Are you feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to constantly release new books and battle algorithms? Do you wonder if there's a more sustainable, low-stress path to a successful author career? Is it possible to focus on art, build a loyal fanbase, and escape the publishing rat race? In this episode, Johnny B. Truant discusses the artisan author approach.

In the intro, When your brain says “write!” but your body says, “nope.” [The Author Stack]; Productivity, AI, and pushback [Seth Godin]; The Buried and the Drowned, Short Story Collection.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

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Johnny B. Truant is the author of over one hundred and fifty books across multiple genres, including thriller, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and nonfiction. His latest book is The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Prioritising art over profit and building direct connections with fans





• Moving away from the high-pressure, algorithm-focused “rapid release” model that can lead to burnout





• The benefits and strategies of in-person, live selling at markets and festivals to find new readers





• Utilising platforms like Kickstarter for book launches to create special editions and connect with true fans





• Adopting a “low-stress” approach to marketing by choosing what you enjoy and opting out of things like social media

You can find Johnny at JohnnyBTruant.com, and the Artisan Author Kickstarter here.

Transcript of Interview with Johnny B Truant

Joanna: Johnny B. Truant is the author of over one hundred and fifty books across multiple genres, including thriller, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and nonfiction. His latest book is The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race. So welcome back to the show, Johnny.

Johnny: Man, it is so fun to be on The Creative Penn. It's just like coming home. It's just so great. So thank you for having me.

Joanna: Well, you've been on the show multiple times over the years, and the last time was a couple of years ago when you were pivoting into this stage of your author journey. So we are going to jump straight into the topic today.

Why The Artisan Author and why now? What were you seeing in the author community that made you want to write this book?

Johnny: I used to do a lot of author education. We had a podcast and a book and all that. Around the time COVID started, I stopped doing a lot of that and just focused on fiction.

When I came back to the 20Books Conference, the last one, so much had changed. People were really ramping up AI in different ways, the rapid release had gotten faster, and all the tactical stuff had gotten more tactical.

I just remembered thinking, “Boy, I always wanted to just write books my own way, at my own speed.” Despite going fast, I don't like being forced to go fast and I don't know if this is a game I want to play anymore.

You have to fit into all the very specific categories that the algorithms like to promote, and a lot of people are playing those games. In the midst of that, I did talk to another author. You may know her. She's British and runs a podcast.

Joanna: Yes, it was me!

Johnny: I know that you had said—I don't know if you used the word ‘artisan,' but you definitely described a lot of the things that I'm looking at now, which is, “I don't want to go in that direction either, and I'm doing more and more of what I want to do and trusting my true fans to be interested in it.”

Over the course of the next year, I started thinking more and more about that. What if instead of going into that faster, faster, rapid-release, kind of a death spiral sometimes—a lot of burnouts is related to that—

What if instead we acted like artists who are selling fine goods to very discerning customers?

I would just call them artists and readers. We don't have to worry about price and we don't have to worry about fighting the algorithms. We can just rely on a one-to-one connection to true fans rather than hoping the algorithms will find people for us.

Joanna: Yes, and I did use that word. In fact, a couple of years ago, I wrote a positioning paper for the show about positioning myself also in the artisan space. I think this is really important. It's something that we obviously care about.

Having known you for many years, our conversation was sort of, “Look, don't give it all up because you are great at this.” I've been reading your writing for a long, long time, before you wrote fiction. I think what is nice about this period right now is that we do get to question things.

For a while, there were kind of rules. You guys had a book, what was it, The Fiction Formula or something like that, at one point?

Johnny: You know, it's so funny because I work with Sean Platt. I was working with him a lot more in that nonfiction space, and Sean will do things like that. He'll say, “Okay, we're going to call it The Fiction Formula.” And I'm like, “But we've already talked about how there's no formula.”

He's like, “No, no, that's the genius. It's going to be called The Fiction Formula. There is no formula,” because he wants the catch.

Joanna: But the thing is, there almost was for a bit.

Like you said, we met again at the last 20BooksTo50k. That was actually a thing for a period of time. Now I kind of say, “Well, one book to 50k.” Like you said, you can, if you do fine goods to discerning customers, you can do one book to 50k. It's a very different time.

It's almost like at the beginning of the indie revolution, we got to reinvent the way things were done. I feel like that's where we are again.

We are reinventing the way things were done because what is new becomes old.

I feel like where we are now, fifteen-plus years into the indie revolution, or maybe seventeen-plus years into it, now we can reinvent it all over again.

Johnny: Yes, and that's something that I explored in The Artisan Author book. It was almost a little bit of a history lesson, not because I wanted to bore people with it, but because we were on this very sensible and aspirational trajectory for a while.

We came out of the old traditional publishing days where you had to query an agent and hope that you hit the right person at the right time and in the right mood. Instead, we were suddenly without gatekeepers and we could do what we wanted.

Then it started to be, “Okay, so if you write more books, you'll make more money.” We helped to contribute to that with Write. Publish. Repeat.

Then it became that at all costs, with no governor on it. Like, let's just go faster. Let's forget about the caveats of trying to enjoy yourself and maybe trying to write art that you actually care about.

A lot of people just went to extremes with the rapid release thing, and that's what I think really hit me when I went back to 20Books.

It was like when you watch a