Novel Marketing

Most authors know only one kind of Kickstarter campaign, and for many of them, it isn't the best one. This week on Novel Marketing, you’ll hear from Russell Nohelty, a USA Today bestselling author of over 70 books who has run dozens of successful Kickstarter campaigns. Russell wrote the book on the subject, How to Launch Your Book on Kickstarter , and he didn't hold back, even when he di...

The chatbot told him his manuscript was brilliant. The humans gave his manuscript a C. That's what happened to one author who trusted AI as his editor. If you use AI to help with your editing, it's probably lying to you too, and not just once in a while. In this week’s episode , I talked with Matthew Bowman, a freelance science fiction and fantasy editor who has worked with authors for 1...

Your book may not be dead. As Miracle Max would say, it might only be mostly dead. A book that flopped three years ago could sell better today than it did on launch day, but only if you fix what actually broke. This week, I talked with Julie Broad, founder of Book Launchers and host of BookLaunchers. TV. Julie is a #1 Amazon bestselling author, and her team has helped more than 400 authors write,...

The slowest way to write a novel is to start writing a novel. It sounds backward, but it’s not. In this week’s episode , you’ll hear from Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn . She’s spent years exploring short fiction as both craft practice and creative outlet, and she pushed back a bit on my claim about the slowest way to write a novel. You’ll learn What Joanna considers the main benefit of short st...

Authors on KDP Select get access to $700 million a year in the Kindle Unlimited fund. One login, one dashboard, one algorithm, one company to deal with. But that same company won't let you talk to a human with authority when something goes wrong, and it runs an algorithm that can end your career without telling you why. So which is it? More money, or more freedom? In this week's episode...

Authors have historically lamented all the administrative, technological, and marketing tasks that go along with being a writer. How many times have you sighed and said, “But I just want to write!”  We have just gone through a massive transition in how authors use AI. You can now have AI agents do tasks for you, which means you can delegate all your non-writing tasks to a bot. You tell the bot wha...

It's 1:30 in the morning, and a woman in Cleveland has just finished your book. She meant to go to bed hours ago, but she just couldn't put it down, and now she's at the end, feeling that particular ache that comes from finishing a book you loved. She turns the page to see what you have for her next. What does she find? Your book’s last pages might be quietly costing you thousands i...

If a reader Googled your name right now, what would come up? An abandoned LinkedIn profile from a career you left behind? A neglected Goodreads page? An insurance agent in Albuquerque who happens to share your name? There's only one number-one spot on Google,  and if you don't claim it for your name, someone else will. The good news is that your most powerful tool for winning that spot i...

You know you need an email list. You've heard about reader magnets and maybe you even have one, but you're stuck at a handful of subscribers, wondering how other authors build lists of tens of thousands of engaged readers who actually buy their books. Damon J. Courtney knows how. He's an author and the creator of BookFunnel , a service that helps authors grow their email lists and d...

Every month, traditional publishers lose more ground to indie authors. One reason it’s happening is that in trad publishing, a committee or the highest-paid person in the room makes the call on book covers, marketing copy, and even what they suppose readers might like. Both get it wrong far more often than they want to admit. Most indie authors aren't much better off. They just swap the highe...

For most of publishing history, creating an audiobook meant writing a check for thousands of dollars and hoping you'd earn it back in sales. Because of the expense, many authors decided it wasn't worth the risk. So, they skipped audio entirely. Here's the problem. That decision now backfires in a way nobody saw coming. The number one sign that a book was written by AI isn't bad...

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...