SPA Girls Podcast

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

USA Today bestselling author Lana Love writes short romance: 15,000-word books with curvy heroines and protective heroes. She publishes one a month and has more than 60 out. Her income doubled when one book in her Mountain Men series took off and lifted her whole backlist, and she did it with very little advertising. In this episode of the SPA Girls Podcast (EP571), she walks us through exactly how.

The core move works on any backlist. Lana listed her ten best-reviewed books, her ten highest-rated books and her best sellers, then looked for what they had in common. The answer was military, blue-collar, protective heroes in small towns. That became her Heartland Heroes world, and the eleventh book in it is the one that took off.

She also covers how she picked an Amazon Short Reads category where the top 100 was within reach, why trope-forward titles like Rugged Loner outsell clever ones, and how a free bonus epilogue brings in newsletter subscribers who open 40–45% of her emails. Plus shared-world collaborations, building complementary character wounds, and fitting a full romance arc into 15,000 words.

🔁 CLASSIC REPLAY — This episode was originally recorded in 2024 (EP468) and the strategy is just as relevant today.

#SelfPublishing #ShortRomance #IndieAuthor

👤 ABOUT LANA LOVE:

Lana Love is the USA Today bestselling author of short romance featuring curvy heroines and the strong men who move heaven and earth to win them.

https://loveheartbooks.com/

📚 RESOURCES MENTIONED:

BookFunnel: https://bookfunnel.com

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com

Stuff Your Kindle: https://stuffyourkindle.com

Becca Syme — Strengths for Writers: https://www.betterfasteracademy.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources:
http://www.SelfPublishingAuthorsPodcast.com

🎧 Listen on your favourite podcast app — search “SPA Girls Podcast”

💗 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

Subscribe so you never miss an episode!

#WritingCommunity #WritingPodcast

Four authors, more than a decade of self-publishing, over 300 books published combined, and four very different takes on the successful author mindset. Cheryl, Shar, Wendy and Trudi share what keeps them writing through industry shake-ups, sales dips and busy family life.

Cheryl runs her whole life from one diary. Wendy’s words for the day get written that day, no exceptions. Shar caps her social media at five-minute blocks and logs every small win. Trudi writes first thing, has dropped deadlines altogether, and works best with plenty going on around her.

The one rule we all agree on: pick two new tactics, give them a real chance, then try the next two. Plus how to carve out writing time when your family wants you now, Renee Rose’s trick for turning comparison into motivation, what to do when the sales graph dips and LOTS more!

Mentioned in the episode:

Becca Syme  – listen to her episodes with us on EP524, EP487 and EP146

J. Gabriel Gates: EP568

Nalini Singh: Worldbuilding episode with us EP363

Sacha Black: EP422

Renee Rose: EP512

ScreenZen app

Romance Writers of New Zealand: romancewriters.co.nz

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources: http://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 You Tube 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

#SelfPublishing #romancewriter #writingpodcast #indieauthor

Be in charge, take action, get results. 🎯 Most of us stay stuck because we’ve never actually decided what we want. Business coach Erin Marcus on working out the outcome, reverse engineering the steps, and putting a date on it. 📅 A classic replay, and all of it still applies. ✨

Her starting point is that most people don’t get what they want because they’ve never decided what it is. Others know, but don’t believe they’re allowed to have it. Either way there’s nothing to reverse engineer from, so the work becomes what Erin calls random acts of marketing.

The fix is a process: Decide. Take action. Look at what came back. Decide again. Erin writes out what she wants every morning because it makes the rest of the day’s decisions easier. She works in specific outcomes rather than feelings, because feelings are vague enough to let you off the hook. Then she asks the question that stops most people: when is it happening? Put it on the calendar, then live by the calendar.

There’s a long stretch for writers in the middle. Trudi once spent an hour with Erin trying to decide whether she wrote urban fantasy or paranormal romance. Erin’s read was that the decision was giving her a reason not to start. Start the book — the genre settles once the book exists. Pick a niche for now rather than forever. And a lot of the subgenre agonising exists because Amazon needs a category to sell ads against, not because readers need one.

In this episode:

Why most people are stuck: they haven’t decided what they want, or don’t believe they can have it

Reverse engineering the steps from the outcome

“Random acts of marketing” and where they come from

Wanting the impossible: if the outcome depends on other people behaving, it isn’t yours to have

Erin’s daily written practice, and why she does it before anything else

Start with what you don’t want, if that’s easier

Specific outcomes beat feelings, because vague language is where we let ourselves off the hook

Be in charge, take action, get results, then decide again

Why self-trust shortens the gap between deciding and doing

Fear and habit: your brain’s job is to keep you alive, not to make you happy

How fear turns up as overwhelm, confusion and distraction

“When is it happening?” — putting it on the calendar and living by it

Debriefing monthly, and after every marketing event

Three or four goes is starting, not trying

Recovery speed over perfection — what used to cost a year now costs a moment

Observing your own behaviour without the judgement

A niche for now, not forever

“I don’t pivot, I iterate” — and the companies that didn’t

Why subgenres matter more to Amazon’s ad categories than to your reader

Reading the physical signal: what a clenched feeling tells you, and what excitement tells you

Inspired action plus infinite possibilities equals inevitable results

Turning away from the problem to find the answer

Being lit up about your work is what gets you marketing it

Your commitment to the outcome has to be bigger than your fear of the thing

Writing the books and growing the business are two different skills

Why none of us can see our own patterns, and who you let tell you the truth

About Erin Marcus

Erin Marcus is a business coach and consultant with more than 25 years of mentoring, training and coaching behind her.

🔗 Find Erin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinmarcus/
📌 Erin’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@ErinMarcusUntamedSuccess

📌 Note on this replay: since we recorded this in May 2023, Erin has moved on from Conquer Your Business, so the website mentioned in the episode is out of date. Find her on LinkedIn instead: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinmarcus/

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources: http://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 You Tube 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

J. Gabriel Gates — who writes romantasy as G.J. Gates — has a full-time job he loves and a self-funded publishing business. He opens every book launch with a Kickstarter, and that money becomes his entire advertising budget. In this episode of the SPA Girls Podcast (EP568) he walks us through going indie after traditional publishing, writing a genre he’d never touched, and the ten-second video that reached 1.6 million people.

Whether you’re changing genres, growing a social account from scratch, or working out where an ad budget is going to come from, this one is practical tips packed in: BookTok and Instagram hooks that convert, why the simplest video wins, Amazon ads to train your also-boughts, feeding Kickstarter money straight into Facebook ads, and how Jacob writes seven days a week around a day job he genuinely loves.

About Jacob

J. G. Gates (who also writes as J. Gabriel Gates) is the author of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi books, including the Dragons and Aces, the Luck Gods Series, The Lamplighters, The Sleepwalkers, Blood Zero Sky, and more.

After receiving his B.A. in theater from Florida State University, Gates moved to Los Angeles, where he acted in a dozen national TV commercials and wrote screenplays that were optioned by Hollywood producers. He is an alum of Spalding University’s MFA in writing program, and has taught college writing at Kellogg Community College and Olivet College. He has also worked as a ghostwriter and editor.

Gates is a dad of three and a city council representative in his small Michigan town. When not writing books, he works as the executive director of a prominent regional arts organization. He also enjoys live storytelling and has appeared on stage at The Moth. Some of his other interests include, running, biking, playing music, and making dumb TikTok videos.

https://jgabrielgates.net
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📚 RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com

BookVault (special edition printing): https://bookvault.app

Monica Leonelle: https://monicaleonelle.com

Canva: https://www.canva.com

Authors Review Books (Jacob’s podcast): https://authorsreviewbooks.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE SPA GIRLS:

🌐 Website & free self-publishing resources: http://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 You Tube 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