The Rebel Author Podcast

The History I started my shopify store around the 10th December 2023 after a viral video on TikTok on December 8th. So I integrated with Bookvault and stayed with POD shipping until February 2025. Since February 2025, I’ve been distributing and fulfilling all orders from my website in my own warehouse. These are the lessons I’ve learned from the last ten months of running my own website sales and distribution. And yes, I will talk numbers, but I’m making you wait till the end! Please note, I will talk about finances, systems and the occasional legal thing. Absolutely nothing I say is financial, legal or tax advice. You must seek advice from professionals in your own countries and tax territories. I recognise that this model is not for 99% of authors. It’s a LOT of work. It’s a lot of logistics, a lot of peopling, team building, paperwork and problem solving. This is as far removed from sitting behind a desk and writing 24/7 as you can get. Do not listen to this with an open heart. Be skeptical, that will keep you on the right track for creating a business you love. But know that I do love this and I am framing these lessons learned from that perspective. Why Direct? I’d always had a transactional website for Sacha Black work but it barely did £20 a month. So I knew the work I was about to scramble to do for Ruby may be for nothing. But I didn’t want to be beholden to TikTok the way I’d been beholdened to other sources of income and I knew if I’d gone viral once, I could do it again and that would lead to relying on TikTok. What do I mean why? Two reasons: why should you as an author have a direct store but also why should readers come to you? For you, you can earn more per sale. POD companies integrating with shopify automatically give you more as there are no hidden fees. But when you shift to print runs you more than half the cost of printing each book. Of course you also give yourself a host of other problems like fulfillment and overheads, but you gain a lot more product flexibility and potential meaning you have the opportunity to make bigger profit. BUT and this is a big but, you have to work out what you want your business to look like. That said, there are consequences. I usually write and publish 3 books a year and this year I’ve dropped to 2 published. Though I will have written a 3rd and a short story by the end of the year. But I wasn’t able to get that third one published. Despite that, this is going to be my biggest year ever for income. It already beat last year in 7 months. Which goes to show that you don’t have to be rapid releasing anymore to make good money. The fact I’ve not published three, is a direct consequence of the warehouse and also the increasing team size and the need to train staff. Thankfully due to the Kickstarter, some rights deals an big increase in direct sales of products and merch, I haven’t seen a dip in income. Which goes to show that you don’t have to be rapid releasing anymore to make good money. There are other benefits like reader loyalty because you’re treating them better, you are able to provide higher quality books and with extra goodies and sign all the books for example. And that’s really the heart of the mindset shift you need to have and how you should frame thinking about a direct store. Why should a reader bother coming to you when they can get next day shipping for free on Amazon? Can you answer that before you set up your store? For me this looks like three promises: Every book that leaves the warehouse is handsigned by me (I do this in batches and sign for 4-5 hours and get several thousand books signed in one go so it doesn’t disturb writing time.) They get extra bonuses for ordering directly like stickers, bookmarks and character art. Last, if they preorder a book in any format I have for sale on the website, it will get shipped BEFORE the public release date. We aim for delivery a couple of weeks prior but it depends on print runs and me hitting deadlin

Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-six between Rachael Herron and I. To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website. * If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create perfect prose, then you’ll love my guide to crafting sensational sentences. Read The Anatomy of Prose today and start creating kick-ass stories.

Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-four between Rachael Herron and I. To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website. * If you haven’t read The Anatomy of a Best Seller, what are you waiting for? Grab my latest craft book and start deconstructing so you can write your own best seller today.

Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-two between Rachael Herron and I. Don’t forget, Patrons get early access to these Black Herron episodes an entire month early and then we air them on the podcast feeds the following month. If you’d like to hear them early you can join me on Patreon from as little as $2 right here. To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website. * If you haven’t read The Anatomy of a Best Seller, what are you waiting for? Grab my latest craft book and start deconstructing so you can write your own best seller today.

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover: Differences between serials and novels Planning your story when writing serials Knowing when to end each episode Is there money in writing serials? Marketing serialized fiction Find out more about KimBoo: houseofyork.info Rebel of the Week is: KarlaIf you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to [email protected] No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover: The concept of the hungry author mindset and how to develop it Building an author platform beyond social media How to use a book map Patterns of authors who have sustainable, long-term careers Biggest mistakes nonfiction writers make Find out more about Ariel: Instagram @hungryauthors hungryauthors.com Rebel of the Week is: MarkIf you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to [email protected] 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Nicole Hutton. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-one between Rachael Herron and I. Don’t forget, Patrons get early access to these Black Herron episodes an entire month early and then we air them on the podcast feeds the following month. If you’d like to hear them early you can join me on Patreon from as little as $2 right here. To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website. * If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.