There are three words that can help, but you're probably gonna gag when you hear them. In fact, you are likely gonna have a lot of feelings reading this one.
This is one of the absolute best posts on the subject I have ever read. Brilliant, friend. Just brilliant. You verbalized things I have thought for a long time. Authors really need to check out this post and listen to what you're saying here about business and sustainability.
As someone who's been doing this for a long time but is still obscure but not burned out, there's a lot of reality to what you're saying. It offers hope but not the empty kind. There are paths forward, but the approaches so often discussed are direct paths to burnout and disaster. This is more holistic, more achievable, and kinder to the creatives. Well f-ing done.
Yay! I'm so happy to hear that. I've been slowly building this case I feel for the last year and I'm going to be rolling out a lot more methodology in the next few months :)
Excellent. For what it's worth, I've been in the industry for sixteen years now and have been watching these changes toward the gristmill taking place. I've never felt right about it and seen so many authors utterly ruined because of their attempts to drag creativity out of themselves to sate what they think is necessary to succeed. It's so much more complex than that. Thank you for doing this work. I think you may save careers with it.
Fantastic insights. Writing is the easy part really, or at least the part (most) would do for the sake of it. Challenges start when the writing becomes an asset. I have been stuck with that for many years, on the naive premise that culture has a value beyond other commodities. Being able to just let it go and work intuitively probably doesn’t make the writing better, but allows to put it out there as an asset. Thank you for sharing.
The industry is changing, with or without us. As with any business, innovation and creativity to offer something new, fresh, and unique is essential to success. Writers, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears invested, do not have an entitlement to make money. This is the unfortunate truth of all markets. Thank you for this article, it did a great job highlighting the challenges and the need to embrace new opportunities.
I come from the music industry! Music folks do it best. I know that the number is less than three years. You have a great run and then that's it. The unicorns or the true artist they can push beyond that burn out. This is regular business. Great article though for the masses who then hopefully won't have delusions of grandeur.
I'd love to hear how you think all of this works with traditional publishing? When you say "the publishing industry," I'm inferring that you don't mean traditional publishers, but lmk if that's not right! Genuinely curious and trying to understand. I work in traditional publishing, and the emphasis on volume that I hear about in indie/self-publishing (when I hear "indie," I think "publisher not owned by the Big 5") communities is utterly bewildering to me. It's not at all how we think about books in acquisitions meetings.
I don’t even know how to answer this because traditional publishing is still part of the publishing industry. They are the publishing industry, in fact, so they are the largest part of the problem, frankly.
More importantly, every word in this article is just as true for a trad publisher as it is an indie or self publisher. We are all publishers. Successful published authors think of themselves as indie publishers anyway.
A publisher makes money the same way a self published author does, and faces the same challenges, just at a different scale. Authors who work with trad publishers have the same success paths as one who doesn’t.
The whole thing is broken, and while I have many friends in trad publishing, the only reason it would be different for trad publishers is that they are the only ones who stand to gain from how the industry currently treats authors.
You would have to be way more specific on the scope of your question because to me this is targeted to authors either self publishing or trad publishing.
Trad published authors should retain special edition rights, for instance. If they aren’t, they are leaving a lot of money on the table. They should narrow band all their rights much more, honestly.
So, yeah. Idk. To me this is just as accurate for any author in every publishing situation.
Thanks for these insights Russel. Before taking up writing full time, I taught online courses and ran online communities. I find being an author quite similar on the business end…. Which is disappointing. I pictured more in person engagement. I have leveraged assets including my Substack but never thought of ads that way.🤔
Every once in a while, I get invited to those types of things, but my writing falls between genres so there’s often no clear category. My publishers bring my books, but I rarely get to go.
This reaffirmed my viewpoints of the publishing industry. There are so many implications and advice that pushes and prioritizes volume. However it’s not sustainable. I feel like in any other business they would discourage a model like this. I currently wrote a poetry book and right I am testing what is the most effective way to market my book so I can break even. This post was the right timing for me to read and it has given me new ideas! Thank you for the post!!
I give you credit at the beginning and the end of the article. At the end I write this in Spanish:
About Russell Nohelty and his Newsletter
Note: I am very grateful to Russell Nohelty for allowing me to translate part of his article (see below). For Russell, ‘the king of leveraged equities’, this technique comes so naturally to him that until recently he thought this was common knowledge, but what he has learned recently, he states in his article, is that nobody does it.... or doesn't even know it exists.
In fact, the first thing he thinks of when he takes on a project is how I can reuse it in multiple places and formats. As he points out, and it's a good practical example of the content of this article:
‘This post will end up being used in an article, and it will probably end up in a book, or maybe even a course or at least training in our community.’
Russell, in addition to being a widely recognised writer, is the author of the popular newsletter ‘the Author Stack’, which sits at the intersection of craft and commerce, helping writers create more sustainable businesses that allow them to thrive while creating works that light them up inside. It strives ‘to give authors agency in a world that too often seems to want to take it away.’
The original, much fuller and longer article, which deserves to be read in its entirety (in English), is below:
Yes! So so true Russell about leveraged assets (though I also hate the term). I think one way I think about the blocks with money and writing is that people who pay are showing you one form of proof that your work has value. I mean, it has value because you wrote it, but to be sustainable as an author (or in the creative industry I'd argue) money needs to exchange hands.
For sure. People can say your work is valuable, but until it has value it’s hard to invest in it, or quell the feeling that you shouldn’t be “wasting your time”, which also…we should be so lucky to waste all our time on things that are “frivilous” but that’s a whole different 6000+ word rant.
I've been focusing a lot more on the business aspect of being an author, and a lot of that is thanks to you, Russell. Writing and publishing books without having a business mindset is really just having an expensive hobby haha. Which is fine, too, but ultimately, I do want my books to reach people, so as much as I hate marketing, I gotta play the game to achieve my long-term goals.
Thanks for writing another great post on the subject.
Leveraging assets has been foremost in my mind for decades since I wrote career training software and took the extra time to build reusable libraries and modules as well as easy means of importing external content. But with what I do now, I struggle to manage the sheer volume of relevant assets and to prioritize them for remarketing.
Thousands of old blog posts, notes and resources with unique solutions that I often forget until I look for them myself and rediscover old work or someone asks a question and its familiarity leads me back to old work. Much of this is distributed on old computers that I haven't used in years.
I didn't worry much about this state of neglect as my professional work kept me very busy and for many years was a license to print whatever money I needed. But after retiring and seeing how a big part of my sustenance is likely to be destroyed by the incoming US administration, I must find a better way of identifying and releveraging all that old work.
Hmmm. Well, a few masters theses have been done with that old work, mostly translating into Portuguese... maybe I will suggest something like that to my university colleagues for the next round.
So far, it seems like my newsletter has the biggest chance of being a leveraged asset for me.
I actually kind of did the opposite this summer... I cut doing a lot of the things that had been taking my time, then slowly started things again. I tried posts with art from my stories across different social media, but that didn't really pan out (though I may need to test Instagram reels) after the couple months I tested, so I stopped doing that.
But I started noticing a book sale here and there as soon as I reinstated my newsletter, so I'm doing new testing there to see how i can make it more sustainable for sending consistantly.
I’m so early on in my writing career. This small platform, paywalled membership - taking other writers who live with chronic illness with me and one ebook (fully published books not far behind). The one thing I’m clear on is sustainability. Yet to see how it all pans on. Trusting and learning as I grow💚
Thanks so much for sharing all your insight and wisdom. I believe the publishing industry could transform completely. In that the minority of writers generating an income could be much increased. Belief in our own capabilities makes a massive difference. I’m new to it all though so what do I know😆
Regardless, I have my vision and I’m in full alignment with it💛🫶🏼
It's going to take some time for me to read this entire post--it's so good! I just got to the "list" part and I like all of these points you make--especially this one: "We have to compete against every product that ever been made: In very few industries are the business owners up against a 400 year old dead person for somebody's money and attention. Maybe a winery has to compete against the past sometimes, but then at least that older wine is way more expensive which prices people out of the market for it. Even film and radio only go back a hundred years, but books have been published for thousands of years, and you can read them all for a pittance. No musical artist will ever have to go up against Mozart, only a cheap facsimile of Mozart as told through a modern orchestra."
This is one of the absolute best posts on the subject I have ever read. Brilliant, friend. Just brilliant. You verbalized things I have thought for a long time. Authors really need to check out this post and listen to what you're saying here about business and sustainability.
As someone who's been doing this for a long time but is still obscure but not burned out, there's a lot of reality to what you're saying. It offers hope but not the empty kind. There are paths forward, but the approaches so often discussed are direct paths to burnout and disaster. This is more holistic, more achievable, and kinder to the creatives. Well f-ing done.
Yay! I'm so happy to hear that. I've been slowly building this case I feel for the last year and I'm going to be rolling out a lot more methodology in the next few months :)
Excellent. For what it's worth, I've been in the industry for sixteen years now and have been watching these changes toward the gristmill taking place. I've never felt right about it and seen so many authors utterly ruined because of their attempts to drag creativity out of themselves to sate what they think is necessary to succeed. It's so much more complex than that. Thank you for doing this work. I think you may save careers with it.
Fantastic insights. Writing is the easy part really, or at least the part (most) would do for the sake of it. Challenges start when the writing becomes an asset. I have been stuck with that for many years, on the naive premise that culture has a value beyond other commodities. Being able to just let it go and work intuitively probably doesn’t make the writing better, but allows to put it out there as an asset. Thank you for sharing.
You’re welcome!
The industry is changing, with or without us. As with any business, innovation and creativity to offer something new, fresh, and unique is essential to success. Writers, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears invested, do not have an entitlement to make money. This is the unfortunate truth of all markets. Thank you for this article, it did a great job highlighting the challenges and the need to embrace new opportunities.
Thanks! Glad it resonated
Thank you for this! All things I've been thinking over for a while but haven't managed to put together in my head.
You’re welcome!
I come from the music industry! Music folks do it best. I know that the number is less than three years. You have a great run and then that's it. The unicorns or the true artist they can push beyond that burn out. This is regular business. Great article though for the masses who then hopefully won't have delusions of grandeur.
Thanks! Yes, the publishing industry runs about 10-15 years behind the music industry.
I can only hope that people listen to you. Keep giving it to them Russell. Great stuff always from you.
I'd love to hear how you think all of this works with traditional publishing? When you say "the publishing industry," I'm inferring that you don't mean traditional publishers, but lmk if that's not right! Genuinely curious and trying to understand. I work in traditional publishing, and the emphasis on volume that I hear about in indie/self-publishing (when I hear "indie," I think "publisher not owned by the Big 5") communities is utterly bewildering to me. It's not at all how we think about books in acquisitions meetings.
I don’t even know how to answer this because traditional publishing is still part of the publishing industry. They are the publishing industry, in fact, so they are the largest part of the problem, frankly.
More importantly, every word in this article is just as true for a trad publisher as it is an indie or self publisher. We are all publishers. Successful published authors think of themselves as indie publishers anyway.
A publisher makes money the same way a self published author does, and faces the same challenges, just at a different scale. Authors who work with trad publishers have the same success paths as one who doesn’t.
The whole thing is broken, and while I have many friends in trad publishing, the only reason it would be different for trad publishers is that they are the only ones who stand to gain from how the industry currently treats authors.
You would have to be way more specific on the scope of your question because to me this is targeted to authors either self publishing or trad publishing.
Trad published authors should retain special edition rights, for instance. If they aren’t, they are leaving a lot of money on the table. They should narrow band all their rights much more, honestly.
So, yeah. Idk. To me this is just as accurate for any author in every publishing situation.
Thanks for these insights Russel. Before taking up writing full time, I taught online courses and ran online communities. I find being an author quite similar on the business end…. Which is disappointing. I pictured more in person engagement. I have leveraged assets including my Substack but never thought of ads that way.🤔
You can do conventions. I did them for years. It was the main way I built my business in the early days, even more than kickstarter.
Every once in a while, I get invited to those types of things, but my writing falls between genres so there’s often no clear category. My publishers bring my books, but I rarely get to go.
This reaffirmed my viewpoints of the publishing industry. There are so many implications and advice that pushes and prioritizes volume. However it’s not sustainable. I feel like in any other business they would discourage a model like this. I currently wrote a poetry book and right I am testing what is the most effective way to market my book so I can break even. This post was the right timing for me to read and it has given me new ideas! Thank you for the post!!
Glad it could be helpful!
I give you credit at the beginning and the end of the article. At the end I write this in Spanish:
About Russell Nohelty and his Newsletter
Note: I am very grateful to Russell Nohelty for allowing me to translate part of his article (see below). For Russell, ‘the king of leveraged equities’, this technique comes so naturally to him that until recently he thought this was common knowledge, but what he has learned recently, he states in his article, is that nobody does it.... or doesn't even know it exists.
In fact, the first thing he thinks of when he takes on a project is how I can reuse it in multiple places and formats. As he points out, and it's a good practical example of the content of this article:
‘This post will end up being used in an article, and it will probably end up in a book, or maybe even a course or at least training in our community.’
Russell, in addition to being a widely recognised writer, is the author of the popular newsletter ‘the Author Stack’, which sits at the intersection of craft and commerce, helping writers create more sustainable businesses that allow them to thrive while creating works that light them up inside. It strives ‘to give authors agency in a world that too often seems to want to take it away.’
The original, much fuller and longer article, which deserves to be read in its entirety (in English), is below:
You can see the translated text here:
https://chamberly.substack.com/p/la-industria-editorial-esta-rota
You’re awesome!
Yes! So so true Russell about leveraged assets (though I also hate the term). I think one way I think about the blocks with money and writing is that people who pay are showing you one form of proof that your work has value. I mean, it has value because you wrote it, but to be sustainable as an author (or in the creative industry I'd argue) money needs to exchange hands.
For sure. People can say your work is valuable, but until it has value it’s hard to invest in it, or quell the feeling that you shouldn’t be “wasting your time”, which also…we should be so lucky to waste all our time on things that are “frivilous” but that’s a whole different 6000+ word rant.
I've been focusing a lot more on the business aspect of being an author, and a lot of that is thanks to you, Russell. Writing and publishing books without having a business mindset is really just having an expensive hobby haha. Which is fine, too, but ultimately, I do want my books to reach people, so as much as I hate marketing, I gotta play the game to achieve my long-term goals.
Thanks for writing another great post on the subject.
Love it!
Leveraging assets has been foremost in my mind for decades since I wrote career training software and took the extra time to build reusable libraries and modules as well as easy means of importing external content. But with what I do now, I struggle to manage the sheer volume of relevant assets and to prioritize them for remarketing.
Thousands of old blog posts, notes and resources with unique solutions that I often forget until I look for them myself and rediscover old work or someone asks a question and its familiarity leads me back to old work. Much of this is distributed on old computers that I haven't used in years.
I didn't worry much about this state of neglect as my professional work kept me very busy and for many years was a license to print whatever money I needed. But after retiring and seeing how a big part of my sustenance is likely to be destroyed by the incoming US administration, I must find a better way of identifying and releveraging all that old work.
Yeah. We hired somebody to go through that stuff and organize it into categories
Hmmm. Well, a few masters theses have been done with that old work, mostly translating into Portuguese... maybe I will suggest something like that to my university colleagues for the next round.
Good insight, thanks 👍. Can I translate the first part of this article into Spanish with links to you and a descripción of your newsletter?
Sure.
So far, it seems like my newsletter has the biggest chance of being a leveraged asset for me.
I actually kind of did the opposite this summer... I cut doing a lot of the things that had been taking my time, then slowly started things again. I tried posts with art from my stories across different social media, but that didn't really pan out (though I may need to test Instagram reels) after the couple months I tested, so I stopped doing that.
But I started noticing a book sale here and there as soon as I reinstated my newsletter, so I'm doing new testing there to see how i can make it more sustainable for sending consistantly.
I’m so early on in my writing career. This small platform, paywalled membership - taking other writers who live with chronic illness with me and one ebook (fully published books not far behind). The one thing I’m clear on is sustainability. Yet to see how it all pans on. Trusting and learning as I grow💚
Cool!
Thanks so much for sharing all your insight and wisdom. I believe the publishing industry could transform completely. In that the minority of writers generating an income could be much increased. Belief in our own capabilities makes a massive difference. I’m new to it all though so what do I know😆
Regardless, I have my vision and I’m in full alignment with it💛🫶🏼
It's going to take some time for me to read this entire post--it's so good! I just got to the "list" part and I like all of these points you make--especially this one: "We have to compete against every product that ever been made: In very few industries are the business owners up against a 400 year old dead person for somebody's money and attention. Maybe a winery has to compete against the past sometimes, but then at least that older wine is way more expensive which prices people out of the market for it. Even film and radio only go back a hundred years, but books have been published for thousands of years, and you can read them all for a pittance. No musical artist will ever have to go up against Mozart, only a cheap facsimile of Mozart as told through a modern orchestra."
Yay! Yes, it’s something I think about a lot. Glad it resonated with you