Novel Marketing

You will die.  It could be today, it could be 15 years from now, but no one lives forever. Your books, however, can outlive you. In fact, seventy years after you're gone, they’ll live in the public domain. That means your grandchildren's grandchildren could end up responsible for your intellectual property. Most authors have done zero planning for what happens to their books, passwords,...

What do you do if your Amazon account gets suspended but you didn’t do anything wrong?  Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't care if you're innocent. That's not pessimism. It's strategy. Once you understand what Amazon cares about (hint: it's not you, the law, or fairness), you can start speaking a language they respond to. In this week’s episode , I spoke with Lesley Hensell, co...

Is hiring a publicist a waste of money or not? A typical book publicist charges between $3,000 and $10,000 per month, and they often require a three-month minimum. At $3 of profit per book, you'd need to sell 5,000 copies just to break even. Most PR campaigns don't come close to selling 5,000 copies. But the publicist gets paid either way, while the author takes all the risk. Here's...

Do you feel like an imposter as a writer? You probably are. Most authors who experience imposter syndrome are imposters, but they don't have to be! As the saying goes, “There are no good writers; just bad writers who didn’t quit.” Every author starts off as a bad writer. To make a living at writing you must improve through hard work, determination, and training.  In this week’s episode , you’...

Are your book sales stuck? Maybe sales have slowed. Maybe your launch never took off. Or maybe you're spending money on ads without seeing results. This week on Novel Marketing , Amazon ad specialist Bryan Canter explains how "promo stacking" can revive a struggling book and put it in front of new readers. You'll learn: What promo stacking is and why it works Which promotions d...

Instead of a guest interview or a marketing deep-dive, in this week’s episode I'm inviting you to something I've spent years building for authors who want to be taken seriously. You’ll discover: How you can get lifetime access to my $249 course this month for $0 How you can get your questions answered by me live on a monthly basis How you can get my digital doppelgänger (ie. AI Thomas) t...

A writers conference with no pitch appointments, no breakout tracks, and no recordings? What’s left? A conference that sold out last year! The Novel Marketing Conference is different, and every single attendee that responded to our survey said they were glad they came in 2026.   In this week's episode , I break down exactly why I removed those traditional writers conference elements and what...

Have you ever finished a book you loved, handed it to a friend, and heard back, "It was fine"? That disconnect has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It has everything to do with a principle C.S. Lewis understood well enough to write classics that have endured for decades. In this week's episode , I sat down with bestselling novelist Angela Hunt to break down the four an...

The difference between making thousands of dollars on your next book and losing money can come down to a few cents per click. If your ads generate even a few pennies of net profit, you can run them until you've sold tens of thousands of books. But if you're losing money, no amount of spending will fix it.  In this week's episode , David Gaughran, a veteran of digital advertising, jo...

We’ve arrived! It’s the 500th episode of Novel Marketing. To celebrate, I’m giving away the MacBook Neo I reviewed a few episodes ago , but I’m also revealing my worst takes and biggest mistakes over the past 500 episodes. Some of those takes were correct, but when circumstances changed, the advice was no longer good. But sometimes, I was wrong from the start. Gather ‘round and hear the tale of th...

Most authors can tell you their royalties but not their net profit per book. They spend money on ads, see sales come in, and assume things are fine. But are they? Sales and profit are not the same thing. How can you find out if you’re making money or just making sales? In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from Eiri Theodorou, founder of Publisher Champ, an analytics platform used by over 25,000 au...

There’s a culture shift underway that most authors aren’t seeing. Even traditional publishers can’t figure out why their titles are resonating. If your book isn’t selling, it could be a cover or craft problem, but it might be a zeitgeist problem.   In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from fantasy and LitRPG author Seth Ring. We discuss the biggest cultural shift in storytelling in two decades and...

I bought and tested Apple's cheapest laptop so you don't have to. I stress-tested the MacBook Neo with a 250,000-word document, ran every major writing app, and pushed the machine to its limits. Whether the Neo is right for you depends on what you use your computer to do, because authors do more than just type words into a word processor. In this week's episode of Novel Marketing, y...

Your author friends are lying to you about your book cover. Well, not on purpose. They can’t help it. When authors are trying to pick a book cover, they often ask their friends which cover they like best. But that strategy doesn’t work because your friends look too closely. They think about your feelings. They vote based on which cover has more votes. But your cover isn’t for your friends. It’s fo...

Many authors say reader magnets don’t work anymore. But when done right, a good reader magnet can grow your email list from zero to thousands of subscribers before your first book even launches. In this episode , you’ll hear from author, podcaster, and producer of the Novel Marketing podcast, Laurie Christine, who built an email list of thousands using various reader magnet strategies, all while w...

Do you ever wish you had a team of writing, publishing, or marketing professionals to consult? Do you wish you had an assistant to help with the business and marketing side of writing? What if you could have both for less than the cost of a couple of lattes? In this week’s episode , you’ll hear about the newest additions to the Novel Marketing Patron Toolbox, a growing suite of practical tools des...

Is your writing a hobby or a profession? The answer to that question changes everything. Many authors claim to be professionals but act like hobbyists. They write what they want instead of what readers will pay for. They try to fit a finished book into a genre instead of studying the genre first. They publish without a marketing plan or budget and are shocked by low sales and few reviews. They exp...

If your book isn’t selling, it may not be your writing. It may be your metadata. In this week’s episode of the Novel Marketing Podcast, you’ll hear from Dave Chesson, creator of Publisher Rocket, and learn about the hidden engine behind book sales on Amazon. Even if your book is well-written and professionally edited, Amazon doesn’t read your book. It reads your metadata. And if your metadata is u...

Many authors assume book formatting is complicated, expensive, or something only professionals can handle. In ​this week’s episode​ , I talk with Bryan Canter about why that assumption is outdated, and how tools like Vellum have changed what authors can do. If you’ve ever wondered whether you need to pay a pro or learn to format your book’s interior yourself, this conversation will give you clarit...

American Taxes, pay too little and you go to jail. Pay too much and you lose the money you need to reach more readers with advertising and promotion.  If your records feel like a mess of Amazon deposits, Ingram payments, Kickstarter funds, affiliate income, coaching fees and dozens of random expenses you’re not alone.  In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from a CPA who works specifically with aut...

Do you ever feel like your book is taking forever to write? Maybe you’ve been working on the same manuscript for years, and then you look up and see other authors publishing a book a year, or more. How do they do it? In this week’s episode , I ask Jerry B. Jenkins that very question. He has sold more than 73 million books, including his mega-bestselling Left Behind series, and he breaks down the h...

Most authors begin writing as a solitary pursuit and soon realize they don’t know other writers or industry professionals who can help them grow. So how do you go from a solitary outsider to a connected insider who knows designers, editors, marketers, and more? In this week’s episode , we talk with Dale L. Roberts, an award-winning indie author and host of Self-Publishing with Dale , about how gen...

If you ask a bestselling novelist how long it took to go from aspiring writer to published success, the answer is usually about ten years. One reason it takes so long is that most authors learn about writing in a haphazard way. They read a blog post here, listen to a podcast there, attend a conference where they receive a firehose of information, and then watch YouTube videos hoping to fill in the...

ChatGPT used to be the go-to AI for authors, but it's no longer the best choice for every task. New models like Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok are outperforming it in specific areas, from creative writing to research to automation. In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from The Nerdy Novelist, Jason Hamilton. We discuss which AI tools work best for your writing, your budget, and your gen...

I am not a big fan of Substack for novelists. Most novelists are better off using the free version of Kit and WordPress. However, Substack is a completely different story for nonfiction authors. If you’re a nonfiction author who wants to grow your platform without juggling five different tech tools, this week’s Novel Marketing episode is for you. In this week’s episode , I talk with screenwriter a...