Self-Publishing Roundtable

Unfortunately due to technical difficulties and link confusion our guest was unable to join us this week. Instead the SPRT gang covered beautifully by having a discussion about indie publishing stuff.

Our apologies for not having the expected guest but huge thumbs up to Wade, Robert and Chrishaun for saving the day :)

Audio available for download or watch on youtube ?

Every year the Romance Writers of America hold a big national conference. Romance writers of all flavours flock to the conference to mingle with their peers, participate in workshops, listen to speakers and panels and–apparently–drink margaritas :P

Zoe York was not a member of the RWA when she attended–she is now though–earlier in the month but she traveled from Canada to the conference to take part–and drink said margaritas. She reported back on her first RWA conference, what she thought of it, what tasty morsels of information she gleaned, the two workshops she ran and more!

Probably the most well-known male Urban Fantasy hero is Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden–an unwilling hero in a contemporary urban setting with a lot of supernatural elements. Think John McClane (from Die Hard) but wielding magical powers instead of a conventional weapon.

Sadly, we were not able to interview Jim Butcher (he's not indie) but we did have the next best thing! Domino Finn, author of the Black Magic Outlaw and Sycamore Moons series talked with us about Urban Fantasy, its tropes and how to write the tough guy protagonist–without making him an asshole.

Robert Chazz Chute, Chrishaun Keller-Hanna and Erica Conroy to discuss the below topics:

- Data Guy presents insane Romance data at the RWA conference

- Canadian author committed to the traditional route makes Robert sad :(

- Harlequin's reading app could be a game changer!

Remember when we interviewed Honorée Corder? Well she's coming back and this time she's bringing Hal Elrod and Steve Scott with her. Together they'll be talking to us about their recently released non fiction book, The Miracle Morning for Writers: How to Build a Writing Ritual That Increases Your Impact and Your Income (Before 8AM). It combines Hal Elrod's global phenomenon with Steve Scott's writing habit techniques (which helped him get on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list). You'll learn how to take charge of your morning and maximize "the rest of the day" for your writing efforts.

Audio available for download or watch on youtube :)

New Adult is a genre that only emerged within the last few years. It's a genre where the protagonists and targeted audience are college-aged and, like Young Adult, is being crossed with many other genres. Jasmine Walt is a new author who writes Fantasy married with New Adult and doing extremely well at it! She's currently ranked within the top 100 authors in Sci-Fi & Fantasy and Fantasy on Amazon. Did I mention she's a new author?

Audio available as well as Youtube recording.

We were surprised at how much of an introvert our guest was. He's very down to earth, with a practical and motivated mind when it comes to making money in publishing.

There's no doubt that romance is the most popular genre. The readers are voracious and will follow their favourite authors with a passion. Quite a number of those readers are currently enamoured with Chance Carter. A man writing Bad Boy Romances for women. While male romance authors aren't unusual, they're more likely to write under a female pen name. But not Chance, he's flaunting his gender on social media and the fans love it. How much do they love it? Well, a recent release netted him 400 reviews in a week! So of course we invited him on to find out how he does it.

Welcome to the Roundtable Roundup, our fortnightly podcast where we invite a guest or two to join us live to discuss the latest news and views from the self-publishing and indie industry.

Author Zoe York returned! She joined Robert Chazz Chute, Xavier Granville and Erica Conroy to discuss the below topics:

- Amazon is cracking down on advertising sites

- KDP Accounts being shut down without warning!

- Author Earnings May Report

Audio available!

Australian author Demelza Carlton joined us to talk about building her mailing list from very low to over 15,000 in just six months! We asked her to share with us exactly how she did it, how much it cost and how one would maintain a list that size once you've attracted oodles of subscribers. We also talked about her writing, publishing but not her fear of swimming with fish :P

We interviewed the founder of JuNoWriMo, Becca J. Campbell and learned how the challenge started, the effort that goes into running an event of this scale, about her own writing and a lot of other interesting things along the way.

JuNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1667 words a day! It's also a community of writers and aspiring writers to get together and offer support, motivation and friendship. It's almost like NaNoWriMo except it's in June instead.

Interview is available on both audio download and youtube.