Writer resources available on The Author Stack
While we have an extensive archive of articles about building a writing career, we also offer several other resources to help authors build better businesses. Some of these are available for free. Others are available only to paid members, as are a bunch of novels and comics I’ve written throughout my career. Good news, though…you can become a paid member and then access all these titles with a free 7-day trial.
FREE RESOURCES
ARTICLES
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: FREE
This is our main publication. It sits at the intersection of craft and commerce, helping writers build more sustainable businesses that allow them to thrive while creating work that lights them up inside. We strive to give authors agency in a world that too often seems intent on stripping it away from them.
TUTORIALS
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: FREE
These articles are more focused on step-by-step instructions than most of the others in this publication. When there is a complicated topic with many steps that must be followed precisely, we will put them into this section. In general, you will either get a regular article or a tutorial each week.
GUEST POSTS
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: FREE
Every week we bring in top industry experts to talk about how they are building their businesses and help you on their journey. These are perfect for authors at every stage of their journey.
THE SIX FIGURE AUTHOR EXPERIMENT
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: FREE
“I have a dumb idea, but it also might be brilliant.”
Russell Nohelty has been pitching this idea to people for years with lackluster results until he met Lee Savino at The Future of Publishing Mastermind and they vibed together.
The idea is as simple as it is complex. Even though Russell is a USA Today bestselling author whose made over $500,000 on Kickstarter alone, almost none of his 40+ novels are on retailers. In fact, his three most popular series (The Godsverse Chronicles, The Obsidian Spindle Saga, and Dragon Strife) which have accounted for hundreds of thousands in Kickstarter and direct sales, have never been put on retailers at all.
When Lee heard that she just about fell out of her seat, but then she fell in love with the idea of launching them live through a podcast and talking through all the ups and downs with people as they happen.
So, after a first meeting that went so well they decided to record it, Lee and Russell started a podcast with the express intent to launch his series The Godsverse Chronicles on retailers, failing and succeeding along the way to help you launch better books.
Even though it started as a retailer centric show, it has evolved to include the entire indie author industry, including Kickstarter, Substack, Patreon, Shopify, and much more.
🐲DRAGON BONUSES
Dragons have it all; wealth, tributes, fans, love, fear, and zero f*cks to give. They move at their own pace and still, it all works for them. Honestly, we at The Author Stack could use more of that energy, which is why we created our dragon tier. When you choose to embrace your inner dragon, you get access to all our top tier resources to help you get where you want to be in your career and stay there.
You’ll also get access to the Poobah dragon, Russell Nohelty, by being able to slide into his DMs with any questions you have along the way (as long as you don’t abuse it). This is something Russell doesn’t offer lightly, as he’s very protective of his energy, and something he’s never offered before to anyone but close friends.
We also have a paid chat, monthly calls, and a wonderful flock of dragons to help you embrace your inner badass.
SECRETS OF SUBSTACK BESTSELLERS
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: Paid (🐲Dragons)
Success on Substack is not one-size-fits-all. Whether you prioritize growth or focus on monetization, the key lies in aligning your goals with the right strategies. Define your touchpoint level, understand your audience’s needs, and plan for a sustainable path forward. Your Substack can become a thriving ecosystem—if you approach it with clarity and purpose.
Russell Nohelty and Claire Venus share insights on navigating Substack, focusing on the balance between growth and monetization. They discuss the importance of understanding your goals—whether to run a low or high touchpoint publication—and tailoring strategies for sustainable success.
BUILD YOUR SUPERFANDOM
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
Are you a creative who's sick of agonizing to make enough money? Have you spent years banging your head against a brick wall, trying to make it work with little success to show for it? Are you struggling to connect with a fan base of excited customers?
Then Build a Superfandom is for you! This course was created with one question in mind:
What would I go back and tell my past self that would take years off my own struggle and make me a successful creative without wasting time, energy, effort, and money?
This course was the answer to that question. It's a practical guide to everything I needed to know in order to get the six figure creative business I run today.
I've spent the last decade building my creative writing business from just a few thousand dollars a year into a successful six-figure business without using fan art, licensing products, or relying on public domain characters. In that time, I have become a USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR, raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter, and grown my email list to tens of thousands of superfans.
THE KICKSTARTER ACCELERATOR
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
Plan, Market, and Launch Your Next Kickstarter Using the Kickstarter Accelerator Methodology that Russell Nohelty developed from running 20+ Kickstarters and raising $300,000+ on novels, anthologies, comics, and audio dramas.
The Kickstarter Accelerator is the course that broke everything open for Writer MBA, and combined with the Fund Your Book with Kickstarter and Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter books available to paid members, will make your next (or first) campaign be your best launch ever.
DIRECT SALES MASTERY FOR AUTHORS
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
Are you tired of fighting with algorithms and ad copy to make book sales? Do you see your book sales dwindling and know you need to make a change?Have you tried selling books direct through your website, crowdfunding, subscriptions, or in-person, but struggled to gain traction?
Then Direct Sales Mastery for Authors is perfect for you.
Direct sales refers to the practice of authors selling their books or other written works directly to consumers without the involvement of traditional publishing houses or third-party retailers. This approach allows authors to have more control over the distribution and pricing of their works. It often involves selling books through various channels.
We recognize five areas of direct sales for authors: Website landing pages, website storefronts, crowdfunding launches, subscriptions and memberships, and live events and signings.
In these books, we show you how to make money in all of these areas! Direct Sales Mastery for Authors Volume One and Two covers all five of these areas to give you the most robust understanding of the opportunities that all authors have right now.
DIRECT SALES ACCELERATOR
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
In conjunction with our direct sales books, this accelerator is a self-study course filled with material on how to build a direct sales environment through your website, and at conventions. We have other courses for subscriptions (Substack specifically) and Kickstarter available to dragon and paid members, so this focuses on those three other paths.
CREATE PROFITABLE FACEBOOK ADS
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
Understand your customer journey, craft ads that people want to see, and make a profit off your ads. I've taken lots of Facebook courses in my life and spent thousands of dollars on failed Facebook ad campaigns before I finally figured out how to make them work for me, and now I'm bringing that knowledge to you. This course was created years ago, but it's in general still relevant (though the interface has changed)
HOW TO RUN A VIRAL GIVEAWAY TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID (🐲Dragons)
Have you been stuck growing your email list with very little results? Do you want massive growth in your list in a very short amount of time? Your email list is the most important thing necessary to grow your business, and being able to run a group builder with 10-20 other creators means that you can add 1,000 new prospective customers to your list, every week, as often as you would like. If you can master this single concept, you can revolutionize your creative business and go from struggling to successful in no time at all.
PAID MEMBER BONUSES
As a paid subscriber to the Author Stack, you receive several additional resources only otherwise available to our members.
HOW TO BUILD A WORLD CLASS SUBSTACK
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Are you ready to start a world-class Substack? Are you interested in building your mailing list or paid subscriptions on a platform that gets great organic reach?Are you struggling to get noticed in a sea of other publications?
Then How to Build a World Class Substack is perfect for you.
Written by USA Today bestselling author Russell Nohelty and Substack expert Claire Venus, this comprehensive guide dives deep into the strategies and techniques for creating a standout Substack publication. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting, this book offers valuable insights into maximizing your impact on Substack.
Learn how to create compelling content, grow your subscriber base, and navigate the unique features of the Substack platform. Russell and Claire share their personal experiences, practical tips, and proven methods to help you build a successful and sustainable publication.
If you're ready to elevate your Substack, engage with your audience, and build a publication that truly shines, turn the page and start your journey to becoming a Substack rockstar. Your path to a world-class Substack begins here and it's full of joy!
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
How to Become a Successful Author is the best book you'll ever read on building a successful author career from the ground up, packed with everything you need to know to become a successful author, starting today. It is broken up into three sections: Mindset, all about how to build focus, grit, and resilience, Writing, where Russell breaks down how to build a successful book from the ground up, and Marketing, where you'll learn how to take your book and share it with the world.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR CREATIVE CAREER
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
How to Build Your Creative Career is set up in five sections: How to Make Great Content, The Basics of Sales, Building an Audience from Scratch, Making Money at Live Shows, and Launching your Product Successfully. Every creative I’ve ever met is stuck at one of those stages of their career, and this book gives you the tools to open those floodgates, overcome those blocks in your own career, and supercharge your career. This book can’t guarantee you a successful career, but it can give you all the fundamental knowledge you need to set you up for success because it was written by a creative for a creative.
ADVANCED GROWTH TACTICS FOR AUTHORS
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Advanced Growth Tactics for Authors is a collection of essays on growing a creative business between 2015-2022 and we've now compiled them into one place. This book is filled with everything I learned about building a business that lasts and allows me to thrive. If How to Build a Creative Career is a beginner’s guide to building a writing business and How to Become a Successful Author builds on that for experienced authors, then this book is the master’s course.
BOOK SALES SUPERCHARGED
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Learn how to get your book selling on platforms from USA Today bestselling authors Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle. Five books are available behind the paywall: Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, Get Your Book Selling on Facebook, Get Your Book Selling with Cross-Promotion, Get Your Book Selling at Events and Signings, and Get Your Book Selling in Print.
THE AUTHOR ECOSYSTEMS
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Are you struggling to turn my writing into a career? Are you overwhemed trying to decide what advice you should take (and what you can filter out)? Are you desperate to prevent or recover from burnout?
Then you'll love The Author Ecosystems.
After working with thousands of authors to help turn their love of writing and publishing into a sustainable career, USA Today bestselling authors Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle have observed five clear and unique publishing ecosystems (or archetypes) that closely align with author success.
We’ve mapped these archetypes onto the five ecosystem biomes on Earth (Desert, Grassland, Tundra, Forest, and Aquatic) to provide a clear, easily visualized metaphor for each type and linked them to successful publishing strategies that work best for each one. We’ve also identified healthy and unhealthy habits for each type and have developed guidance to create a healthy ecosystem and foster a sustainable author career using strategies that align with your natural strengths.
Depending on your archetype, there will be certain things that resonate with you more than others, and different strategies will help you to thrive. The Author Ecosystem helps you identify those things that will help you most and abandon things those that don’t serve you.
FUND YOUR BOOK WITH KICKSTARTER
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Are you struggling to fund your project? Have you had failed Kickstarter projects before? Are you scared of spending a month of your life on a campaign that doesn't make its goal?
Then this course is for you, filled with everything you need to get started on Kickstarter and crush your goals without a massive time commitment.
HOW TO SET UP AND RUN AN ANTHOLOGY
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Build an amazing team of creators, hire a crazy good cover artist, and take over the world. I recorded this course in June of 2018 and used my upcoming anthology, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, as a case study to test every secret I talk about in this course. I didn't know what would happen. I hoped it would do a little better than my first anthology, but when I launched the campaign it blew Monsters and Other Scary Shit out of the water!
WRITE A GREAT NOVEL
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Master character creation, structure, plot, prose, editing, and more in order to write a great book more quickly than ever before. Are you struggling to finish your novel? Does it take you years to write a book? Do you lack confidence in your writing? Then Write a Great Novel is for you. It's everything I've learned from writing my first 20+ novels. Not only do I give you my secrets to creating characters and building structure, but I give you the tips, tricks, and hacks I've found to write better books faster. Most authors aren't teachers, and most teachers aren't prolific authors. I am both.
HOW TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE FROM SCRATCH
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Are you a creative who's sick of agonizing to make enough money? Have you spent years banging your head against a brick wall, trying to make it work with little success to show for it? Are you struggling to connect with a fan base of excited customers? Then my How to Build an Audience from Scratch mini-course is for you. It will show you the five-step process I implemented to grow my email list above 20,000 and become a six-figure creative human. It's packed with information, and I can't wait to share it with you.
10X YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
Are you struggling to be productive? Do you wish you could get more done in a day, week, month, or year? Then join USA Today bestselling author and six-figure creative entrepreneur Russell Nohelty as he shows you how to 10x your productivity starting today. Learn how to effectively make a goal that you can measure and achieve, how to tell if you have a good idea, how to stop being caught up in idea-switching, how to say no to projects, and much, much more.
LESSONS AND LECTURES
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: PAID
Over the years I’ve given dozens of lectures and recorded countless lessons for creative humans and you have access to a huge selection of them.
INTERVIEW ARCHIVE
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: PAID
Over the years I've interviewed over 100 successful creators about how they built and sustained their business. I used this knowledge to build my own career. Now, I'm opening my complete archive up to you.
INCOME REPORTS
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: PAID
The only section on The Author Stack that is completely paid, I reveal all the numbers from previous years for most of my business (except WriterMBA) and I even give the numbers I received in compensation from that company. We have income reports going back to 2018, with data as far back as 2017.
SCRIPT LIBRARY
Complete or Ongoing? ONGOING
Free or Paid: PAID
A collection of my scripts I’ve written for TV, movies, comics, and audio dramas, along with story bibles and pitch packets. While a lot of these have been produced, especially the comic and audio dramas, I decided to upload a whole collection so you could see evolution over time. A lot of these stories that weren’t products, like The Facilitator, ended up becoming key components of other books, like Magic where Ollie is basically a facilitator just like in my original script.
THE COMPLETE CREATIVE ARCHIVE
Complete or Ongoing? COMPLETE
Free or Paid: PAID
When I was running my previous blog, The Complete Creative, I ran a lot of experiments and wrote a bunch about running a creative business that didn't fit anywhere else on The Author Stack. There’s even some new material in there that I archived exclusively for paid members.
We also have a large selection of fiction books and comics available behind our paywall. You can check them out here.
Additionally, we have a lot of resources not available behind the paywall. You can find them below.
OTHER RESOURCES
AUTHOR ECOSYSTEMS QUIZ
After working with thousands of authors to help turn their love of writing and publishing into a sustainable career, we have observed five clear and unique publishing ecosystems (or archetypes) that closely align with author success. We believe that identifying your ideal author ecosystem and focusing on marketing actions that work with your natural tendencies is the surest path to thrive as an author. We’ve mapped these archetypes onto the five ecosystem biomes on Earth (desert, grassland, tundra, forest, and aquatic) to provide a clear, easily visualized metaphor for each type and linked them to successful publishing strategies that work best for each one. We’ve also identified healthy and unhealthy habits for each type and have developed guidance to create a healthy ecosystem and foster a sustainable author career using strategies that align with your natural strengths.
Depending on your archetype, there will be certain things that resonate with you more than others, and different strategies will help you to thrive. The Author Ecosystem helps you identify those things that will help you most and abandon things those that don’t serve you.
I’ve also written extensively about The Author Ecosystems for our sister publication.
Conventions, conferences, and book signings for every Author Ecosystem
How to build a sales funnel and flywheel using author ecosystems
KICKSTART YOUR BOOK SALES PODCAST
Welcome to the Kickstart Your Book Sales podcast with USA Today bestselling authors Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle, where you’ll learn how to supercharge your book sales, go aggressively wide, and take your author career to the next level.
PREVIOUS MEDIA APPEARANCES
I’ve made hundreds of media appearances in my career. This includes interviews, articles, podcasts, workshops, and more.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I keep a running recommendations list of all sorts of things, including editors, artists, vendors, apps, favorite books, and more.
Hope you find something that helps supercharge your creative career and take it to the next level. If you’re excited to get started, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to take advantage of everything The Author Stack has to offer.