Creativindie Experiments in self-publishing, productivity and building a creative empire

I’m working through the material for my next course, Guerrilla Publishing, but this part is too important not to share for everyone. I keep saying, if you’re not selling books, it’s almost always because of your cover, blurbs or # of reviews. I’ve made tons of videos (and a free course) on cover design, and I recently posted a video on …

    Want to make a living with your writing?  Download my FREE book launch checklist and discover the step-by-step publishing roadmap I use to launch bestsellers.   Update – I’m back in! I raised enough of a fuss that they changed their ruling – read to the bottom to find out what happened. For the last year, I’ve been telling everyone …

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 and tools I pay for, …

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 government oversight. But after years of trying to write …

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 best for viral sharing and …

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 readers.  (Steven Pressfield calls anyone who writes for an audience the …

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 as dark fantasy (Scarlet Thread …

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 Tom Corson Knowles. I met …

  I just spoke to Kevin T Johns about writing fiction that sells and asked him for some tips on actually finishing a book – plenty of authors never finish and need more help – he delivered with this epic post! Writing a novel, especially a first novel, is a massive and complex project. The sheer amount of work involved can …

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 isn’t exactly true. I haven’t focused on philanthropy yet because in …