Scaling An Author Business With Rachel McLean

How do you successfully scale an author business? How do you delegate to your team as well as continue to research and write the books you love? With award-winning crime author, Rachel McLean.

In the intro, new Kindle devices [Amazon]; new European markets for Spotify audiobooks [Spotify]; customisable audio with Google NotebookLM;
Amazon Ads launches new AI tools for advertisers;
Enhancing Creativity with AI Tools [ALLi]; My Lessons Learned from 10 Million Downloads of the show; and Blood Vintage Kickstarter wrap-up.

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Rachel McLean is the award-winning author of the Dorset Crime series, as well as other crime books, and has now sold over 2 million copies.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Making the decision to scale your author business
• Hiring multiple freelancers with different skillsets
• Money and lifestyle as a source of motivation
• Writing with multiple co-authors and creating a small imprint
• How to write what readers want to read
• Moving your readers from KU to other platforms
• Selling audiobooks direct using Shopify and BookFunnel
• Using AI tools for location research
• Publishing videos on socials to humanize your brand

You can find Rachel at RachelMcLean.com.

Transcript of Interview with Rachel McLean

Joanna: Rachel McLean is the award-winning author of the Dorset Crime series, as well as other crime books, and has now sold over 2 million copies. So welcome back to the show, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you for having me.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on the show in November 2022, and we talked about how you pivoted into crime fiction. So we're just going to jump straight into things today.

You started out with your Dorset Crime series, but you now have five series in total, and you work with multiple authors under your imprint, Ackroyd Publishing.

How has your business changed over the last few years?

Rachel: In some ways it hasn't changed that much, and in other ways, it's changed massively. So the core of my business, which is about writing crime books that reade