Johnny B. Truant is one of indie publishing's early authorities, having created and co-hosted the original Self Publishing Podcast with Sean Platt and David Wright. He is also the author of the indie cornerstone guide Write. Publish. Repeat, and hosted the Smarter Artist Summit author conference in Austin, Texas from 2015-2018 with the same two partners.

On the fiction side, Johnny is the bestselling author of Fat Vampire, adapted by The SyFy Network as Reginald the Vampire. His other books include Pretty Killer, Gore Point, Invasion, The Beam, Dead City, Unicorn Western, and over 100 other titles across many genres.

Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas where he's finally surrounded by creative types as weird as he is.

LINK:

https://johnnybtruantbooks.com

AWARDS/LISTS/ACCOLADES:

(Given in the bio above. Nothing else to note)

The Artisan Author by Johnny B. Truant

Less rush. More freedom. A way to love writing again.

If modern indie publishing feels like a high-stress race to the bottom, the good news is there's another way.

Most authors start writing for the love of it, but in recent years the reality of "writing for a living" has soured. Now, for a lot of us, it no longer looks fun — or creatively fulfilling — at all.

You have to obey genres exactly or your books won't sell. If you step outside your lane and try something new, the kinds of readers most authors court will never buy it. And then there's the SPEED of it all: The rules of "Rapid Release" say you have to publish a book every month — at least — or you'll never survive. Forget about taking a vacation. Time off will let the algorithms forget you.

Even successful authors often find themselves in "golden handcuffs": selling a lot of books, but only in a series they now have to write forever. And all that to earn around a dollar per book … sold to readers who are far more loyal to Kindle Unlimited than to you.

Where's the joy? Where's the delight that got you into storytelling in the first place? Remember when writing felt like a creative playground instead of a grind? What if, instead of succumbing to that grind, you could find a way to be creative and free … without having to settle for poverty?

In The Artisan Author, industry veteran Johnny B. Truant offers an alternative to Rapid Release: a new way to succeed as an author without sacrificing your freedom, worrying about competition or AI, or fearing you'll lose everything when the winds — or the algorithms — inevitably change.

The way of the Artisan Author is the opposite of Rapid Release. Instead of rushing to churn out the same-old same-old, Artisans follow their muse and write whatever they want. Instead of stressing out, Artisans take their time, putting as much care and beauty into their work as they desire. It's a way to build a substantial, sustainable, bulletproof income based on Kevin Kelly's idea of "1000 True Fans": readers who are loyal to you, not any platform. True Fans are all you need to earn as much as you want as an author. They're people with whom you build genuine human connections … and who therefore love you enough to spend far more than ordinary readers will ever spend.

Johnny B. Truant has been a thought leader in the independent publishing community for over a decade, hosting the original Self Publishing Podcast, holding the Smarter Artist Summit conference, and co-authoring the industry bible Write. Publish. Repeat. In The Artisan Author, Johnny presents an art-first, quality-over-quantity alternative to Rapid Release for writers who thought sacrificing creative joy was the only way to succeed.

It's not, though. It's wonderful over here on the artfully profitable side of writing. Join us, will you?

 

REVIEWS

  • "Art over algorithms, soul over speed. Johnny provides encouragement for indie authors who want to make a living on passion, not pace, and a practical roadmap for focusing on delivering high value books to true fans."

    – Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn

  • "The insights and advice that Johnny gives in The Artisan Author are exactly on point. I was nodding and grinning all the way through. Find your readers and treat them right!"

    – Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Dune: House Atreides

  • "This is a book that the indie author community has needed for a long time. Not only did Johnny B. Truant step up to the plate in support of author longevity, but he hit this one out of the park."

    – Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Founding Director of Kobo Writing Life and author of Wide For the Win
 

BOOK PREVIEW

We Were Promised Unicorns. We Were Given TPS Reports

I'll bet you remember the day you realized you wanted to be a writer.

Maybe it wasn't one specific day. Maybe it was a year, or a season of life, in which the idea of writing slowly grew within you. Maybe, like many authors, books saved you at a time when you needed them most, and a deep part of you decided you wanted to do the same for others. You'd build fantasies for strangers to lose themselves in. You'd plumb the depths of the mundane with your words, trying to make sense of it all. You'd build worlds like sanctuaries: a refuge from the everyday; a pause button for the frenzy — or the difficulty — of your future readers' lives.

Maybe you've always had stories within you. Maybe, like a seedling finding its way through hard earth, a fragile idea struggled for years inside your mind — shaping and reshaping itself until one day, it broke free and became words on a page. Maybe that process took decades. Maybe it happened in a snap. Either way, a feeling came with it: You no longer had to accept the reality you were given. Now you were a creator, and could live in worlds of your own.

You were free. And as soon as you figured out how to make some money selling your books, you'd be freer still.

Speaking for myself, the dream of writing full-time was all that kept me sane for a while. I was in a job I hated, and the prospect of advancing in that job (thereby earning the right to do it forever) felt like sailing headlong into a storm. But I couldn't see an alternative. I'd set my sails and was qualified for nothing else. Worse, it was 1999: a decade or so before the Kindle made digital self publishing possible. Back then, "becoming an author" meant submitting short stories to magazines that nobody read, then sending query letters to agents to trumpet those credits and hope they'd deign to represent you.

It was a one-in-a-million shot. My odds of escape were not promising.

Before ebooks and print-on-demand, there were only two paths to becoming a writer. One was to pay to publish thousands of copies of your book and sell them from the trunk of your car, and the other was to win the lottery by finding not just a good agent, but also a good editor. But it didn't stop there. You also had to luck into a publishing deal big enough to buy more than ramen noodles … and even then, if your book didn't sell as many copies as the publisher wanted, they'd pass on publishing your next book and send you right back to zero.

My dream of writing for a living felt about as possible as being struck repeatedly by lightning, but I didn't care. It was my only way out. My only way to do what I truly wanted, and enjoy my life instead of hating so much of it.

If you've been at this a while, maybe you can relate. If you're brand new, be glad the world has changed. Because it did change. After ebooks and print-on-demand became a thing, the draconian trad scene was no longer the only way to get published. Technology had given us new formats, and the internet had given us a voice. Writers didn't need permission anymore. Now we could reach readers directly, and deliver our books through sites like Amazon.

The sun came out. Bunnies hopped through beautiful meadows. Unicorns blessed us all with the fertile magic of unlimited possibility, and writers' dreams came true the world over.

Maybe that's where you entered the picture, or maybe you're just entering the picture now. Whether you were a writer in the good ol' days or just became one recently, you're probably familiar with the dream that began in the late twenty-aughts and early teens. Suddenly, writers didn't need permission to write, nor to publish. We could reach readers everywhere without middlemen! Unicorns rejoice!

Well … not so fast.

Let me ask a question. Is that how the writing world feels to you right now?

If this is the first book about indie publishing that you've read, maybe it does still feel that way. If, however, you've read other books — or attended writers' conferences, or lurked in author forums, or followed authors-talking-about-authoring on YouTube or elsewhere — you've probably gotten a very different picture.

Yes, you used to be able to write whatever you wanted, but now everyone knows you really need to write to market. Research a genre, study the recurring elements, then write a book with all that same stuff and be sure to commission a cover that looks like all the others.

Yes, you used to be able to put your book up for sale and people would buy it, but obviously you have to do more than that now. Have you chosen the right keywords? Picked all the right sub-genres? Is your description SEO-optimized? Oh, and what about social media promotion and advertising? You don't actually think you can sell books without learning to run ads, do you? Well, don't worry. Ad strategies change all the time, but if you join all the courses and spend a few hours a day staying current, your ad game might only be slightly behind the curve.

Yes, you used to be able to sell your book for a decent price, but now we're told readers won't pay more than about $2.99. You could make your book exclusive to Amazon with the hope of earning more through Kindle Unlimited, but KU is hit or miss. You might do great there … or your books might earn almost nothing. Either way, you'll be attracting readers who don't actually like to pay for books because they're paying Amazon for an all-you-can-read subscription. That's cool, right?

Yes, you used to be able to publish a book occasionally and do okay. Can't do that now, though. You do have enough new releases lined up to publish at least one a month indefinitely, right? No? Well, then you'd better cancel your vacations and weekends and start writing yourself into burnout if you hope to survive. These days, "Rapid Release" is all the rage. If you can pump out books fast enough, you might outrun Amazon's extraordinarily short shelf life. If not, good luck. Books older than about a month might as well be invisible. Nobody sees them.

Yes, you used to be irreplaceable to your readers. Those were the good old days. Now, we're told that if you don't publish something new immediately, your readers will move on to someone else. They probably won't remember your name anyway, seeing as you were just one more snack in their neverending book buffet. Oh, and don't forget about AI. Some folks who've really dialed into writing with AI can produce a few new books a week. I guess you're pretty replaceable after all.

Doesn't feel like unicorns anymore, does it?

These days, with so many indie writers praying at the temple of so-called "Rapid Release publishing," it starts to feel like there are only two options for authors, be they established or newbies. Choice #1 is to join the rat race and publish commoditized, written-to-market, coloring-within-the-lines fiction at a rate of one book every two to four weeks if you want a chance of success. Choice #2 is to write whatever you want however you want … but sell almost nothing.

I was one of the early voices in digital self publishing — one of those excited souls who, starting in 2011, publicly sang this industry's praises. When I returned in 2023 after three years away, though, the lose-lose dichotomy I've just described hit me like a hammer. I'm an art-first author, so Choice #1 felt worse than the most tedious office job. Choice #2, while creatively satisfying, wasn't any better. Yes, I love writing and would do it for free … but how could I justify taking much time to write if I couldn't earn money doing it?

I stared out at those newly-foreign lands in 2023, wondering when someone had swapped my unicorns for a world of TPS reports and officiousness. When had writing become such a grind? All my old hopes fell away in a heap. I suddenly realized that the WOPR supercomputer from the movie Wargames was talking about authoring as much as global thermonuclear war when it said, "The only winning move is not to play."

More and more, what passes for "normal" among self-published authors is unpalatable to someone like me — someone who wants freedom in what I write, genuine connections with readers, to enjoy my work instead of burning out, and to actually make a living instead of selling my books for pennies. Maybe you're like me. Maybe you've done your research, looked out into the wide world of writing, and decided it sounds no better now than it ever did — even back in the query-and-pray days.

Maybe the "normal" way of doing things is unpalatable to you, too. Maybe once upon a time, you dreamed of being a writer. Maybe, against all odds, you actually became one. But maybe now you feel like I felt, and like the WOPR felt. Why bother writing if the only winning move is not to play?

Well, don't give up just yet. Don't declare it all a loss just yet. This book might contain the breath of fresh air you've been waiting for.

As it turns out, there is an alternative. There is another way to be a successful author — a way that almost nobody talks about in the faster-faster world we indies unwittingly find ourselves in. There is an alternative to the Rapid Release race to the bottom. There is a way to write what you want, charge what's fair, court loyal fans who love you, and build a writing life in which you can start every day with the rainbow-loving unicorn joy you were promised.

You don't have to obey the rules that everyone else follows.

You don't have to rush.

You don't have to sell your heartfelt stories for pennies on the dollar.

And you don't have to worry, if you dare to live your life instead of working 24/7, that you'll be left behind and forgotten.

If what you've just read strikes a chord, then it's time to buckle up, buttercup — because I'm about to share an evolutionary writing renaissance with you.

Come with me, dear writer, into the way of the Artisan Author.

You can't possibly imagine the creative joy you've been missing.