Note: I’m not at $10K a month in passive income yet, but I think I will be by the end of this year… this post is about my plans to improve my sales funnels. I don’t like talking about how much my business earns, because it doesn’t give the full picture. With all the services
Years ago I started working on a book called “The Creative Brain on Drugs.” It’s a book not just about the various mind-stimulating or sensation-altering substances that the majority of writers and artists have depended on for creative insight, but also their political views on the inherent right to self-modify, without...
For the past year I’ve been using giveaways to build my platform – resulting in my shares, more engagement, more traffic, a huge email list and more book sales. It works great. Here’s the problem: Most authors don’t know how to use book giveaways well. Most software is expensive. I now use KingSumo, which is
Recently I realized my whole process for publishing bestselling books is completely backwards. At a party in Medellin recently, a guy said “wow, you’ve hacked publishing!” I don’t like being called a hack because there’s an assumption that it means I’m putting out poor quality books to trick or fool...
I’m doing a lot of things right with my book marketing, but it’s hard to do everything perfectly. Plus, I know that sales are limited by demand – so the fact that one of my books sells 10x better than another one hasn’t bothered me too much. I figured mermaids (Shearwater) just weren’t as popular
I’ve been invited to speak on some podcasts and channels recently – I usually say yes because I love talking about publishing and book marketing. I’m not ashamed to say I get really excited and geek out about these things. So here are three recent interviews I think worth listening to. The first is with
When I started Creativindie, I mapped out a 6-step process to Creative Independence. The ultimate goal of that process was Luminosity – becoming a generous beacon, a shining light, helping others achieve their own meteoric rise. I’ve said that this can only be achieved if you’re a successful artist, but this...
The title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, but it highlights an important issue. A lot of authors have been burned by predatory publishing companies, marketing firms or services promising the world and delivering little. Usually, authors spend way too much on their first book and see no results, then spend two years figuring out what
Being an author can be a thankless job. Not everyone appreciates how hard you work. So I made some “merit badge” style awards you can use as a visual reminder of your successes. I added in some common milestones, but you can white them out and replace them with your own goals. Remember that even
I’ve talked before about how doing boxsets and anthologies can be great for building your author platform – not only to reach more readers, but also to build long term relationships with other authors in your genre. And I’ve talked a lot about doing book giveaways to encourage shares and promotion; and also about doing
I’m writing this post in response to a new infographic dividing up the Myers-Briggs personality types into Harry Potter characters. First of all, I don’t think Malfoy actually fits the INTJ personality type, actually. But I do think “strategists” are usually misunderstood and often villainized. Recently I’ve...
I had good intentions. I meant to boil down my most recent book launch into a simple, one page roadmap. Instead, like usual, I have a sprawling document worth of notes – I’m going to share it here so it can start being useful. Make sure you scroll down to the end and read “my
