The Pulp Writer Show

Jonathan Moeller
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Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel. Sometimes there are jokes.

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 327: Libraries & Indie Authors

    In this week's episode, I discuss whether or not it is worthwhile for indie authors to pursue selling their books to libraries. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Mask, Book #8 in The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: CAINAMASK The coupon code is valid through November 16, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! Links mentioned in the show. Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Libraries/comments/1vaexhe/librarian_need_what_from_authors_wanting_to_speak/ Ingram Spark: https://www.ingramspark.com/hubfs/Print%20Book%20Setup%20Guide.pdf TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 327 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 29th, 2026 and today I'm discussing whether or not indie authors should try to get their books in libraries. Before we start with that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Mask, Book #8 in The Ghosts series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CAINAMASK. That coupon code will be valid through November the 16th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered. I also have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. My main project right now is Blade of Rifts, and I am 58,000 words into it as of this recording, hoping to get to 60,000 tomorrow. I think that puts me roughly halfway through. I think the rough draft will end up being around 110-115,000 words, but we will see when we get there. I'm hoping to have that out before American Thanksgiving at the end of November, if all goes well. My secondary project is Cloak of Silver, which will be the 16th book in the Cloak Mage series. I believe I am 5,000 words into that at the moment. Once Blade of Rifts is finished, Cloak of Silver will take over as my main project. That's probably going to end up being my first book of 2027, though if it's possible to get it out in December, I will do so, but we'll just see when we get there. In audiobook news, Leanne Woodward will soon be narrating Elven-Warlock. Hollis McCarthy has started work on Cloak of Frost, and Brad Wills is working on Blade of Visions, so we should have some new audiobooks before too much longer. The way these things tend to go is I'll go a long period without any new audiobooks and then they suddenly all arrive at once, but that is part of the fun of the experience. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:09 Main Topic of the Week: Libraries and Indie Authors Now let's move on to our main topic, libraries and indie authors. Writers love to talk about one of their big goals being able to get their books on a shelf in the library. Many writers feel like libraries are crucial to their success and spend a lot of time courting the attention of librarians. As it happens, the transcriptionist for the podcast was a librarian for quite a long span of time, so she offered to share her opinion on working with libraries as an indie writer. First, we're going to talk about interacting with libraries as an indie author and what makes sense and what's not worth your time. Then we're going to talk about the logistics of making your audiobooks available to library services like Hoopla and Libby. What are the pros and cons of making your ebooks available to the library? So let's start off with a [former] librarian's opinion on working with libraries. [Her opinion will be marked in italics in the transcript.] This section is wholly the opinion of our transcriptionist who offers her thoughts as a former librarian, but is not speaking on behalf of any of the libraries where she has previously worked. Her thoughts can be divided into three categories. #1: You're welcome to ask, but we can say no. One thing to understand immediately is that even librarians at smaller libraries are contacted multiple times a day by authors or publishers. We may not have the time to respond to every single request individually because we are busy. It's becoming less common that a library will buy a book for the sole reason that was written by someone in the community. Even a small town can have many local authors and with library budgets ranging from stretched to non-existent, it's probably not possible to buy all of the books written by local authors. Emailing every single person on staff at one library is a waste of time and is considered a bit rude. If you feel compelled to cold email libraries, you should just contact the acquisitions librarian or the librarian who specializes in your area (for example, the children's librarian for picture books) and you should not contact the library director with purchase requests unless it's a small enough library where they're the only librarian on staff. Keep your message to a paragraph or two at most, include relevant information like ISBNs, and try to make it sound like a human wrote it and not ChatGPT. You should also check the website for a document called a collection development policy before contacting the library or librarian. This type of document clearly states if that there are certain things library will not buy such as picture books created with AI or anything at all in the erotica category. Some will even have policies that specifically outline the cases when they will or won't buy or accept self-published books or books from local authors, so it's worth the time to look for that policy because even if you donate the books yourself, there may be a specific reason why they won't be added to the library's collection that has nothing to do with the quality of your book. [Also, a "free" donated book isn't free to a library when you consider staff time and resources/supplies spent on processing, cataloging, and providing shelf space for a book.] So that was her first thought. #2: What's in it for them? There was a really great post on the r/Libraries subreddit when an author bemoaned that librarians from dozens of libraries weren't responding to his request to host an author event for him. The link to the post will be included in the show notes of this episode because the response from librarians to that author was comprehensive. Essentially, the librarians responding to that author encouraged the author to draft event proposals through the lens of what the community realistically wants. Since author events and book signings at libraries struggle to get attendance unless there is a compelling topic or an already very, very famous author, you need to make a strong case that the topic is of local interest or in general a hot topic to the general public. There is a local historian who does a fall presentation of ghost stories specific to my city. Because he is such an engaging speaker, a surprising amount of people buy his local history books after the presentation, even if the books are not limited to ghost stories. His speaking offer is perfectly timed to the season and is an interesting enough topic to draw in even people who don't like to read or don't care about local history. That is a more compelling event to the average person than an unknown author talking about a book they haven't read and most likely have not heard of before. #3: Is pursuing library sales the best use of your time? Speaking as a former librarian and someone who currently works in indie publishing, I can say without hesitation that spending hours emailing libraries, asking them to buy your book or host an event for you is not a great return on your time. Libraries can be great partners to an author, but remember that in the eyes of librarian, you're just another patron. We don't have any special obligation to you just because you're a writer, especially if you don't live in the library's community. Librarians use professional judgment to guide purchases and both can't and won't buy every single thing that's requested. That's not a reflection on the quality of your work; it's just a difficult reality of the profession. I can say with all confidence that your time is generally better spent improving both your cover and your blurb, creating ads, and most importantly of all, working on your next book than is spent cold emailing libraries, especially using AI generated emails to ask them to buy your books or host your events. So that was our transcriptionist's (who is a former librarian) thought on the matter. So now we're going back to my thoughts. All that said, the best way to be in a library's collection is to make sure that it's even possible for libraries to order your print books and ebooks. In this section, I'll briefly talk about the practical ways to do that. I'm going to start with print books and then talk about ebooks. Print Books In short, the easiest way to do this is through Ingram Spark. There are other options out there beyond Ingram, but Ingram is a massive distributor that works with bookstores and libraries both, so I'll focus on this one just for clarity. Libraries are more likely to order from a large distributor than from your website or a local shop because creating new purchase orders is not fun (which is if you work in the government or any sort of government organization, you know that the rules around purchasing things are arcane, dense, and often very difficult to navigate). This is especially true with tax exempt forms also slowing down the process. Many libraries also have Ingram well integrated into their workflows, so it makes the idea of buying your book at least slightly more likely if they can buy it from Ingram instead of from you personally at your web store or some other business. Ingram provides a very detailed set of instructions for making your b

  2. Oct 26

    Episode 326: 6 Lessons For Indie Authors From STAR TREK

    In this week's episode, we examine six business lessons indie writers can learn from the long-running STAR TREK science fiction franchise. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Exile series at my Payhip store: FALLEXILE The coupon code is valid through November 16, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 326 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 22nd, 2026 and today I'm discussing six things that indie writers can learn from the long-running Star Trek science fiction franchise. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, it is time for Coupon of the Week, and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Exile series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLEXILE. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through November 16th, 2026, so if you need a new ebook to read as we exit fall and head into winter, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am very pleased to report that Elven-Warlock, the seventh book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series, is now available and you can get it at Amazon. It's also available for Kindle Unlimited, (excuse me, Kindle Plus subscribers because one of the indie publishing news items this week is that Kindle Unlimited has been renamed to Kindle Plus and contains some audiobooks. So you can read more about that in the news.). But for me, Elven-Warlock is now out in Amazon and Kindle Plus and it is doing well. So thank you all for that and thank you all for enjoying the Rivah series. Now that Elven-Warlock is out, my next main project will be Blade of Rifts. I'm pleased to report I reached the 30,000 word mark just before I started recording this episode. I think the book will be about 100,000 words long, so I am about 30% through the rough draft. If all goes well, I'm very much hoping to have it out before American Thanksgiving at the end of November, if all goes well. We'll see if I can pull that off or not. My secondary project is now Cloak of Silver, which will be the 16th book in the Cloak Mage series. I am 1,000 words into it as I record this. It will be my new main project once Blade of Rifts is done and it will probably end up being the first book I publish in 2027, but we'll see how the next two and a half months go. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is still working on Blade of Visions and we should have some more updates on that before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:32 Main Topic: Lessons From Star Trek Now let's move on to our main topic, which has been part of a series, which has been six things indie writers can learn from large media companies. We did Disney two weeks ago. Last week we did Nintendo. This week we're doing something slightly different, a long running science fiction franchise, specifically the Star Trek franchise. I'm not going to talk about specific plot points for the most part or the creative highs and lows of the franchise. I think everyone can agree that the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Inner Light was among the best of the series along with Deep Space Nine's In The Pale Moonlight and the episode in Voyager where Janeway and Tom Paris turned into giant lizards may have been among the low points. However, once you have 60 years of Star Trek movies and TV shows, some of them are going to be really good and some of them will be less good, but we're not going to focus on that. We're going to instead focus more on the overall business decisions that Star Trek as an intellectual property has made in its 60 years, which are applicable to indie authors in many ways. #1: Continuity Lockout One of the most common criticisms of modern Star Trek is that it's too difficult for new fans to find a good entry point and that even new series rely heavily on references to older ones in a way that make new viewers feel confused or left out. A good example of this would be how The Doctor from Voyager returned in Starfleet Academy on Netflix. While The Doctor is a great character, to fully understand his character in Starfleet Academy, you need to remember him from Voyager in the '90s, which was a long time ago. Another example would be Strange New Worlds, which is considered to be among the best of modern Star Trek, but it calls back to Kirk and Spock and Captain Pike and a lot of other characters from the original series. This can make new viewers feel confused or left out. I talk about the idea of continuity lockout more in Episode 274 of this podcast, which is entitled Avoiding Marvel Continuity Lockout Syndrome since that's a common weakness of Marvel media properties where that they reference a lot of characters in movies and TV shows that the new viewers may or may not have seen. As writers, it can be difficult to find a balance between including references to other characters and works without confusing or alienating new readers. It's important to keep those references in the background and focus on the most important thing, which is creating a solid plot with compelling characters. Many romance writers excel at having main characters return as secondary ones later in a series without making readers need to read the earlier books in the series to feel invested in the story. For example, in the first book, the main character and her love interest live happily ever after. Then in the second book, they are background characters as the new main character and her love interest try to find a way to overcome their obstacles so they can live happily ever after. It's especially relevant to talk about this now because one of the reasons I started on Half-Elven Thief was because I was worried my longer series like the Andomhaim books and Caina were starting to have Continuity Lockout Syndrome, so I thought that would be a good way to introduce new readers to my work and it seems to have worked out well so far. #2: Forcing Star Trek To Be Big Another mistake has been to market and consider Star Trek in the same way as bigger franchises such as Marvel, Star Wars, or Disney. In trying to make Star Trek a billion dollar IP, a lot of decisions were made that left the core group of fans disappointed and didn't bring in enough new fans to justify the massive cost of blockbuster films or expensive streaming series. The current Star Trek fandom frankly isn't big enough to prop up an entire streaming service or a new film that would cost hundreds of million dollars to create and market, especially when the new series that have been already on the Paramount Plus platform haven't necessarily appealed to that core group of fans or brought in a significant amount of new ones. As writers, it can be tempting to try and write towards publishing trends or try to change your series to make it appeal to as broad a group as possible. Chasing some idea of bigger success or responding to what feels like fan consensus online (but it may just be the consensus of random bots running off a server farm somewhere) can mean that you're frustrating or neglecting your current fans. It's not bad to try new things (as we mentioned above with continuity lockout), but it's important not to lose sight of what makes your work unique. This is a tricky thing to do, and I do think I threaded that needle a little bit with Half-Elven Thief because while it was a new series with new characters and a new setting and new locations and so forth, it was still epic fantasy, which is what I mostly write so I was able to use a lot of epic fantasy tropes I've used in other books and combine them to new effect that people seem to enjoy. #3: Don't lose sight of a series' main focus and appeal. It's interesting to note that two recent series that have been more successful with Star Trek fans have been comedies and one wasn't even Star Trek. Seth McFarlane's The Orville captured a strong group dynamic and the optimism of classic Star Trek. The animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks managed to do the same thing even though it did have a lot of references to other Star Trek shows. Although a vocal group of fans want grim and dark approaches to the IP, an even larger group wants the optimism and campy fun of older Star Trek series. Of those two series, I like Star Trek: Lower Decks quite a bit and I've seen the entire thing. I think it's one of those rare parodies that's such a good parody of the thing it's parodying that kind of warps around to become a good example of the thing it is parodying. Another good example of this is the comedy film Hot Fuzz about police that starts out as being a parody of sort of over the top police action thriller films, but then kind of warps around to become an actually good example of over the top police action thriller films. Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite movies for that reason. I think Star Trek: Lower Decks managed to pull that off as well, where it starts off as being a comedy about one of the lesser ships in Starfleet and the collection of misfits who work on it, but it warps around and becomes a very good example of Star Trek as the crew learns to work together and solve their interpersonal problems and fight whatever the big monster of the season is. Of course, since I am not a fan of modern AI, my favorite season is Season 3 when the big bad of the season turns out to be a malevolent AI in grand Star Trek fashion. Recent Star Trek series have been criticized for being heavy on interpersonal drama and accusations of being too focused on political messaging. Whether that is accurate or not is of course up to the

  3. Oct 19

    Episode 325: Six Lessons For Indie Authors From Nintendo

    In this week's episode, we take a look at six lessons indie authors can learn from the successes and failures of Nintendo. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: ELVENFALL  The coupon code is valid through November 9, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 325 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 16th, 2026 and today I'm discussing six things that indie writers can learn from Nintendo, both good and bad, which is kind of a follow-up to last week's episode, which was six things indie writers can learn from the Disney Corporation, both good and bad. Before we get into that, we will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So first up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code (in anticipation of the upcoming release of Elven-Warlock) will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That code is ELVENFALL. This coupon code will be valid through November the 9th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered with the Half-Elven Thief series. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. I am very nearly done with the first round of editing on Elven-Warlock. The cover is ready as well. If you're on my website or my social media, you should be able to see it. As soon as I finish recording this podcast, I'm hopefully going to be able to finish up the first round of editing and then start on the second. I believe this episode is going live on the 19th of October and hopefully Elven-Warlock should be out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited a day or two after that, if all goes well. In any event, I definitely want to have it out the week of the 19th of October. Once Elven-Warlock is out, my secondary project right now is Blade of Rifts, which will get promoted to my main project and I'm currently 13,000 words into that. In audiobook news, as we mentioned last week, Cloak of Summoning and Ghost Armor Omnibus Two (both of which are narrated by Hollis McCarthy), are now available at their respective audiobook stores. For new projects, Brad Wills is now recording Blade of Visions and if all goes well, that should be out sometime next month. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:12 Main Topic: 6 Lessons Indie Writers Can Learn From Nintendo Now let's move on to our main topic this week, six lessons indie writers can learn from Nintendo. Last week, you might recall, we did the same thing with Disney Corporation looking at lessons indie authors can learn from Disney Corporation, both good and bad. We're going to do the same thing with Nintendo, which is one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world. I thought today about six ways writers can learn from Nintendo's best and worst corporate decisions. Admittedly, while there are things to criticize about Nintendo the way there are about Disney, I do on a personal level like Nintendo more than Disney, and I do have a fairly long history with Nintendo stuff. In the '80s and the '90s, I had an NES and a Super Nintendo, and so played quite a few Super Nintendo games. I actually beat Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past back in the day. I'm not entirely sure what happened to that Super Nintendo console. My brother told me a while back that he sold it, but I don't think that's what actually happened, but it was 30 years ago and I don't remember what happened, so it really doesn't matter. So from about 1998 to 2019, I did not play a console game at all. Whenever I played games, it was PC games or nothing. However, in 2019, to reward myself for publishing my 100th book, which was Dragontiarna: Knights, I got a first generation Nintendo Switch and really enjoyed it. As you know, buying a Nintendo Switch in 2019 was probably a good idea because next year was COVID. So I finally beat a bunch of games on the Switch that I never had the chance to beat the first time around. I finished Skyrim. I beat Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which was a pretty good Metroidvania. I beat Metroid Dread. Then with the Nintendo Online stuff, I went back and played a lot of the old NES games and Super Nintendo games I never had the chance to beat back in the '80s and '90s. I beat the original Marios. I beat Super Mario World, all four of the original Castlevanias from Nintendo and Super Nintendo. I thoroughly enjoyed the Switch. In 2025 when the Switch 2 came along, I got one when the opportunity presented itself and have been playing it pretty regularly when I have time (which is less and less these days) ever since. So while I didn't play any console games of any kind between 1998 and 2019, I have used a fair bit of Nintendo devices over the years. So that is my background as I talk about this. If you look at the history of Nintendo, it's been around for a really long time. I think Nintendo was originally founded in 1889 as a producer of Japanese playing cards. The company's had quite a few different business ventures, of which the most successful and most famous, of course, is video games. So with that in mind, let's look at six lessons indie authors can learn from Nintendo, both good and bad. #1: A Tale of Two Mario Movies You might have seen the recent Super Mario Brothers movies in 2023 and 2026. You probably heard of them since they both made over a billion dollars. However, the Mario movies were not always as successful as you go back to 1993 to look at the original Super Mario Brothers movie. Back then, Nintendo gave the movie's team complete freedom and did not worry about how the movie could impact the brand. It was something of a troubled production as they tried to figure out the tone, and based on the reviews, the movie didn't quite get there. There is a small number of people for whom this is one of their favorite video game movies, and it's sort of a cult classic in that way, but [it] definitely didn't have broad mainstream appeal the way the 2023 movie did. I think it's also fair to say in 1993 movie video games didn't have quite the heft that they do now, that movies were so far more culturally dominant in 1993 than video games were at the time. The idea of a video game company dictating terms to a Hollywood studio the way they can now would have seemed ludicrous at the time. So Nintendo wisely waited until 2023 to release another Super Mario Brothers movie until they found a partner that matched their creative vision and wanted to create a faithful adaptation. Although it's fair to say that both movies, both Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers Galaxy, played it a bit safe creatively, it was able to capture what makes the Mario series so much fun and was far more successful and well received than the live action movie from 1993. I think these movies also both performed an important social function in that it was a movie you could bring the kids to and the kids would enjoy it. If you have kids or if you are responsible for watching kids for any length of time, you recognize how valuable this can be. Now, what can we learn from this as writers, even writers who only dream of having their work adapted into a billion dollar movie? It's also important not to lose sight of what people like in your work, what make your work successful. For example, a long running series, there's sometimes a tendency to have the heroes suddenly make wildly out of character decisions or introduce a slew of new characters. I don't want to name any names because I don't want to start any feuds on the Internet, but I was reading a long running series about a very popular character whose author suddenly became sort of militantly agnostic halfway through the series. Suddenly all his protagonists were militant agnostics and spent all their time talking about agnostics and so forth. You can see this sometimes in other series where the writer undergoes some sort of personal experience like a religious conversion or gets divorced or has some sort of equally significant and/or traumatic life event and suddenly that's all they can talk about or that's all they can preach about, especially if it's a religious or political conversion experience. I think if that happens, people should keep in mind the Christopher Nolan quote I mentioned last week that came from Tom Schone's book, The Nolan Variations, where Nolan said, "I've had conversations with friends of mine and they all ask about why I don't make a film about the things I care about politically and I always say, well, because it doesn't work. You can't use narrative to tell people what to think. It never works." I think that's a corollary to that lesson about Nintendo where you don't want to stray too far from what makes your books work and above all, you don't want to use your books as a soapbox. There are other places you can use it as a soapbox, but your books probably shouldn't be it. #2: Take responsibility for your actions. When the Wii U flopped commercially in 2013, the CEO of Nintendo at the time, Satoru Iwata, took a 50% salary cut for five months. Other board members also chose to take pay cuts. Now, obviously this would not have that huge of an effect on the finances of a company the size of Nintendo, but this gesture was seen as a symbol of taking responsibility for their actions rather than an act that would generate enough money to actually avoid mass layoffs. I think this was a good thing they did. In the modern age, the age of the Internet where the Internet has made public affairs and business and leadership more transparent than ever before, the only way to maintain the authority to e

  4. Oct 12

    Episode 324: 6 Lessons For Indie Writers From the Successes & Failures Of The Disney Corporation

    In this week's episode, we take a look at lessons indie authors can learn from the successes and failures of the Disney Corporation. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Ashes, Book #7 in The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: FALLASHES The coupon code is valid through October 26, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 324 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 9th, 2026 and today I am discussing six things that indie writers can learn from the Disney Corporation, both good and bad. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Ashes, Book #7 in The Ghosts series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLASHES. As always, you can get the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store in the show notes for this episode. That coupon code will be valid through October 26th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook as we head into fall, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report the rough draft of Elven-Warlock is finished. That will be the seventh book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I've also finished the bonus story that I will release with it called Paladin and Commander. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Paladin and Commander when Elven-Warlock comes out. So I should mention this is an excellent time to subscribe to my new release newsletter since I give away free short stories quite a bit. If all goes well, I am hoping to have the book out before the end of the month. I am going to start editing immediately after I finish recording this episode, so hopefully that won't take too long. My next project once Elven-Warlock is finished will be Blade of Rifts, the seventh book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I'm currently 10,000 words into that and I'm very much hoping to have that out before American Thanksgiving, which is at the end of November, but we will see how the rest of October and November go. Quite a bit of audiobook news this week because it seems that ACX has sped up their quality assurance process. So Cloak of Summoning (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is out and you can now get it at all the audiobook stores, I believe- Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Chirp, Storytel, Spotify, the works. It's 13 hours long, so it should be a good nice listen if you wanted to listen to it. Also Ghost Armor Omnibus Two is now in audiobook as well. That is again narrated by Hollis McCarthy and that combines Ghost in the Assembly, Ghost in the Corruption, and Ghost in the Siege into one 37-hour audiobook bundle. So if you get it today, it should be able to tide you over for the week and you get that at Audible, Amazon, and Apple. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:42 Main Topic: 6 Things Writers Can Learn From The Disney Corporation So now let's smoothly segue over to our main topic. Our main topic this week is six things writers can learn from the Disney Corporation. I have to admit, whenever someone mentions Disney to me, the first thing that pops into my mind is not Mickey Mouse, it's not Disneyland, it's not Marvel, it's not cartoons. It's a warning against the dangers of corporate consolidation. However, all that corporate consolidation means that Disney is the largest company in the theme park industry and one of the largest in the entertainment industry, which means there's a lot to learn about the actions of the Disney Corporation, both good and bad, especially since they have gone through some public controversies in the 2020s. Since writing is part of the entertainment industry, it's wise to learn from the successes, struggles, and outright failures of a large organization like the Disney company and apply it to our own writing careers. So today I think we will talk about six specific things that writers can learn from the successes and the failures of the Disney Corporation. #1: Be fair to the customer (or to put it more cynically, don't nickel and dime the customer). One of the things that Disney has gotten a lot of criticism for and negative publicity in the past few years for is the massive price increases to its theme parks and the Disney+ streaming service, which is at a time of, as we all know, economic turmoil when many people can't afford extras like entertainment or travel. Doing it now is especially tone deaf. Many people feel like a Disney vacation is no longer attainable or they take on a frightening amount of debt to go to Disneyland. There is a recent online phenomenon of people going to thrift stores to stock up on physical copies of their favorite Disney movies and shows to avoid the cost of paying for streaming with recent Disney+ hikes/increases. What can the indie author learn from this? Raising prices too quickly or citing prices beyond the industry standard will leave people to feel cheated. As a writer, you can make sure that your pricing is appropriate for your categories. You can also put your books into Kobo Plus or Kindle Unlimited to reach people who have a book subscription service, but don't feel like they have extra money to buy books individually. You can also make it easier for people to sample your work by saying the first book in a series is permafree or at a discounted price. For myself, for the last five years or so, the default price for my new ebook novels (so long as it's novel length) has been $4.99. I started that with Dragonskull in 2021 and I've carried that on ever since and it's worked out pretty well. I have at times contemplated raising the price of backlist stuff to $5.99. I noticed that if you publish on Kobo now, that's their default suggested price for a novel is $5.99 USD. I want to resist doing that for as long as possible. I do have quite a few free or low cost entertainment options. Quite a few of my first books in the series are free. The second book is usually $0.99. So that's like two entire novels you can get for $0.99 to decide if you want to read the rest of the series. Half-Elven Thief is in Kindle Unlimited, so if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you can read that for the cost of your subscription. All my books on Kobo are in Kobo Plus as well, so if you have a Kobo Plus subscription, you can make use of that. I know a lot of people do because something like three quarters of my Kobo revenue for the year comes from Kobo Plus and not direct book sales on the platform. I do regularly run sales to things such as Coupon of the Week (or BookBub when I can get it). It's a good idea to try and make things as affordable for possible as for many people as possible, especially in this economic climate. #2: Story over message (or if you want to send a message, use Western Union) That quote is famously attributed to media executive Samuel Goldwyn, though it seems to have been misattributed to him and many other people have been quoted as saying it. Disney and Pixar have been criticized in the past few years (especially in the 2020s) for movies that have often been called overly preachy or movies that come across as having a political agenda. Instead of adding to the endless Internet discourse on that topic, I want to share an excerpt from an interview with Christopher Nolan that might speak to the problem Disney is facing in some of their storytelling. The following quote has been attributed to Tom Schone's book, The Nolan Variations. The quote is: "I've had conversations with friends of mine and they all ask about why I don't make a film about the things I care about politically, and I always say, 'Well, because it doesn't work.' You can't use narrative to tell people what to think. It never works. People just react against it. You have to be purer about it. You have to be truer to the principles of narrative and telling a story, and that means risking misinterpretation. It doesn't mean you don't care about something, or that it doesn't mean anything to you, but you have to be neutral or objective in your approach. You can't tell people what to think, you can only invite them to feel something. I always think of the great moment in Gladiator, where he chops off his head and then turns to the audience and asks them, 'Are you not entertained?' Whatever it is, you've got to entertain." If you saw some of the discussion around The Odyssey this summer where people were endlessly arguing about what this moment or that moment in the movie actually means, you can see that he followed that principle pretty well. Given that The Odyssey made $1.7 billion dollars, there might be something to that. I think that's a very good idea, especially in frankly, contentious political times where we live in like right now where if you make a political statement, it's so easily misinterpreted. If you look back through the past several decades and even less contentious times, the most successful entertainers generally kept their political opinions to themselves and then tried to create art that was open to listeners' or the viewers' or the readers' interpretations. One thing I have noticed among writers who tend to get very political on their social media and very political in their books is that they're always shocked when they start getting attacked for it. Say if they come out in favor of a certain position or a certain politician or whatever, at first they'll get a lot of claps from people who approve of that, but then they will get a lot of attacks from people who don't approve of that. The thing to understand ab

  5. Oct 5

    Episode 323: Five Things To Consider Before Writing Full-Time

    In this week's episode, I take a look at five potential problems to consider before becoming a full-time writer. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in The Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: FALLSHIELD The coupon code is valid through October 19, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 323 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 2nd, 2026, and today I am discussing five things to consider before becoming a full-time writer. We will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off all the audiobooks in The Shield War series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLSHIELD. As always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be included in the show notes for this episode. The coupon code is valid through October the 19th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook this fall, we have got you covered. Now let's move on to an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. It was not as productive a week as I hoped. There's a lot going on and I went onto my porch and my foot went through a deck board, so I will be buying lumber later today. Despite that, I am up to 59,000 words of Elven-Warlock, which I think puts me about three quarters, maybe 70% of the way through. I'm very much hoping I can finish it this coming week, if all goes well. My secondary project right now is Blade of Rifts, which will be the seventh book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I am currently 6,500 words in it, so that'll take over as my main project once Elven-Warlock is complete. In audiobook news, some exciting news: Cloak of Summoning is out. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and as of right now, Google Play, Kobo, and my own Payhip store. It went live a lot faster than I anticipated, which is a good thing, so the links to the various stores are still going live, but you should be able to get it at all your favorite audiobook stores before too much longer. So that is where I'm at on my current audiobook, publishing, writing, and ebook projects. 00:02:02 Main Topic: Things to Consider Before Becoming a Full-Time Writer So with all that in mind, let's now proceed to our main topic. So as of September 2026, I have now been a full-time writer for 10 years. And in honor of that, I thought I would do an episode today on five things you should consider before becoming a full-time writer. First of all, I am so thankful for all of my readers and all my listeners who make it possible for me to write full-time and even hire on other people as needed, like my transcriptionist, my narrators, and my accountant who all do things that I would not be able to do by myself. I'm very grateful to them and more importantly, I am very grateful to all of you who have read the ebooks and listened to the audiobooks because you make all of this possible. So with that in mind, here are five things you should consider before going full-time as a writer. #1: Your larger financial picture In his memoir Sometimes the Magic Works, epic fantasy author Terry Brooks recounted a conversation he had with his editor, the legendary Lester Del Rey, told him that before he would even consider going full-time, he needed to make sure he had a year's worth of salary in the bank and since Terry Brooks (before he became a full-time writer) was a lawyer, that was a significant amount. So he did that and he decided it was time to start thinking about writing full-time. This is something that's going to be unique for everyone and everyone's situation is different. Before you consider writing full-time, you need to think about your larger financial picture. This is a decision that shouldn't be made from the heart, but from the brain and specifically with a spreadsheet in mind. Since changing jobs is a very heavily financial decision, you need to take a hard look at your finances. Are you carrying a significant amount of debt such as student loan debt, housing debt, medical debt? Do you owe a lot of money on your car or cars? Things of that nature. Do you have large fixed expenses every single month that you have to meet such as rent, car payments, student loan payments, insurance payments, and so forth? Do you live in a high cost of living area? Are you financially responsible for children or other relatives? Do these children have medical conditions that require a lot of care and therefore are expensive? As I always mention when I talk about financial and legal stuff, I am not a lawyer and I am not a financial planner. You obtain legal advice by hiring a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction and you obtain financial advice by hiring a licensed financial planner. That said, it might be wise to visit a fee-based financial planner to review your financial health in detail before making the decision to become a full-time writer. #2: Income Over Time On a related note, you need to have a pretty established track record as a writer to be able to make the jump to full-time. One good month or even a good year is not generally a sign that it's time. You need to see how things do in the aggregate across time. I've mentioned before that I only became a full-time writer in 2016 and I'd been publishing since 2011 at that point, and I had been making a pretty consistent income for some time, but I never wanted to quit my full-time job until I needed to do so for family reasons (when I moved to another state in 2016) and decided to try making a go at being a full-time writer since I thought I could pull it off. In that case, the decision was kind of made for me, but at that point I had been making enough income that I was confident I would be able to cover my expenses with full-time writing. Most writers experience a period of peak earnings and things level out. For example, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King aren't selling as much as they were at their peak decades ago. Granted, I think most writers would be very, very, very happy to have J.K. Rowling and Stephen King's current level of earnings, but I think it's fair to say Harry Potter is not selling as well as it was during the peak of Harry Potter's popularity and Stephen King's books aren't selling as much as they did during his peak when he was writing big books like It and Salem's Lot and so forth. That is even true for myself. My best year of writing ever in terms of finances was 2017 when I finished the Frostborn series and started the Sevenfold Sword series, and I've never had a year quite as good as that one. It's been up and down since then. I've never had a year bad enough where I thought I need to quit writing and think about doing something else, which is a good thing for which I'm very grateful. But conversely, I've never had a year as good as 2017. So the point of this is you can't base the calculation to go full-time off of your peak income because it's likely that income will level out over time. I'd say in 2026, I'm probably going to do about 63% gross of what I did in 2017, which is still a very good year, but it's nowhere near approaching my best year. So obviously I would not have based my calculation to go full-time off my best year, and I don't think you should do that as well. #3: Healthcare Costs I've heard people say the US has a very bad healthcare system. I don't think that's true. What I think is more accurate to say is that the US has a good healthcare system, but our way of paying for it and financing it is very bad. If you look throughout American history, the United States as a country tends to have this unfortunate genius for taking the worst aspects of capitalism and combining it with the worst aspects of socialism in certain cases and unfortunately, I think that what has happened with how we pay for our healthcare system. Now, granted, you can hear horror stories about every country's healthcare system. It's not too hard to find horror stories about the NHS in the UK or the Canadian healthcare system, but generally it is a good deal less expensive than it is in the United States, even if you're paying more in taxes. A joke I've heard frequently in the last few years is that if you break your arm in the US, you can see a doctor in the same day, but it will cost you $55,000. In the UK, you can see the doctor for free, but he won't be able to see you for nine months. In Canada, you can see the doctor the same day and he'll just tell you to kill yourself. Now, obviously this is exaggerated for comedic effect, but there is an element of truth to the excesses of each individual healthcare system. Since I'm based in the US, I will talk about this from a US-based perspective. In the US, if you're a full-time self-employed person, the best possible outcome for you is if your spouse or partner is employed full-time and you can get on their healthcare plan because that will be the most cost-effective for you. If that is not an option and you need health insurance, you will need to go on the healthcare market and enroll in a plan that is both much more expensive and much more limited than the typical employer provided plan. These plans are very geographically limited to a specific state or region, usually don't cover as many services, cost an enormous amount of money, and still require a hefty deductible beyond the monthly premium. And this is just for one person or two people! If children and multiple family members get involved, the costs just skyrocket swiftly. If you live in the US, you will need to spend a lot of time thinking carefully about health insurance, especially if you or anyone in your family has significant healthcare needs or needs very specific prescriptions or

  6. Sep 28

    Episode 322: BLADE OF VISIONS, Rhamnousia Pendragon, and Bad Leadership

    In this week's episode, I take a look at the characters of Rhamnousia and Zelos Pendragon in BLADE OF VISIONS, and what they say about bad leadership. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Forge, Book #6 in The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: FALLFORGE The coupon code is valid through October 12, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 322 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 25th, 2026 and today we are discussing my new book, Blade of Visions, and how it portrays bad leadership in the character of Rhamnousia Pendragon. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Forge, Book #6 in The Ghosts Series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLFORGE. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the episode notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through October the 12th, 2026, so if you are in need of a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As you might guess from the episode title, Blade of Visions is now out and you get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. Initial response to it has been very strong and people seem to be enjoying it. As I mention later in the episode, I even had someone email me and say it was one of my top 10 books, which is pretty impressive out of 176 books. So thank you all for that. Now that Blade of Visions is out, my next main project is Elven-Warlock, which will be the seventh book in the Half-Elven Thief series. I'm currently 36,000 words into it, hoping to get to 40,000 by the end of the day, if all goes well. I'm hoping this will be out towards the end of October, if all goes well. My secondary project will be the follow-up to Blade of Visions, which will be the seventh book in the Blades of Ruin series, specifically Blade of Rifts. I am 3,000 words into that. So that's my secondary project right now. Once Elven-Warlock is finished, it'll be full speed ahead on Blade of Rifts. In audiobook news, we are very nearly done with Cloak of Summoning, which is narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So hopefully we will have that available to you all to listen to sometime in October along with Ghost Armor Omnibus Two, which I'm going to start setting up before too much longer and if all goes well, Brad Wills will start recording Blade of Visions as an audiobook next week. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, audiobook, and publishing projects. 00:02:34 Main Topic: Rhamnousia Pendragon and Bad Leadership Now let's move on to our main topic this week, which is Blade of Visions, Rhamnousia Pendragon, and Bad Leadership. As I mentioned earlier in the episode, a surprising number of people have written in to say nice things about Blade of Visions, for which I'm grateful. As I mentioned, a few have even said someone my best books, which is also very nice. And I think the character of Rhamnousia Pendragon helped a great deal to inspire that reaction along with the fundamental problem many people, organizations, and indeed societies face: where do we find good leaders? As I've mentioned before, I based Rhamnousia and Zelos Pendragon off two historical bad leaders, specifically Empress Maude and King Stephen from the English civil war of 1138 AD through 1153 AD. I say "loosely based" because Rhamnousia and Zelos are half siblings while Maude and Steven were cousins. For that matter, as the Blade of Ruin series has gone on, Rhamnousia's and Zelos' respective characterizations have taken on a life of their own that increasingly diverges from the source material. To be fair to Maud and Stephen, unlike Rhamnousia and Zelos, they did not have disguised evil sorcerers actively giving them deliberately bad advice. For Rhamnousia, I basically thought of all the worst traits from the incompetent female managers and leaders I've encountered over the years, combined them into one character, made her both extremely intelligent and highly vindictive, and we ended up with Rhamnousia Pendragon. This isn't to say that women cannot be effective leaders. Many thousands of years ago (or so it feels) when I worked in big box retail, I devised a metric that turned out to be highly effective for gauging whether a new manager, whether male or female, would be competent or not. The metric: the more boring the manager is in the first meeting, the better he or she will be at the job. The boring ones who introduced themselves and immediately got down to business without a lot of chit-chat were invariably the best ones at their jobs. The ones who spent a lot of time talking about their feelings, their kids, their visions, their ex-spouses or whatever tended to be really bad or the ones who were really jokey, wanted to be liked or worse, insistent that you like them. A secondary metric is whether or not they were willing to get their hands dirty. Like the best store manager I ever encountered in my big box retail career helped unload trucks, stock shelves, run registers, and even cleaned the bathrooms himself a few times. They say one of the best guiding principles for effective leadership is to never ask someone to do something that you would not be willing to do yourself, and he followed that guideline quite well. Granted, he had excellent motivations for doing this. I believe one year the store did well enough that he got a $90,000 bonus, which was in pre-9/11 money, which would be around about $175,000 in 2026 money. However, his level of competence was definitely the exception and absolutely not the rule. One of his predecessors as big box store manager was fired and later prosecuted for a variety of excellent reasons, including giving away lots of merchandise to local restaurants in exchange for free meals for himself and what gossip called "getting handsy" with some of the female employees in the office, but what the police more accurately called assault. Apparently he forgot that every single inch of big box store was covered in cameras which kept recordings. Another predecessor was a very friendly and affable man, but utterly unable to assert himself without having an emotional breakdown and consequently let people walk all over him to the detriment of his job. He eventually quit due to the stress. Based on these and many other examples I've encountered, I think Rhamnousia and Zelos are very realistic characters. I'm afraid that in real life leaders like Rhamnousia Pendragon and Zelos Pendragon are very common and bad leaders, whether men or women, are more normal than good or even competent ones. In 2023, I knew an entire cluster of people who quit healthcare and education, not because they disliked the admittedly difficult work, but because their managers were so inept and malicious that they made the working environment unendurable. No doubt you can think of numerous examples from your own life. Anyway, Zelos Pendragon is a much different mode of leadership failure than Rhamnousia. He's a bit more like the store manager I mentioned earlier who wanted to be liked. Zelos is a much more amiable person than Rhamnousia and much less arrogant. However, he really wants to be liked, isn't terribly clever, and he's not firm in his decisions and changes his mind frequently. Despite being more likable than Rhamnousia, he is nonetheless a terrible leader, just for different reasons. By contrast, Rhamnousia Pendragon doesn't want to be liked. She demands to be respected and obeyed. She's far more interested in enforcing the rights and prerogatives of her royal dignity. Admittedly, these qualities are actually necessary to be an effective monarch, but Rhamnousia also has a fatal talent for alienating her allies through arrogance and enjoys humiliating people in public. This is all the worse because she's very intelligent, which means in practice she finds better ways at shooting herself in the foot since she doesn't have anyone to moderate her bad decisions. If you've read the rest of my books, you know that good leadership versus bad leadership is an ongoing interest of mine. I think it's tied to my interest in history. That would be a recurring theme in Frostborn and Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna and The Shield War, obviously now in Blades of Ruin, in Ghost Night and Ghost Armor, and increasingly in the Cloak Mage series where I think about the questions of good leadership versus bad leadership. It's strange how someone can be an absolutely terrible person yet somehow be a good leader, but yet that's not an infallible metric because very often terrible people often turn out to be terrible leaders. For that matter, good people likewise fail at leadership a great deal. To get things done, you often have to crack some heads together, stomp on people's personal petty fiefdoms, or employ outright coercion to get people to act, do this or you're fired and a lot of people just don't like doing that. There seems to be some sort of very narrow and very elusive overlap between the attributes of personal ruthlessness, ambition, and willingness to act in the greater good that creates an effective leader, and that combination is very rare. To be fair, however, from the other side of it, leadership is an unpleasant gig. If something goes wrong, it's the leader's fault. If something goes right, your employees and workers take the credit (or perhaps your superiors), and you just happened to be there for it and h

  7. Sep 21

    Episode 321: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Sixth Course!

    In this week's episode, I provide an update on my current writing projects, and I share four samples from the sixth book in some of my fantasy series. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Cloak Games series at my Payhip store: FALLGAMES The coupon code is valid through October 5, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered!

  8. Sep 14

    Episode 320: How I Learned To Write Fast

    In this week's episode, I take a look back over the last fifteen years and recount how I learned to write quickly. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Stone, Book #5 in the The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: FALLSTONE The coupon code is valid through September 28, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 320 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 11th, 2026, and today I'm discussing how I learned to write fast. Before we get to all that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Stone, Book #5 in The Ghosts series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLSTONE. As always, we will include the links and the coupon code in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through September 28th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. For Blade of Visions, which is my main project right now, the rough draft is done, the first editing pass is done, and I'm hoping to start on the second editing pass as soon as I finish recording this episode. So if all goes well and nothing unexpected happens, I very much hope that the book will be out a week from when this episode goes live. So a week from whenever you listen to this, check your favorite ebook store and hopefully Blade of Visions will be there. And of course you can always listen to this podcast and watch my website and social media for other announcements. My secondary project is Elven-Warlock, the seventh book in the Rivah Half-Elven series. I am currently 16,000 words into that. As soon as Blade of Visions is published, Elven-Warlock will then be my new main project and if all goes well, I hope to have that out in October sometime. In audiobook news, as I mentioned last week, Blade of Thieves and Cloak of Worlds should now be available at all the different audiobook stores. Hollis McCarthy is currently recording Cloak of Summoning and we should have some updates on that soon. In a bit of exciting audiobook news from that or related to that, I should mention that Hollis McCarthy was announced as a finalist for Narrator of Distinction for the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association for her work on Cloak of Embers, which was Cloak Mage #10. So if you get a chance, be sure to congratulate Hollis for that if you hang out on my social media pages. So that's where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:25 How I Learned to Write Fast Now let's move on to my main topic, how I learn to write fast. Occasionally I will see a new indie author looking with dismay at how much time it takes to write and expressing the opinion that it must be impossible to write a million words a year without the aid of generative AI. Ha, no. I should point out that I wrote a million words in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 and back then the current AI tech bros were still searching for the big scam that would one day make them rich. They tried crypto and NFTs in the interim. ChatGPT would not be inflicted upon the world until the end of 2022. Admittedly, I didn't write a million new words in 2021, 2022 and 2023, but that was from a combination of personal issues taking up time and illness. I still hit between 800,000 and 900,000 in those three years. In 2024 and 2025, I wrote a million new words. I might or might not hit a million new words in 2026, and it largely depends on how the rest of the year goes. I had to take a lot of time off in spring and summer, and that really slowed me down. I did hit 700,000 words once Blade of Visions was done, so we'll see what happens the remaining four months of the year. But yes, if you're writing full-time, a million words in a year is certainly achievable, though as with all things it takes practice and can be subject to events. With that in mind, I thought I would explain how I was able over time to ramp up to writing a million new words in a year. It was less something I set out consciously to do when I started this in 2011 and more a step-by-step evolutionary process that took several years. By the grace of God, I have been indie publishing for almost 15 and a half years now. So here's the process of how I ended up writing a million words in a year. #1: Tech Writing Back in the second half of the 2000s, I used to do a lot of tech blogging, mostly about Linux, and I also did tech support, which frequently involved writing FAQs and guides for how to connect your Blackberry or Windows Mobile device to the company email or whatever. In retrospect, Blackberry and Windows Mobile were both terrible operating systems, so it's not surprising the iPhone and later Android blew them out of the water. Anyway, tech blogging taught me the value of writing quickly. Back then, you could still make money off Google AdSense, and so if I could write quickly on a tech topic, I could post it, get Google traffic, and then make a little bit of money from Google Ads. Writing FAQs and guides also taught me the value of writing as concisely and as clearly as possible. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said of public speaking that the best approach to public speaking was "be sincere, be brief, be seated", and that's also true of technical guides. Back then, I was working on novels as well, specifically what would end up becoming the first three Caina books, but I never wrote more than a thousand words a day of fiction unless I was bored or I was really inspired, neither of which happened all that often. #2: Soul of Serpents By the end of 2010, I had sworn off trying to get traditionally published and decided to focus on tech blogging, but then I got my first Kindle after Thanksgiving in 2010, and I realized there had to be a way to make money off this thing. This led me to discovering Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and the other early self-publishing platforms. I published Demonsouled, Soul of Tyrants, and the first three Caina books, and then I decided I'd write one more Demonsouled book to finish off the story. It always annoyed me to no end that I'd never gotten to write a sequel to Soul of Tyrants, but now that the opportunity was here, I decided that I would have a Demonsouled trilogy and Soul of Serpents would be the last novel I would ever write, which goes to show I may not be that great at telling the future. Soul of Serpents was the first book I ever wrote specifically intended for self-publishing instead of submitting it to legacy publishers. I wrote it over the summer of 2011, and I figured if I wrote 1,500 words a day, I could get the rough draft of the book done by the end of the summer, which I did, and I ended up publishing it at the end of August of that month. That was also why I made Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts free for the first time, which meant that their sequels started to sell a little bit. I was actually beginning to make a little bit of money off my novels for the first time in my life, which was very exciting. It also meant that I wanted to continue the Demonsouled series past the third book, which leads us to the next phase of our story. #3: Soul of Dragons In the second half of 2011, I was extremely busy. I had a full-time job and I had a part-time job that required a lot of off-the-clock preparation. Despite that, I was determined to write Soul of Dragons, so I pushed onward when I could. This was when I began writing during my lunch break for the first time, but I often didn't get to my 1,500 words a day during lunch. So by the time I got home at the end of the day, which was frequently between 9:00 and 10:00 PM, I would frequently squeeze in my remaining words (sometimes all my words), before I went to sleep, only to wake up at 5:45 AM to go to the gym. This level of workload, as you can imagine, was absolutely exhausting, and I don't recommend it, but I still did it. I think it was necessary to learn to write a novel under a state of extreme strain since that was good practice for the 160 books that would follow Soul of Dragons. If I wrote only when I was perfectly calm and there was nothing else demanding my time or attention, I would never get any writing done at all. I really hate to give career advice to younger people since so much of the advice they receive these days is obsolete at best and malicious and condescending at worst. In economic terms, 2026 might well be another planet compared to 1976 or 2000, but sometimes in life you really do have to put in a maximum effort over a sustained amount of time (even if it's approaching midnight, you have to get up in five hours, and you still have 500 words to go before you can sleep). That said, if at all possible, I would advise only putting in that kind of effort if you're working for yourself and not for an employer that will lay you off the instant the stock price dips slightly. It took a while, but I did it. Soul of Dragons came out in February of 2012 and sold pretty well. By this time, the books were selling well enough that while I didn't want to go full-time, they were providing a nice cushion against the unexpected vagaries of life. My full-time employer was also heading towards trouble, so I decided to keep writing. #4: Ghost in the Storm My next book in early 2012 after finishing Soul of Dragons was Ghost in the Storm. Like with Demonsouled and Soul of Tyrants, I was always disappointed that I never got to continue Caina's story past the end of Ghost in the Blood, and so I was excited to start Ghost in the Storm. Little

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About

Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel. Sometimes there are jokes.

Information

  • Creator
    Jonathan Moeller
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    328
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Jonathan Moeller
  • Show Website
    The Pulp Writer Show