Summary: This week, the guys talked about Direct Sales and why Rainmaker is helping us make SterlingandStone.Net the best author website on the internet. They (well, mostly Sean) ramble quite a lot about the subject at first, but they end up saying some really useful stuff by the end. First, they talked about writer health, prompted from a listener voicemail. The conversation focused mostly on how important ergonomics is for writers, since we spend most of our day sitting very still while typing our brains out. They also showed off Sterling & Stone’s first ever hardcover, The Dream Engine. This is a big step for us, and we hope to have many more hardcovers in the future. Even though there is quite a learning curve involved, plus the lack of promise of getting any real profit from sales, having hardcover available is really making a statement about how seriously you take your books, and hopefully that will inform how seriously others take them, too. We got an update on the Sterling & Stone logo contest, which, thanks to 99 Designs, is going awesome! There were so many options to choose from that it made Dave cranky, and once we had narrowed the choices down to a handful, the results were astoundingly beautiful. Finally, they got to the topic of direct sales and the reasoning behind the decision to make S&S the official umbrella site for everything Johnny, Sean, and Dave are doing. A few things that were touched on: How Sterling and Stone came about The benefits of direct sales The subscription model and how to build a relationship with readers What authors can do now to apply some of the stuff we’re doing on S&S, even if you can’t afford to use Rainmaker. By the way, here’s the link Johnny mentioned from Garrett’s blog, about direct sales. If you have questions, about any of this, leave them below on this blog post, and the guys will answer them on a G&A hangout tomorrow (Thursday) night. NOTE: You’ll see that hangout, not on the usual Youtube channel, but a different one completely. Here’s the link to S&S’ new, official channel, where all SPP and BOU episodes will be from now on.
