I’ve given a lot of advice to authors over the last 500 episodes. I’ve helped authors get published, sell more books, and hit the bestseller list. But I’ve also made my share of mistakes and a few really, really bad takes. Sometimes I was right at first, but things changed and made me wrong. Good advice in 2013 became bad advice in 2023. And sometimes, I was wrong the whole time.

So, in this 500th episode, instead of celebrating all the things we did right, we are going to revisit my biggest blunders and see if we can’t learn anything.

I’m also celebrating by giving away the MacBook Neo I reviewed a few episodes ago. You can find details on how to enter at the end of this post.

We have a lot of new viewers on YouTube, and some YouTube commenters question how this can really be the longest-running book marketing podcast when the YouTube channel is not that old.

So, gather around, and I will tell you the tale of Novel Marketing.

Part 1: My Story

I started building websites for authors back in 2007. After  a couple of years, I started speaking at writers conferences about websites, social media, and marketing. I started a blog called Author Tech Tips that got featured several times by Writer’s Digest as one of the most helpful blogs for authors.  

Then, in 2013, I launched the Novel Marketing Podcast with Christy Hall of Fame Author James L. Rubart. My company also developed a suite of WordPress plugins to help authors build their own websites.

The next year, I started developing courses for authors, worked as the fractional marketing director for a publishing company, later became a literary agent, and started the Christian Publishing Show.  

Eventually, I realized I was doing way too much and had a mental breakdown in 2019. I pruned my life down to just the Novel Marketing Podcast, Christian Publishing Show, and the courses. No more websites. No more plugins. No more agenting. Jim Rubart also left Novel Marketing as a regular co-host, although you can still find him in our popular course, The 5 Year Plan to Become a Professional Author.    

In 2024, we started recording the podcast in video and posting episodes to YouTube. I also began developing the Patron Toolbox, which is a collection of over 70+ tools to help authors sell more books. We launched a community for authors on AuthorMedia.social, and last year we launched a new show called Author Update. Along the way, we started hosting the Novel Marketing Conference every January.

While I started blogging for authors in 2009, I didn’t start podcasting until 2013, and it took 13 years to publish 500 episodes.

And boy howdy, have I made some mistakes along the way. So, while I work up the courage to talk about the big mistakes, let’s talk about the “rug pulls.” Rug pulls were things that were good advice at the time, but are terrible advice now, as the rug was pulled from under us. These are important because you may not know how things have changed.

Part 2: Rug Pulls

Rug Pull #1: WooThemes

WooThemes was a WordPress theme company that built a theme framework. Think of it like an early version of Divi.

Then they launched an ecommerce plugin called WooCommerce, which became the #1 ecommerce platform for WordPress and the second most popular platform in the world.

Eventually, all WooThemes switched its focus to WooCommerce and abandoned its theme business altogether. All the websites we built with WooThemes were now on an abandoned theme framework. That rug pull is still causing stress 10 years later.

Rug Pull #2: Facebook Parties / Virtual Launch Events on FB

In 2014, we did an episode with Nadine Brades about how to host Facebook parties and launch events. And that technique worked in 2014.

Then Facebook started selling social proximity data to Amazon, and launch parties went from a way to get readers hyped into a way to get reviews deleted. Today, if Amazon sees a cluster of reviews come in from a bunch of socially proximate readers, it is more likely to delete most or all of those reviews. A cluster of socially proximate reviews looks too much like the “buy Amazon reviews” Facebook groups that sprout up like weeds.

I now recommend that authors NOT connect with readers at all through their personal Facebook profiles. Authors can avoid this social proximity filtering by using business pages and keeping personal profiles limited to real-life friends.  

Rug Pull #3: Google Reader

We used to recommend Google Reader on my website called AuthorTechTips. Google Reader allowed you to subscribe to blogs and news websites, saving your personal inbox for urgent emails from real people. But Google didn’t want blogging to prosper, so they canceled Google Reader and pushed everyone toward Google+.

Blogging never fully recovered from the loss of Google Reader. I still use Feedly, which was a Google Reader replacement, but it didn’t take off because most people are not willing to pay for an RSS reader.

RSS is still a life-changing technology and the best way to preserve internet freedom, but it means paying for what you use rather than expecting everything to be free.

Rug Pull #4: Google+  

When we first started Novel Marketing, the marketing gurus of the day were telling authors they didn’t need websites because Google+ and Facebook were good enough. Episode 2 of the Novel Marketing podcast was titled “Do Authors Still Need a Website?” where we pushed back on the “all you need is social media” gurus.

We told authors they still needed a website, but that Google+ was an important tool in the book marketing toolbox.

Then Google killed Google+ and dumped it into the Google Graveyard. Every author who built their platform there lost it. And did Google give us Google Reader back as a way of saying sorry for killing Google+?

No. No, they did not.

Rug Pull #5: Facebook Pages

During the AuthorTechTips days, we spent a lot of time teaching authors how to set up Facebook pages, how to post engaging content, and how to connect with readers on social media. In 2010, this strategy worked!

Then everything changed when the Facebook EdgeRank Algorithm attacked. Facebook stopped showing you all the posts from the people and pages you followed and started sorting posts based on how relevant they thought the content was.

So, I adapted. I traveled the world teaching authors how to rank on Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, and it still worked. Authors could still use Facebook to reach thousands of readers for free. Then Facebook started replacing EdgeRank with machine learning that was optimized around revenue maximization.

Facebook makes more money when pages sponsor a post to reach fans than when pages reach fans for free. It started limiting the reach of pages. By 2016, the only reliable way to reach readers on Facebook was by paying for ads.

Facebook went from an author’s marketing super weapon to a total waste of time. Now I see it as a place to spend money, not a place to spend time.

Rug Pull #6: Social Media

When I started in 2007, I was optimistic about social media. It seemed like a way for the world to come together and for authors to use it for good. But as the algorithms came between users, political censorship grew, short videos replaced human interaction, and AI Slop dominated, I could no longer recommend social media for authors. In fact, I’ve helped countless authors build massive platforms and hit the bestseller list without touching social media.

The fall of Facebook and Google+ are an important lesson for authors in the importance of owning your platform. Owning your platform means paying money for services. If something is free, you are the product being sold. And if something is free, the company providing the free service may find that they can save money by deleting all your hard work.

This has been the biggest transformation in my thinking. I now embrace the “You’re an adult, and it’s a free country” ethos. Social networks treat you like a peasant and a child. I reject that philosophy down to the toes of my Texan boots. My ancestors fought in too many wars to escape that kind of old-world paternalism for me to trade my freedom for the facade of fake popularity.

Digital sharecropping is one step away from digital slavery and digital serfdom, where you will own nothing and be miserable. If you want to preserve your freedom, autonomy, and book marketing power, get a job and pay for the services you use. Buy things and care for what you own.

For authors, this means spending money on your own website and an email service provider.

Rug Pull #6: MailChimp

Mailchimp used to be the gold standard for managing author email newsletters, and it was the best pick for almost everyone. It offered a generous free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers, which allowed new writers to grow without any overhead costs. It was easy to use, had a great delivery rate, and offered reasonable prices for authors with larger lists.

We set up so many authors on MailChimp that the company sent Author Media monkey plushies and shirts.

Then they sold to private equity, and the platform started getting worse. First, it was little things. Features went missing, and the interface got harder to use. Then it was big things. The “forever free” plan of 2,000 free subscribers dropped to 1,000 subscribers.

Then the private equity company sold MailChimp to Intuit, the company that makes Turbo Tax. Intuit actively lobbies Congress to keep the tax code complicated, so you are forced to use their software. They got rid of MailChimp’s “forever free” plan entirely, raised the prices, and made the platform much harder to use.

Most authors switched away long ago. If you are still using MailChimp, I have good news for you. All of their competitors are better. I switched from MailChimp to Kit (affiliate link), but I know some authors who prefer MailerLite (affiliate link).

Because authors were paying customers of MailChimp, they were able to switch to a competitor and keep their subscriber list. While authors who left Facebook and Google+ left like refugees, authors who left MailChimp left like conquerors. That is the difference between being a customer and being the product sold to advertisers.

Part 3: Mistakes & Blunders

The following mistakes and blunders are wrong now, and they were wrong when I first said them.

Mistake #1: Thinking Social Media Was a Place to Listen to Readers

I used to think you could use social media to get to know your target audience. But by the time I was making this recommendation, users really only saw what the algorithm promoted.

Authors aren’t listening to readers on social media; they are listening to bots and the algorithm. This got a lot of companies in a lot of trouble. They paid big money for sentiment analysis having no idea how much the Biden administration was influencing the algorithm, as we have since learned in multiple congressional investigations.

But you don’t need a congressional investigation to tell you the true source of sentiment fled from social media into a million private group chats over the past decade.

Think of your own behavior. You used to post more content publicly on Facebook; now you share it in a private group chat or text message. You’re not having those kinds of conversations in public anymore, so the sentiment analysis that companies run on public posts is less accurate.

People are much more honest in a private group chat than they are on LinkedIn.

Even before the censorship industrial complex, social media users would self-censor and status seek. Marketers who want to know the truth are better served by watching customer behavior rather than monitoring customer sentiment. Because customers often aren’t even honest with themselves, but money tells the truth. Looking at what they actually buy gives you a much clearer picture.

Mistake #2: Recommending That Novelists Should Blog

Blogging is an amazing strategy for nonfiction authors. It helps authors market-test ideas, improve their craft, grow their platform, connect with readers, and get ideas into the world immediately.

I was convinced that there was a way to make blogging work for novelists. But for most novelists, blogs are a total flop, especially those just getting started.

Blogs can still be useful for novelists who want to connect with existing fans. If you’ve sold 10,000 copies of your novels, the rules change. But until you’ve built a fan base, no one cares about your movie reviews, hot takes, or reading list. Even the popular novelists’ blogs rarely lead to book sales because the blog topic is invariably different from their fiction.

This is why I don’t recommend Substack for novelists.

A blog is a place to create a permanent record for your email newsletter, or at least the portions of your newsletter that would interest readers a year from now. But it is not a way to get famous or to drive sales of your novels.

Mistake #3: Condenser Microphones for Author Podcasters

In the early days of the podcast, I recommended the Audio Technica AT2020 condenser microphone. because it was the microphone I used. When I first bought it, it was one of the only USB microphones on the market.

The problem with condenser microphones like the Blue Yeti is that they record the room in addition to the person talking into them. To get good performance from a condenser microphone, you need a professionally treated recording studio, with carpeted floors, foam on the walls, and books on the shelves. Blue Yetis lead to expensive room upgrades, and they still make you sound like you’re in a bathroom half the time.

Podcast Hall of Fame podcaster Dave Jackson roasted me for recommending a condenser mic on his Podcast Rodeo podcast, and he was right to do so.

By 2014, when I recommended the condenser microphone, USB dynamic microphones were available.

Most writers record in home offices with hard floors, air conditioners, windows, and pets. In the real world, dynamic microphones perform better at a lower cost. I now recommend dynamic microphones like the Samsung Q2U (Cheapest), PodMic USB (Best Value), or the Shure SM7B (Best Quality). These are all dynamic microphones that naturally reject background noise and make you sound like a professional.

I maintain a free podcast gear guide that I keep up to date as things change. You can find it at www.podcast.parts.

Mistake #4: Marketing Personas & Reader Avatars

For years, I followed the corporate marketing practice and helped authors create reader personas. I would have an author print out a stock photo of a fictional reader and tape it to their monitor.

This was a mistake.

Customer personas work in the corporate context because they are based on expensive marketing research and real-world experience from salespeople who talk with customers all day long.

Authors, on the other hand, are too creative for this exercise. They end up creating an imaginary friend who loves everything they write. This fictional reader persona is useless for helping the author make strategic editorial or marketing decisions.

Now I recommend that authors find a Timothy, a real-life human being you know personally who can give you honest, sometimes painful feedback. This has become an incredibly beneficial strategy that has helped countless authors.

It also helps predict failure. If an author goes looking for a Timothy and can’t find one, the book is doomed. If you can’t find one stranger who can get excited about your book, you can’t find a thousand.

Mistake #5: Avoiding Politics

For the first 10 years of Novel Marketing, we mostly avoided political topics. Jim wasn’t super political, and it felt off-topic. We still received 1-star reviews on Apple Podcasts for failing to virtue signal various progressive talking points. Silence is violence, apparently. I eventually recorded some oblique “how to survive cancel culture” type episodes, but in general, I kept the show apolitical.

However, the more time I spent in the publishing industry, the more I realized how politics influenced everything. Politics motivates which authors get book contracts, which books get placed on bookshelves, who gets hired, and which marketing techniques will work for which authors.

The authors who don’t realize how politics impacts publishing end up blundering around, oblivious to how the deck is stacked against them. For example, if you are a conservative white Christian man, no big publisher is going to sign you for a debut novel. But if you know what you are doing, you can make more money and reach more people as an indie author.

So, I started addressing political topics here and there. I began talking about the changing cultural zeitgeist, and that topic became so popular on YouTube that it spawned its own spin-off podcast called Author Update.  

Then Charlie Kirk was assassinated. That event changed me. Our episode about his death is the only time I’ve ever cried on this podcast. Seeing so many people celebrate, diminish, and justify his death caused me to stop caring about the negative comments from leftists. Once I saw what “internet people” celebrated, I stopped fearing their jeers.  

Also, it turns out, leftist trolls were not real in any kind of financial way. The leftists on YouTube or AuthorMedia.social who leave long diatribes are not patrons or channel members.

Mistake #6: Ignoring My Health

I’ve known for a while that my health was slipping. I was gaining weight every year, had less energy, and I was on an express train to a heart attack.

One YouTube commenter described my face as “horrifying.” Sometimes the trolls are right. I knew that if I wanted to walk my daughters down the aisle someday, I would need to make some major changes.

The tipping point was Charlie Kirk’s murder. I realized we were in for some dark times, and that I needed to be physically fit in order to help my family navigate them. We are in a fourth turning, where hard times make strong men, and I realized this had to become literally true for me.

My doctor recommended portion control and told me about apps that could estimate how many calories I was eating by analyzing a photo of my plate. It turned out my problem wasn’t what I was eating, but how much I was eating.

I was eating too much and moving too little.

I started tracking my eating with the LoseIt app, and got an Apple Watch to track my movement. My modest goal was to walk my kids to the park every day, which was enough to count for exercise because of how out of shape I was. But I kept at it. I started filling my activity rings and eventually setting more ambitious goals.  

Beyond that, I changed what I was eating. I focused on getting more soluble fiber, more protein, fewer carbs, and less fat. Tracking my food so closely with LoseIt helped me identify and avoid foods I don’t digest well. It turns out milk and seed oils are hard for me to digest, and I didn’t even know what seed oil was a couple of years ago.  

I recently used Grok’s multi-agent mode to create a health coaching panel made up of a Bio Hacker, a Dietitian, a Personal Trainer, and a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctor. These personas live in the project instructions for a Grok Project, and they debate each other using Grok’s multi-agent mode. I upload my food and workout logs into the project and get customized analysis and advice. With the advice of this AI health panel, I’ve started adding strength training with the Hevy app.

So far, I’ve lost about 50lbs, which sounds like a lot, but it’s only about half of what I need to lose. I have a long road ahead of me, but I am now making progress. I’m healthier each month than I was the month before. And no, I’m not taking prescription weight loss medication, but I’m not ruling out that possibility in the future.

I have a great episode with Joanna Penn about how to stay healthy as an author. When I recorded it with her, I was still pretty healthy. It was before my long, slow decline. She spoke very frankly about how writing can be an unhealthy profession.

Physically, it requires a lot of inactivity, especially for successful authors. When people first start writing, they typically don’t know how to overcome the psychological resistance. So they procrastinate by doing dishes, cleaning the house, anything but writing. At that stage, writing isn’t unhealthy because the avoidance can lead to more physical activity.

But once you learn to sit down and write, things change. You go from writing for one hour, to two, to three, to eight. Sitting at a computer for eight hours a day isn’t healthy. Our bodies weren’t designed for that.

She shared her journey toward getting healthier and wrote The Healthy Writer (affiliate link), which we discussed in our episode. Besides eating and moving, she also covers practical techniques for writers, like avoiding carpal tunnel and other physical issues.

Early in our careers, we work hard to learn how to sit down and write, and that discipline matters. But we also have to learn to get up and move. Movement actually helps creativity. It gives the mind rest, and a rested mind is often what you need to solve a plot problem or a character challenge.

Many Thanks to You!

So those are my big mistakes and hard lessons learned over the last 500 episodes. Ever since my season of pruning in 2019, these podcasts and courses have been my full-time job. I’m often dumbfounded and always grateful that I am able to support my family with this kind of work.  

I wouldn’t have been able to keep this going without the patrons who support the show on Patreon.com. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for spreading the word. Thank you for defending me in the comments.

I also want to thank the team that helps make Novel Marketing possible.

• James L. Rubart for helping me get the show off the ground and for cohosting the first 200 episodes.
• Shauna Letellier for her tireless work blogifying all of the episodes.
• William Umstattd for editing the audio and managing the podcast.
• Laurie Christine for helping wrangle topics and directing the Novel Marketing Conference.
• Joel Crumbly for editing the video and managing the YouTube channels.
• Margaret Umstattd for edits, being a sounding board and for standing by me through all the twists and turns in life.

And speaking of Margaret, we have an announcement: we are expecting Baby #5 in July!

Enter to win the Macbook Neo I reviewed a few episodes ago.