the ‘bestseller’ status just a few months later.

Honestly, I just wanted to try something new after years of writing on Medium. But what started as an experiment turned into a game-changer.

In just six months, the Write • Build • Scale publication has:

• Grown to over 4,200 total subscribers

• Gained over 150 paying subscribers

• And earned the Substack ‘bestseller’ badge

Over these past six months, I’ve tested dozens of Substack growth strategies and monetization methods. Many of them didn’t work, but some of them worked exceptionally well.

Let’s dive into five of these effective Substack growth strategies (that most creators on the platform don’t use enough).

#1: Set Up a 'Become a Member' Page

The default offer page Substack provides is okay, but let’s be real - it’s pretty basic. If you want to convert more subscribers, you need a more compelling page.

That’s why we created a 'become a member' page for our publication (think of it as a sales page for your paid Substack). This page is by far the most profitable page of our entire publication.

A custom ‘become a member’ page allows you to explain the value of your paid plan in more detail, share testimonials of other paid subscribers (to add social proof), and add visuals that make your offer ‘pop’.

In other words, it’s a much better marketing asset than the standard offer page Substack provides.

Here’s how to create your 'become a member’ page:

• Go to your publication’s settings and click on ‘website’

• Go to ‘custom pages’ and click on ‘add’

• Write a clear explanation of what’s included in the paid plan

• Be specific about the benefits (e.g., “Save hours with exclusive templates and tools”)

• Add screenshots and testimonials from existing subscribers

• Be clear about the pricing and add a link to the standard Substack offer page

Tip: Link to your 'become a member' page in many of your emails and make it easy to find on your Substack (add it to your publication’s navigation bar).

#2: Narrow Your Focus

If people don’t understand what your Substack publication is about within 30 - 60 seconds, they’re not going to subscribe. It’s harsh, but true.

Your Substack needs a clear focus. That means knowing exactly:

• Who you’re writing for (your audience)

• What problems you’re solving (your value)

• Why it’s worth subscribing to your publication (your unique angle)

The challenge is that many writers want to appeal to everyone.

They fear that narrowing their focus will limit their audience, but the opposite is true.

When you’re clear about your niche, you attract the right people. And those people are way more likely to subscribe, engage, and eventually buy something from you.

For my Write • Build • Scale publication, the goal is clear: We help online writers and creators grow their audience and monetize their expertise.

Everything we write reinforces that message.

Tip: Ask yourself, “What do I want readers to get out of my Substack?” Write your answer in one sentence and use it as the foundation of your tagline, about page, and posts.

#3: Create Your ‘Premium Content Library’

Our premium content library is a separate page on our publication where we feature all links to our paywalled content.

This way, paid subscribers can easily access the exclusive content they’ve unlocked, making sure they get the most out of their paid subscription.

But aside from keeping paid subscribers happy, this premium content library also serves as a marketing tool for our paid tier.

Since the page is accessible to free subscribers as well (they just can’t access any of the content), they get a glimpse of everything they’re currently missing out on, which creates interest and desire to join the paid tier.

Here’s how to create your premium content library:

• Go to your publication’s settings and click on ‘website’

• Go to ‘custom pages’ and click on ‘add’

• Hyperlink to all of your premium content and sort it by content type (like guides, courses, templates, and replays of live sessions, etc.)

• Add this page to your Substack’s navigation bar so your subscribers see it often

Tip: Create a premium content library, keep it up to date, and feature it prominently in your Substack publication.

#4: Use the ‘Free + Paywall’ Strategy

One of the best ways to convert free subscribers into paying ones is the free + paywall strategy. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a premium article

2. Make 25 - 50% of the post free to read for everyone

3. Add a paywall that prompts free subscribers to join paid to unlock the rest

The free + paywall strategy is really effective because it lets readers experience the quality of your paid content without having to take out their credit card first.

It’s like giving your readers a taste of the cake before asking them to buy the whole thing. If the free section is valuable enough, they’ll likely want to see the rest as well.

I strongly prefer this strategy over simply paywalling entire articles. When you lock 100% of your premium content behind a paywall, free subscribers will never get a taste of your premium content (making them less likely to join the paid tier).

Tip: Make the free section valuable enough to hook readers, but leave the most valuable insights behind the paywall.

#5: Don’t Go At It Alone

Substack is a community, and the fastest way to grow is to connect with other creators on the platform.

I know this can be a struggle for a lot of writers, as many of us tend to enjoy writing because it’s more of an introspective activity.

But if you go at it alone, growing on Substack will be difficult. You’ll grow so much faster when you collaborate with other writers, especially through:

• Guest Posting: Cross-posting or guest writing for other Substacks puts you in front of new audiences, bringing in new subscribers

• Newsletter Recommendations: Swapping newsletter recommendations introduced over 2,000 (!) new subscribers to our publication

Tip: Engaging with 3 - 5 writers in your niche every week. Comment on their posts, restack their Notes, exchange newsletter recommendations, and reach out for potential guest post opportunities.

Want To Grow Your Substack In 2025?

Join our live masterclass on January 30th (free) if you want to learn how to grow your audience and income on Substack - even if you’re just starting out:

» Yes, I Want To Lean How To Grow & Monetize My Substack In 2025

Write • Build • Scale

Learn how to write online, build your audience, and scale your income.

By Sinem Günel

If you liked that one, I highly recommend checking out their masterclass. Just click on the link above and sign up. So, what do you think?

• What’s your favorite secret?

• How are you going to change your own publication to take advantage of these tips?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Hi,

A lot of you ask me about book reviews and, frankly, I kind of suck at them. I know they are important, but I just have a lot of stuff going on to manage them. However, my friend Rossana Corniel from Booksprout lives for book reviews.

So, I met with their team at Author Nation, I invited Rossana to talk to you about how to get more reviews…something readers tell me is one of their biggest sore spots when it comes to building their author career.

Have no fear. We’re about to walk you through the process and get you stacked with reviews.

Get 2nd Month Free!

Note that there is an affiliate link in this post, it won't cost you anything and anything I receive from the affiliate goes to my coffee fund.

Hi,

Can you remember the last time you shopped online and didn’t check the reviews first? I honestly cannot. If you do this regularly, you’re not alone. In fact, according to a study by Nielsen, 90% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s saying a lot!

Reviews are important for any product sold online, but they are especially important for books because of the unique role they play in readers' lives. This is because books are experiences, which make them uniquely different from products. Reviews not only boost visibility but also help potential readers feel confident that your story will resonate with them. Let’s explore why book reviews matter so much and how you can use them to set your next release up for success.

How reviews boost your book's visibility

Platforms like Amazon, Apple Books, and Goodreads use reviews to decide where to position your book—like a giant Pac-Man gobbling reviews to rank your book higher. More (and better) reviews often mean more visibility. This isn’t unique to books, it’s how reviews work for pretty much any product sold online. And as a self-published author, understanding this will help you make sure you leave no stone unturned when marketing your books.

Book reviews as marketing tools

Reviews are literally testimonials, and you can use them to bring your book to life across all platforms. A short, standout quote from a review can make an excellent hook for a social media post, draw attention in a newsletter, or shine on your book’s product page. Including snippets like “a page-turner I couldn’t put down” or “a fresh take on the genre” can immediately grab a potential reader’s attention. Reviews also add substance to your marketing materials—anyone can say their book is great, but when real readers say it, the message carries a lot more weight. Leveraging positive reviews in your marketing strategy helps build momentum and keeps the buzz around your book alive long after launch day.

Books Are Different: Why Reviews Matter Even More

With books, readers are even more into checking reviews. This is because books aren’t tangible products. Their quality and enjoyment vary a lot from person to person, and readers know it. Whether it’s a shining 5-star rating or a 2-star review saying, “Too much spice!”—it all helps readers decide if your book is right for them. Time is precious, and reviews help readers invest in stories they’ll love.

Book reviews make a bigger impact on a book’s performance than typical online product reviews for several key reasons:

• Choosing a new book is a big commitment: Readers want to be sure they’re investing time in something they will enjoy. When a book has enough reviews, readers can decide if it's the right book for them. They look at both positive and negative reviews to help them decide!

• Reading is a part of a person’s identity: People who love certain genres enjoy connecting with others who share their interests. Reviews help signal whether a book will hit the right beats to keep them interested. This is why niche book clubs have become so popular lately. Readers want to connect with others who love the same kinds of books, and thoughtful reviews help them do that. They help readers find their community.

Here's a visual example of a few of the niche reader groups that can be found on social media, where their main focus is discussing books in their favorite genres.

• Building credibility and community: When a book accumulates reviews, especially a mix of thoughtful feedback, it feels like a community conversation, creating buzz and credibility. This social proof reassures readers they’re not taking a risk on an unknown title; they’re picking up a book that others have read, discussed, and enjoyed. A strong set of reviews can help your book stand out, encouraging readers to join in and see what the excitement is all about.

• Promoting your book on paid sites: There are several book promo sites (sites where authors can advertise their books) like Book Barbarian, Digital Book Today, Reading Deals, and others, that require your book to have a minimum amount of reviews before you can submit it for a promotion.

Let’s get into how bestselling authors get reviews—and, more importantly, how you can use those reviews to elevate your marketing strategy.

How Do You Get Book Reviews?

If you’re launching your first book, getting reviews can be tedious at first. But as you go through the process a few times with each new book you launch, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but most review strategies fall into one of three categories: Organic Reviews, Targeted Review Campaigns and Book Review Sites.

First though, even before asking for reviews, take these two critical steps. They can make or break your review process:

Step I: Make Sure Your Book Is Ready for Reviews

There’s nothing worse than receiving a low-star review for something avoidable, like typos, grammar issues, or plot holes. To prevent this, ensure your book is professionally edited, proofread, and reviewed by a few beta readers before subjecting it to public reviews. Also, be sure to include trigger warnings in the front matter. Reviews live forever online, so set yourself up for success by checking these boxes first.

Step II: Identify Your Ideal Readers

The best reviews come from readers who love books like the one you're writing. Take some time to figure out who your ideal reader is and where to find them. Findbooks, or connect with your existing email list and social media followers. Pay attention to what they post about, the authors they mention, and the reviews they write. This will help you understand how to connect with them through your marketing efforts.

Taking Reviews into Your Own Hands

Ok, now let’s say your book cover is amazing, your blurb is something that will grab the attention of your ideal reader and your book has been professionally edited. Now it’s time to go after those reviews and these are the three ways to do just that:

I. Organic Reviews

These are the reviews that come naturally from readers who discover and love your book. Organic reviews tend to trickle in slowly. As a general guideline around 5% of customers who purchase a product will leave an online review, so for every 20 sales, you might expect to receive one review.

While you can’t guarantee a reader will leave a review, you can increase the chances by asking in a friendly, thoughtful way. Include your request for reviews in key places, such as the front and back matter of your book, your newsletter, or on social media. For example, you could write: "Enjoyed the story? Your review would mean the world to me—it helps other readers discover the book and motivates me to keep writing. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!"

Pro Tip #1: When you tell readers why reviews are important, it makes your request more meaningful and encourages them to help. People love feeling helpful, so let them know how much their review means to you. Be sure to thank them in advance—it goes a long way. Here are some reasons to give them that may resonate with you:

• Reviews help other readers discover my book.

• Your review motivates me to keep writing.

• Seeing your feedback brightens my day.

• Reviews are critical to my growth as an author.

• Positive reviews help my book gain visibility on major platforms.

• Reviews build my connection with readers like you.

II. Targeted Review Campaigns

This includes managing your own dedicated team of readers, hitting up bloggers and influencers, and distributing ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) to generate reviews and buzz. It’s all about building relationships with the people who will support your book.

• Street Teams (a.k.a. ARC Teams, Review Teams, Launch Teams): These are groups of loyal readers who support your books by leaving reviews when you have requested them. You can recruit readers to your review team by inviting them through your email list and posting on social media. Building a street team is about connecting with readers who are already invested in your work. Pay attention to readers who reach out with thoughtful comments or questions—they’re often great candidates for your team. You can also use automations in your email welcome sequence to ask new subscribers if they’d be willing to join your review team.

• Blogger Outreach: Reach out to book bloggers or genre influencers who review books like yours. Start by researching niche blogs or social media accounts that align with your genre and send a friendly pitch offering a free copy for an honest review.

Pro Tip #2: Major platforms, like Amazon, have strict terms of service for reviews. For example, you’re prohibited from offering incentives like payments or gift card raffles for reviews. The only thing allowed is providing a free copy of your book in exchange for an honest review. Fortunately, there are countless readers happy to review under these conditions, and this article focuses entirely on leveraging that approach.

III. Book Review Sites

Book review sites connect authors with readers who love discovering new books and provide reviews in exchange for free copies. These platforms make it easier to distribute ARCs, track reviewer feedback, and gather early reviews before or during your book launch.

Not all review sites are the same, so take the time to research which one fits your goals. Look for platforms that cater to your genre, have active reader communities, and offer tools to track review progress.

One of the leading book review sites is Booksprout. It helps streamline the entire process by connecting you with readers, managing review copy distribution, and letting you track reviews easily. It even lets you send private thank-you messages to readers, helping you build a loyal review team without the hassle of spreadsheets or endless follow-up.

Pro Tip #3: If you’re considering a platform like Booksprout, make sure you’re prepared with these steps:

1. Have Everything Ready: Your book cover, sales blurb, and formatted book should be complete, and links to review sites should be ready to share.

2. Research Keywords: Choose keywords that help your book stand out in search results. On platforms like Booksprout, keywords are essential for ensuring your book reaches the right audience.

Other Book Review Platforms to Evaluate

• BookSirens: Connects indie authors with readers who leave thoughtful, honest reviews.

• Hidden Gems: Matches authors with readers in their genre, focusing on quality feedback.

• NetGalley: Publishers and authors share ARCs with a large community of reviewers.

• StoryOrigin: Helps authors find readers through targeted online book fairs. It also offers tools to grow your mailing list and collaborate with other authors.

Book Reviews Are Non-Negotiable for Your Book Launch

Reviews should never be an afterthought because they matter too much to the overall marketability of your books. They impact visibility, credibility, and help you build a genuine connection with readers. Many of the most successful authors use all three strategies—organic reviews, targeted review campaigns, and book review sites. Take the time to research how to best implement each one.

Building a steady stream of reviews takes time and persistence and every single review your book receives is a step toward building your author brand. Have an open mind with some of the feedback and take it into consideration when it makes sense to, while celebrating the glowing reviews as you go. There are readers out there just waiting to read your book and reviewers are key to helping them connect with your story. You’ll find them!

If you have any questions for the Booksprout team, feel free to drop them below or email us at help@booksprout.co, and someone from the team will be happy to get back to you! If you want to try Booksprout and get the second month free, click here.

Rossana Corniel leads marketing efforts at Booksprout, combining her passion for helping authors with her love for reading and writing romance novels, along with children’s books. As an author herself, Rossana understands the unique challenges faced by writers and enjoys creating tools and strategies that empower them to reach their audiences. When she's not working on Booksprout campaigns or her next romantasy novel, you’ll likely find her lost in a book or brainstorming new ways to support the indie author community.

Get 2nd Month Free

So, what do you think?

• Do you have a better handle on reviews?

• Can you see how to short circuit the review system and get in front of reviewers?

• What is your review process like?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Today I am so excited because one of my favorite humans, , who writes one of my favorite Substacks, , just released her first craft book on Kickstarter and I love it so much.

Kickstarter link

If you want to check out more of her writing before backing the campaign, I honestly can’t recommend her Substack enough.

Ines Johnson is having a Breakdown

Join Ines as she breaks down, outlines and pieces together techniques used in television episodes, movies, and/or an aspect of the indie publishing market.

Every author dreams of crafting that unputdownable novel, a book so gripping that readers are glued to every page. But beyond grabbing a reader from the first page, the true challenge lies in maintaining that momentum for the entire story.

You want to produce more books, faster, and with fewer roadblocks that have the reader dog-earing or DNFing your books. But writer's block, sagging middles, inconsistent writing habits, and slow progress can derail even the most passionate authors. Then instead of picking up the pen or putting your fingers on the keyboard, you go and sit down on the couch to binge watch the latest reality show or streaming sensation, which manages to hold your attention and keep you from the page.

What if you could use those TV binging behaviors in your novels?

Would you like a method inspired by the very techniques that make television shows binge-worthy?

As a professional couch-potato (and trained screenwriter), I was taught to pick out the pattern of twelve scenes that are showcased in every television program and film. After writing novels for a decade, I've realized that five of these scenes are absolutely necessary to hold readers attention.

The Five Necessary Scenes to Make Your Book Binge-Worthy

What makes a story, or more importantly, a series of stories, truly binge-worthy? While a compelling premise, rich characters, and masterful pacing are critical, there’s one thing every gripping story needs: key scenes that anchor the narrative and keep readers hooked. Whether you’re writing romance, fantasy, mystery, or any other genre, these Five Necessary Scenes will give your story the legs it needs to stand tall in the crowded world of publishing.

1. Creating Character Empathy

Your story can start in countless ways: with a prologue, a flashback, or dropping readers into the action. But no matter the method, one thing must be constant—empathy. If readers don’t care about your main character from the start, they won’t stick around to see how the story unfolds.

How to Build Empathy:

• ·Extraordinary Qualities: Make your character stand out. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who battles monsters while navigating high school, or Sherlock Holmes, whose intellect is unmatched. Readers love rooting for characters with unique abilities or traits.

• Extraordinary Worlds: Sometimes, it’s not the character but the setting that captures attention. Consider Mark Watney’s survival on Mars in The Martian or the quirky charm of Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls.

• Save the Cat: The term “save the cat” refers to a scene where the hero does something admirable, like rescuing someone in need. For instance, Buffy befriending Willow in the face of high school cliques establishes her compassion and moral compass.

Pro Tip: Combine these three elements—extraordinary qualities, a vivid world, and a “save the cat” moment—early on in your book to create a protagonist readers can’t help but root for and keep the pages turning.

2. Directing the Meet Cute

The Meet Cute is the moment your romantic leads or band of misfits cross paths for the first time. While this scene is a staple in romance, it’s just as vital in other genres where key relationships drive the plot. One of my favorite meet cutes is in the opposites attract, buddy film, Lethal Weapon where Mel Gibson's Riggs tells Danny Glover's Murtaugh about a hollow point bullet he plans to commit suicide with early in the film shortly after they first meet. In the Grand Gesture of the film, Riggs gives Murtaugh the bullet solidifying their bromance and as proof that Riggs is committed to their partnership (aka undying love for each other).

Four Elements of a Meet Cute:

Whether it's electric chemistry, instant conflict, or an awkward misunderstanding, the Meet Cute scene sets the tone for the entire relationship arc. To create a memorable Meet Cute, it helps to break it down into four essential elements.

1. Setting: Where and when your characters meet sets the tone. Pride and Prejudice, Twilight, and Fifty Shades of Grey are all the same story; two opposite individuals are attracted to each other, overcome their differences, fall in love, and live happily ever after. The only difference is where and when it takes place. In Pride and Prejudice, it’s a Regency-era ball; in Twilight, it’s a 21^st century, small town high school. In Fifty Shades of Grey, we're in a 21^st century, big city skyscraper.

2. Trope: The story's trope hints at stakes. In an office romance, for example, reputations or careers might be on the line.

3. Attraction in stories comes in four distinct dynamics that shape the characters’ relationships. There’s the mutual spark of instant chemistry, as seen in Romeo and Juliet, where both characters are immediately drawn to each other. Then there’s mutual disinterest, like in When Harry Met Sally, where initial indifference or dislike gradually gives way to deeper feelings. Sometimes, the attraction is one-sided, as in The Notebook, where one character is captivated while the other resists. Finally, there’s the charming awkwardness of unspoken admiration, as in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where one character nervously hides their feelings while the other remains blissfully unaware. These dynamics add tension and complexity, making the journey to connection compelling and memorable.

4. Situation: Is the meeting heroic, embarrassing, or contentious? For example, is one character saving the other, or are they clashing in a battle of wills?

A strong Meet Cute isn’t just adorable—it’s foundational. It sets the stage for your characters’ relationship and hints at the challenges they’ll face together.

Subscribe now

3. Planning Fun and Games

The “fun and games” section is where your characters spend time together, their relationship deepens, and readers begin to fall in love with them as a couple or want to join the ragtag group of misfits on their quest.

Three Dates and a Disaster:

The journey to connection often unfolds through three pivotal bonding moments. First, the characters realize they need each other, sparking an initial connection. Next, conflicts arise as they confront their differences, challenging the bond they've begun to build. Finally, a deeper connection forms, but their vulnerabilities come to light, testing their relationship. Each of these "dates" serves as an opportunity to introduce unique obstacles that push the characters closer together while also revealing their flaws and fears, adding layers to their developing romance.

This section is where your characters (and readers) have the most fun. But don’t forget to build up to the impending disaster of the Dark Moment.

4. Surviving Dark Moments

Every great story tests its characters, and the Dark Moment is the ultimate trial. This scene threatens to tear the characters apart or forces them to confront their deepest fears and flaws.

Types of Dark Moments:

• Revelation: A deep secret or betrayal comes to light, as in Love Actually when Emma Watson finds out Snape is cheating on her and their marriage unravels.

• Misunderstanding: Miscommunication creates a rift, like in Pride and Prejudice when Darcy’s letter changes Elizabeth’s perceptions.

• Life-Changing Event: A tragedy or upheaval shakes the foundation of their world, like in The Martian when Mark Watney loses his potato crop and lessens his survival chances.

• External Force: An antagonist or other external conflict drives them apart, like in Twilight when the vampire villain bites Bella, forcing Edward to drink her blood to get the poison out of her system.

• Internal Insecurity: Characters’ personal doubts and fears sabotage their happiness, like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's pilot episode when Buff ruins her chances of being accepted after pulling a stake on one of the popular girls.

In the Dark Moment, whether your characters work together or separately to overcome their challenges, the payoff should lead them closer to their happily ever after.

5. Pulling Off a Grand Gesture

The Grand Gesture is the emotional high point of your story, where your characters declare their love or commitment to the group in a big, meaningful way. It’s a moment of catharsis, where they confront their vulnerabilities and prove their growth.

Grand gestures take many forms, whether in romances, buddy films, or ensemble stories, but they all signify a transformative moment of connection. A declaration might involve a heartfelt admission of love or camaraderie, often a turning point born from growth and honesty. Public displays bring emotions into the open, showing the world their commitment. Rescues, whether physical or emotional, highlight bravery and dedication in moments of crisis. Personalization makes the gesture uniquely meaningful, reflecting the specific bond between characters. Finally, sacrifice underscores the depth of their connection, as someone gives up something vital for the other, showcasing selflessness and devotion.

These gestures cement relationships and bring emotional closure to the story. It’s the scene that readers will remember long after they’ve finished the book, so make it count.

Crafting Your Own Binge-Worthy Story

By incorporating these five necessary scenes—Character Empathy, the Meet Cute, Fun and Games, Dark Moments, and the Grand Gesture—you’ll create a story that keeps readers glued to the page. Each scene serves a specific purpose, deepening character arcs, building tension, and delivering emotional satisfaction.

Checklist for Crafting Binge-Worthy Stories: Actionable Steps for Authors

To help you implement the Five Necessary Scenes in your own writing, here’s a handy checklist to ensure your story keeps readers hooked from start to finish. Use this as a guide while plotting, drafting, or revising your next book.

1. Create Character Empathy

• Introduce extraordinary qualities: Does your protagonist have unique traits or skills that make them compelling? Highlight what sets them apart.

• Establish an extraordinary world: Is your setting vibrant and engaging? Does it captivate readers while providing a backdrop for the story?

• Include a "save the cat" moment: Have you shown your character’s compassion, bravery, or moral compass? Give readers a reason to root for them.

2. Direct the Meet Cute

• Define the setting: Where and when do your characters meet? Does it set the tone for their relationship arc?

• Choose a trope: What stakes or challenges are inherent to their dynamic? (E.g., opposites attract, forbidden love.)

• Determine the attraction type: Is it mutual, one-sided, or awkward? How does this shape their chemistry?

• Create a memorable situation: Is the Meet Cute heroic, embarrassing, or adversarial? How does it hint at future challenges?

3. Plan Fun and Games

• Design three pivotal bonding moments:

  • First encounter: Do they realize they need each other?

  • Second encounter: Are conflicts or differences creating tension?

  • Third encounter: Does their deeper connection reveal vulnerabilities?

• Introduce obstacles: Are these moments layered with challenges (physical, emotional, or external) that push them closer together?

4. Survive the Dark Moment

• Identify the crisis type:

  • Is it a betrayal or revelation?

  • Is there a misunderstanding driving them apart?

  • Is it a life-changing event, external force, or personal insecurity?

• Deepen the stakes: How does the Dark Moment test your characters? Will it make or break their relationship or resolve?

5. Pull Off a Grand Gesture

• Choose the gesture type:

  • Declaration: Is it a heartfelt admission of love or commitment?

  • Public Display: Does it involve showcasing emotions for all to see?

  • Rescue: Is someone saved, physically or emotionally?

  • Personalization: Is the act uniquely tailored to their relationship?

  • Sacrifice: What are they willing to give up for each other?

• Tie it back: Does this moment reference an earlier event, proving how far the characters have come?

Take the Next Step: Perfect Your Pacing

These are the five necessary scenes of fiction, but there's more. What's worked for me in crafting over 100 books in ten years is a series of twelve scenes that I learned during my time working as a producer and screenwriter for television shows.

My Page Turner Pacing Kickstarter campaign features the nonfiction ebook, print and workbook. There's also opportunities for working through the online course on your own, in a group cohort, or one-on-one with me. From mastering these essential scenes to perfecting your pacing, I’ll guide you every step of the way.

Kickstarter link

As I said above, I can’t recommend Ines’s work more. She is one of the smartest people in the world when it comes to these things. If you don’t back the campaign, at least do yourself a favor and subscribe to her Substack.

Ines Johnson is having a Breakdown

Join Ines as she breaks down, outlines and pieces together techniques used in television episodes, movies, and/or an aspect of the indie publishing market.

So, what do you think?

• "Which of the five binge-worthy scenes—Character Empathy, Meet Cute, Fun and Games, Dark Moments, or Grand Gesture—do you find most challenging to write, and how do you approach it?"

• "Have you ever tried incorporating TV-inspired pacing into your books? What results did you see in reader engagement or reviews?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I’ve been reading ’s Newsletter Circle since long before they featured me in an issue. When I saw they released a massive study analyzing the habits of 75,000+ Substack publication, I took the opportunity to ask them some questions about what they learned through the process.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, then it’s a great publication that just recently moved back to Substack.

Newsletter Circle

Your go-to source for building a successful newsletter business. In-depth interviews with newsletter operators and insightful reports on paid subscription strategies.

By Ciler Demiralp

Tell us about yourself and the idea behind this report.

Hi everyone! This is Ciler. I’m the founder of Newsletter Circle, which is a go-to source content platform for newsletter operators. I started Newsletter Circle by doing in-depth written interviews with successful newsletter operators about how they built their newsletter businesses from scratch.

After interviewing over 60 operators and studying their individual newsletters, I saw a need to see the bigger picture of the newsletter landscape. I’ve never seen a large scale analysis of newsletters. So, I decided to get my hands dirty and analyzed 75K Substack newsletters. The report gives answers to questions such as:

• How many newsletters are active and inactive?

• How frequently do creators publish new issues?

• What are the subscriber ranges?

• What is the usage rate of Substack Notes and Substack Recommendations?

• How many newsletters offer a paid subscription?

• What are the average paid subscription prices?

• What are the social media channels most preferred by different categories?

Get the report

Can you give us some insight about the data set you used.

As you might guess, I didn’t gather this data manually, which would take months. Instead, I scraped publicly available data of 75K Substack newsletters. All the information you see can be found on the included newsletters’ pages. Data scraping requires technical expertise so I worked with an expert in this area. We scraped the maximum number of newsletters that we could.

I also worked with an experienced data analyst to clean the data, verify its accuracy, and perform some statistical calculations.

I then spent several weeks analyzing the raw data, uncovering insightful findings, and crafting the report. I have a solid background in market research that also helped me a lot along the way.

From a technical perspective, Substack’s platform allowed for easier data gathering, which is why I started with it. However, I’m exploring ways to create similar reports for Beehiiv and Kit newsletters in the future.

Your analysis shows that 45% of all newsletters are inactive tracks with my own colloquial data. Why do you think that almost half of all newsletters on the platform are defunct?

As you said, 45% of newsletters are inactive—equivalent to 34K inactive newsletters.

This is massive!

As newsletter creators, we know how easy it is to start but this shows how challenging it is to keep going. Most people launch newsletters with great intentions, but few stick with it because:

• It requires patience: Consistency is key, even when results aren’t immediate.

• It requires resilience: Emotional highs and lows are part of the journey, and you have to push through them.

• It requires self-discipline: According to the report, 95% of newsletters are solo ventures. Without a team, staying motivated falls entirely on you.

It’s a momentum work. Once you lose that momentum, it’s inevitable to give up altogether.

For me, seeing these struggles reflected in real data was both eye-opening and validating. That’s why so many newsletter creators I’ve interviewed on Newsletter Circle emphasize the same advice: “Don’t give up. Keep going.”

It might sound like a cliché, but the data proves just how crucial this mindset is.

What are the top characteristics that separate successful, active Substack newsletters from defunct, inactive ones?

We said 45% of newsletters are inactive. But, if you read this data from a positive angle, it says something highly encouraging to newsletter operators:

“If you publish your newsletter consistently, you’re already ahead of nearly half the creators out there!”

In addition to being consistent, active newsletters publish more frequently compared to the overall average. Among actives, publishing multiple times a week is 19% (vs. 13% in total) and weekly publishing is 30% (vs. 20% in total).

Another finding is that the percentage of active newsletters increases as subscriber numbers grow. The highest percentage is observed among newsletters that have 100–250K subscribers (81%).

Another finding is that the more active newsletters are, the higher the paid subscription ratio is. Among 41K active newsletters, 50% offer a paid subscription, compared to just 36% across all 75K newsletters.

As an additional personal comment, I think it’s also critical to be clear about how to position a newsletter and set expectations accordingly. If it’s a hobby project, then not seeing a huge growth shouldn’t be a problem. If it’s a business project, then creators should approach their newsletters as a product and make concrete business plans. Otherwise, they are disappointed and give up more easily.

For curious readers, here are a bit more detailed definitions for active and inactive newsletters in this report.

Data for the report is pulled on May 10th. Newsletters that published their latest issue within the past six weeks (between April 1st and May 10th) are classified as “Active.” On the other hand, newsletters that published their latest issue more than six weeks ago (before April 1st) are classified as “ Inactive.”

Subscribe now

The report mentions untapped potential in active newsletters that don’t use Substack’s Recommendation and Notes features. What do you mean by that?

It was surprising to see that 22% of active newsletters don’t use Substack Recommendations. To me, Substack Recommendations is a no-brainer. I’m not sure why some creators choose not to leverage it, as the report doesn’t provide answers to this question.

As for Notes, I didn’t find anything specific in the data. However, based on my previous conversations with creators, I can share a few comments about Substack Notes:

• Limited awareness: While Substack Notes is becoming more popular, some creators might not yet realize its potential for growth and engagement. That’s why I aim to highlight its use in my creator interviews.

• Lack of time: Creators who grow with Substack Notes are highly consistent, publishing multiple Notes daily. But focusing on multiple distribution channels isn’t easy. Creators already active on LinkedIn, X, or other platforms might struggle to make time for Substack Notes.

• Lack of target audience: For some creators, Substack Notes might not align well with their newsletter’s target audience, leading them to prioritize other channels.

Only 36% of newsletters analyzed have a paid option, and yet paid newsletters seem to have considerably more engagement than free ones. Should more newsletters think about going paid to boost engagement, or do you think those with the most engagement tend to go paid?

I think both approaches are valid.

From the data, we see that as the number of subscribers increases, the paid subscription ratio also rises. This suggests that many creators prefer to wait until they’ve reached a certain list size before activating paid subscriptions. They want to ensure that the conversion rate will justify the effort required to produce premium content.

On the other hand, based on my interviews with newsletter creators, I’ve observed a growing trend of creators offering paid subscriptions even with smaller lists.

These creators often maintain close relationships with their subscribers, regularly gathering feedback to understand their audience’s needs. This helps them feel confident about converting their superfans into paying subscribers right from the start—and they often succeed. So, for smaller newsletters, fostering engagement before going paid is highly crucial.

Among the 20k active publications that offer paid subscriptions, the average price was $10/mo and $96/yr. Most newer newsletters prefer to fall way below that, with many wanting to price below the $5/mo that Substack allows as the lowest price. How should we use this report to influence our own paid journey?

The data confirms that the average price is not $5 or below. It’s $10 and doesn’t vary much for different subscriber ranges.

The paid subscription price depends on how unique your content is, how much value you provide to your paid members and the level of trust you build before going paid. Despite the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to your question, I think there are two approaches:

• Start with a low price and increase gradually until finding that sweet spot where you maximize conversion.

• Start with a higher price, observe conversions, gather feedback from super fans who don’t convert and lower the pricing accordingly if this is the issue. Maybe you’ll find out it’s your content, not about the price.

There is still a lot to explore about paid subscriptions, so in 2025, I’ll create exclusive content about paid subscription best practices for my paid members.

English dominates the Substack landscape. How can creators working in less common languages break through and build sizable audiences?

First, I would recommend creators conduct some online market research to determine whether there is interest in their newsletter topic within that specific language or region. They can check certain keywords on Google Trends, use tools such as Semrush and search forums.

Next, they should craft a strategy tailored to the content consumption habits of the audience in that language. They shouldn’t rely on in-platform discovery mechanisms like Recommendations or Notes since they’re also dominated by English content.

For example, if the audience prefers reading blogs, creators can start by building a blog, driving traffic, and capturing email addresses through their website. Alternatively, if the audience is more active on social media, creators can focus on building their following on relevant platforms and then direct those followers to their newsletters.

Certain categories in your analysis (e.g. food publications) show distinct social media preferences (e.g. Instagram and TikTok). How should creators tailor their content strategy based on niche-specific trends highlighted in the report?

It’s all about knowing your audience, where you can find them, and finding the best platform for your content. For a business newsletter, it might make more sense to hang out on LinkedIn, whereas an art newsletter reaches out to a wider audience on Instagram.

So, I recommend gathering subscriber information and conducting market research to clarify the newsletter positioning and craft a growth strategy accordingly. A few quick recommendations are:

• Make a sign-up survey and ask their social media accounts to your subscribers

• List your competition and research where they’re actively publishing content continuously other than their newsletters.

• Explore what type of content on those relevant channels gets more engagement.

• Each social media channel has its own dynamics to be successful. Study ways to increase the number of followers on those channels.

• Repurpose your newsletter content on the channels you choose continuously.

Get the report

I’ve followed your newsletter for a long time, and love how you run your publication. Is there anything you found in this Substack specific analysis that you’ll be bringing into how you run your own publication outside of it?

Here are my three major decisions after the report:

• This report is a product of asking questions that haven’t been asked before and doing dedicated research to reach unique insights. In 2025, I’ll focus more on creating such original content with a “ content journalist” mindset. As newsletter creators, we need more original content supported by real data, and I love doing it.

• I initially started Newsletter Circle on Substack but switched to Beehiiv for better user analytics. However, to promote the report, I began publishing it on Substack Notes and collaborating with Substackers (like this interview:)), which showed me how impactful Substack is for engagement. I need a platform that prioritizes engagement, so I’m back to Substack.

• I recently launched a paid subscription to Newsletter Circle.

The report provides a snapshot of the current data, but I want to explore paid subscriptions further because I have many questions.

With that in mind, I’ll be publishing mini-reports and more dedicated content about "paid subscription best practices" for my paid members.

I’ll start researching Substack bestsellers with Purple, Orange and White badges. I have already identified 4,000 Substack bestsellers with these badges, and I will analyze them one by one. Here is the list of 47 Substack newsletters with purple badges:

Where can we find more about your work and how can they download this report for themselves?

Anyone who wants to dive into more detailed insights about Substack can download the report for free by signing-up here.

Here is my newsletter, Newsletter Circle. Free subscribers will get weekly interviews with creators building newsletter businesses through paid subscriptions. Paid members will reach mini-reports on paid newsletters’ best practices & growth strategies and AMA sessions with paid subscription pros.

So, anyone who's focusing on building a newsletter business through a successful paid subscription can become a paid member.

Finally, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I write a lot about newsletters there as well :)

Thank you so much for joining us. This was great. If you’d like to learn more about , then make sure to subscribe below.

Newsletter Circle

Your go-to source for building a successful newsletter business. In-depth interviews with newsletter operators and insightful reports on paid subscription strategies.

By Ciler Demiralp

What do you think?

• Does anything stand out from this report that we didn’t cover?

• What do you think is the most interesting finding?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

When emailed me out of the blue to ask if I would host this essay since she didn’t think it fit on her publication, I believe my exact words were “F*ck Yes! I’m in.”

Usually, we don’t go in for all the cursing, mainly because a subset of our audience doesn’t like it, and nobody has unsubscribed from a newsletter because of too much cursing.

I think an exception was warranted in this case. Enjoy!

FREQUENT CRIERS CLUB

crude attempts at staying tender when everything is scary and everyone is numb

By Erin Shetron

To anyone currently bingeing all the "how to hack your newsletter growth in 2025" listicles floating around lately: I see you, I love you, and I’m worried about you.

As someone who’s spent the last two years producing and growing over 60 newsletters (and the previous five years as a marketing director), I deeply understand the slightly sickening but mostly heady, hopeful allure of these articles.

Which is how I also know that, if blindly adopted for your own newsletter, much of the advice in these articles can accidentally fuck your shit up.

So, I present for your consideration (and sanity): Eight recommendations to help you navigate the increasingly dark and deep sea of “hacks,” “tips & tricks,” “takeaways,” and “keys” to growth. If you’re keen to grow your newsletter this year without accidentally fucking it up, this is for you.

1. Practice healthy skepticism, namely about who benefits most from the “how to grow” content you’re consuming. For example, if you are reading an article from a person or group who makes it their whole thing to publish “how to grow” articles, just know that while they absolutely have incentive for creating good, useful content, they have even more incentive for gaining: readers/subscribers, opens, and clicks. Why? Because increasing these kinds of metrics increases the chances to sell subscription upgrades, goods and services, and ad space. Basically, pumping out these types of articles makes money. Like my 7th grade history teacher always said, if you’re curious why anything is playing out the way that it is, follow the money. I’m not here to vilify making money—I, too, require money to live—I’m just suggesting adopting some skepticism when deciding which “growth hacks” to try, especially when they’re written by anyone turning a profit by constantly creating and pushing said hacks.

2. Practice discernment. “This worked for this other person!” Yes, but that other person is selling financial literacy classes and you are trying to paywall your personal essays about life on a ranch. When consuming growth strategy advice, remember to discern the differences between your newsletter (including its goals, topics, purpose, and audience) and that of whatever case study is being presented.

3. If it sounds too easy, it is. I just got an email that was all about “one way to get a 19x ROI.” The tip was to sponsor, AKA run ads, in their newsletter. At first blush, you might think (because they are literally telling you) that all you have to do is buy an ad in this newsletter and you’ll make 19 times whatever you spent on that ad. Upon further investigation, however, you’ll learn that the minimum ad spend is $3k and they are estimating you’ll get 30 qualified leads. Even if they could somehow guarantee a cost of $100 per qualified lead (they can’t), you’d need a 3% conversion rate to turn just one of those leads into a paying customer. Then, to reach that 19x ROI, that one customer would have to pay you $57k. For some businesses that might be reasonable, but for me and basically everyone I know, running $3k worth of ads in a newsletter does not usually drum up enough clients to earn $57k.

4. Consider saturation. Ask yourself, if every single person reading this list took this advice, would the advice still work? This is one of my favorite ways of discerning worthwhile advice from turds in a toilet. Often, if everyone took the same advice, competition would increase, demand would drop, and worst of all (to me), your newsletter would be like everyone else’s.

5. Cultivate an eye and intuition for “right place, right time.” So much of growth strategy, although not many would admit it, is about being in the right place at the right time. When reading through case studies and testimonials, remember that the biggest success stories you’ll see always have a “right place, right time” element to them, though you won’t see it written about. Moreover, anyone who says “I did this specific thing that grew my newsletter, and if you do that exact same thing then you will grow your newsletter to the exact same extent!” doesn’t understand strategy. They are just someone using their “right place, right time” to gain your attention and, you guessed it, make money. And don’t confuse “right place, right time” for luck or happenstance; the more you can develop a knack for putting your work in the right place at the right time, the more you’ll grow.

   1. Some examples of right place: Highly prominent/visible ad placement, especially open/curious audience, highly novel offering, low competition. Ask yourself: is this the best place for my work?

   2. Some examples of right time: You’ve been working on your craft, dialing in your voice, and your branding’s on lock. Your work speaks to a current event, relevant quandary, or topical theme. Your audience has been primed and is eager to receive from you. Ask yourself: Is this the right time for my work?

6. Filter strategies through your values, your goals, and your gut. A good, sustainable strategy will align with your values, help meet specific goals, and spark that “yes, let’s fucking go” from your body. There are so many strategies to try, and the ones that feel right to you will almost always perform better than the ones that feel off. I’m not a mystic so I don’t know why this is true, just that it is. Mystics, sound off in the comments!

7. Keep your dopamine gremlin in check. That gut feeling I just mentioned? Don’t mistake it for the dopamine gremlin inside you that’s currently high off the possibility of growth, productivity, and recognition. We’ve all heard the Edward Abbey quote, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” It’s also the ideology of the dopamine-deprived. Regulate your nervous system, get clear on your goals and values, and don’t let that greedy little dopamine gremlin behind the wheel.

8. Adopt a testing mindset. If scouring growth hack articles is your jam, honestly I love that for you. There are so many solid, useful ideas out there! Despite what the articles might say, the only surefire way to know if a growth strategy will work for you is to test it. A testing mindset looks like…

   1. Acknowledging from the outset that the strategy may not work

   2. Tracking the results with non-judgment, curiosity, and discernment

   3. Not panicking and cutting off the experiment too prematurely (before there’s enough information to prove a result)

   4. Not engaging in sunk-cost fallacy and keeping the experiment running even after the results are not what you’d hoped

      Subscribe now

A few “growth hacks” I like, as a growth strategist and editor:

1. Hone your voice above all else. Yes, work on craft. Sure, publish consistently. Yes, produce work you’d covet if someone else produced it. But before you try pinning down a niche for your newsletter or taking another workshop or setting up another color-coded content calendar (@ me) or reading another “growth hacks” listicle, the single piece of growth advice I can’t overstate is this: Find. Your. Voice. Whether you’re writing how-to articles, conducting interviews, culling pop culture recommendations, or doling out micro-fiction, find your voice. Find your voice so that your writing is unmistakably yours, no matter what you’re writing about. Find your voice so that your narrator and characters and recommendations and observations float off the page. Find your voice so that you can publish anywhere and people will say, “Oh shit, who is the person behind this?”

2. Do it your way! Reinvent the wheel! Make it weird! Seriously, people are inundated. People are trying to cut down on screen time. The more you can get in touch with your creativity to produce a newsletter that’s unique, surprising, and yours, the more people will fall in love with and share your work. Creativity is contagious, and bringing your own unique creativity to your newsletter is an invitation for everyone reading it to engage in their own creativity.

3. Pitch your work audaciously. Getting in front of new, relevant audiences is essential… actually, it’s so essential that it feels a little stupid typing it out, oops. Anyway, pitching your work to writers, interviewers, podcasters, etc. who are new to you/your readers can be extremely advantageous to growth. Even if the newsletter or outlet you’re pitching to seems like a reach, pitch anyway! To me, the most important aspects of a pitch is relevance of the topic and high potential for audience appeal. Take this article as an example: I emailed Russell a pitch for what I thought would be highly relevant and appealing to his audience, and even though I don’t have a high subscriber count, he accepted! And now my unhinged opinions astute recommendations are reaching new folks who’ve probably never heard of me. Hi!

4. Email free subscribers separately. If your goal is to get more of your free subscribers to upgrade, there’s a lot of conflicting opinions out there about how often to paywall, what to paywall, etc. In my experience, I’ve seen the best results by simply remembering to email these folks before a paywalled piece goes live. Keep it simple, keep it friendly, and keep it relevant. Like a press release, there’s gotta be a good reason for writing to them. Your reason is a new banger of a paywalled post that’s about to get published. Every so often, use the filter tool to send an email to free subscribers only. Tell them why they’ll love your upcoming post, invite them to upgrade, and thank them for sticking around even if they don’t upgrade. Then make sure to send them a free preview to the paywalled post.

5. Throw money at the problem. Commerce over capitalism! Spending intentionally! Supporting solopreneurs and small businesses! Feminine economy! If you’re like me, it’s not likely that you’ve got a bunch of extra cash to throw around, so this advice may not be for you. But if your growth goals are on a timeline (maybe you are shopping your book next year or launching a workshop or turning on paid subscriptions), spending some money in the right places can help get you there. Do not rush, do not make this choice out of fear, and do not spend money you don’t have. If you have the budget and you’re already doing the work to grow organically, here are some places to consider spending your money:

   1. Newsletter classifieds. I love how old-school and straightforward these feel, and I love that it’s a surefire way to get in front of new, relevant audiences. The click rates aren’t usually high from my limited testing, so temper your expectations, but still—I’ve definitely seen that the right ad in the right newsletter can send along new readers. (I’m currently working on a private directory of classifieds as another perk for my clients - comment or DM me to add yourself or someone you know to this list!)

   2. Paid social media ads. It’s easy to throw away money on social media ads, so I’m hesitant to share this. But having run a few tests myself, I’m cautiously optimistic that this is a viable way to improve brand awareness and gather leads for digital goods and services like workshops, consultations, and courses. Russell has a whole course on creating profitable FB ads)

   3. Get help placing essays. Writer’s Relief is a company that will create lists of good target magazines for your work based on the length, themes, submission windows, etc. They will also take care of the actual process of submitting for you.

   4. 1:1 Strategic + editorial consulting with an experienced professional (this is what I do). You can be the most together, most genius, most efficient, most creative person at producing your newsletter, but it still doesn’t negate the fact that two brains are always, unless the second brain sucks and is mean, better than one. There is nothing more helpful than having a skilled professional review your writing, your branding, and your strategy. Not because they have the answers, but because together, in joint pursuit of creating something honest, captivating, and remarkable, you start seeing the creative solutions and opportunities you hadn’t seen before.

Before I go, a huge shout-out to Valerie Monroe of How Not to F*ck Up Your Face for the inspiration behind the title of this piece. Valerie is not fucking up her face or her newsletter, please go check her out!

Happy strategizing! See you in the comments!

—Erin

Erin Shetron is a frequent crier and strategist to the (Substack) stars. You might recognize her from her popular interview with Amanda Hinton, her oops-too-personal life updates on Notes, or mentioned in Substack circles as “someone I hired for newsletter guidance because Alex Dobrenko called her a Substack whisperer??” With a background in creative nonfiction and poetry along with years as a marketing director, she now helps writers and entrepreneurs produce their best, most impactful work while honoring their creativity and wellbeing.

Erin enjoys walking her elderly dog, kick-chalking her pool cue, reading fantasy novels, dreaming about the feminine economy, and espousing the benefits of radical, unabashed, loving honesty. A Philadelphia native and proud Temple University alumna, she now lives in Oregon with her boyfriend and dog, who you may hear snoring in the background of your calls (the dog, not the boyfriend).

FREQUENT CRIERS CLUB

crude attempts at staying tender when everything is scary and everyone is numb

By Erin Shetron

If you liked that one, I highly recommend Erin’s publication. I feel like she literally works with all the coolest, hippest, most successful Substacks, and she is a great writer, too.

What do you think?

• Do you feel better about your Substack journey now that you’ve shaken off the shackles of growth articles?

• Are you hyped to get back into the Substack saltmine?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Domestic thrillers are currently killing it in the marketplace. If you are new to the genre, check out my thoughts on Frieda McFadden's The Housemaid for my thoughts on a straight-up domestic thriller.

Domestic thrillers operate on some shared tropes: forced proximity (domestic setting), ticking time bomb, hidden identity, victim, protector, woman in peril, scars, and secrets. The story's trajectory is that the protagonist, as prey, becomes a protector.

Twisting tropes is a crucial part of storytelling. But you must understand the trope before you can twist it. Happily, I’ve found a great example of subverting the heroic heroine to create a hot mess.

But first, let’s examine the heroic heroine to understand the foundation. Heroic heroines face brutal challenges and setbacks but manage to succeed in all aspects of life. They also usually become more physically attractive in the process. An example of a heroic heroine is Lessons in Chemistry.

In contrast, we have the hot mess or morally ambiguous heroine such as Bridget Jones or the more recent Fleabag series. With great delight, I introduce you to Love Letters to a Serial Killer by Tasha Corydell, which features a fantastic hot mess heroine, Hannah.

Tasha Corydell’s Love Letters to a Serial Killer is a striking example of how twisting well-loved tropes can create fresh, unforgettable narratives. Corydell subverts traditional romance and crime elements in this novel, flipping the familiar expectations of love, obsession, and moral boundaries. Examining how Corydell reinvents these tropes provides valuable insights for writers who want to breathe new life into familiar frameworks.

The protagonist, Hannah, has terrible taste in men because her type is emotionally unavailable. She feels disappointed and tries to get men who won't spend the night to become serious boyfriends. Hint: it's not going well. She works demeaning jobs and is generally unfulfilled with her life—until she discovers the true crime online community.

Her obsession with a recent murder and the suspected killer, William, gives her life purpose. The uneasy relationship between protagonist Hannah and William is at the heart of Love Letters to a Serial Killer—their dynamic challenges expectations of a romantic connection.

Traditionally, the focus is on the promise of redemption or self-discovery, with one character softening or "saving" the other, which is a familiar premise. However, Corydell shows Hannah and William's relationship as dark, obsessive, and fraught with ambiguity. Rather than repelling her, the darkness in her serial killer pen pal excites Hannah.

Corydell invites readers to explore a relationship rooted in attraction to danger rather than growth. For writers, this approach offers a fresh look at relationships—rather than framing love as a cure for darkness, Corydell frames it as a pathway into deeper, uncharted psychological territories. This approach adds intrigue and complexity, particularly within the crime thriller genre, where redemption arcs are familiar.

One of the most refreshing elements in Love Letters to a Serial Killer is Hannah's rejection of the heroine who seeks to redeem or change their morally gray love interests. Hannah's attraction doesn't come from a desire to change the killer. Instead, she is fascinated by his unchangeable nature, almost revering the damage within him. She looks for opportunities to shame him and show him off as a freed serial killer after his release. He's an object for Hannah to use to increase her self-esteem.

This subversion forces readers to focus on Hannah’s internal journey, which is more about self-discovery than saving anyone. Hannah thinks she is a 'good person', yet her actions, such as spying on her fiancé William and sleeping with his brother, show otherwise.

The Unsettling Allure of the Antihero

Love Letters to a Serial Killer offers a unique perspective on the “antihero” trope. It’s less about what William did (or didn’t do, as it turns out) and more about Hannah’s journey. Hannah wants him to be a killer, and she’s dreadfully disappointed to learn that she’s been duped all along.

This nuanced approach to the antihero trope opens up complex narrative possibilities. Writers can note how Corydell uses this trope to reflect more on Hannah’s character than the antihero himself. Rather than glorifying his flaws, the story scrutinizes Hannah’s attraction, making the antihero a mirror for her inner complexities. It’s a powerful technique for adding layers to character dynamics, turning the spotlight onto the protagonist’s motivations rather than simply creating a seductive “bad boy” character.

Final Thoughts: Embracing Moral Ambiguity

What makes Love Letters to a Serial Killer so haunting and compelling is its fearless embrace of moral ambiguity. Corydell doesn’t shy away from the complexities of Hannah’s attraction or the inherent darkness of the relationship. This commitment to moral nuance is a critical lesson for writers looking to twist tropes. Hannah embraces her predator qualities rather than being prey.

For writers, Love Letters to a Serial Killer exemplifies how subverting tropes can reinvigorate genres, challenge readers’ expectations, and create psychological depth. By twisting the familiar into the unfamiliar, writers can tap into the unease, allure, and fascination that make stories unforgettable.

Interested in learning more about tropes, what they are, and how to use them to make your story stronger? Check out my Trope Thesaurus Series!

So, what do you think?

• What are your favorite examples of tropes being subverted in novels, and how did they enhance the story for you?

• Do you prefer morally ambiguous heroines or traditional heroic heroines? What draws you to one over the other in your reading?

• Which tropes in domestic thrillers do you find the most compelling, and how would you like to see them twisted or reinvented in future stories?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Welcome to the third part of our branding series with Sarah Robertson, the designer, mentor, and writer behind the Brand Seasons publication. Here are the first two parts if you need to catch up.

Just this week, Sarah launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Brand Seasons Playdeck, a pocket-sized card deck full of branding wisdom and guidance featuring 48 prompts to support you with strategy, styling and storytelling.

In her first piece for The Author Stack, Sarah shared her approach to branding with purpose—definitely worth a read if you’re building a business or publication. She then talked us through the process of creating an intuitive brand strategy. Today, we’re stepping into styling and crafting a moodboard.

We’ve already laid the groundwork with strategy, but now it’s time to dive into styling, focusing on one of the most exciting parts of the process: moodboarding! 

This is where things get interesting because a moodboard is your brand’s playground, where you get to experiment with how your writing should feel. Think of it as a visual Pinterest party, and you're the host.

Moodboards can be a powerful tool for all creators. Not only can they help shape the visual direction of a project or publication, offering a sense of clarity, but they can also help you find your aesthetic. It's about crafting the look and feel of all the key elements we’ve explored in earlier posts—such as foundations, positioning, and essence—in a tangible, inspiring and cohesive way.

The magic of moodboarding

When writing about brand styling, I’m referring to designing a brand identity, specifically logo design, colour palette, and typography. However, before diving into these elements, I begin with a moodboard for a broader, more explorative approach.

It acts as a visual compass, guiding you through the design process, and it can be a joyful way to explore how your brand essence, capturing the textures, imagery, and colours that best represent your identity. For writers, moodboards are especially useful for evoking the right atmosphere for your work—whether it’s the cover design for your latest book or the overall aesthetic of your author website.

This allows us to play before we plan. To consider styling through a wider lens before delving into the details. Think of it like doodling before you make the masterpiece—have fun and see what sticks!

Examples of moodboards

Here are a few moodboards I’ve developed for a range of clients. Each reflects a distinct style and purpose, and I hope they inspire how you might approach your brand creation:

The Mindful Potter

This moodboard is a nod to the beauty of ceramics, featuring natural textures and earthy tones. It was produced for a pottery brand, but writers working in mindfulness, nature writing, or even self-help could feel right at home here. Muted colours, organic shapes, and tactile elements help convey peace and connection to the outdoors.

Studio Nikogwendo

This brand draws heavily on Art Deco influences, using geometric shapes and a refined, elegant palette. Writers working in literary fiction, historical narratives, or genres with a sophisticated tone could reflect on this style for inspiration. The moodboard combines sharp lines and symmetry with luxurious touches.

Kind & Conscious

Designed for a lifestyle brand situated by the stunning coast of Cornwall, this moodboard captures the character of the ocean through soft watercolour washes, handwritten fonts, and wave-like patterns. Does your writing touch on nature, wellness, or personal growth? Then this might resonate.

How to curate your moodboard

Ready to begin? Here’s how to get moving. And remember, you can approach the process in a way that feels good; make your favourite drink, tune into your favourite playlist, and then begin:

1. Begin with inspiration: Start by collecting inspiration on a platform like Pinterest or use a similar tool. You could even go analogue with magazines, scissors and glue! Think about how you want your writing brand to feel. What colours, textures, or imagery align with your stories and overall voice as a writer? Pay attention to elements that resonate with your genre, themes, and character.

2. Collate a range of visuals: Look for a mix of fonts, images, and textures that communicate your brand essence. You might find inspiration in typefaces, photographs, colours, book covers, or artworks that evoke the mood you want to convey. Curating a diverse range of visuals will help capture the full scope of your brand identity, from emotional undertones to stylistic preferences.

3. Refine your vision: Once you’ve gathered a selection of images, narrow them down to 8–12 images that truly speak to the heart of what you bring to the world! These visuals should embody the nature of your writing, guiding decisions around colour palettes, typography, and overall style. This refined collection will serve as a foundational reference point for your brand's aesthetics.

4. Seek feedback: Share your moodboard with trusted peers, mentors, or even a segment of your audience. Ask a question like ‘Do the images reflect the themes of my work and the tone and voice of my writing?’ Their feedback might reveal a hidden gem, and involving your community can boost your brand and build a real sense of connection among your readership.

5. Assemble the moodboard: Now it's time to pull everything together. Using tools like Canva or Adobe Express, arrange your chosen images into a cohesive layout. Aim to create a moodboard that’s easy to reference and visually inspiring. Consider the balance between the various elements: how do the colours, fonts, and textures interact? Do they capture the atmosphere you're aiming for?

Bonus Tip: You could also share different versions of your moodboard and ask yourself (or others) ‘Does one feel more compelling or cohesive than the other?’ Now you’ve got a solid visual reference to guide your style, keep it close, let it shape your branding decisions, and revisit it as you develop your writing brand.

Styling elements to explore

While you’re styling, it can help to consider the specific elements that will visually represent your brand:

1. Logo: Whether you choose a symbol or typography-based logo, it should reflect your moodboard’s key elements. Think about how shapes, colours, and fonts could influence your logo design.

2. Palette: In design, think of your colours as the mood-setters—whether you’re going bold and bright or soft and serene, they evoke different emotions and can set the tone for your entire brand.

3. Typography: Fonts play a huge role in how your brand communicates. Whether you’re going for something classic, modern, or whimsical, your chosen typeface will influence how readers perceive you.

Tools for moodboarding

Here are some recommended tools to help you curate your moodboard:

• Pinterest: A great starting point for inspiration, you can setup dedicated boards for each project you’re working on.

• Unsplash and Pexels: High-quality stock images you can use to build out your visuals and develop your identity.

• Google Fonts and MyFonts: Play around with fonts to find the one that best fits your brand's voice. Your type choice can heavily influence design.

• Coolors: Experiment with different colour palettes to find the perfect match for your moodboard. For advanced creation, try Adobe Color.

• Adobe Express and Canva: These design tools are ideal for assembling your moodboard and experimenting with layout.

Follow these steps, and you could have a moodboard that acts as a visual foundation for your writing brand, guiding your choices around logo, colour, and typography.

Join the conversation

Take a moment to reflect on your brand style.

• What aspects do you enjoy working on?

• What could benefit from some refinement?

• And what no longer serves your vision?

Share your thoughts in the comments, or join me at Brand Seasons for deeper insights. Over the summer, we’ve been delving into these themes within my membership, and colour and typography resources await!

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed this, check out this article from Sarah’s archive about making side projects your playground. Here, she shares more about her Brand Seasons Playdeck, plus the moodboard she crafted for the project.

Brand Seasons

Making side projects your playground

In the world of the artist, maker, or writer, there’s something deeply satisfying about dedicating yourself to a creative adventure that belongs entirely to you. These passion projects—the ones that gently simmer in the background—often become the truest reflection of who we are…

Read more

2 years ago · 21 likes · 18 comments · Sarah Robertson

Sarah’s Brand Seasons publication is a must-read for those looking to integrate their creative practice with cohesive branding. She also writes about curiosity and connection and has recently launched a branding and business podcast.

When she’s not writing on Substack, Sarah helps her clients define their vision, craft beautiful visuals and discover their voice through her studio, These Are The Days.

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

This week I have an article by Dan Gerstein from Gotham Ghostwriters. Dan reached out to me about his upcoming Gotham Ghostmasters course, and asked if there was any way we could work together.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t given ghostwriting much thought until this year, but it is a great way for writers to make a living in the publishing industry. I feel like it’s a natural fit for Deserts, who can easily disappear into their work without taking credit for it at all. This isn’t natural for me, but since I’ve been embracing my inner Desert this year, it’s something I’ve thought about more and more in the last few months.

I’ve been trying to appreciate the process of writing and finding joy in everything I write instead of just writing what brings me joy, which I think is a cornerstone skill of ghostwriters and Deserts alike.

Some of the greatest authors of all time made their living as a ghostwriter between their own books, and the opportunity grows more and more interesting every day, as more people want to write a book to become thought leaders in their industry.

So, I asked Dan to write an article for us about ghostwriting, the opportunity available for writers in ghostwriting, and how writing can get involved in adding this potential lucrative income stream into their business. I think it’s a really great opportunity for the right kind of writer, and I hope you’ll keep your mind open reading this one.

Dan Gerstein is the CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters. A nationally recognized political writer, communications strategist, and idea man, Dan has been writing professionally for himself and others for more than 30 years.

A graduate of Harvard College, Dan got his start in collaborative writing and thought leadership development as a speechwriter and policy advisor on Capitol Hill for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman from his home state of Connecticut. He went on to serve as a senior advisor and communications strategist for Lieberman in his vice-presidential and presidential campaigns.

Much like the media and publishing industries we are symbiotically connected to, the writing profession has undergone its own existential upheaval over the last several years — in our case what might be called a Dickensian disruption.

To many established journalists and authors, it seems like the worst of times. Due to the seismic shocks to the news media business model, thousands upon thousands of experienced reporters and editors have either been laid off or driven out by the fallout from all the cost-cutting and related stresses. And due to the rapidly changing economics of book publishing, which have dramatically deflated the size of advances, a large share of writers who once made a living producing books can no longer do so with anything but meager advances.

Yet for our community of writers for hire — ghostwriters, speechwriters, content marketing pros — it seems like the best of times. democratization of publishing across all platforms, combined with the massive premium being placed on thought leadership across most industries, has resulted in an explosion of demand for ghostwriting services, and correspondingly, a major spike in compensation for our services.

Many of you reading this may have considered giving ghostwriting a chance, and even more of you would have thought about it except that you don’t even know it’s an option for you.

So, what is ghostwriting? Ghostwriting is the practice of writing content on behalf of another person who is credited as the author. Ghostwriters are typically hired to create various types of written works, such as books, articles, speeches, blog posts, or even social media content, without receiving public acknowledgment for their work. The credited individual or organization takes ownership of the content, while the ghostwriter typically remains anonymous.

Not getting credit might not be the ideal scenario for you, but ghostwriting – particularly in the book publishing marketplace -- is big business and members of our community are making a lot of money doing it while still being able to work in the industry they love doing the thing they love—namely writing.

In the first-ever compensation survey of professional book ghostwriters, undertaken by our agency and our partners at the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), the full results of which will be released in the coming weeks. A full third of the 269 respondents reported annual income of more than $100,000 – and 25 percent said they had charged at least $100,000 for the last full manuscript they collaborated on with a client.

Subscribe now

Meanwhile, the median annual income for traditionally published authors is often reported to be around $6,000 to $10,000. Advances can range from a few thousand dollars to six or seven figures, but many authors receive advances on the lower end of this spectrum. Similarly, self-published authors reported earning $15,000 from writing in 2023.

This disparity helps explain the growing number of A-list authors and journalists who are openly eschewing the stigma long associated with ghostwriting and unapologetically embracing the identity of collaborator. They see ghosting as a natural way to make a good living while still stretching their storytelling muscles.

Writers like Ariel Levy, the New Yorker writer who collaborated on Demi Moore’s celebrated memoir; Sam Lansky, the best-selling memoirist who worked on Britney Spears’ blockbuster recent release; and most notably J.R. Moehringer, the author of the acclaimed Tender Bar, who set off a media frenzy two years ago with his rumored million-dollar deal to collaborate on Prince Harry’s Spare.

Just a few months ago, the New York Post reported that Buzz Bissinger – the writer behind the Friday Night Lights phenomenon – had signed on to work with his fellow Pennsylvanian John Fetterman on the iconoclastic Senator’s upcoming memoir.

We at Gotham Ghostwriters have had a front row seat to watch this tale of two trendlines. Not a week goes by where we don’t get contacted by at least 2-3 displaced journalists and dissatisfied authors who are eager (and/or desperate) to learn how to get into the ghosting game. They typically have heard through the writer grapevine that ghostwriting presents a great opportunity to leverage their skills and diversify their income, but they have no idea where to start.

Perhaps after reading this, you’re curious, too. For those of you who are also ghost-curious, here is the core of what I tell them, based on a decade plus experience brokering hundreds of collaborations:

1. Successfully making the professional leap into ghostwriting requires making a threshold mental shift. You have to stop thinking of yourself as a writer/author/artist and start embracing the idea of being a service provider. Your sole job is to help your clients realize the best version of their vision for their book. Which is to say, the darlings are no longer yours to kill.

2. Create a business plan for yourself. If you are serious about launching a ghostwriting practice, it is essential to develop a business plan. Not a 10-page, data-filled document with all kinds of charts and graphs. Just a concise set of answers to a few key questions that will provide focus to your work, such as: What are the services I plan to offer? How do I stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace? Who are the clients I am best positioned to serve as a solution for? How do I reach them?

3. Do market research. As with the formation of most any new business, it pays to do market research. How do most ghosts price their services? What are the critical elements of a standard contract? How do you navigate the issue of credit? Gathering this kind of intel is a complicated task in a field as opaque and unstandardized as ghostwriting. So don’t hesitate to ask for help, be it from individual veteran ghosts (who generally are very sympathetic to people just starting out) or from groups like our agency, the Association of Ghostwriters, or ASJA.

4. Build your brand identity. Start with a professional-looking website – or at least dedicated page on your existing site – that compellingly articulates your value proposition and showcases your skills, experience, and work product. Then make sure to include a dedicated entry on your LinkedIn page that highlights your service offerings as a ghost.

5. Plan your launch. Once you have your fundamental ducks in a row, you should prepare to announce the launch of your practice to your extended networks. Indeed, the fastest way for newbies to get over the first client hump is to let the people who can vouch for your talents and reliability know that you are available to help others tell their stories. More importantly, make a list of good targets in your network that might benefit from your services that you can contact when you are live.

6. Go live. When you’re ready, blast out an announcement email that lays out why you’re a great solution to certain authors’ problems, post it on your site, then link to it on your social channels. You don’t need a ton of customers to make this work. You’ll likely only be working with 1-2 at a time, and you can probably find them among your existing network.

Ghostwriting is not for everyone, but if you’re struggling to get your work seen by people and you want to explore a potentially more lucrative path, we would encourage you to check out GHOSTMASTERS, the new professional development program we launched this summer. Instead of reactively trying to help writers navigate this evolving marketplace one by one, we thought we could better serve our community by proactively sharing our expertise in a series of online courses about how to launch and grow a ghostwriting practice that would be accessible to anyone in the world.

One of the things that makes GHOSTMASTERS unique is its singular focus on the business side of ghostwriting. We did a survey of the marketplace, and the few educational programs offered to aspiring ghosts are mostly craft-oriented – how to do the work. There was nothing primarily designed to help writers get into the field and step up their game. Our program was created to fill this void.

The series will kick off at the end of September with Ghostmasters 101: How to Break Into the Business of Ghostwriting, an introductory course for professional writers who are looking to make the leap into collaborations. 

You can find out more about the program and how to register here.

Gerstein is the founder and CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters

So, what do you think?

• Have you ever thought about ghostwriting?

• Does this spark anything inside your brain noodle?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Tana French’s In the Woods (2007) is one of my favorite stories because it melds a police procedural with a detailed look at how relationships work in a thriller. As her first novel, it won the Edgar, Anthony Macavity, and Barry awards and kicked off a career that now includes nine books.

In the Woods impresses me so much because it engages me every time I pick it up. Each sentence pulls me along to the next without effort, which is my definition of a page-turner.

If I dig down further, the characters are deeply flawed. French carefully peels back layer after layer of character and story to reveal the exquisite agony of damaged people. Her main character, Rob isn’t a good guy or even heroic, but he’s interesting. Given what he's survived, I want to know what will happen to him.

Digging down even more, I realize In the Woods is a masterclass in the scar trope.

Here’s my synopsis:

One Irish summer day in the eighties, three school-aged friends go into the neighborhood forest to play, and hours later, only one bloody child is found alive (violence). The other two children are never seen again, and the boy, Rob, has amnesia about the event (scar).

Twenty years later, Rob is a detective in Dublin’s Murder Squad (profession). He's changed his name, and crucially, in his mind, he's moved from his past trauma. (hidden identity). Adult Rob is an arrogant loner, longing for his first big murder case to solve (macguffin, ticking time bomb). Rob’s partner is the most recent Murder Squad addition, Cassie (loner, politics, profession). For someone not yet thirty, Cassie has been orphaned, stabbed, and ostracized by a former friend(scars). Rob and Cassie get their first big murder case, but it's in Rob's childhood neighborhood (forced proximity, scar, secret). Rob hides his past from everyone because he doesn’t want to lose the case (ticking time bomb).

The victim is Katherine Devlin, a promising teenage ballet dancer (profession) from the neighborhood. Her sexually assaulted body is discovered in an adjacent archeological dig site (suspects, violence).

The victim’s family includes her ill mother and her developmentally delayed twin. Neither are reliable historians of Devlin's family life. Katherine's older sister, Rosalind, and her father are the critical sources of information. The sexual assault casts suspicion toward a male perpetrator (suspects, red herrings).

This is the setup you need to know. Now, I will tell you who did it and, more crucially, why: Roselind groomed one of the archeology male students to commit the crime she arranged because she was jealous of her sister’s talent. Even Rosalind has a scar.

I’m jumping over all the delicious twists In the Woods delivers to reach this conclusion because it's time to talk about scars. (If you have not, I still want you to read any/all of Tana French's books because they are fantastic).

Subscribe now

As the narrator, In the Woods is Rob's story. He tells us that in the beginning:

What I am trying to tell you, before you begin my story, is this---two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

This story is a journey to find Katherine's killer and an unflinching examination of Rob and Cassie's developing relationship. The show-do-not-tell mantra is something we hear constantly in storytelling. It's easy to say show, but how do you do that exactly? French’s method is meticulous story details.

In the Woods shows Rob and Cassie's relationship development from their first meeting to the bitter end, along with all the tiny reveals in between. What continues to impress me (even when I'm not reading it) is how French teased these relationships out.

Both detectives are loners and socially outside the Dublin Murder Squad clique; from the start, their inexperience and arrogance allow them to bond quickly. Rob's attraction to Cassie is disengaged early on (cue him rescuing Cassie in the rain with her broken moped and how her humor quashes that romantic impulse).

Soon, he thinks of them as twins reaching out slow blind hands in a gravity-free and wordless space. They finish each other's sentences and protect and respect each other. Yet, beneath their loner status, they harbor deep scars.

Scars are beautiful in storytelling because they provide unconscious character conflict. Rob believes what happened in the woods twenty years ago doesn’t impact his life. He says he didn’t become a detective to solve his case. But we know Rob craves the truth, and he lies.

Perhaps my background, including my many years as a wound care nurse, predisposes me to favor scars.

Let's back up a minute to think about what a scar is.

A scar is the body's natural reaction to healing a wound. The scar creates a new surface to heal the damage, but the resulting tissue differs from the original tissue. In a scar, the wound never goes back to normal.

And here’s the bit that is important for us as storytellers,

The problem is that scar tissue lacks the flexibility and elasticity of normal healthy tissue.

Scars don't mean the wound has gone away. It has patched up the source, but what remains is vulnerable to breakage.

I love the scar trope because it's a structural character flaw. Characters aren’t even aware of the depth or vulnerability of their weaknesses until conflict tests them in the story. Even then, they may not become conscious of their scar, but as the audience, we see it.

Rob will never bounce back from his trauma, and neither will Cassie (her trauma is introduced here and continues in the next book from her POV, The Likeness). Their scars undermine their friendship. Despite their best intentions, once under pressure, their carefully constructed relationship built on trust rips open.

In storytelling, wound and scar are often used interchangeably. Thinking about In the Woods made me realize why I cringe whenever I hear this, but I never really thought about why I do this until recently.

A wound is a break in the skin or other body tissues caused by injury or surgical incision (cut).

Wounds are the original injury, while scars are the result; they are two slightly different but essential mechanics in storytelling.

Rob decides to spend the night alone in the woods at a critical moment during the investigation. That event rips open his scar. Cassie rescues him, and they make love.

Boom! It's the culmination of what I knew as a reader, but the characters didn't; they were soulmates. French showed us how perfect they are as partners in every way. And yet, In the Woods is not a romance; it's a mystery/thriller, so cue the damage unfolding.

Rob may have escaped the woods physically years ago, but emotionally, he never got out. The trust he and Cassie accumulated between them splits apart because of his inability to form adult attachments. Plus, the wonderfully devious antagonist, Roselind, gives it a good push. (My feelings on female antagonists in mysteries and thrillers are demonstrated below).

Given what French shows us, how can we apply these ideas about wounds and scars to our storytelling work?

1). Consider the wound as an inciting event for your character’s scar journey.

In Rob's case, a third-person narrator relates the events to us, and Rob fills in later with more details from the police report. We experience the terror of this childhood trauma through a flashback. Since all the information is new, the flashbacks are exciting and varied; they establish world-building.

The timeline of the wound may be in your character's past or an event that happens in real-time as the story develops. This is a terrific use of flashbacks.

2). Use the scar as an example of how the character has supposedly moved on and how that character progresses through the story. Is the scar a secret? If so, why is that important to the story?

Rob tells us he never thinks of the event in the woods, which is no longer relevant to his daily life. Remember, this is the same guy who told us that I crave the truth. And I lie. Although Rob has changed his name, acquired a new accent, and become a professional, his hidden identity is a ticking time bomb as soon as the murder location is identified as his former hometown. If he reveals to his boss that he was a past victim, he's off the case. Rob's ambition and his lack of awareness about his trauma sets up his tragic professional and personal relationship arcs. Even when Cassie reveals she knows his true identity, she hides it from their boss because Rob assures her it's not an issue. Her trust in him is sadly misplaced.

3). Show us the scar splitting open in the storyline. Save the Cat discusses all is lost and the dark night of the soul in the third act of a story. This is scar-splitting territory for our character. We need to see this happen to our character(s). 

Rob decides to spend the night alone in the woods because of his frustration with the investigation. He doesn't realize how inflexible his scar is. This is where we see Rob’s life start falling apart big time. His estrangement from Cassie leads them to make mistakes in the investigation. They eventually figured out that Roselind masterminded the killing but also missed that she was still a minor. She won't be charged with the murder.

Meanwhile, their professional and personal relationships are ruined. Rob is reassigned from Murder Squad, and Cassie eventually joins another division. She eventually becomes engaged to their colleague, Sam.

TropeTalk

I'm the USA Today Bestselling Author of the Trope Thesaurus series. I also write fantasy when I'm not geeking out about tropes, stories, and language. Incidental discussion of travel, shoes, and cats is likely.

By Jennifer Hilt

What do you think about wounds and scars? Do you use them interchangeably? Does it make sense in your storytelling worlds to use them to show related but separate events? Let me know in the comments below! I’m still thinking about how this plays out in other examples of the mystery and thriller genres.

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Let's be honest. Being an indie author often feels like a frantic juggling act. You're spinning plates of character development, plot twists, and witty dialogue while simultaneously trying to balance social media posts, email newsletters, book promotions, and a never-ending to-do list. You're the ringmaster, the clown, the lion tamer, and the acrobat all rolled into one. It's enough to make even the most seasoned author want to run away and join the circus (and not in a good way). The sawdust is getting in your eyes, the roar of the crowd is giving you a headache, and quite frankly, you just want to sit down and write for a while.

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a productivity nerd. I'm always on the lookout for "cheat codes" to reclaim my time and energy. And automation? That’s my superpower.

I don't automate because it's trendy; I automate because, at my core, I'm lazy. I'd rather spend my time dreaming up new worlds and characters than wrestling with spreadsheets or agonizing over social media captions. And you know what? You should, too.

The Automation Advantage: More Writing, Less Juggling

Automation isn't just about efficiency; it's about liberation. It's about giving yourself the gift of time to focus on what you love most: writing. Here's how it can change the game for you:

• Reclaim Your Time: Say goodbye to hours wasted on mundane tasks. Automation gives you back those precious hours so you can write more, market smarter, or simply recharge your creative batteries by (probably) scrolling TikTok. No? Just me? Alrighty then.

• Increase Productivity: We're all looking for ways to increase productivity without burning out. Automating the time-suck tasks can help. Imagine a well-oiled machine, humming along smoothly while you sip your coffee and dive into your latest chapter. That's what automation can do for your author business.

• Maintain Consistency: Ever wished you could clone yourself to keep up with social media, newsletters, and blog posts? Automation is the next best thing. Schedule your content in advance and watch your online presence thrive, even when you're busy crafting your next bestseller. 

Your Automation Starter Kit: Conquer the "Suck"

Before you dive headfirst into the world of automation, take a moment to assess your current workflow. Which tasks consistently leave you feeling bogged down, frustrated, or overwhelmed?  

This is what I call "the suck." You want to automate the suck so it doesn’t, you know, suck. 

Pinpointing these pain points is the crucial first step towards effective automation. By identifying the areas where you're spending the most time or struggling the most, you can strategically prioritize the tasks that will benefit most from automation. Once you've identified your biggest time-wasters and productivity killers, you're ready to tackle some easy wins. Here are a few simple automation strategies that can make a significant impact on your author business:

Email Marketing:

• Hands-Free Newsletters: Say goodbye to the last-minute scramble to get your newsletter out. Write a single blog post and let your email service provider pick it up and send it automatically through an RSS-to-email automation, so every new blog post is automatically sent to your subscribers. (Here’s an example of how to do this with Mailerlite.) 

Social Media Maven:

• Schedule and Thrive: Don't let social media become an energy vampire. Use scheduling tools like Buffer or PromoRepublic to plan your posts in advance, freeing you to focus on writing and engaging with readers in real time.  Bonus points if you can repurpose your blog content into social media snippets!

Sales & Distribution Dynamo:

• Review Team Assembly: Streamline your ARC team process by automatically sending out digital review copies through platforms like BookFunnel once they sign up using a form. Track reviews in Airtable, Notion, or Google Sheets and send automated reminders until their review is posted. 

Leveling Up: Automation for the Savvy Author

Ready to take your automation game to the next level? Here are a few more advanced techniques:

• CRM Wizardry: Turn website visitors into loyal fans with automated email sequences, web push notifications, or even text messages tailored to their interests. Think of it as your own personal marketing assistant, working tirelessly in the background to nurture your leads and boost your sales.

• Data Insights Unleashed: Gather data from multiple sources and automate its analysis. Uncover trends, understand your audience's preferences, and make informed decisions to grow your author business. Knowledge is power, and automation gives you the power to harness that knowledge without spending hours poring over spreadsheets.

• Workflow Optimization: Create powerful workflows that connect multiple actions. For example, you could automatically validate new subscribers' email addresses, add them to your email list, and send them a welcome discount for your books—all with a single signup. This is like having a virtual assistant who never sleeps!

Beware the Automation Pitfalls (and My Late-Night Coding Mishap)

I once spent an entire weekend automating the process for subscribers of Indie Author Magazine to switch between annual and monthly subscriptions with just one-click. I was incredibly proud of the sequence I’d built — as well as the custom code that I hacked well into the wee hours of a Saturday night. 

I rolled into our Monday morning all-hands meeting feeling like I’d solved the greatest problem we faced. Imagine how deflated I was when my business partner showed me that 3 people had requested this over the past two years. I solved a problem that simply didn’t exist. 

Lesson learned: Don't automate just for the sake of automation. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of new tools and shiny features, but not every task needs to be automated. Focus on the areas where automation will truly make a difference in your life and business. Don't waste time automating something that doesn't need it or that you could easily do manually.

Another pitfall to avoid is neglecting maintenance. Automation tools and workflows aren't "set it and forget it" solutions. They require regular monitoring and updating to ensure they're functioning correctly and delivering the desired results.  Remember, automation is supposed to make your life easier, not create more work!

Finally, be prepared for a bit of a learning curve. Automation tools can be powerful, but they can also be complex. Take the time to learn how to use them properly and don't be afraid to ask for help or consult online resources if you get stuck.  

Your Automated Author Adventure Awaits

Automation isn't just about saving time; it's about reclaiming your creative energy, reducing stress, and building a sustainable author career. By automating the mundane, you can focus on the magic of writing and connecting with readers. So, ditch the juggling act, embrace the power of automation, and let your creativity soar. Your next bestseller is waiting, and automation can help you get there faster and with less stress.

Ready to take the plunge? Start small, experiment, and don't be afraid to ask for help along the way. The rewards of automation are worthwhile! 

Chelle Honiker writes a weekly newsletter called Author Automations and is the founder of Indie Author Magazine, Indie Author Training, Indie Author Tools, and Direct2Readers.com to empower authorpreneurs. She also serves as the programming director for Author Nation, an annual conference in Las Vegas. Chelle's extensive career in executive operations and leadership, coupled with her experience as a speaker and TedX Organizer, showcases her dedication to supporting and empowering authors worldwide.

Author Automations

Technology and automation hacks and information for storytellers. Written by Chelle Honiker, publisher of Indie Author Magazine and Indie Author Training.

By Chelle Honiker

What do you think of this one?

• Are you already automating bits of your author business?

• Are you too nervous to start?

• Do you think this is a good way to fight overwhelm?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last newsletters what I learned in my second year of Substack (part 1 covered creating sustainable growth and part 2 was about writing consistently without burning out). 

Today’s newsletter is almost like a part three. Based on your comments and feedback, I wanted to expand on growing your Substack and creating more intention in your content strategy. If you’re intimidated by the term “content strategy,” don’t be. All it means is you have a plan for what you want to write, when to publish it, and how you share it. 

I’ll discuss developing a content plan that doesn’t take up too much of your time. I’ll also share tips on a few important features within Substack for better showcasing your “brand” (AKA, you). 

Quick note: These tips are meant for people who have already written a fair amount of content. Maybe you’ve posted every week for the last six months and need to rethink your strategy because you’re short on time. Or perhaps you’re ready to take a step back and assess how you can get smarter with your Substack newsletters (I have ideas for that too!). 

I hope you find this advice helpful. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to leave them. Your comments help me decide what to write about next! 

1. Figure out a posting schedule that works

When I first created Memoir Junkie Wannabe Author, I posted a newsletter every single week. My background in content marketing told me this was critical to getting people interested and on board. I aimed to post once a week. 

For the first six months, I diligently published a weekly newsletter, posting on Tuesday at 5 a.m.

After six months, I took a step back to examine how I felt about this schedule. While I enjoyed it, figuring out what to write, writing, editing, and publishing took a lot of time. I started to feel burnt out and realized I was dreading the end of the week when I’d have to begin my next newsletter. 

When I’m no longer excited about the process, I always stop and assess what’s going on. If you’re going, going, going but not gung-ho about the process, you may want to revisit your posting frequency. 

While I loved posting and sharing on Substack, I knew a once-a-week publishing schedule would not be achievable in the long run. 

I decided to slow it down. I reduced it to twice a month. At first, I didn’t notice a big drop-off in subscribers. I still saw a steady stream of engagement (mainly in the form of comments), but after a few months, I noticed the engagement kind of fell off. But the open rate and views were steady. 

Then, there was a big lull when I saw no new subscribers. I realized I needed to use this “free time” I would have otherwise been spending on writing my weekly posts to start expanding my reach. I kept my eyes peeled for ways to contribute to other people’s publications, including this opportunity to become a guest contributor for The Author Stack. 

I had previously connected with Russell on Zoom and written about The Author Ecosystem on my Substack, so the decision to contribute to his publication felt natural. (A big tip for growing your Substack is connecting with others on the platform.)

By shifting my time and schedule, I expanded my reach and gained a steady flow of subscribers.

Take a step back and assess your posting schedule. If you dread sitting down to write, see what changes you can implement. Maybe you can try twice a month and evaluate the numbers afterward to see if engagement has dropped significantly. Or maybe you can create shorter posts but still maintain the weekly schedule. 

The key is to be consistent. 

Subscribe now

2. Publish and share other people’s stories

A big part of the Substack experience is forming connections with other writers. I observed what other Substack authors were doing with their content. They asked their community to contribute to their Substack as guest authors. 

There are many reasons to do this, including wanting to expand your reach (i.e. if I contribute to another publication, I will likely share that newsletter with my followers, too), build connections, or position your Substack as a collaborative publication. I decided to do the same. 

Here are a few published stories from my writer community:

• Cliches saved my life

• A late encounter with ‘El Bori’

• I taught memoir writing in a men’s prison

I put the word out and published other writers’ stories. Because I was involved in writing classes, finding writers who wanted their stories shared wasn't hard. If you don’t have writing colleagues, connect with others on Substack by subscribing and commenting or getting on Notes.

See if you can contact your Substack “friends” and collaborate or cross-promote. What I love most about Substack is how involved everyone is with their audience! 

Here’s a quick tip on how to connect with other Substackers:

• Follow newsletters you enjoy and comment on posts you like. 

• Share them on Notes. 

• Be thoughtful of what you say. 

• Rather than writing, “Thanks for sharing,” say what resonated with you, or ask a question to elicit a response. 

Create a page on your site that lets readers know they can contact you if they want to contribute. To be more efficient in creating a process for growing this, you could create an intake form on Google Forms and paste a link. 

When my readers saw I was publishing other people’s stories, they contacted me and asked if they could share theirs. Ramping this up takes time and intention, so be patient. 

While posting and sharing other people’s pieces is a great way to grow engagement, preparing them for publishing still takes time and effort. I had to edit and ask questions about the parts that felt unclear. 

3. Assess your content

Now that I’m in year two of Substack, I have a good deal of content and have organized my site better. (Read part 2 to learn more about your site organization.)  

I regularly check my dashboard in Substack to analyze what got the most views, opens, likes, and comments. I love seeing these numbers grow! I was floored the day I saw my views broke 1,000. 

See what gets the most engagement and note to write more newsletters that expand on those topics. 

The newsletters that typically get the best engagement are stories where I share something that:

• Is highly vulnerable

• Is about writing tips and craft

• Provides insight on how I continue growing my Substack

Here are my top stories from 2023-2024:

• Embezzlement, betrayal, and federal prison: This was a story from my writing buddy. I never thought a guest post from someone else would get engagement like this! 

• The bad news of writing a memoir: I feel like this topic resonated with people because honestly, why do people write books when it’s such an uphill battle?!

• Unputdownable books of 2023: I’m a huge audiobook person, so I enjoy sharing my top reads every quarter or so. While these newsletters take time to write, they also get many views because they generally appeal to everyone. 

This leads to my next quick tip: I start drafts ahead of time for stories that take me a while to write. So, for the best books list, I’ll sometimes get ahead by writing notes about them while listening to the book. 

Another tactic to reduce the time I spend on these posts is to reduce the word count for each book to a few sentences (brevity is a challenge for me!).

Writing a little at a time for more time-intensive stories helps reduce the feelings of overwhelm and resistance. 

Subscribe now

4. Create roundups

When done with intention, roundups can actually be a great way to quickly reshare what you’ve written about and get them in front of your newer readers. 

You can also commit to roundups where the entire newsletter is dedicated to your favorite Substacks. I want to get more consistent at doing these, but here is one that got me a few subscribers! 

I follow other Substackers who share roundup posts regularly and then post them on Notes.

Here are thoughtful ways to do your roundups:

1. Collect newsletters based on themes or umbrella topics. For example, I could organize a roundup of the best writing tips or newsletters about writing regularly.

2. Include other people’s Substack posts (that have the same theme or amplify your message) in your roundups. Be sure to tag them so they see it and potentially share it. 

3. Do a “most popular” or “trending” roundup, based on top newsletters for the week, month, quarter, or year.

Quick side-tip: Create an Excel sheet with a running list of your published URLs broken down by topic. Then, you can quickly reference them to copy and paste them into roundups or updates. Trust me, this helps save time!

5. Update older posts you’ve written 

When you post on the internet, it’s instantly dated. Updating your older stories keeps them fresh and saves time when writing new ones. It’s another great way to get your stuff in front of your newer subscribers.

Examine your newsletters and consider refreshing stories that:

• Got the most views

• Have a ton of comments

• Offer your best tips/advice/stories

For example, I could do updates for my posts about joining writing groups and what I’ve learned since I first signed up two years ago. 

For updates, it’s not about rewriting the whole thing. It can be as fast as inserting a paragraph at the top in italics about what’s changed since you wrote this piece and why. 

6. Use Notes more often

I need to take my advice on this, as I don’t use Notes nearly as much as I want. 😆

But here’s why Notes is awesome–consider it an extension of your Substack. Whenever you don’t have time to write a whole post, get on Notes and share your insights of the day or something that resonated with you. 

Other tips for Notes:

• Share older newsletters on Notes with a sentence or two about why you’re sharing them.

• Comment and like other people’s Notes–it’s a fantastic tool for engagement and connection.

• Restack other Substacks on Notes with a thoughtful comment explaining why.

Substack tips

While having a content plan matters, so do the “little things” on Substack that can help with growth and engagement. 

Subscribe now

7. Turn on your paid subscription

It took me an entire year before I felt like I was worthy of turning on Substack’s paid subscription for Memoir Junkie Wannabe Author. In one particular Substack Office Hours (no longer offered on Substack), someone told me to turn on your paid option, no matter what. Don’t think about it, just turn it on because you never know who will want to become a paid subscriber. 

I don’t know why it took that kind of encouragement, but I’m glad that person told me to just go for it. I expected nothing, but I have a handful of paid subscribers today. OK, to be fair, a few of them are my friends, but their support still counts and means so much to me!  

3 Tactics for your paid messaging

1. “My content is always free, but you can still pay.”

My favorite Substack authors tell their readers that their content is always free, but “I appreciate your donation to support my work because it’ll help pay for the time I spend writing and providing great content.” 

I appreciate this kind of messaging because it tells readers that their work is quality but free no matter what, and they always have the option to donate and become paid followers.

2. “I’m about to turn on the paid option on my Substack, and I’m scared.”

Another type of messaging I like is when Substack authors are transparent about every step of the paid subscription process. One woman I follow said she was terrified to turn this on and felt like a fraud, because, who would want to pay?! She also admitted she didn’t have a full strategy for what content she would share with paid vs. free members. She asked her readers to be patient, and guess what? They were super patient and supportive. 

3. “Here’s what you get when you become a paid subscriber.”

Then there’s the strategic Substackers with a solid plan for engaging their paid subscribers. For their paid member, they give them access to things like: 

• Exclusive group chats and Q&As

• Premium content (one gal who reviewed books had a “cliff notes” section of her site that was locked content and only accessible through paid)

• The best tips, such as guides or how-tos

Or maybe you don’t do any of the above and quietly turn start including the “paid” buttons in your newsletters. That’s fine, too! 

8. Three ways to improve your branding on Substack

1. Welcome email

How to get to your welcome page: Go to your Dashboard >> Settings >> [left rail] Branding >> Welcome email

If you still use the generic Substack welcome email, make it your own. Tell readers why you’re grateful to have them and what they can expect with your content. 

Alas, this also took me a while to revisit and revamp, but after I did it, I felt so much better about giving my new subscribers valuable content.

My welcome email points people to various parts of my site with links to the most popular and evergreen content, such as writing tips and recommendations for books and podcasts. 

Now that I have a handful of paid subscribers, I’ve created two versions that differentiate paid from free. Honestly, the links are pretty much the same in both versions; the only thing that’s different is the messaging. 

In the paid version, I thank people profusely because it’s a dream of mine to get paid for my work on Substack (and one day grow it to the point where I can make a living from it)! 

2. Your About page

How to get to your About page: Go to your Dashboard >> Settings >> [left rail] Basics >> About page

This is another opportunity to include links to your content. Like your welcome page, think about the most valuable, evergreen content the reader has likely come to your site for. But the About page should show you’re a human. 

Add photos, favorite books, other Substacks you enjoy, or what you like to do in your free time.

3. Recommendation blurbs

How to get to your About page: Go to your Dashboard >> [top tabs] Recommendations >> [at the top] click Manage

In my previous Lessons in Substack Year 2 post, I discussed setting up recommendations (scroll down to tip #4) to share other people’s Substacks. Just like turning on the paid subscription, just do it. 

I forgot to mention in the previous parts 1 & 2 newsletters that I spent time writing a unique blurb about why I recommend them. Sometimes I take a sentence or two from their “About me” page and tweak it to make it my own. 

The most important thing to convey is why I’m recommending them, what do I like or enjoy about their Substack? Chances are, this is what other people will enjoy as well. Adding that tiny personal touch makes a big difference in getting folks to subscribe to them. 

So, that’s it for now. I hope you will implement some of these tips to help grow your readership without taking too much time. If you’re like me, you already probably spend a great deal of your day in front of screens. While I love Substack, I also love being outside, seeing friends, and traveling. 😁

Tip: Be sure to check out Russell’s in-depth guide on mastering your content calendar.

If you found this newsletter helpful, I would love it if you could leave me a comment below. Or if you didn’t find it useful, tell me why! I would be happy to go deeper on anything I’ve written about in this newsletter, or if you’re interested in learning more about content strategy, feel free to let me know.

Memoir Junkie Wannabe Author

I'm writing my first book—it's a memoir. I'm using this Substack to share my experience and what I'm learning along the way. I write stories, tips, and review my favorite memoirs.

By Claire Tak

What do you think of this one?

• Does it give you ideas on how to expand your own content on Substack?

• Have you ever done a refresh of your publication?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

When I was in junior high, I went through a brief period where I was convinced that I was destined to be a famous actress someday and our family’s residence in central Wyoming was standing between me and my unfulfilled dreams. Fueled by dreams of someday having my own starring role on ABC’s TGIF, I believed that my parents were holding me back. One night I finally tearfully unloaded on my unsuspecting mother who had no intention of moving our family to Hollywood but silently determined that she would do what she could to help her daughter feed her desires to be an amateur actress.

During my sophomore year of high school, my mom saw that our local community college was having open community auditions for Fiddler on the Roof. Since my high school did not have a robust theater program, my mom suggested that I audition.

My friend Nancy, a high school freshman, got the coveted role of Chava. I, a high school sophomore, got the role of Bielke, the youngest daughter. According to the character description, Bielke is supposed to be played by an 8-10 year old. I was so jealous of my younger friend for getting the role that I wanted and for getting to flirt with the cute college freshman who would play Fyedka. She got to flirt while I had to act like a little girl.

But Nancy was a flawless Chava. She was perfect for the role. And I still had fun as the youngest member of Tevya’s family, learned a great deal about theater, and continued to feed my acting dreams.

I would eventually exchange my English and drama dual major to English and history, fully embracing my role as an English teacher who infused history into everything I taught. I finally admitted that others were better and more suited for refining their acting skills. While my jealousy over the years was sometimes well placed, it didn’t make me better.

It’s this life lesson that I also have to return to over and over again as a writer.

Some writers really are better than you…right now

In my first couple of years teaching, I struggled with the reality that I didn’t know everything. I had some incredibly talented students who really were better writers and thinkers than me. As a young 20-something, I often felt lost as I tried to be the teacher that those uniquely talented writers needed.

I’ve also felt this way as a writer.

We are allowed to proclaim our gifts as writers, and it’s not self-defeating to admit that there are some writers who are just better than us. Admitting this doesn’t doom us to never being as good as our favorite writers. If becoming great is a life goal, we can certainly work to become as good as them. We just have to accept that we aren’t as good as they are yet. Have you ever read a famous writer’s early work and compared it to their later writing? Even the best of the best experience personal growth over a lifetime of writing and publishing. Why should you be any different?

Your only competition is you

It sounds cliche, but it’s true. You’re not in competition with anyone else. You are in competition with yourself.

Every writer has unique challenges: careers, families, health issues, financial obstacles, etc. We cannot know every challenge that a writer faces, nor does it help us to know what challenges they face. What helps us is dealing with our own challenges and finding a routine that works for us. The time we set aside for our writing and the word counts that we commit to are our own. The timelines we set for projects are our own. And the deadlines we set for when we want the projects to be finished are our own.

It is also true that your fellow writers are your peers and you should see them as such. Fellow writers should help us flourish. They shouldn’t suck all of the air out of the room, and most do not. When we find fellow writers who expand our perspectives with their own writing and challenge us to be better, we can more easily achieve our goals. These writers are not your competition; they are your cheerleaders.

Subscribe now

Embrace your evolution

As a young teenager, I truly believed that the only way I could achieve professional happiness was if I became a successful actress. I enjoyed acting and was frequently told by friends and family that I was good.

When my family moved to Michigan my junior year, I discovered a new high school theater community where I made good friends and had fun on the stage, but I never got the lead roles.

When I started as a drama major in college, I faced the same challenges. I had to finally admit that my path did not involve making my mark on the stage. I would, however, eventually make my mark as a high school theater director, making my mark behind the scenes through my talented students. I poured my creative energy into students who would go on to do great things.

When I became a mom, the dream shifted and I rediscovered my love for writing, a creative space where I flourished as I never had in the theater.

When I was really young, I believed that fiction was the only real kind of writing. After all, it was the only thing I was interested in reading. As I got older and spent more time reading nonfiction, I finally acknowledged that my gift is nonfiction writing, telling my story and connecting my experiences to the bigger world around me. I am slowly making a return to fiction, but that experimental writing is proving to be its own challenge, stretching me in new ways.

I’m also learning to embrace the idea that I am on my own timeline. I can lament the fact that Mary Shelley was only 19 when she wrote the very first science fiction novel, or I can find encouragement in the fact that Toni Morrison didn’t get her first book published until she was 39. In fact, there are a lot of writers who didn’t get a real start until they were in middle age. Again, I am not in competition with others; I’m in competition with myself. Is it hard to see much younger writers getting huge audiences and book deals? Yes. Have I wondered why some crowdfunding projects have made thousands of dollars while my own labor of love has struggled to meet its goal? Yes.

But I also know that we’re all walking an unpredictable path full of unforeseen twists and turns, hills and valleys. And so I will keep fighting the green-eyed monster, because jealousy never helped anyone achieve their goals.

On the Journey

Reflections on middle age, family, faith, citizenship, and travel

By Sarah Styf

If you liked this one make sure to check out the Kickstarter for their next book!

Back the book

What do you think of this one?

• Do you face your own version of the green-eyed monster?

• What strategies do you use to get through it?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

I love the revenge trope. Settling scores against those who have wronged us is part of the human condition; look at the Knives Out franchise and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid as recent popular revenge trope examples.

But what’s so impressive about this trope that stretches back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

The revenge trope has redemption, scar, and secrets tropes embedded. It’s rooted in a shifting power dynamic between at least two parties. The revenge trope isn't developed nearly enough, so we will unpack what makes it so powerful and how we can harness that conflict.

To do that, I'm going all in on John Wick (2014), but only the first twenty-nine minutes. So, let's look at how careful setup is required to deliver the revenge trope.

My John Wick infatuation boils down to his relationship with Viggo Tarasov, his former Russian mob boss. Yes, this movie has fantastic fight scenes and worldbuilding, but the tension between these two characters in the story’s beginning minutes fuels the rest.  

In storytelling, it's tempting to rush to the acts of revenge rather than mine the history of the two parties. That is the genius behind John Wick ---that it takes the time to tease out the history between John and Viggo, the Russian mobster. We’re desperate to know more as the scenes unfold.

Subscribe now

Here’s my John Wick (2014) synopsis for the first part:

 John Wick is a retired assassin and recent widow recovering from his wife’s funeral (scar). When the doorbell rings, a courier delivers a beagle puppy (macguffin) and a note—a last gift from his dying wife (redemption, secret). 

From a series of flashbacks, we learn that John is going to end up bloodied and hurt in this story, watching videos of his wife. We see him at the hospital when she dies, and we see Helen's funeral (scar), where former colleague and shadowy Marcus shows up to a wary John to pay his respects (secrets). There is more to John than a mild-mannered grieving husband (hidden identity); we're intrigued.

The next day, a young Russian man, Iosef (alphahole), spies John’s beloved car at a gas station and offers to buy it from him. John refuses him in Russian (mistaken identity). That night, Iosef’s (antagonist) henchmen invade John’s house, beat him, steal his car and kill his puppy (macguffin, violence).

Meanwhile, the audience sees Iosef brings John’s stolen into a chop shop (forced proximity, politics). The owner, Aurelio, recognizes John's car and punches Iosef before ordering him to take the car away (violence, ticking time bomb). Soon, Russian mafia head Viggo calls Aurelio, asking why he hit his son, Iosef (ticking time bomb).

Aurelio explains to his boss, he stole John Wick’s car, sir. And, uhhh, killed his dog.

Viggo replies, Oh. And hangs up.

Our first glimpse of Viggo is from a Manhattan penthouse deck with a view of the city skyline. It’s a great contrast to Aurelio sitting in his industrial neighborhood shop. It's a great way to show us the different worlds these men inhabit, but they are all interconnected.

Back to John, who wakes up badly injured, buries his dog, and takes a bus into New York City, searching for his missing car (Macguffin, scar, journey). His first stop is Aurelio’s shop, where he learns the thief is mob boss Viggo’s son (hidden identity). It's clear John and Aurelio know each other; Aurelio loans him a car (workplace, politics).

By now, we really want to know who is John Wick?

Iosef returns to his father (boss), proud of his successful Atlantic City job. Viggo pours his son a drink, they share a toast, and Viggo punches his son in the stomach (family, violence).

A gasping Iosef protests at why his father would care that he stole a car from a fucking nobody (mistaken identity).

Viggo replies, “It’s not what you did, Son. It’s who you did it to.” 

After dropping this little parenting gem, Viggo reveals John’s backstory (found family, secrets, scars, redemption) to Iosef before he dismisses his son. Viggo’s voiceover shows John back at his home, entering a sealed war room.

As John unpacks buried weapons, the war room’s landline telephone rings. John answers but remains silent while Viggo expresses sorry for John's wife's death and his son's actions. He asks John not to seek vengeance, but John hangs up before he finishes. Viggo tasks his assistant to hire a hit squad to kill John. John lies in wait for the assassins at his home (journey).

This is the first twenty-nine minutes of a one-hundred-and-ten-minute film. I've included some dialogue because the character exchanges are excellent world-building examples for a movie that doesn't have much talking. I’m also scattering other examples throughout this piece for this reason. Notice how the restraint in the dialogue adds to the building tension; it's like using a pregnant pause to convey meaning.

Now that we know the main players and how they are generally related let's review all the tropes packed in this setup. Some of these tropes will repeat, like violence, ticking time bombs, and MacGuffin, because those are thriller must-haves. Seeing them helps create anticipation. We're worried for John as he faces the Russian mob army. Can John succeed in killing Iosef before Viggo kills him? That is our story question.

John Wick tropes

antagonist, alphahole, boss, family, forced proximity, found family, hidden identity, journey, macguffin, mistaken identity, redemption, scars, secrets, ticking time bomb, violence, warrior.

Now that we see these tropes, let’s recap the setup:

1. John was once the most valued employee of the Russian mobster, Viggo.

2. John earned the freedom to leave Viggo’s mob and marry Helen by completing an impossible task.

3. In the present, Viggo’s son, Iosef, stole John Wick's car and killed his puppy—a last gift from Wick's dead wife. Iosef was unaware of Wick's identity when he committed his crimes. 

4. John will kill Iosef as revenge. Viggo will try to kill John before he succeeds.

It’s Goal, Motivation, and Conflict time!

John:

Goal: Kill Ioself for killing his dog and stealing his car.

Motivation: revenge

Conflict: Ioself is the son of his former boss, Viggo, a powerful Russian mobster.

Viggo:

Goal: Kill John Wick before he can kill his son.

Motivation: self-preservation 

Conflict: As John’s former boss, Viggo knows John will stop at nothing until he is successful.

See how John and Viggo’s goals are mutually exclusive? Only one can ‘win’! We know that means we have a story with plenty of conflict potential. Revenge is all about pulling the knot tighter. All the delicious carnage that follows works because of this setup between John and Viggo.

The stakes are high because it's not just a former employee going after his employer. The two men have a history together based on professional respect, plus the inciting incident involves their respective families.  

Let’s stop for a moment to consider how John Wick would change if:

• If Iosef wasn’t Viggo’s son but a random criminal with no connection to John.  

• If Iosef stole John’s car and it was a loaner.

• If Iosef hadn’t killed John’s symbol of hope.

Viggo's son has taken something from John, and that imbalance can only be restored by John's taking Iosef from Viggo. Yes, Iosef becomes a MacGuffin.

We can learn a few tactics from John Wick (sadly, not how to kill three men in a bar with a pencil) to spice up our thriller drafts.  

Three Questions to Strengthen the Revenge Trope Foundation in a Thriller:

1. Are the main character's goals are mutually exclusive? If not, keep tweaking the story until they are.

2. Are the redemption, secret, and scar tropes built into the main characters? Know what they are and how they are weak points for the characters.

3. Am I mining the history between the main characters to squeeze out every connection?  Use their goals to create clashes and draw secondary characters into their conflict to raise the stakes. Return to the core relationship between the main characters (i.e., the revenger and revenge), drawing the connections tighter. 

When in doubt, go back to the main relationship between the revenger and the revengee and think about how can I dig deeper?

So, tell me! What do you think about the revenge trope in John Wick? Do you have any recommendations for me for other revenge tales? Hit me in the comments below!

Now, go watch John Wick!

TropeTalk

I'm the USA Today Bestselling Author of the Trope Thesaurus series. I also write fantasy when I'm not geeking out about tropes, stories, and language. Incidental discussion of travel, shoes, and cats is likely.

By Jennifer Hilt

What do you think?

• What are your favorite revenge movies?

• Do you think John Wick is an effective example?

• What can you bring into your own writing?

Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Give us a tip

Regular contributor recently emailed me about ’s new book Love Apptually and asking if I wanted to feature an article from the author. If you know me at all, then you know I’m a sucker for:

1. Puns

2. Personal introductions

So, this one fit the bill on both counts, and Alyssa delivered first a great pitch and then a great article which I think can really help writers do something they absolutely hate…namely writing blurbs and marketing copy.

If you like this one, make sure to subscribe to Alyssa’s Substack, and check out the book, too!

Grumpy + Sunshine

Romance rants & raves from Alyssa Jarrett

By Alyssa Jarrett

The Marketing Framework That’s (Kinda) Safe for Work

Thanks for the intro, Russell! Happy to be here. Before I prioritized my career as a romance author (my debut Silicon Valley rom-com Love Apptually just released!), I spent over a decade in the tech industry, working as a content marketer for early-stage startups.

I’m often asked what are the top marketing strategies and tactics that can be applied to selling books instead of enterprise software. And the number-one framework I teach to aspiring authors and consulting clients alike is one I actually learned in high school speech & debate—way before I became a marketer.

If you’re thinking: but Alyssa, how can you label this marketing framework as NSFW when you were taught it as a literal minor? Good question and fair criticism!

It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, but before I describe the framework, I always apologize for the profanity. Because it’s called the SHITS.

Yes, of all the ways you can market your book, you’re definitely going to want the SHITS.

Here’s why.

The Marketing Magic of Having the SHITS

As I mentioned, I first came across the SHITS in high school. When you compete in policy debate, you’re taught the following acronym:

• Significance

• Harms

• Inherency

• Topicality

• Solvency

The SHITS’ original use was to make it easier for debaters to remember the stock issues when crafting their arguments. But once you know how they work, they can be applied to any use case where you need to be persuasive and convince someone to do something, whether that’s vote for your resolution or buy your book.

So I’m going to explain each element of the SHITS, using examples from both bestselling debut rom-coms I love, as well as my own.

Let’s dive in!

Significance: What important problem does my character want to solve? And why should readers care?

Significance is critical to grabbing the attention of potential readers. If you want people to drop whatever they’re doing and buy your book, the first sentence of your blurb or description needs to frame what your character wants as significant—as something readers actually care about and can resonate with.

Let’s look at a few opening sentences of popular rom-com blurbs:

• The Hating Game: Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office.

• The Kiss Quotient: Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe.

• Red, White & Royal Blue: First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince on this side of the Atlantic.

• Love Apptually: Celebrity stylist Casey Holbright is used to being the sidekick in someone else’s story.

These openers all give an inkling of what these characters are facing, whether it’s pursuing a promotion or dealing with fame. They also immediately narrow the wide world of romance novels to their respective subgenres, such as workplace romance, STEM romance, or royal romance.

By getting clear on why readers should care about your book, you will also get more specific on which types of readers will care. And caring is the first step to adding your book to cart.

Harms: What bad things will happen to my character if they don’t get what they want?

In publishing speak, the harms are also known as the stakes. It’s not enough for characters to want something—bad things must befall them if they fail in their mission. This is what moves readers from simply caring to being full-blown invested in your story.

Here’s how harms are previewed in these blurbs:

• The Hating Game: Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking. If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign.

• The Kiss Quotient: She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

• Red, White & Royal Blue: International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.

• Love Apptually: But when her biggest client suddenly decides to dump her right before Fashion Week, she needs to channel some major main character energy.

These harms include consequences like a lack of dating experience, a tabloid leak, and a detrimental loss in income. But I’d argue that The Hating Game’s blurb is the best at escalating the stakes by explicitly stating what happens if Lucy wins or loses. Regardless of the outcome, I’m sold.

Despite the name of the genre, most characters in romance novels don’t set out to fall in love. Romance may be what they need in the end, but the Significance and Harms in these stories are all about what they want—and what’s at risk if they don’t succeed.

Subscribe now

Inherency: If what my character wants is so important, why don’t they have it by now?

Something has to be standing in the way of your main character—otherwise, your story would be resolved in just a few pages. And where’s the fun in that?

This inherent obstacle could be internal, like an inability to trust others, or external, like an antagonist. In romance—especially in enemies-to-lovers or second-chance romance—the love interest and the antagonist are often the same person.

Here’s how inherency shows up in these blurbs:

• The Hating Game: After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.

• The Kiss Quotient: It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish.

• Red, White & Royal Blue: As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations.

• Love Apptually (part 1): Her dream job quickly unravels into a nightmare, however, when she learns Evan never agreed to hire her and has zero intention of ditching his gym-rat attire—not for his own board of directors and definitely not for a fashionista who cares more about Prada than Python.

• Love Apptually (part 2): But just when their rivalry turns into something more, Casey discovers a bigger threat than flip-flops at the office. To prevent Evan from losing the business he built from scratch, they’ll need to team up to save his startup—and his reputation.

In The Hating Game, Joshua is Lucy’s inherency because she can’t fall in love with him and beat him at the same time. Stella in The Kiss Quotient is trying to gain sexual experience as a woman with autism, and Alex and Henry’s relationship in RWRB is under constant threat from the paparazzi.

And not to toot my own horn, but in Love Apptually, I offer two inherencies: First, what’s keeping Casey from succeeding at her new gig is her love interest, Evan himself. But just when they’re finally getting along, another antagonist comes along and puts both their careers at risk.