It’s a wrap! Season 1: State of the Industry is done. After interviewing some truly stellar guests with their fingers on the pulse of what’s going on in all different areas of self-publishing, the guys, Niamh, and Bonnie sit back to discuss what patterns they’ve seen and what lessons they’ve learned.

The gang discusses being mindful both of what they are doing and what they are choosing no longer to do, about strengths and weaknesses, as well as the overall feeling of bullishness on the future of indie-publishing in general. They also talk about how it may be the end of the amateur hour of self-publishing when anyone can throw something resembling a book together, put it up, and expect to get sales, but for those willing to put in the time and serious work, the future looks bright. And they explore the ways in which traditional publishing companies have started to act more like indies with competitive pricing and slightly more rapid publishing, and the ways indies are acting more like trads in taking both their branding and businesses more seriously.

They also get into more specifics about things like analytics, ads, audiobooks, and more!

Tune in for everyone’s biggest take-aways.

“There’s never been a better time to be an indie author,” Craig Martell says on this episode of the Story Studio Podcast.

Craig Martell runs the 20 Books to 50K facebook group and events with Michael Anderle who we also interviewed in this State of the Industry series. In this interview, Craig shares the behind the scenes of both his own wildly successful author journey and how he came to host live author events with Michael.

Listen in to learn all about Craig’s take on current industry trends and how he uses his catalog and ad dollars wisely to assure ongoing full-time income, based on years of experience.

Click HERE to learn more about the 20 Books to 50k Facebook Group.And you can find LMBPN publishing where both Michael Anderle and Craig Martell HERE.

Erin Wright is a contemporary western romance author who also runs the fantastic online/Facebook Group called Wide For The Win. Erin was initially invited onto the podcast in place of having someone on from Apple since it is very difficult (maybe impossible) to get someone from Apple on a podcast to talk about the state of the industry, but her interview gave us all so much more.

Erin has been very successful with her books in the Apple store, but she also has an excellent track record of making her catalog sell well wide, across multiple bookselling sites and platforms, (as in providing a full-time income), and she has been helping others to do the same.

Listen in to find out how Erin does it and how she helps others do it too.

If you are an author who wants to publish your books wide (rather than exclusively through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program) then check out the Wide for The Win Facebook group here. You can also learn more about Erin Wright here.

When the guys first met Mark Leslie Lefevbre, they got to know him as Mark Kobo, because he was working for Kobo back then. Now Mark works for Draft2Digital, through which he continues to promote wide publishing options, including Kobo, but, through the easy-to-use Draft2Digital dashboard interface, also Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more. Draft2Digital also makes it easy for indie authors to get their books into library systems, which has recently seen some pretty incredible growth in market share while much of the country (and the world) has been rotating through various levels of lockdown and quarantine.

Listen in to learn more about Mark’s journey and about what Draft2Digital can do for the modern indie author, now and into the future. You can also learn more about Mark through his Stark Reflections podcast.

Andre Chaperon and Shawn Twing are writing and business partners. Together they run a website called Tiny Little Businesses (which you can find at https://tinylittlebusinesses.com). Sean first found Andre through his Autoresponder Madness course. Andre also spoke at the very first S&S event (after at first refusing to). Shawn has been in digital marketing for more than two decades and, at one point, was a customer of Andre’s Sphere of Influence product.

It’s so refreshing to hear online marketers say that a smaller, more engaged list that is genuinely interested in hearing from you is better than having a huge list of people who only rarely care whether they hear from you or not. Their focus in writing emails is on quality communication and storytelling through email. How can you best connect with your audience through writing emails? Anyone with an email list should definitely listen in to learn more about what Andre and Shawn have to say.

Once upon a time, there was a fiction writer who wanted to send a free copy of his book to his mom. But he didn’t want her to have to read it in a word doc on her desktop. He wanted her to see the book in its finished form, with the cover and copyright and all the rest. And he wanted her to read it on her e-reader, just like any other published book.

Back in 2015, the solution didn’t exist, but luckily Damon Courtney had the drive and technical know-how to create it. Damon is the founder of Bookfunnel, which is now the industry standard for delivering free books to readers. Whether it be getting advanced copies of books to ARC teams, or rewarding subscribers to newsletters with extra “secret” stories, Bookfunnel has become the very best way to get free books onto the electronic reading devices of readers everywhere.

Listen in to hear more about the Bookfunnel story, why you need it, and go here to get your own account: https://bookfunnel.com.

It’s no secret that the audiobook segment of the publishing industry has been growing in recent years. In the last 9 months of stay-at-home orders and quarantines, people have been listening to audiobooks more than ever. But a lot of indie authors don’t know how to break into the audiobook market. How do you find the right narrator and get the right recording quality necessary for platforms like Audible and Chirp?

Well, Will Dages from Findaway Voices is there for you. Findaway Voices is as close to being the Draft2Digital of audiobooks as anyone in the industry is. They have a whole host of narrators that they help match to the books that are best for their voices and match the voices that are best for your books. Or if you have the setup and the voice for it and really want to read your own books, you can upload the audio files yourself.

Listen in to learn more about Findaway Voices and all things audiobook, and when you’re ready to set up a Findaway Voices account yourself, go to https://findawayvoices.com.

Sean has known Jane Friedman since before the beginning, way back when Yesterday’s Gone was just the seed of an idea and he approached her to talk about a series of Shel Silverstein-like children’s poem’s that he wanted to write. She invited him to talk to one of her college classes about copywriting, and they have been close friends ever since.

Jane has over 20 years of experience in the publishing industry and is an expert in business strategy for authors and publishers. She’s the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors, and has worked for F+W Media and the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2019, Jane was awarded Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World; her newsletter was awarded Media Outlet of the Year in 2020.

Jane’s most recent book is called The Business of Being a Writer. Also, in collaboration with The Authors Guild, she wrote The Authors Guild Guide to Self-Publishing.

Learn more about Jane Friedman here: janefriedman.com/about/

In today’s episode, the guys talk to Dave Chesson, founder of Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching advanced book marketing. His tactics and insights help both Fiction and Nonfiction authors get their books discovered by the right readers.

Dave and the guys talk about how he went from being a career military member to becoming an author and how his curiosity about categories and keywords led him to create Kindlepreneur. Any author selling ebooks on Amazon today will really want to listen to Dave.

Dave is also the creator of Publisher Rocket, a software that helps authors see what’s really going on in the book market so they can pick better keywords and categories to help them sell more books.

You can learn more at Kindlepreneur.com and publisherrocket.com.

As powerful people are so fond of saying, “Knowledge is Power” and in the world of ebook publishing, Alex Newton’s K-Lytics is a powerful thing. Knowing the real numbers about the category, genre, and subgenre that you publish in can help to give you a deeper understanding, more realistic expectations, and help to make ebook launches and sales a little more predictable. Niamh has been a huge fan of K-lytics from even before she entered the publishing space and was eager to ask Alex a lot of questions. Listen in for all of his helpful answers so you can join Niamh, Bonnie, and the guys in all getting a whole lot smarter about analytics during this interview.

You can learn more about K-lytics and sign up for your own account right here: lytics.com/">www.k-lytics.com