The Story Studio Podcast - Writing, Storytelling, and Marketing Advice for Writers & Business

If you’ve ever questioned your writing or wondered whether you were ready for your dream project, this inspirational episode is for you. As Dave said, sometimes writing something smaller and more personal will give you the lessons to attack the big stories. Fresh on the heels of finishing The Beam and Yesterday’s Gone, listen to […]

Justin Sloan joins us to talk about video game writing and writing while keeping your day job. He a novelist, game writer for telltale games, and screenwriter. This episode is full of information on the differences in structure between novels and games, how he started and what is required to think outside the box when […]

Selling more books with autoresponders goes beyond a simple newsletter list. While Sterling and Stone requires detailed segmentation, you can learn tools and techniques for you own list regardless of size. This episode covers: What is the purpose of an autoresponder How to use broadcast and autoresponders for maximum effectiveness What you should put in […]

Johnny and Sean brought JA Huss on to talk about street teams after they read her popular book 321. In addition to being the first romance book that Sean told Johnny to read immediately, they were impressed by the number of her day one verified reviews on Amazon. This interview took an amazing left turn […]

If you’ve been faithfully watching the show for a while, then you might remember the guys wondering out loud about this mysterious website called Buck Books. They wondered what the company was all about, and they puzzled about how legit it was. (Because how do you take someone with the name Buck Flogging seriously, really?) Since then, the guys have come to terms with the funky name and even funkier profile picture (seriously, go here to see the profile pic for Buck: http://archangelink.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bucks-pic.jpg) and they’ve come to see Buck Books as a tool many authors should know about. Enter Matt Stone, who came on the show to tell us about what Buck Books is and to share some insights into how to make a book more appealing to readers. There are some very good tips here, so don’t you dare miss the show! Visit Buck Books Here: http://buckbooks.net Visit Matt’s Other Site Here: http://archangelink.com

Let's face it--exclusivity sucks, and having "all your eggs in one basket" when it comes to where your books are available isn't a smart idea at all. But... But Amazon's KDP Select just keeps winning us over, tempting us with new benefits and goodies for staying exclusive. So whatever should an indie author do? Swallow the pill and go exclusive? Or play the long-term game and go wide? In this week's episode, the guys talked about how maybe there's another way to think about your relationship with Amazon, and maybe there's a way to make Amazon work for you instead of the other way around. This week, the guys talked about how much they’re using Select and why. This is more than simple experimentation; it’s about making a cost-benefit judgement. KDP wants exclusivity, but what does it give in return? The guys suggested a completely new way of looking at KDP, a way that just might keep us from feeling abused. More importantly, this attitude is essential when working with any platform, and it’s necessary to future-proof your business. Also this week, we get an update on how “optimization” is working out for S&S, and we all get some tips that could help us optimize, too. Among those tips were some pointers about covers. Go to sterlingandstone.net to see the covers discussed on the show!

Your list, your email list, where readers can stay connected with you and get notifications of your latest releases, is probably the single most important thing any indie author should have in order to be a self-publishing pro, except for maybe a well-written book, of course. We’ve heard the guys talk before about how important having an email list is, as well as them lamenting how they slacked off in that area for most of last year, but we haven’t yet really dug into how to build your list and keep your readers opening your emails, even months later. Enter Nick Stephenson, email marketing extraordinaire and author of both fiction and nonfiction. He was a charming and knowledgable guest who definitely had a thing or two to say about how to build and sustain an email list, for either fiction of nonfiction authors. Among the things Nick talked about were: How he built his list to incredible number in a matter of months How he handles both his fiction and nonfiction lists How he keeps his open and click-through rates high for his different lists There is so much great info here, you’ll probably want to listen more than once, and if you’re like me, you’ll want to keep a notebook handy so you can jot down some email list ideas for your business.

The vast majority of SPP episodes so far have been applied mostly to fiction authors, which makes sense because Johnny, Sean and Dave are all primarily fiction authors and most of us watching/listening at home are the same. But, still, with Smarter Artist (Sterling & Stone’s nonfiction imprint) constantly growing and succeeding and more and more writers either dabbling in nonfiction or fully embracing it, it’s about time to show nonfiction some more love on SPP! Enter Steve Scott, habits expert, kindle marketing superhero, and nonfiction-writing extraordinaire. And he had some wonderful tips and tricks to share with us SPP listeners on how to outline, write, launch, and market a nonfiction book. Of course, no matter what you write, this episode has plenty of gems that make it well worth listening to. Of special note, among other things are: How Steve comes up with his nonfiction book ideas What his new daily podcast is all about, and why you may want to check it out What’s working for Steve in the area of marketing, and what’s not, and why How Steve uses his email list and the 99-cent price point to sell more books How he uses his habits expertise to help him improve as a writer

The first episode of the new year, we’re starting things off right by talking about goals for 2015. The guys really shaped the year to come (until something shiny distracts them and everything changes) by laying out some benchmark outcomes and concepts. The new word for the year is either “harmony” or “optimization,” at least for now, since it will likely change a few times in the months to come. Now that S&S has a massive catalog of titles to play with, in Johnny’s perfectly articulated words, “it’s time to make our books work for us.” A few things you’ll probably be looking forward to especially: A return to form for Collective Inkwell, meaning more words and more amazing stories Fiction Unboxed 2, which the guys are promising will be game changing and jaw dropping A return to fiction as the main focus for S&S That last one is good whether you read their fiction or not. We’ll all likely see a huge improvement in the usefulness of SPP if the guys are producing more fiction and promoting it more. After all, most listeners are fiction writers, so if the guys do more cool stuff with their fiction, we’ll all benefit more from lessons learned from their experiments, failures, and successes. All in all, if you’re not excited about SPP and Sterling and Stone for the new year, what’s wrong with you?

This week, the guys wrapped up the year by meandering around a couple of different amazing topics. The voicemails supplied fantastic questions, which lead to interesting mini discussions. The main topic, the guys’ predictions for the indie publishing world in 2015, was definitely more a wish-list than a try at fortune-telling. Will any of them actually come true? I mean, who wouldn’t love for Amazon to improve their dashboard? And wouldn’t it be great to have another indie hit Howie-levels of success? Will any of those things actually come true? Only time will tell.

It’s a true mark of wisdom to be able to learn from your own experiences and mistakes. As 2014 draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to stop and think about what we did best, what we can work on, and what mistakes we can take lessons from to make the next year stronger than the last. That’s exactly what the guys did this week, and the episode that resulted was solid gold. A few key topics that were covered (and you won’t want to miss): Sending emails regularly Having pro covers Not releasing single episodes (well, for now, anyway) Constantly getting better (iterative growth) Trimming you tribe and getting closer to your truest fans And all kinds of smaller points we can’t even list here. All in all, there were a lot of fantastic lessons hit here, and listening to this episode will no doubt help you think of what lessons you can learn from this year to help you start 2015 with a bang!

This week the guys talked about how to stay motivated… well, at least for the last 20 minutes, anyway. As usual, the off-topic stuff was actually as fun as the topic itself. They talked about email for a while. As any long-term listener probably knows, we’ve been slacking on email for most of this year. But now that we’re taking advantage of email again, a lot of fans are responding very positively. Finally, the central topic, how to stay motivated, was nothing but gold. If you’ve ever stalled while writing, if you’ve ever hit writer’s block or lost all motivation in writing halfway through the project, then the second half of this episode should really help you!

This week, the guys talked about how to bond with your readers. This is definitely one of the top ten most useful episodes of the year, in my book, so you should absolutely check it out. There is a lot of emphasis these days on producing more and writing faster, and indies often focus on two main tricks to sell more books: price and promos. But also incredibly important is finding ways to connect with your readers, to slowly win them over, build a lasting relationship, and make them your true fans. How do you do that? The guys talked about a few fantastic ways they've used in the past, such as: Author's notes Development diaries Author-read audio recordings Newsletters and autoresponders Giving bonuses and finding other ways to surprise your readers (in a good way) Even if you have very few readers really following your work right now, and even if your writing time is limited and you feel you don't have time for all that extra work, coming up with ways to bond with readers is an essential part of building you tribe, which will be nothing but profitable in the future.

We haven’t talked about audiobooks near enough yet! This week, the guys sat down with audiobook narrator Rachel Fulginiti about storytelling through audio and using popular narrators to magnify your marketing reach. Any long-time listener of the show will know that the guys haven’t been big fans of audio in the past. They didn’t have anything against it; they just didn’t really consume books in audio so they saw narration as very 20 percent. More recently, Sean has been binging on audio content, and his appreciation for fine narration is only growing week to week. Add to that the fact that many narrators have their own tribes, true fans of their voice and storytelling style that follow them from book to book, no matter the author or genre, and the guys are certainly thinking that the right author-narrator team can go a lot of good. Rachel was a charming guest, and her thoughts on audiobooks and the relationship between author and narrator were refreshing and insightful. This is worth listening to more than once, for sure!

This week the guys talked with recurring guest Ed Robertson about branching off from one series to a new one in the same world. On paper, the idea seems to be pretty sound. If you’re coming off one series that already has a sizable following and sales, like Ed is with Breakers, doesn’t it make sense to start a new series in that same world? Not only would the second series promote crossover—with some readers jumping over from one series to the next—but it would also start with a rich and textured world to grow from, saving you work and allowing you to jump right into a more interesting story. Well, thats the idea, anyway. A good portion of the show was spent talking about how Sean and Johnny didn’t make it to the bestseller lists they were shooting for, which gave Ed a chance to rub his credentials in their faces. But he was able to give some great advice regarding how to use promos and box sets to multiply sales.