In this week’s episode, we take a look at 5 lessons indie authors can learn from tradpub.
This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:
JULYCROWN
The coupon code is valid through July 20, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 310 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 2nd, 2026 and today we are discussing five lessons indie authors can learn from traditional publishing. Given how negative I’ve been about traditional publishing over the years, that may be a bit of a surprise, but we will find out more later. We will also have a Coupon of the Week and a progress update at my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects.
So let’s start off with Coupon of the Week. This week’s coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 of my Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is JULYCROWN. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July 20th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook for your summer travels, we have got you covered.
And now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I’m pleased to report that Blade of Thieves is now done and published. Once this episode goes out, you should be able to get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. It’s starting off strong, so thank you to everyone who is reading and enjoying it. Thank you for everyone being patient while I got to it.
Now that Blade of Thieves is finished, my next main project will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy novel series. I’m currently 24,000 words into that. I think the rough draft will be about 100,000 words. If all goes well, I hope to have that out in August. My new secondary project is now Blade of Visions, which of course will be the direct sequel to Blade of Thieves. As of this recording, I am 1,000 words into it.
In audiobook news, Leanne Woodward has started recording Dragon-Mage and Hollis McCarthy is currently recording Cloak of Worlds, which was the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series. In a few days after this, Brad Wills is going to start recording on Blade of Thieves. So we should have a bunch of new audiobooks coming up for you to listen to before too much longer, if all goes well. So that is where I’m at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects.
00:02:23 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Things Indie Authors Can Learn From TradPub
Now onto our main topic this week, five lessons indie authors can learn from TradPub. Given how critical I have been and continue to be of traditional publishing on this blog and my podcast, this might come as a bit of a surprise and this should be in no way an endorsement for anyone to pursue traditional publishing.
My blunt opinion is that if you are a new author starting out, you are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better served going indie instead of traditionally publishing. You will retain ownership over your IP. You will potentially be able to make more money and you won’t have to deal with the various problems endemic in traditional publishing. Occasionally I see on social media a newish author trying to get an agent or being excited that an agent responded to their query letter or whatever. I don’t do this because arguing with strangers on the internet is a waste of time, but I want to tell them, “Don’t do this. Go indie. You’ll be much happier in the long run and you won’t have to worry about your agents stealing all your money,” of which there have been documented cases that have happened.
Now with all those caveats aside, traditional publishing has lasted for a long time. There is a reason that traditional publishing has survived so many changes and continues in many different forms to this day. And while I wouldn’t recommend that you pursue traditional publishing, there are things you can learn from it to enhance your career as an indie author. So today I’m going to talk about five things you can learn from TradPub as an indie author.
#1: Your book doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Many authors are resistant to their book being put into categories or being paired with similar books. I’ve frequently noticed that aspiring and first time authors are particularly resistant to the either idea of their book best fitting into a single category or being similar to another authors. It doesn’t mean that your book isn’t creative or unique, it’s accepting the reality of bookselling. Even in the modern indie era, books are still very much classified by a limited number of categories on book sites and ads are built on comparing your books to other authors.
Focus on the category that best represents your book if it spans genres and focus extra effort on finding similar authors to help potential readers understand what type of book you are offering. For example, I had this problem with Cloak Games and Cloak Mage for a couple of years because the series is primarily an urban fantasy, but it’s also set 300 years in the future. There are increasing science fiction elements in the series. The protagonist has visited several different planets and so forth, so trying to cram that all into an ad description or an ad targeting is a difficult proposition.
I had better success when I started describing the series as the Dresden Files crossed with the Shadowrun RPG, which readers of it will say probably captures it quite well and then in the marketing, I always focus on the urban fantasy elements. I don’t even mention the sci-fi elements because I think that’s a fair representation of the book is that it’s 80% urban fantasy with some sci-fi stuff in the background. So that is an example from my own books that I’ve done where I have emphasized the urban fantasy and contemporary fantasy aspect of Cloak Mage in the advertising and then just didn’t mention the rest of the stuff in the other advertising.
Traditional publishers even create the feeling of similarity with their own books by using the same artists and styles for their book covers. There was a post going around last year showing all the romance books with blue covers, cartoon figures facing each other while outside, and swooping white font. Book genres have conventions and trends in their covers. Instead of fighting that, you might want to take a time to look at the best sellers in your category to take note of what’s working for other authors in your category. A book cover doesn’t have to match everything about your book. It just has to give people a quick impression of what the book is about so it makes sense and doesn’t confuse people and gives them something that is least in line with genre expectations.
My rule of thumb for book covers is always that it should, in a space of two seconds of looking at a book cover, it should tell you the title of the book, the author of the book, and the genre of the book and it should do this all in an aesthetically pleasing and attractive matter. Those are essentially the four rules for a successful book cover, that you look at it and you can within two seconds know the title, the author, the genre, and it’s presented in aesthetically pleasing and attractive manner. So to get a good book cover for your category, it would be a good idea to look at the other books in your category and see if you can find a design that while it doesn’t copy the other designs, nonetheless follows some of the same design rules.
#2: Timing matters.
Traditional publishing is largely based on three seasons: spring, summer, and fall. By building the release schedule this way, it offers reliability for booksellers and libraries and each season has a general theme that makes it easier to market new releases. For example, fall has a lot of prestige literary fiction titles while summer might focus more on beach reads and SATs study guides.
Indie publishing isn’t beholden to this type of thinking about scheduling book releases, but it’s smart to learn from what has worked for traditional publishing over the last couple centuries. Book sales in the US are generally a little softer in January and the summer and peak around the winter gift giving season. Thrillers often get published in September and October so they can get the “spooky season” boost from people looking for Halloween adjacent reads. It makes sense to look at the rhythm of what has been working for bookselling in your genre and see if there’s a time that is especially advantageous for you to put out your book where you’re just starting out and don’t have very much in the way of your own sales data yet.
For myself, I found what indie authors really need to watch out for is holidays. Publishing a book the day before Christmas or the day after Christmas is not a good idea. One of the reasons I didn’t rush to get Blade of Thieves out the last week of June is because a lot of people will be taking the last week of June off because it leads right into the 4th of July holiday, which is why Blade of Thieves came out after 4th of July. I’d say the weakest times in my experience for indie authors are generally on November, December (because of the late Christmas), and then August and September also tend to be fairly weak because that is back to school time, which is very often very expensive and a financial strain for many people, in addition to their time and energy being focused on things other than recreational reading.
Also, I’ve been doing this long enough to say this with some authority is that presidential election years, especially in the run up to the election are always pretty weak times in 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024, especially 2024. I did notice a dip in sales as we approached the election and the general intensity of the campaigning and the ads and everything picked up. I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of the reading public, especially in the United States, also overlaps with the very politically involved public. I mean, it’s not a perfect Venn Diagram, but there is significant overlap. So as the election season heats up, you can expect to see a drop in sales. I honestly wonder if traditional publishing has that as well. I would look into that at some point. So I’d say for an indie author, be mindful of holidays and don’t be alarmed if you see a sales dip before and during the holidays and it might be a good idea if you have a big release to wait until after the holiday to push it.
Tip #3: If it’s a product, make it a good one.
Another thing that many authors reject is the notion that their book is a product to be sold and not just a piece of art. Publishing isn’t shy about thinking of their books as products with units just like a can of beans on a shelf and when you’re shipping hundreds of thousands of books across the world, the general process isn’t all that different (with the possible exception that books are generally quite heavy). When you remove some of that emotional attachment to a book and think of it as a product, it becomes a little easier to work with.
And what do I mean by that? It’s much easier to tear a book apart in editing, change the cover, fix the blurb, and make ads by thinking of the book as a product that exists next to similar products instead of a special and unique masterpiece. If your book is a product, then make it a good one. Take the time to improve it and look at it from an outsider’s perspective. Seek feedback, just like TradPub does through the use of advanced reader copies.
Tip #4: Deadlines work.
One thing traditionally published authors usually have that indie authors do not is a deadline. The TradPub book is set to be released on a specific date and missing the deadline is a pretty efficient way to get your publisher upset with you as a TradPub writer since that release date has likely been publicized and changing release dates could impact how your book sells against other books. The problem with not having a set deadline for finishing a book is that many indie authors fall prey to waiting for inspiration or letting themselves get into the habit of undisciplined work time. They let, as I often say, the perfect to be the enemy of the possible, or just as importantly, the finished.
Some people need an external deadline and pressure from other people in order to work for any meaningful amount of time. It’s best to know yourself and if you’re the kind of person who needs some structure to work well, to find a way to put that structure and those deadlines into your work as a writer. You can try making deadlines and sharing them with someone else in a form of accountability buddy or making a set of rewards based on making your own deadlines. Plotting out your release schedule at the beginning of another year is a way of doing this.
Tip #5: Paper books still matter.
A surprising area of opportunity for TradPub has been print books. For some categories like children’s books or cookbooks, ebooks have never been the driving force and the demand for physical copies over ebooks has remained fairly consistent. Some of the trend of readers wanting more print books started in the COVID era when people were spending entire days on Zoom meetings and staring at computer screens for work or school and needed a break from their screens in their leisure time.
Bookstagram and BookTok have also driven this print trend. These influencers typically use physical books in their photos and videos and they are often arranged in various athletically pleasing ways. Publishers responded with a slew of special and exclusive print editions for this market and existing fans of the series. They often have sprayed edges or color illustrations and are so prized by collectors that some have the [sprayed edges] on the books facing out in their bookshelves or books on stands to display certain interior illustrations.
Traditional publishing did not give up on print and neither should you as an indie author. Most of your income as an indie author is probably going to come from some form of ebooks, but print should not be overlooked. Some categories do better than others in the print format, but many readers will want the print version of a favorite book they have already read as an ebook or just prefer print as their preferred reading format.
Fortunately, the days of having to buy a large amount of print books and keep them in your garage has passed for indie authors. Many companies, including Amazon, Ingram Spark, and Draft2Digital offer print on demand services for indie authors so you don’t have to spend a large sum of money printing your own books. It’s worth investigating how the print on demand format might work for you as an indie author.
One thing I should also mention is that if you write nonfiction, it’s also a very good idea to have a print edition because for certain kinds of nonfiction books, the reader will keep the nonfiction book and reference it again and again and keep it for years as opposed to a fiction book where the reader might read it once and be done with it and if it’s not their favorite book, they might not need a print edition.
My Linux Command Line Beginner’s Guide is also available in print and is my overall bestselling print book because it’s essentially a tutorial for learning the basics of the Linux command line and it makes sense therefore that people would want the physical copy as a quick reference when doing things in the Linux command line.
In conclusion, there’s no point in throwing out the centuries of experience that traditional publishers have in selling books. Although the publishing industry continues to change (and although I still think you’re better off self-publishing than pursuing a TradPub deal), it’s wise to look at things that are working there and adapt them to suit your needs (although once again, I still think you’re better off self-publishing).
So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your view on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we’ll see you all next week.
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