What's actually working for indie authors right now? What are they actually trying? And what is producing results?
In this episode of Write, Wrong, Repeat, JP Rindfleisch IX, Tom Holbrook, Crys Cain, Jeff Elkins, and Holly Lyne get together for another brutally practical check-in on their writing careers and author businesses.
Everybody brings something different to the table.
Crys is continuing to push into translated editions, experimenting with different distribution options after changes at KDP, and using regular free promotions to support sales across a growing catalog.
Tom has a BookBub Featured Deal sending tens of thousands of readers into his cozy mystery series and gets into what happens after the free downloads start rolling in: sell-through, Kindle Unlimited reads, reviews, reader magnets, and whether a huge promotion actually translates into long-term readers.
Holly reports back from her first in-person event under her pen name, where she sold out of books and saw an incredible conversion rate among readers who stopped at her table. She also talks about special editions, reader magnets, BookFunnel promotions, Publisher Rocket, and the constant challenge of deciding which marketing tools are actually worth paying for.
Jeff talks about launching NRDS Season 2, the strange emotional crash that can follow publishing a book, balancing fiction with developmental editing and the Dialogue Doctor, and experimenting with TikTok as both an author and an editor.
And JP has been testing just about everything.
He talks about selling nearly ninety books at a live event, using extremely clear signage to attract exactly the right readers, planning a special-edition Kickstarter, changing his TikTok Live schedule, growing his newsletter through BookFunnel, selling damaged special editions, simplifying his website setup, experimenting with dictation, and discovering that turning off Amazon ads did not necessarily hurt his sales.
The conversation gets into:
- BookBub Featured Deals and what happens after thousands of free downloads,
- Sell-through from one book to the next,
- Amazon and Kindle Unlimited,
- Free-book strategies,
- Book translations and international publishing,
- TikTok and BookTok experiments,
- Building social media around individual series,
- In-person author events,
- Reader magnets and newsletter growth,
- Special editions,
- Kickstarter campaigns,
- BookFunnel promotions,
- Amazon and Facebook ads,
- Direct sales,
- Publisher Rocket and AI-assisted category research,
- Author websites and storefronts,
- Dictation and productivity,
And the eternal indie-author question: Do I really need to be doing all of this?
As always, nobody on Write, Wrong, Repeat has the one perfect answer. Instead, five working authors compare notes on what they tried, what surprised them, what seems to be working, what they're abandoning, and what they plan to test next.
If you're trying to build an indie author career, market your books without losing your mind, or figure out which of the endless author-business strategies deserves your time and money, this episode gives you a look at what those experiments actually look like in practice.
Because sometimes the best author-business advice isn't "this always works."
It's, "I tried this. Here's what happened."
