It’s 2025, and authors are at war over AI. Some are embracing it, others are retreating to bunkers, and a few think it’s just another passing fad. But amid all the controversy, most authors are missing out on the AI advantage that everyone can agree on: AI can help you market your books, which gives you more time to write. Most of us became authors because we love writing, not because we love marketing. But what if AI could handle some of the heavy lifting for you? What if you could spend less t...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 451
Science fiction is changing, and so are its readers. The cultural landscape that shaped the last 40 years of sci-fi is shifting, including thoughts about wokeness, AI, WWIII, population, and more. If you're still writing about overused and cliched sci-fi themes, you're missing the mark. In this week's episode of Novel Marketing , we explore: Why climate-change narratives are losing their grip on sci-fi readers How population change can impact the next big sci-fi stories The new ro...
Feb 26, 2025•38 min•Ep. 450
To indie publish or traditionally publish? That is the question. For years, indie publishing was seen as a fallback for authors who couldn’t land a traditional contract. But times have changed. Many indie authors now outsell and out-earn their traditionally published counterparts. And yet, while many traditionally published authors are switching to indie, it’s far less common to see a successful indie author sign with a major publisher. What would make an indie author turn down a traditional pub...
Feb 19, 2025•46 min•Ep. 449
If you’re thinking about writing a book series, you might want to reconsider, especially if you’re a new author. That’s not to say you should never write a series, but it can be a risky endeavor, and I can prove it with math. In this week’s episode , I break down why writing a series may limit your potential readership. You’ll learn: The four steps every reader must take for your sequel to sell well The math behind why sequels struggle to sell The hidden dangers of "battered reader syndrome...
Feb 12, 2025•23 min•Ep. 448
Have you ever set up a book table and stacked your books neatly, only to walk away with disappointing sales? You're not alone. But there is a better way to sell books from your book table at in-person events. In this week's episode of Novel Marketing , I sit down with Sarah Hickner, an expert in book table sales, to uncover: Common mistakes authors make at book tables (and how to avoid them) Simple tricks to draw readers in without feeling pushy How to use giveaways, bundles, and book ...
Feb 05, 2025•45 min•Ep. 447
Congrats on getting booked for a podcast interview! Whether you’re promoting your book or lead magnet, your audio quality on the podcast can make or break your credibility. In our latest episode , we share pro tips on: How to prepare for your interview (beyond just showing up) Microphone techniques that make you sound like a pro The gear you need (that doesn’t break the bank) What to do after the interview is done I’ve been podcasting since 2007, I’ve tested a lot of gear, and I’ve made some cla...
Jan 29, 2025•17 min•Ep. 446
Serialized fiction has been captivating readers for centuries, from nightly bedtime stories to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations to modern writers on platforms like Royal Road and Wattpad. In this episode, I interview bestselling author Seth Ring, who shares how serialized fiction helped him write 25+ books, build a dedicated fanbase, hone his craft, and achieve financial success. Discover: The benefits of writing serialized stories The key differences between Wattpad, Royal Road, and oth...
Jan 22, 2025•56 min•Ep. 445
Where is publishing headed in 2025? Are we witnessing the end of traditional publishing or the birth of something new? In this week's episode of Novel Marketing , we’re unpacking: The surprising trends reshaping the industry. Why successful indie authors are rejecting six-figure advances. How romantasy, premium books, and shifting political preferences are transforming bestseller lists. And of course, we can’t ignore AI. We'll even see what AI has to say about the future of publishing ...
Jan 08, 2025•32 min•Ep. 444
Many authors feel stuck. They're toiling away in obscurity, and none of their promotion efforts seem to go anywhere.Success in publishing is as much about who you know as what you know. And sometimes, the lack of knowing the right people keeps you from finding success.We still live in a world that's run by human people, and your connection to those humans will lead to your success. If the word networking makes you feel awkward, you need to change your mindset.Networking is about relati...
Dec 18, 2024•33 min•Ep. 443
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the endless task of writing, publishing, and marketing your book? From deciding which software to use for writing to figuring out how to keep track of all the characters in your story, the choices can feel paralyzing, and the number of things that need to be done can be very overwhelming. Besides your writing tasks, you have the business side of things: scheduling meetings, tracking your finances, recording book sales, running ads, and figuring out if your business...
Dec 11, 2024•35 min•Ep. 442
Your author platform is your ability to spread the word about your book. As an indie author, your platform is directly linked with how large your book launch can be. Bigger platforms lead to bigger launches. All else being equal, traditional publishers always prefer large-platform authors to authors with no platform. So, how do you grow your author platform? This week’s episode is a webinar I recently presented. You’ll learn · Two myths about author platform · What you’ll need to build an enduri...
Nov 25, 2024•52 min•Ep. 441
Is your website’s Contact page serving your readers and web visitors? In the past, authors simply shared their email addresses on their websites. But that opened the door to a flood of spam, which drowned out real messages from readers. Connecting with your readers is essential to building your readership, so you can’t simply remove your email address from your website. But how do you create an effective Contact page that helps readers connect but keeps spammers out? In this week’s episode , we’...
Nov 20, 2024•15 min•Ep. 440
Choosing the right setting can supercharge your book sales. Some people read a book just for its setting. A good setting can lead to spin-off products like board games, art books, coloring books, calendars, comic books, and even movies. Setting not only turns people on to a story, but it also turns people off. Every author must answer the question, “How can I place my story in a setting that readers want to spend time in?” And the answer to that question is an art and practice called worldbuildi...
Nov 13, 2024•53 min•Ep. 439
Sometimes in marketing, it pays to zig when everyone else is zagging. In this digital age, when authors race to do everything online, it's easy to forget the magic of face-to-face interactions. Personal connections can transform your relationship with your readers and fellow authors. A book festival is a fantastic way to meet with readers and writers at the same time in real life. But what is a book festival, and how can you organize one? In this week's episode , I asked Dave Cohen to ...
Nov 06, 2024•28 min•Ep. 436
As Yoda says, “Difficult to see the future is.” But difficult is not impossible. Causes have effects, and the more you have a sense of the rhythms of the past, the better you can sense the future. If it takes you two years to write a book, you owe it to yourself to ask, “What kinds of books will be popular in two years?” Reader preferences change over time, but sometimes they change rapidly. If you don’t keep up, you may get stuck writing a book people no longer want to read. So, how can you det...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 438
Has inflation eaten away at your book profits? Perhaps you want to start advertising and need some margin. Or maybe readers are not taking you seriously with your book's current low price. You need to raise the price of your book, but how should you do it? Most authors raise prices quietly. One day, the price just goes up, and they hope no one notices. But that approach is a massive mistake and a missed opportunity. A future price increase is a rare opportunity, and in this week's epis...
Oct 23, 2024•19 min•Ep. 437
The last time I visited Barnes and Noble, I marveled at the comic book section. Western comic books only filled a couple of shelves, while around the corner, there was an entire aisle of manga comic books. I wondered, “Why is Eastern manga so much more popular than Western comic books from DC and Marvel?” As I investigated, I discovered an interesting and shockingly ancient answer. Western storytelling is typically based on the three-act structure, which dates back to Aristotle. But one ancient ...
Oct 16, 2024•30 min•Ep. 435
Reader magnets are like real magnets. Sometimes, they aren't very magnetic, and other times, they're so magnetic that we can rapidly grow an email list of tens of thousands of readers. A reader magnet is supposed to magnetically draw readers onto your list so that when you have a book to announce, lots of folks are ready and eager to learn more or buy. But what if your reader magnet doesn't seem to be working? In this week's episode , I interviewed Jonathan Shuerger to learn ...
Oct 09, 2024•41 min•Ep. 434
Are your book sales starting to dip a bit? Perhaps your book sales were once great and are now starting to fall. You may see this drop in sales for several reasons, but you don’t have to stand by and watch them drop indefinitely. Most bestselling books see their highest sales during the pre-order period, followed by the launch month, and then experience a slow, steady decline. But you can extend a book sales lifecycle. In this week’s episode , we’ll talk about Why your sales may be declining Whi...
Oct 02, 2024•29 min•Ep. 433
The Holy Grail for many authors is to write a popular book series where readers of book one go on to read book two and so on. Writing a popular book series provides many marketing advantages, namely that your advertising is far more profitable. But writing a series is also risky. Generally, you can only sell subsequent books to folks who purchased, read, and enjoyed the first book in the series. For some authors, writing books in a series has shackled their otherwise good books to a relatively u...
Sep 25, 2024•44 min•Ep. 432
I'm excited to announce that tickets are now for sale for the 2025 Novel Marketing Conference. The conference will be held in Austin, Texas, on January 17th and 18th. This event is not a typical writer's conference where you learn how to write and publish a book. Our conference is focused on book marketing, and our goal is to help you make 2025 the best year of your author career so far! In this episode , you'll find out · Three special ingredients that make the Novel Marketing Co...
Sep 11, 2024•22 min•Ep. 431
A few weeks ago, Dazed Digital published an article asking why men no longer read novels. The article itself had no satisfying answers, but the question triggered a big discussion online, particularly on X, where everyone had a hot take. But men are buying and reading books. And authors who write what men want to read are making millions of dollars. In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from Alexander Macris, who wrote a rebuttal of sorts to the assumption that men don’t read novels. In our conve...
Sep 04, 2024•57 min•Ep. 430
Authors often refer to their books as "babies." As I've worked in the publishing world with authors and now that we are awaiting the birth of our fourth child, I'm starting to see a lot of similarities between birthing a book baby and a human baby. We can learn a lot about delivering a book baby by looking at the process of delivering a real baby. In this week's episode , you'll gain insight on The author's experience in each stage of book-baby development How ...
Aug 28, 2024•21 min•Ep. 429
Novelists often struggle with what to write or say in their email newsletters, blogs, and podcasts. Unpublished novelists often feel like they have nothing to talk about, and published authors know readers tire of constant book promotion emails. So, what should novelists write about? Writing a novel is a bit like woodworking. When you craft something from wood, you often have leftover pieces of lumber you can use elsewhere. Savvy carpenters and writers know how to put the leftovers to use. A nov...
Aug 21, 2024•45 min•Ep. 428
Have you ever wondered if a course would be a better way to present the material in your book? Have your readers asked you to develop your book into an online course? You probably know that online courses tend to sell at higher price points than books, but you also know they are a lot of work. Will it be worth it for you? For your readers? I’ve been creating and teaching online courses for over a decade and had to learn many things the hard way. In this week’s episode , you’ll learn the easy way...
Aug 14, 2024•36 min•Ep. 427
You probably know that offering a reader magnet on your website is imperative to growing your email list, tantalizing readers with a sample of your writing, and eventually getting them to buy your book. If you write novels, your reader magnet should be a short story, but if you don’t know how to write a great one, you’ll miss out on the many advantages short stories provide. In this week’s episode, Steve Diamond, author and cohost of the Writer Dojo podcast, and I discuss the art of writing shor...
Aug 07, 2024•43 min•Ep. 426
Your website is one of your most critical book marketing assets . It’s where you manage your online reputation, grow your email list, and sell books. But before you build a website, you need web hosting. You have thousands of web hosting options, which can feel a bit overwhelming. How do you know what kind of host you need for your website? In this week’s episode , you’ll discover What a web host does for your website Which kind of web hosting is best for authors (and which to avoid!) How much y...
Jul 31, 2024•20 min•Ep. 425
Feeling overwhelmed by book marketing can lead authors to look for shortcuts. Shortcuts lead to expensive complications. Expensive complications lead to dead ends. Dead ends lead to suffering. Yoda would call this “The path to the dark side.” Does this sound familiar? How do you escape this overwhelming cycle? There are ten different stressors that can lead to book-marketing overwhelm. Most authors face at least one, and if you are completely overwhelmed, you may be facing all of them. In this w...
Jul 17, 2024•31 min•Ep. 424
Being an author requires you to have hundreds of online accounts for different software and services. Websites such as Amazon, ConvertKit, Publisher Rocket, Patreon, K-lytics, Bookvault, AuthorMedia.social, AuthorsXP, BookBub, Kickstarter, Teachable, Bluehost, WordPress, Grammarly, and Plottr (to name a few) all require a username and password. Some authors avoid using helpful tools simply because they don’t want to create and remember yet another username and password. It seems like too much ha...
Jul 10, 2024•19 min•Ep. 422
Can you make a living as an author without selling through Amazon? Many authors wonder. Amazon is the sole revenue source for many indie authors, but Amazon’s algorithms can disable your KDP accounts and cut off your income without any human reviewing the action. Authors find themselves pleading with a computer to reactivate their accounts while their livelihoods hang in the balance. While this scenario is rare, it does occur. That’s why some authors connect with their readers without relying on...
Jul 03, 2024•49 min•Ep. 421
