SPA Girls Podcast

Very few writers’ time is the same every month — often it’s predictably uneven. We say lean into that pattern instead of fighting it.

This episode came from two similar questions from SPA Girls Podcast listeners: “What is a seasonal writer?” and “How do you build a writing career around a full-time job?”

Shar, Wendy and Trudi take both questions on (Cheryl’s away this week). Wendy swapped a planned new series for a novella in a world she already knew, so the book needed less brain space in a hard year. Shar now sets every deadline and pre-order date from her slowest months, not her best ones, and has written ahead so there’s already something in the hopper for next year. Trudi’s new editor builds her Christmas break into every edit timeline — and it’s changed how Trudi plans her own.

The literal seasons are in here: spring calling a gardener outside, school holidays, the Southern Hemisphere pile-up where Christmas, summer and the end of the school year all land at once. So are life seasons — three of the four SPA Girls lost an elderly parent this year, and the episode is honest about what that did to word counts, decision-making and energy. The practical answer is the same for both. Know your pattern, plan from it, and have a list of the tried-and-true tasks that keep the business moving when the creativity isn’t there.

Plus Parkinson’s Law and why going full-time never doubles your output, Saturdays as a no-computer day, the buffalo-versus-cows storm analogy, and why writing before 12 works for some of us and after 9pm works for others.

In this episode:

What “seasonal writing” covers — literal seasons, holidays, life seasons and writing around a job

“Write every day” is the ideal, not the reality for anyone

The predictable seasons (school holidays) and the ones you can’t plan for

A hard year for three of the four SPA Girls — and the sandwich generation

Wendy’s swap from a new series to a novella in a known world

Don’t make radical business decisions in a high-stress season, or straight after one

Protect your head space: Shar’s Screen Zen app and Wendy’s daughter putting a cut-off on her phone

Taking a month off usually won’t break the business — six months is a different story

Why keeping the day job can be the creative choice, not the consolation prize

Parkinson’s Law and why going full-time doesn’t double your output

Age, pace and the long career — book-a-month isn’t forever

Spring in the garden, school holidays, and the Southern Hemisphere Christmas crunch

Wendy’s Saturdays: one day a week completely off the business

Trudi’s editor and the boundaries worth copying

Sarra Cannon’s HB90 — working out what the time actually costs

Set deadlines and pre-order dates from your slow season, with a buffer

When life turns to custard: the list of tried-and-true tasks you can do by rote

Preloading graphics and newsletters so the business runs without you for a while

Buffalo versus cows — meet the storm head on

Track your monthly word count so you can see your own pattern over years

Find the hours of the day that work for you — and the headphones-on-the-couch years

Writing ahead — why holding books back for next year is a good idea

Brandon Sanderson in lockdown versus the rest of us — don’t judge your seasons by someone else’s

Mentioned in this episode:

Screen Zen (app-limit tool): https://www.screenzen.co

Parkinson’s Law — work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion

Sarra Cannon’s HB90 planning method: https://www.heartbreathings.com

More on this from the SPA Girls:

EP419 The Best Mindset for Organisation and Productivity with Sarra Cannon

EP522 Managing Writing + Your Day Job with Chloe Archer

EP553 Inside a Prolific Author’s Daily Routine with Elana Johnson

EP354 It’s Time To Question The “Hustle”

EP558 Mental Resilience for Indie Authors

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources at www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com

🎧 Subscribe to our weekly episodes on your favourite podcast app — search “SPA Girls Podcast”

❤️ Watch our episode recordings on the SPA Girls Podcast YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/c/SPAGirlsPodcast

💗 This podcast is supported by our amazing Patreon community! ⭐ Join at the $10 tier for access to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group where we discuss marketing, writing, and answer your burning questions: http://www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast

#authortube #SelfPublishing #IndieAuthor #romancewriter

#SelfPublishing #romancewriter #writingpodcast #writingcommunity

Jenna Moreci is an award-winning romantasy and writing craft author with a YouTube channel of hundreds of thousands of subscribers and tens of millions of views. In this classic replay (originally recorded 2023) episode she explains how she built the channel, and how a writer can do the same without it taking over the writing.

Her channel grew slowly for months. It took off the week she stopped trying to be polished and started being herself. Her advice to anyone starting now is the same: don’t copy another creator, and don’t make your first video about you. Give the audience something useful first. They get interested in you and your books once they’re loyal to the content.

She also covers the practical side. Film on your phone, spend money on a mic before anything else, and edit with free software. Post on the same day every week. Budget about a week a month for YouTube and protect the rest for writing. Treat the whole thing as an experiment, so if it isn’t for you, that isn’t a failure.

In this episode:

From a finance degree to full-time writer and YouTuber

The channel grew when Jenna stopped trying to be polished and started being herself

Who she makes videos for: readers and writers who would like her books

Why “worst” outperforms “best” in a title, and why she caps the rants at one a month

Thumbnails that work: silly faces and the dog

Video length, Shorts, and why the bookish audience likes longer videos

One video a week, same day, same time

Writer first, YouTuber second: when to dial YouTube back

Starting on a budget: phone, a decent mic, iMovie

The pros: free marketing, six or seven revenue streams, an audience that likes you as you are

The cons: scripting, batch filming, editing, and the trolls

Give writing advice and readers will judge your books harder

Release videos: character art, backstories and worldbuilding around launch

Repurposing videos into Shorts, TikToks, Instagram clips and blog posts

Your first videos will be bad, and nobody is watching yet, so that’s fine

The biggest mistake: making your first video about yourself

How to find BookTube and AuthorTube

About Jenna Moreci

Jenna Moreci is an award-winning romantasy and writing craft author and YouTube sensation. Her first installment in The Savior’s Series, The Savior’s Champion, was voted one of the Best Books of All Time by Book Depository. Following the release of her first writing craft book, Shut Up and Write the Book, she has been asked to speak for many literary communities and affiliations about the writing process and romantasy genre, including Robinson College at the University of Cambridge, the University of Groningen, and the London Screenwriters’ Festival.

🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/JennaMoreci 🔗 Website: https://www.jennamoreci.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources at www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com

🎧 Subscribe to our weekly episodes on your favourite podcast app — search “SPA Girls Podcast”

❤️ Watch our episode recordings on the SPA Girls Podcast YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/c/SPAGirlsPodcast

💗 This podcast is supported by our amazing Patreon community! ⭐ Join at the $10 tier for access to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group where we discuss marketing, writing, and answer your burning questions: http://www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast

#authortube #SelfPublishing #IndieAuthor #romancewriter

#SelfPublishing #romancewriter #writingpodcast #writingcommunity

You don’t need a million readers. You need 1,000 who buy everything you write. Cheryl, Shar and Wendy take Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans model — 1,000 people spending $100 a year — and work out what it actually looks like for an indie novelist right now.

Wendy has a reader group of 1,000 and gives away a signed print copy with every release. Her bonus epilogues run 3,000 words and jump five or ten years ahead. Cheryl writes hers the day she finishes the book, sets it a week later so it leads into the next one, and delivers it through BookFunnel with her also-by page attached. Shar’s position is that a newsletter signup can be worth more to you than the next book sale, because the list is the only reader relationship you own.

Ad costs are climbing and social reach keeps shrinking — one author they follow has 25,000 followers and around 1,000 of them see a post. So the conversation is about what you can control: the list, the reader group, your own store, and the bonus content that makes people want to stay. Plus Amazon’s new limits on how many titles you can upload a week, why being a human being being a human is the one thing the AI flood can’t copy, and the professional line between talking to your readers and using them as a sounding board.

In this episode:

The 1,000 True Fans model, and why a number to build towards beats firing off in five directions

You’re not after a stadium — you’re after the people who buy whatever you make

Turning a reader into a superfan: the extras, and giving a little of yourself

Why the email list is the foundation — it’s the one thing you own

Reply to readers who email you, or acknowledge them in the next newsletter

Reader groups: giveaways, questions, and the posts that only they get

What to give away — signed print copies and special editions beat mugs and chocolate

Direct sales: better margins, promo codes, and the release two weeks early

Growing the list: the link in the back of the book, and what to offer for the signup

Bonus epilogues — Wendy’s and Cheryl’s two completely different approaches

Delivering bonus content through BookFunnel, and giving it to your existing subscribers

Amazon’s upload limits, AI pulp, and where human connection actually wins

Make yourself easy to find, and check your links

Keep the behind-the-scenes troubles off your reader-facing platforms

Send the tech problems to BookFunnel — that’s customer service done well

Be authentically you, pen name or not

Start with 10 true fans, not 1,000

Author buddies and brainstorming

Mentioned in this episode:

Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans: kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans

BookFunnel: https://bookfunnel.com

MailerLite: https://www.mailerlite.com · Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com

More on this from the SPA Girls:

EP268 How to Use Bonus Content to Sell Books

EP364 Superfans with Steffanie Holmes

EP445 7 Easy Tips for Building Your Newsletter List

EP378 Be a Newsletter Ninja with Tammi Labrecque

EP476 Author Newsletters with Holly Darling

EP433 Selling Direct with Katie Cross

EP479 Interview with Ines Johnson

Support the show: Join us on Patreon at the $10 tier for the SPA Girls Superstars group — brainstorm your bonus content, get feedback on your marketing, and ask four working authors anything about self-publishing — patreon.com/spagirlspodcast

🔁 CLASSIC REPLAY — This episode was originally recorded in 2023 and the writing craft advice is just as relevant today.

Matt Bird is a screenwriter and the author of two craft books for writers, The Secrets of Story and The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. For the second book he read the first ten pages of dozens of great novels, memoirs, movies and TV pilots, and found the same three moves in nearly all of them: the reader has to believe in your hero, care about their circumstances, and invest their hopes in them. In this episode of the SPA Girls Podcast (EP573) he shows how to land all three before your plot has even started.

Whether you’re drafting an opening chapter, working out why readers aren’t connecting with your lead, or looking for concrete character development tools you can use today, this one is practical from end to end. Matt covers the first page of The Hunger Games, giving a character a unique object and a metaphor family, why repetition beats surprise early on, and how to set, upset and reset reader expectations. Plus why readers pick your hero for you, what James Bond’s first scene tells us about vulnerability, and the single thing he’d tell every writer to do — put an ironic object in their hand.

#SelfPublishing #WritingCraft #IndieAuthor

About Matt Bird

Matt Bird is the author of Secrets of Story, and creator of The Secrets of Story podcast and blog. He has an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University. He lives and writes in Chicago where he and his wife Betsy are raising two delightful kids.

All episodes of his podcast with James Kennedy, The Secrets of Story: A Screenwriting & Novel Writing Podcast can be found on podcast apps.

Matt’s latest podcast, A Good Story Well Told with co-host Jonathan Auxier, is also on all podcast platforms.

http://www.secretsofstory.com/

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources at www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com

🎧 Subscribe to our weekly episodes on your favourite podcast app — search “SPA Girls Podcast”

❤️ Watch our episode recordings on the SPA Girls Podcast YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/c/SPAGirlsPodcast

💗 This podcast is supported by our amazing Patreon community! ⭐ Join at the $10 tier for access to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group where we discuss marketing, writing, and answer your burning questions: http://www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast

#authortube #SelfPublishing #IndieAuthor #romancewriter

#SelfPublishing #romancewriter #writingpodcast #writingcommunity

This is a concrete, numbers-heavy conversation about what diversification actually means for a working author. Million-selling author Craig Martelle has published over 200 books since 2015, across 28 series, and has around 25 different sources of income.
Craig’s definition of Author Diversification is multiple revenue streams, and he counts formats, distributors, languages, genres and co-authors as part of it. He walks through where to start when you’ve only got five books out, why paperback belongs in your Amazon ads, what a SAG-AFTRA narrator really costs and why he pays it anyway, and how he translated nine books into German for almost nothing using three AIs checking each other.

Craig is also very open about his pace pace of publishing. In 2019 he published 30 books in 30 weeks, quadrupled his costs, halved his revenue and ended up having heart surgery the following January. He publishes 12 to 20 books a year now, reads every word of every collaboration, and takes the dog out for two hours a day. The three medical thrillers he co-writes with a surgeon are his current bestsellers, and every dollar they earn goes into an investment account for his grandchildren.

And the golden nugget is the best argument against perfectionism we’ve had on the show: if you rewrite one book ten times you still have one book, but if you write ten books you have ten books’ worth of experience.

In this episode:

From Marine Corps intelligence and Russian linguist work to law school to full-time author in October 2015

Over 200 books, 28 series, and roughly 25 separate sources of income

Buying his first series back from its traditional publisher — and earning the buyout fee back in one month on free YouTube audio

Audiobooks on 40 distributors, plus 70 to 80 titles in libraries while staying in Kindle Unlimited

Why genre counts as diversification: readership ceilings and burnout in a single niche

“Write with the reader in mind” — the Venn diagram of what you know and what people actually read

The first step with five books out: one genre, one series, and learning read-through

Where to diversify next, and how to choose an adjacent genre

Translations and which markets are worth translating for, and which ones aren’t

Formats first: why paperback and a full-wrap cover are the cheapest diversification there is

The Amazon ads trick — bundling ebook and paperback in one sponsored ad to drop your cost per click

Crowdfunding an audiobook you can’t otherwise afford, and the snowball effect across campaigns

Why some books sell and some don’t

Marketing the backlist

Resources mentioned
INaudio (Voices by INaudio) · Chirp (BookBub) · Kindle Unlimited & KDP Select · Kindle Countdown Deals · BookBub featured deals · Kickstarter · BackerKit · SAG-AFTRA · DeepL · Learn Self Publishing (AI translation course) · Baen Books · Become a Successful Indie Author · the A Surgeon’s… medical thrillers with James Toouli · the I, Soldier military sci-fi series · Battleship Leviathan · the Ian Bragg thrillers

About Craig

Craig Martelle is a science fiction, thriller and fantasy author who has sold millions of books worldwide.

Before he became an author, he had a long career in the Marine Corps, specifically in the military intelligence community where he worked with most of the U.S. Government’s three-letter agencies. When he retired from the Marine Corps, he attended law school, graduated summa cum laude, and went into business consulting.

Craig was also the original organizer of the 20Books Conference in Las Vegas, which he ran for many years, and he now organizes writing retreats for both beginner and more experienced authors around the world. He also writes non-fiction to help indie authors be more successful in this industry.

Through a bizarre series of events, Craig now lives in in Fairbanks, Alaska. He says he never expected to retire to a place where golf courses are only open for four months out of the year, but he and his wife get to watch the northern lights from their driveway and their dog has lots of room to run – until temperatures reach fifty below zero.

🎧 Subscribe to our weekly episodes on your favourite podcast app — search “SPA Girls Podcast”

❤️ Watch our episode recordings on the SPA Girls Podcast YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/c/SPAGirlsPodcast

💗 This podcast is supported by our amazing Patreon community! ⭐ Join at the $10 tier for access to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group where we discuss marketing, writing, and answer your burning questions: http://www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast

#authortube #SelfPublishing #IndieAuthor #romancewriter

#SelfPublishing #romancewriter #writingpodcast #writingcommunity