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. 6d ago

    Episode 304: Writing Believable Ways For Characters To Miss The Obvious

    In this week's episode, we share five tips & tricks for writing believeable ways characters can overlook the obvious. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: TALONS2026 The coupon code is valid through June 8, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 304 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 22nd, 2026, and it's our first new episode in two and a half weeks, so that is exciting. Today we'll be talking about how writers can believably write characters who miss the obvious or fail to notice important facts without exasperating the reader. We also 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 Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That is TALONS2026. As always, the links to my Payhip and the coupon code will be available in these show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through June 8th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for your summer travels, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Since I recorded the last episode on May 6th, I'm pleased to report that Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, is done. You can get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited since Half Eleven Thief is my Kindle Unlimited series (until it is finished). It's doing quite well and thank you all for that. Now that Dragon-Mage is finished, my main project is now Blade of Thieves. And as of this recording, I am 29,000 words into it. I think the rough draft will be 100,000 words or so, give or take. I hope to have this out in June, though it might slip to July (depending on events). My secondary project is Cloak of Frost, which will be the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I am 2,000 words into that and I am hoping to have that out towards the end of July, though of course that by slip to August (depending on events). So that is what I am working on right now. In audiobook news, since I recorded the last episode, we had two audiobooks mostly come out. Cloak of Illusion (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is available at Audible, Apple, Google Play, and all the other audiobook stores. Blade of Wraiths (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is also finished. I believe as of this recording, you can get it at my Payhip store, Google Play, and Kobo (though Audible and the other audiobook stores should be following along before too much longer). As for Dragon-Mage, Leanne Woodward will be recording that in July (if all goes well). So that's where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:38 Main Topic: Perception Failure Mode for Writers Now let's go to our main topic, how to write characters who miss the obvious in a way that's believable and doesn't exasperate the reader. When writing a story, it's sometimes useful to have a character miss the obvious. Of course, if done badly, this can sometimes inspire exasperation in the audience, like the cliche of the woman going alone into the basement with a flickering candle to reset the circuit breaker while a serial killer is on the loose and you get bonus cliche points if she's wearing a bikini. The trick is to have the character miss the obvious in a believable way that matches the circumstances. The obvious might be obvious, but it is often obvious only in hindsight. For example, here is a story about the time I failed to notice the obvious. In the morning, I typically get up, use the restroom, and then get dressed to go to the gym. I normally sleep with earplugs and don't usually remove them until I get dressed. While using the restroom, I will bring my phone or my tablet, depending on which is closer at hand and play chess puzzles to help my brain wake up. Now this detail is important. My tablet is an iPad, but my phone is an Android. Gradually, I began to notice that whenever I started the day, I could hear a woman talking very loudly outside the window. At first, I thought nothing of it. The house is fairly close to the sidewalk, so I often hear people talking as they walk past. However, as the days passed, I noticed I frequently heard exactly the same woman whenever I went into the bathroom. That started again on my nerves, so I glanced out the window to see who it was, but I never saw anyone nearby. For that matter, it didn't happen every day. Then a very strange fact occurred to me. This only happened on days when I had my phone, not my iPad, and this led me to discover the truth. The chess app had been updated to have the virtual chess coach talk to you as you played chess. My iPad and my phone were on mute, but on Android, apps can sometimes override the system mute setting to make noise. So my phone was talking to me as I did chess puzzles, and because I still had my earplugs in and hadn't enjoyed my morning coffee yet and my brain wasn't working, I failed to realize that my phone was the source of the voice. I had failed to notice the obvious. So once I had turned off the voice on the chess app, this got me to thinking. My specific example is so implausible and convoluted that it would be impossible to use in a novel since it would seem contrived, but how can you have characters in a novel fail to notice the obvious in a way that doesn't annoy the reader? I think there are five ways you can do it. #1: The character fails to notice something because of reasonable circumstances. Human perception is quite fallible and more so when we are stressed. It's common knowledge that if five people witness a crime, there will be five contradictory accounts of what happened based on what the individual in question happened to notice. For example, if you see a car accident in front of you, that will dominate your attention and cause you to miss background details, like the color of a nearby parked car or a nearby house. A character can also miss important details when he or she has no good reason to notice these details. There's a reason that in real life many spies try to be unremarkable as possible. The brain sort of slides over the unremarkable and makes it into part of the background. This can also work in mundane settings. For example, if a character is an electrician, he won't know what accounting software his clients use because he has no reason to know or care, especially if he gets paid on time. Stress is also a good way to have a character fail to notice something important. Job loss, an illness, a bad day, lack of sleep, and other things might mean the character is not operating at his or her best and may fail to notice important details. #2: Missing information causes you to miss the obvious. Insufficient information can cause a character to come to the wrong conclusion. Here's another example from my own life. Earlier this year, I drove a 2,000 mile road trip in a few days and towards the end, my right foot and leg started to hurt. The explanation for that I thought was obviously that I'd driven 2,000 miles in four days and put too much unaccustomed strain on my right foot. Once I got home, I would take a few days to rest and it should be good. Except when I got home, the pain got worse. I developed a fever and an uncomfortable swelling on the side of my right foot. I didn't have tendonitis or muscle strain. I had actually developed cellulitis for some reason. If you haven't heard of cellulitis, it's a potentially serious infection of these subdermal skin layer. A trip to the doctor and some antibiotics later, it was better. But this is an excellent example of coming to a reasonable, nonetheless wrong conclusion based on the available facts. Considering the amount of driving and walking I had been doing, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that I had strained something in my leg, but that wasn't what was happening at all. All the facts I knew were correct, but I was missing the key fact, the infection, and so had come to the wrong conclusion. This is a technique you can use in fiction quite easily and it's common in detective and mystery novels. It's common for the protagonist to construct a theory about the crime only for it to be proven wrong by a single piece of additional information. #3: All the information, wrong conclusion. Sometimes you can have all the correct information, but you draw the wrong conclusion from it. Here's another example from my life. As you may know, I have a lot of audiobooks available on Spotify, so if you're a Spotify listener and want to use your audiobook hours, I have some for you. So this naturally means I get a tax form from Spotify every year. During the run up to the 2026 tax season, I got an email from Spotify saying that my tax information was wrong and needed to be updated, which was baffling because my tax information had not changed. So I logged into the dashboard, but nothing seemed amiss and I saw no notifications about it there. Then I realized the truth, the email was fake. It had been sent to a different email address than the one I actually used for Spotify. The email was a very clever and very well written phishing attempt. The habit of never clicking on any link in an email (instead going directly to the dashboard in question) had served me well here. I had all the facts before me, but I arrived at the wrong conclusion because it was tax season and so it was reasonable to expect to get an email like that. Now this can be used in fiction in multiple ways. Probably the most famous example is how Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Da

    13 min

  2. May 18

    Episode 303: Audiobook Sample Platter, The Fourth Course!

    In this week's speical episode, I provide a writing update, and share audiobook samples from the fourth book in four of my series. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Sevenfold Sword series at my Payhip store: SEVENFOLD2026 The coupon code is valid through June 1, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered!

    21 min

  3. May 11

    Episode 302: Audiobook Sampler Platter, The Third Course!

    In this week's episode, I provide a writing update and share the audio samples from the third book in four of my series. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of  Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, Book #*5 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: FURY2026 The coupon code is valid through June 1, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this spring, we've got you covered!

    19 min

  4. May 4

    Episode 301: Email Newsletters For Indie Authors

    In this week's episode, we take a look at best practices for indie authors' email newsletters. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store: CALLIANDE25 The coupon code is valid through May 18, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 301 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 1st, 2026, and today we are looking at the effective use of email newsletters for indie authors. We'll also have an update on my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects and a Coupon of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code, we'll get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CALLIANDE25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through May the 18th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. My main project right now is Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I'm pleased to report the rough draft of that is done at 82,000 words. So I think this will end up being the longest book in the series to date by a slight margin. I believe the previous longest one was Half-Orc Paladin, which came in at 78,000. I've started editing. The first editing pass is 9% through. Hoping to get a little further with that after I record this episode. I'm hoping to have this book out before the end of May, if all goes well. My secondary project is Blade of Thieves, the fifth book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I am currently 8,000 words into that. So once Dragon-Mage is published, Blade of Thieves will be my new main project. My new secondary project then will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I thought I should mention that in the podcast because I had two questions in my email about that today. So I will be starting on Cloak of Frost sometime in the second half of May, if all goes well. Hopefully it will be published in July, with Blade of Thieves coming out in June (if all goes well). In audiobook news, recording is underway for Cloak of Illusion, and that will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and Blade of Wraiths, which will be narrated by Brad Wills. We're making good progress on both. I am looking forward to sharing those audiobooks with you before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:28 Main Topic: Email Newsletters for Indie Authors Now let's move on to our main topic, email newsletters for indie authors. If you are listening to this podcast, there's a pretty good chance you're also subscribed to my newsletter and if you are not subscribed to my newsletter, I recommend you do so because not only do you get three free ebooks when you subscribe to my newsletter, then every time I have a new book announcement, I give away a free short story as well through links in the newsletter. So it really is to your benefit if you want to read my books to be subscribed to my new release newsletter. But there are other reasons for an indie author to have a newsletter and we're going to talk about some of those reasons in this episode and some of the things you should not do with a new release newsletter or an email newsletter (if you have one). For a while, email newsletters were considered obsolete in the age of social media. Why not just put things on Facebook or Twitter? Well, for one thing, Twitter doesn't exist anymore. For another, as social media algorithms changed and it became harder for people to see content in their feeds consistently, many authors began to look for alternatives to social media and ended up back on email newsletters or Substacks. The main benefit of an email newsletter is that you have control and it's not dependent on a specific platform. You don't have to worry about your account being flagged or closed by some random AI glitch and lose your ability to communicate with your readers. Most importantly, you're targeting people who want to know more about you instead of trying to fight through all the digital noise that is the modern internet. So today, we're going to talk about five things to try with your author email newsletter, and five things that would probably be the best to avoid. #1: Give people a reason to care. People need a reason to subscribe to an email newsletter, and it should be substantial enough to be a motivator. For myself, I offer three free full length books to new subscribers, Malison: Dragon Curse, Blade of the Ghosts, and Frostborn: The Skull Quest, and they arrive in a three book bundle from Book Funnel. People also need a reason to open the emails once they subscribe. For myself, I offer newsletter subscribers free short stories, usually timed around the release of a new book. For example, I just published Blade of Wraiths, and that came with a free short story, Halfling Alchemy, and I gave away a bunch of copies of Halfling Alchemy when Blade of Wraiths came out. For Dragon-Mage, yesterday I finished writing a short story called Paladin and Priest, and that will also be given away for free to newsletter subscribers when I send out the new release newsletter after Dragon-Mage is finally published (hopefully later this month). Other things you can try are offering exclusive discounts, sneak peeks of new books, and giveaways. When I have a BookBub featured deal, I will usually send out a newsletter like the day before or two days before that to share the upcoming discount with my newsletter subscribers as well. Sometimes when I have special sales like that, I will also use the newsletter to send things out to try and generate interest in the sale. #2: Get to the point. It's good to get to the point as quickly as possible in an email newsletter. People are skimming emails at best. We all get lots and lots of emails, and the longer the email is, the less likely it is to be read. Make it easy to scan for the main points and try not to have a long, rambling introduction. Good formatting also helps people who are skimming to find what they want quickly. Good formatting also helps people who are skimming to find out what they want quickly. Based on my own email data, what gets the most clicks are the images of book covers I put on there. Usually I have an image of the book cover that goes to Amazon and an image of the short story cover that goes to my Payhip store where I'm giving away the short story for free, and those consistently get the most clicks in my email newsletters. So that is an example of getting to the point and good formatting because the point of the newsletter is to let people know that I have a new book out or that something's on sale and the good formatting in the form of the cover images lets people quickly get to the thing I am offering them. #3: Use data to figure out what's working. Once you've done a few newsletters, you will have the data to see if there's certain types of newsletters that are more successful than others. You can go even further and test if there's certain days of the week or times of day that are more likely to be successful. Conventional wisdom is to send things early on the day on a Monday or Tuesday and avoid Friday afternoons when people are already distracted by the weekend. For myself, I've generally gotten the best results with newsletters sent on Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Now, obviously many people are at work at that time, but you'd be surprised how many people have signed up for the newsletter with their work email address and seem to welcome the distraction during the workday when a new release announcement arrives. I have sent newsletters on Fridays and weekends. It's never as effective. Usually Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the most effective days to send out a newsletter. #4: Use a consistent format. Using a consistent format for your newsletter can make it easier for people to find the information they're looking for and makes reading a newsletter more of a ritual. For example, author James Clear does a weekly newsletter with three quotes from his own books, two quotes from other people, and one reflection question each week. For myself, my newsletters almost always follow the same format. I'll have one section with the cover image and links to the main thing I'm selling and then below that, two smaller areas, which are for the short story I'm giving away for free, and then another one with another short story I'm giving away for free or some other item I want to promote. Sometimes it's an audiobook. Sometimes it's another author's book who has asked me to include it in a newsletter swap. It's usually something of that nature. I've been using that in the same email format for like the last 10 years or so, and it's been working pretty well. #5: Be sure to preview and proofread before sending. Be sure to preview how the newsletter will actually work before sending it out. Proofread the text, make sure none of the images are pixelated, and make sure all the links are working correctly. If you include a wrong link in the newsletter (which I have done in the past), people will let you know about it. It might be helpful to have someone else test it before sending it out. So those are five tips that you want to do with your newsletter. And I'm also going to add a bonus sixth one: follow the law. There are several regulations related to email newsletters, both in the US and the EU, and I think most of the EU ones still apply to the UK, even though they left a couple of years ago. In the US, if you are sending an email for a commercial purpose, you need to include a physical mailing address wi

    16 min

  5. Apr 27

    Episode 300: Fifteen Lessons In Fifteen Years Of Indie Publishing

    In this week's episode, I celebrate both the 300th episode and my 15th anniversary of indie publishing, and look back at 15 lessons learned during that time. You can get the ebook of WRITING LESSONS FROM THE PULP WRITER SHOW at my Payhip store until the end of May 2026. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, Book #4 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: ORCS2026 The coupon code is valid through May 4, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 300 (yes, that is 300!) of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 24th, 2026 and today we're looking back at 15 lessons I've learned over my last 15 years of indie publishing. We'll also start off with Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, let's have Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, book number four in the Dragonskull series, (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is ORCS2026. And as always, the coupon code and links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through May the 4th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am about 62,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. If all goes well, I am hoping to have that out in May, though it might slip to June, depending on what I have to do in May. I'm also 4,500 words into Blade of Thieves, which will be the fifth book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. In audiobook news, a recording of Cloak of Illusion by Hollis McCarthy is approaching the end, one more proofread listen, and it should be there. And then hopefully the audiobook should be out in May. Brad Wills is also recording Blade of Wraiths right now. So hopefully we should have those audiobooks for you before too much longer. And that's where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:01:46 Main Topic: 15 Years of Indie Publishing Now onto this week's main topic, 15 years of indie publishing because as of April 2026, I have now been indie publishing for 15 years, which is the longest continuous time I've ever actually done anything in my life. I've never had any other job or professional association that has lasted this long. I've done this for so long that when people are angry with me, they no longer preface their remarks on my feelings by saying, "Listen here, young man." I suppose that puts me in the upper tier of indie authors, not in terms of income or market footprint, but in sheer, bloody-minded longevity. There are still indie authors out there who have been doing this for longer and are still publishing regularly, but not all that many. Eventually, indie authors typically burn out and just stop publishing, or stop publishing due to real life reasons, such as illness, family illness, moving, changing jobs, et cetera, or get some kind of tradpub deal and stop indie publishing. It makes sense that indie authors burn out. Sometimes, or even frequently, both writing and the business side of writing can feel like a slog, but I've been blessed with a mind that loves the grind. I don't say that to gloat, but to instead express my immense and humble gratitude to God (as Abraham Lincoln said long ago, the "beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe" & the "Great Disposer of Events") and to all of you, the many people have read (and after 2017 when I started with audiobooks, listened to) one of my books. Thank you all very much. By good fortune, my 15th anniversary of indie publishing and the 300th episode of this podcast coincide. So for the 300th episode of this podcast, I thought it would take a look back at the last decade and a half and reflect on 15 lessons learned in 15 years of indie publishing. #1: Embrace the slog. I think if you want to be a writer, you have to actually like writing. There are a surprising number of writers for whom this is not true, like they enjoy having written or the rewards of the writing, but they don't actually enjoy the part Glenn Cook famously called "put your backside in the chair and do it. " I'm fortunate that I do enjoy that part, but a lot of writers don't. Writing is often a grind in the same way that things like diet, exercise, and home maintenance are. Like if you do them for one day, it's not enough. You have to do them consistently day after day to have results. I think writing is kind of the same way. Effort applied over time cannot do all things, but it can do a lot. This applies to writing as well. A little bit every day can really add up over enough time. #2: Finish the book. A lot of writers get like one third of the way through their book and then give up or start something else. There's often a good deal of perfectionism involved in this. Here is a rule of thumb: a finished, imperfect book is infinitely better than the perfect version that exists only in your imagination, but will never exist anywhere else because you will never write it. Steve Jobs famously said, "real artist ship." I think the corollary is that if you want to be a writer, you have to finish things and then move on to the next thing. If finishing a novel seems daunting, I would suggest first writing short stories or perhaps novellas and learning to finish those. No one runs a marathon without first learning to run a mile after all. #3: Back up your data. This is an important one. I've gone through a lot of computers in the last 15 years, but I've never lost a large chunk of work because I back up regularly. I would suggest a three part system. Use whatever automated local backup your OS provides onto an external hard drive. Do manual local backups onto a flash drive of appropriate capacity and then have some sort of cloud backup you can rely on, which means you'll probably have to pay for it. That way, even if your house or apartment blows up (God forbid!), you will still have a copy of your stuff somewhere. #4: Be willing to learn new skills as needed. It occurred to me that most of these software tools and programs I use on a day to day basis nowadays did not exist when I started in April of 2011, or they're things that I've had to learn in the years since. Like 15 years ago, I didn't know anything about online advertising, Photoshop, 3D rendering, graphic design, social media, paperback formatting, ebook formatting, audiobook production, podcasting, small business taxes, and a bunch of other stuff, but I've picked it up in the year since. I wouldn't say I'm an expert at any one of those things, but I've been able to combine them well. Life, as we know, is change. That means you're going to have to change whether you like it or not, but it's best to make sure you're changing to your advantage. That can mean having to learn new skills. Depending on the skill, it can either be onerous or fun, but it's still worth doing. #5: When possible, give away stuff for free. I know some writers get really worried or upset about giving away stuff for free. They'll price their first novel at $9.99 [all prices mentioned are in USD] or higher, and then say things like a latte at Starbucks costs five bucks, why shouldn't my book, which was so much more work, costs more? (Though these days, I think a Starbucks latte probably is more like $8.37.) Giving things away for free gives readers a chance to try your work in a risk-free environment. If someone picks, for example, Frostborn: The Gray Knight and they don't like it or give up on it by chapter four, they're not out anything but time. But if they enjoy it, they might pick up Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife for $0.99. If they like that, they might go on to the rest of the series where the books are $4.99. That really adds up over time. I've also written and given away via my newsletter a lot of short stories. I have to admit that while I enjoy short stories, I mostly do this to increase the click-through rate of my newsletter. It's best to think of giving away things for free as like planting seeds. If you're a farmer, you pay a lot of money for your crop seed, but then you have to sacrifice it in hope of getting a crop and potentially losing all the money you spent on the seed if it doesn't grow. Giving away ebooks for free is kind of like that. #6: Don't expect sales to go up every year or every quarter. There are pros and cons to the publicly held and traded corporation model, but I think one of the big cons is that the shareholders often demand that revenue goes up every quarter ("Number Go Up", to quote the Internet meme). The trouble is that this isn't sustainable in reality and leads to a lot of economic damage along the way. There's a good chance that when the AI companies tank in the next few years, they're going to take a good chunk of the economy with them because they push this growth at all cost mindset. Even on a smaller scale when a company has mass layoffs to make Number Go Up, it causes all kinds of havoc in people's lives. In writing and publishing, you definitely should not expect sales to go up every quarter or even every year. It just doesn't work that way. Overall, if you have more books, you can generally expect they'll sell more, but it doesn't always or even frequently work like that. Ebook sales, like everything else, tend to ebb and flow. Also, what we will politely call "macroeconomic events" tend to affect sales a good deal. After 15 years, I found that the book reading population tends to overlap a fair bit with the "news doomscrolling" population. So every time there's a si

    21 min

  6. Apr 20

    Episode 299: Draft2Digital Account Changes & Embracing The Grind For Writers

    In this week's episode, we discuss the recent changes for new accounts at Draft2Digital, and talk about how there is no magic pill for success for writers. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store: MALISON2026 The coupon code is valid through April 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 299 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 17th, 2026 and today we are discussing Draft2Digital account changes and how writers need to embrace the writing grind. Before we start on that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week, and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store. That code is MALISON2026. This coupon code is valid through April the 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this spring, we have got you covered. And now an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that Blade of Wraiths, the fourth book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, is finally done. You can get Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, bookshop.org, Smashwords, and my own Payhip store. It has been selling strongly, so thank you all for that and I'm glad I was finally able to get it out into the world despite delays. Now that Blade of Wraiths is done, my next main project will be Dragon-Mage, which is the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series, and I'm about 29,000 words into it. I think it will be about 80,000 words, give or take. So I'm hoping to have that out in May, if all goes well. In audiobook news, the fifth book in the Rivah series, Wizard-Assassin, is now out in audiobook. You get it at Audible, Apple, Amazon, Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and all the other usual audiobook stores. In other audiobook news, Cloak of Illusion is being recorded by Hollis McCarthy right now and Brad Wills will start recording Blade of Wraiths on Monday, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Good progress all around. So it's nice to have a good progress update there. 00:02:00 Barnes & Noble/ Draft2Digital Changes Now, before we get to our originally planned main topic, we will pause to address a news item. A few people ask what I thought about recent changes that Barnes & Noble and Draft2Digital made for self-publishers. If you're outside of Indie Author World and haven't heard of any of this, the gist is that Barnes & Noble is putting new restrictions on indie author accounts and Draft2Digital is now charging a one-time $20 fee for anyone opening account and an annual $12 fee on any accounts that make less than $100 a year on the platform and if you make more than $100 a year on the platform, the yearly fee is waived. Now, as you can expect, there was a good deal of consternation about this online, especially among indies with only one or two books who might not make $100 a year from their books. So what is my opinion on this? My opinion is threefold. First, it's unfortunate they had to do this. In a more optimum world, they would not have had to do this, but I suspect they were forced into it due to circumstances. And because of that, number two, it is inevitable that something like this was coming along because number three, the reason this happened was the overwhelming flood of AI generated slop from scammers. The ultimate source of the problem, as is the ultimate source of many recent problems in the world, is generative AI. A small number of scammers are generating enormous quantities of AI generated slop books and uploading them to the publishing platforms. We're talking like tens of thousands of books a month or even a week, and the books are absolutely low effort as well: AI generated gibberish text, AI generated cover, and then thrown on the store. Since I wrote this podcast script, James Blatch of Self Publishing Formula put out a Substack stack article on it, and he mentioned that he was talking to someone from Draft2Digital. He mentioned an example of the kind of low quality slop books they're dealing with. Last year when US political activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, within hours, several nonfiction books on the murder appeared on the stores, and these books were essentially either copy and pasted Wikipedia summaries or AI generated books on the topic that, as you might expect since it was a very recent event, contained no useful information whatsoever. The scammers were just hoping that to take advantage of a contentious current event and make a few bucks along the way. Now imagine this multiplying tens of thousands of times over every single day, and that is the scale of the problem. Now, this has always been a problem with self-publishing, especially with Kindle Unlimited, but AI takes it to an industrial scale. With some basic LLM knowledge, you can automate the entire thing. The figures I've heard are that something like 70 to 75% of new submissions to Draft2Digital in the last year have been AI generated scam books of that nature. Now, obviously this is not viable in the long term and is an existential threat to the platform, so something had to be done. Amazon already took some steps in that direction by limiting accounts to only three uploads a day, so it was inevitable that the other platforms would have to follow suit. Now, the best way to reduce scams is to increase friction. That's why it's sensible to lock your front door and your car. If someone really, really wants to break into your house or car, that's not going to stop them, but a locked door will deter lots of casual thieves or junkies who are strolling around looking for low risk things to steal. In the same way, these changes won't stop the problem of AI generated slop books, but it will help [make] the problem more manageable by increasing friction. So it's unfortunate that these changes have to happen, but I suspect something like this was inevitable, and I also strongly suspect that more of this will be coming. I think eventually we're going to end up with a per book publishing fee, like $10 per title, [which] while unfortunate, would severely reduce the financial viability of these scams, but perhaps we'll be fortunate enough that the era of free and low cost generative AI is going to collapse before that happens. The economic signs are increasingly pointing in that direction with the various AI providers hiking prices in the last few months, and scamming with AI becomes a lot less attractive when you're spending thousands of dollars a week on tokens. Ultimately, in my opinion, the villain here is not Draft2Digital and it's not Barnes & Noble, but the villain is the AI companies who have very recklessly and irresponsibly pushed this highly destructive and often useless technology out of a combination of messianic hubris and old-fashioned greed disguised as self-righteous altruism, much like the crypto and NFT advocates before them. I've said before that I think the primary problem with LLM based AI is that it comes with a whole lot of negative results and virtually no positive ones. The changes of Draft2Digital and Barnes & Noble are yet another example of AI creating negative outcomes and no corresponding benefits. But thankfully, it is not all gloom and doom. It's heartening to see how increasingly unpopular AI is becoming with the general public, with shutting down data center construction projects becoming a hot issue in local US politics. I think the best outcome for the entire mess created by AI technology would be for using it to become as socially unacceptable as, for example, smoking in front of small children or placing bets on a dog fighting ring. 00:07:15 Main Topic of the Week: There is No Magic Pill For Writers Now our other main topic of this week, how there is no magic pill for writers and writers should embrace the writing grind. A while back, I was watching a sports documentary and one of the athletes said that when she was asked for advice from those just starting the sport, she would happily share her routines with these competitors because she knew that most people lacked the work ethic necessary to complete them for any length of time. She lamented that all people wanted was a magic pill and that there was no magic pill for success in her sport. And I think the same thing is true of writing and publishing. People want a magic pill to land on top of the bestseller list right away and make lots of money instantly. The truth is for any kind of lasting success, there isn't that magic pill. Most writers make money by persistence instead of trickery. In this episode, I will give you five of the most important things you need as a writer in order to succeed in publishing your work. I can't give you a magic pill, but like that athlete, I can give you my routine. I've mentioned these tactics before in this podcast, but I wanted to collect them all in one place as a starting point of advice for working hard for that magic secret to success. #1: Work hard. You might hear stories of writers only working an hour or two a day, but the reality is that prolific authors are working far more than that. Only a handful of writers can make a full-time living publishing one book every few years. The rest of us are writing as much as possible and getting out books at least a couple of times a year, if not more. Times have changed. In a saturated entertainment industry, people are quick to forget and move on to the next thing. Website algorithms reward authors who put out new content frequently. So to be able to be a full-time writer, I do work typical workday hours, but I also do some work in the morning before I actually start, and then some in the eve

    14 min

  7. Apr 13

    Episode 298: STARFIELD - A Personal FAQ

    In this week's episode, I answer questions I receive whenever I mention that STARFIELD is my favorite game of the 2020s. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: HECTOR50 The coupon code is valid through April 20th, 2026. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 298 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 10th, 2026. Today I'm doing an FAQ about my experiences with Starfield, which is my favorite game of the 2020s. Before 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 Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), at my Payhip store. That coupon code will be HECTOR50. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. And this coupon code will be valid through April 20th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am done with the first pass of editing through Blade of Wraiths and then starting on the second. It's taken a bit longer than I've wanted because I've had a lot of Real Life Stuff to do, but if all goes well, I'm hoping to have the book out in the second half of April, so hopefully not too much longer now. I'm also 19,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. Hopefully that will be out in May, if all goes well. No, that might slip to June, but I'm really hoping to get that one out in May. In audiobook news, Hollis McCarthy has started work on Cloak of Illusion, so hopefully if all goes well, we'll have that out to you in May sometime. In fact, I'm hoping that will come out concurrently with Dragon-Mage, because it's always nice when I can stack an ebook and an older audiobook in the series like that together. So that is where we're at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:01:46 Main Topic: Starfield Now onto our main topic. This is ostensibly a podcast about writing and the business of writing, but I like video games, so we're going to talk about a video game this week. The reason for that is whenever I post about Starfield or share a screenshot from it, I frequently get a number of questions. I think it's because Starfield was an oddly divisive game when it came out. People have strong opinions about it and then have strong opinions about other people's strong opinions and I do not have these strong opinions myself. While I enjoy the game a great deal, if you don't like it, that's fine. There are lots and lots and lots of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft, which is the ultimate owner of Starfield. It's possible for two things to be simultaneously true that Microsoft has done a lot of sketchy things, and that Starfield is a good game that I enjoyed. I suspect it's a bit like enjoying a football game while at the same time knowing that the NFL is an unscrupulous cartel that could benefit from some thorough reforms. Despite that, I have to admit that I don't think it's super healthy to make gaming opinions, whether video games or sports games, a core part of your identity. A game in the end is just a fancy toy for amusement and idle moments. If God descended tomorrow and told me that Starfield would vanish from the face of the earth, I'd be rather disappointed, but my dinner would still taste just as good and my house would be just as warm. That said, I did enjoy the game quite a bit. Everybody needs a hobby and even I can't work every hour of every day. I wrote like a hundred novels in the last 10 years. Everyone has their own stresses in life, of course, but we seem to live in particularly stressful time these days, so a harmless hobby is a nice break from real life. The game's newest expansion came out a couple days ago on April 7th. And so with that in mind, I thought I would answer the most common questions I get whenever I post or talk about Starfield. Question: Did Starfield influence your Silent Order Science fiction series at all? No. But I'm always pleased when I get this question because it's easily answered. The final book of Silent Order came out on September the 4th, 2023, and Starfield came out on September 6th, 2023. I tried Starfield like the day after it came out, but I didn't actually start playing it in earnest until April of 2024, like I didn't actually finish the starter dungeon until April of 2024. So no, Starfield was not an influence on Silent Order. It would be fair to say that Silent Order was more influenced by James Bond, some H.P. Lovecraft, and Wing Commander: Privateer, which is actually our next question. Question: What initially drew your interest to Starfield? Part of the game reminded me a lot of Wing Commander: Privateer from the '90s, which was one of my favorite games back in the day. If you're not familiar with it, Wing Commander: Privateer was what's now called a "space trading sim" set in the Wing Commander universe. In all the previous Wing Commander games, you played as a Starfighter pilot fighting in the humans' war against the cat-like Kilrathi invaders. Your missions were assigned to you along with the specific ship you would fly for that mission. But in Privateer, you played a freelance captain with a rundown freighter. You can carry cargo, go bounty hunting, do mercenary work, trading, and just wander around the map following infinite procedurally generated missions from the Mission Board, the Merchants' Guild, and the Mercenaries' Guild. Eventually, you would have enough cash to upgrade your rundown ship to something better and configure it however you liked. There's a main plot, but you can totally ignore it and do whatever you want. I loved Privateer and I finished both it and the expansion. And of course, spent a lot of time doing the infinite procedurally generated quests. Starfield does the same thing, but with 30 years' worth of advancement of game design and technology improvements. In grand Bethesda game tradition, you don't even have to do any of the main plot lines. You can just wander around doing procedurally generated quests. It's like Privateer, but better and with ground-based quests as well. You can get out of your ship and walk around in a way you couldn't in Privateer. In Starfield, you can land at some random science outpost or industrial outpost and the inhabitants will have a quest for you. I've heard Starfield described as a "cozy game", since quite a few people enjoy just building their outposts and their ships and then decorating them like the science fiction version of Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. In another sense, I suppose Starfield could be described as "cozy adventure". Granted, that might be a strange thing to say about missions where you machine gun space pirates, blow up their base, and then loot all their stuff, but Starfield is an excellent game for just puttering around. It's fun after a long day to play for an hour, take out some space pirates, upgrade your ship a little, maybe tinker with your outpost. And I do like, I have to admit, the main plot line and the various faction quests. Question: So the procedural generation stuff doesn't bother you? No. Procedural generation has been part of gaming forever and long before the civilizational blight that is modern LLM systems. Certainly there are points where the procedural generation of Starfield could be improved and it has been improved with patches, but I enjoy the randomness of it. Question: If you think Starfield is good, why did it have such mixed reviews? It did have some rough points at launch, like the lack of surface vehicles, the lack of city maps, and some weird choices for inventory management (among some other issues, though those were later patched or upgraded). I honestly think the game is better than the mixed reviews would indicate, and I also think the mixed reviews were a combination of different converging social factors, specifically, people's expectations of what they imagined the game would be versus what it actually was, its Xbox and PC exclusivity, and the unfortunate addiction to outrage culture in social media. As I mentioned before, I think it's obvious that we live in stressful times and for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this episode, I think people are overall angrier and eager to lash out when a target presents itself, especially online. Additionally, I suspect a big part of the mixed reviews is that Microsoft has built up a lot of ill will since the launch of Windows 11 and Copilot, and Starfield is a convenient outlet for that. Like Outlook and Teams are widely hated software tools, probably some of the most hated software tools in the world, but your job forces you to use them and you can't do anything about it. It's more effective to criticize a consumer-facing business like video games than it is Outlook and Teams, since those tend to be sold in blocks of thousands of licenses to large institutional customers that don't particularly care what their employees think about Outlook or Teams. In fact, fun fact, while I was writing this episode, Outlook was causing problems on Artemis II, NASA's first manned mission to the moon in over 50 years. So there is yet another historical milestone for Outlook. Question: You've said repeatedly that you don't like multiverse stuff, yet Starfield's main plot revolves heavily around the multiverse. That's true. I don't really like multiverse stuff in fiction because it's hard to execute well without making the story poi

    18 min

  8. Apr 6

    Episode 297: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Second Course!

    In this week's episode, I share samples from four of my previously published audiobooks, and provide an update on my writing progress. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Cloak Games series at my Payhip store: CLOAKBOOK25 The coupon code is valid through April 13, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered!

    20 min
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Ratings & Reviews

3
out of 5
4 Ratings

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
    305
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Jonathan Moeller
  • Show Website
    The Pulp Writer Show

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