Episodes

  • Episode 290: Five Instagram Marketing Tips For Writers

    Episode 290: Five Instagram Marketing Tips For Writers
    Feb 16 2026

    In this week's episode, we take a look at five Instagram tips for writers, and we also discuss recent Facebook ad changes.

    This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store:

    CAINA25

    The coupon code is valid through February 23, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered!
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    11 mins
  • Episode 289: Using The Universal Monsters To Write Compelling Villains

    Episode 289: Using The Universal Monsters To Write Compelling Villains
    Feb 9 2026
    In this episode, we look at how the classic black & white Universal movie monsters tap into universal fears, and how you can use that to create compelling villains in your book. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book #2 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: GARETH50 The coupon code is valid through February 16, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 289 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 6, 2026, and today we are discussing how you can use the Universal monsters to write interesting villains. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and publishing projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book #2 of my Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. And that code is GARETH50. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through February 16th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook to get you through the middle of February, we have got you covered. Now let's see where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. As of this recording, I am 63,000 words into Cloak of Summoning and I am almost but not quite halfway through my outline. So this is definitely going to be a long book and it's probably going to come out in the first part of March because it's long enough that it will take me a while to finish writing it and then to edit and proof it and everything else. So I'm making good progress on it. It was a very productive week, but I am still not even halfway through, so I think it's probably going to be March. I am also 5,000 words into Blade of Wraiths. That will be the fourth book of my epic fantasy Blades of Ruin series, and that will probably be in April, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Blade of Shadows (as narrated by Brad Wills) is done and it is slowly starting to roll out to the various platforms. I think as of this recording, the only place it is live right now is my Payhip store and Google Play, but hopefully by the time I record the next episode, it will be available at even more stores than that. Hollis McCarthy is working on Cloak of Titans and I think she's about halfway or two thirds of the way through recording, so we should be able to get that to you before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:13 Main Topic: Universal Monsters, Universal Fears, and Creating Villains Now our main topic, which is the Universal monsters and the universal fears and how you can use that to create villains. One idea a writer can use to create compelling villains is to tap into some of the universal fears, and in some ways, those universal fears are embodied by the classic Universal monster movies. I mentioned before that in Halloween of 2025, I saw that a bunch of the old black and white Universal monster movies were on Prime Video. So I watched them for the first time since I was a kid, and I was pleased to see that they held up pretty well for movies that are nearly a century old, especially considering these were some of the very first movies ever made with sound and the filmmakers were kind of figuring it out as they went along. Dracula is a bit uneven because they tried to cram the stage play version of the book into a 70 minute movie, which really doesn't work, though Bela Lugosi's performance as Dracula and Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing really carried the movie and helped define the characters in the public eye, but the others are all good and Bride of Frankenstein is legitimately a great movie, but why have these particular movies lasted so long in the public consciousness? For that matter, why do people keep coming back to new versions and new stories of Dracula and Frankenstein's Creature and all the others? Partly it's because these characters are in the public domain and you can use them without getting sued. True, but there's a lot of stuff in the public domain that doesn't see the light of day nearly as often as these classic monsters. I think it's because the classic monsters tap into the universal (small U) fears or classic archetypes of the things that people fear in real life. It's interesting to note that most of the classic Universal monsters were either originally humans who became monstrous or creations by humans that turn monstrous. Essentially, the monsters tap into archetypal fears and are exaggerated versions of villains and monsters we might actually encounter on a day-to-day basis. What do I mean? Let's expound. First up, Dracula. Count Dracula is in some ways the easiest ...
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    13 mins
  • Episode 288: Five Additional Business Lessons For Indie Authors From Brandon Sanderson's Apple TV Deal

    Episode 288: Five Additional Business Lessons For Indie Authors From Brandon Sanderson's Apple TV Deal
    Feb 2 2026
    In this week's episode, we look at five business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson's recent Apple TV deal. Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store: CALASKAR25 The coupon code is valid through February 9, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 288 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 30th, 2026 and today we are discussing five additional business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson in the aftermath of his recent Apple TV deal. Before we get into that, we will have a Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and publishing progress. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is CALASKAR25. And as always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes of this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February the 9th, 2026. So if you need a new science fiction ebook to read for this winter, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. Now that Blade of Storms is out and is doing well (thank you all for that), my main project is now Cloak of Summoning, and I am 34,000 words into it as of this recording, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 23 in the outline. I think it's probably going to come out in March because February is a short month and Cloak of Summoning is going to be a long book. So hopefully it should come out early in March. I'm also 1,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, which will be the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. That will be my main project once Cloak of Summoning is done. So hopefully that will come out in probably April or thereabouts. In audiobook news, recording is very nearly completed for Blade of Shadows, the second book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and that will be narrated by Brad Wills. Hollis McCarthy is currently working on the audiobook of Cloak of Titans, and I think she's about halfway through. So hopefully we should have some new audiobooks for you to listen to before much longer. And that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:04 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Business Lessons For Indie Authors From Brandon Sanderson Now onto our main topic this week, five additional business lessons for indie authors from Brandon Sanderson. And I think it is objectively factual to say that Brandon Sanderson is probably the most successful fantasy author who is currently publishing. Beyond the sheer number of sales, what many find most impressive about what he's achieved is his company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, that he has been able to create. It consists of Kickstarter campaign work, special book editions, a successful convention, merchandising (including an RPG), and a whole slew of other things. Even for authors like me operating on a much smaller scale, there are a few things to learn from his success at publishing and creating a specialized empire. Now what's amusing is the notes for the show were prepared a couple of weeks ago, but a few days ago, the news was announced that Brandon Sanderson entered into a licensing deal with Apple TV to produce adaptations based on his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series. As the author himself said on Reddit, "The decision to pick Apple was due to two factors. First, the levels of approvals and control. Apple wants to be a true partner with me and they feel like they really get what I want to do. Second, their track record. Apple does fewer things, but higher quality than some other studios. I find virtually everything of theirs I watch is excellent and creator driven." So that and an impressive degree of creative control he wrung out of Apple for this and if you are at all familiar with the history of movie adaptations, you know that the author getting any degree of creative control does not happen all that often. Usually what happens is the studio cranks out the adaptation that butchers the book and then it disappears into obscurity. So this actually happens to tie in quite well with the original theme of today's episode, which is the Five Business Lessons from Brandon Sanderson. He was able to reach this level of success by following these five business lessons consistently over a period of decades. So we will go into that now. #1: Find a way to meet fan demand and find gaps in the market. Sanderson was ahead of traditional publishing when it came to responding to fan requests for high quality letter bound or other enhanced special editions. By focusing on this gap in the market, he was able to meet a need expressed by his most passionate fans and get an additional round of sales from existing ...
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    12 mins
  • Episode 287: Five Lessons Learned From My Ten Bestselling Books Of 2025

    Episode 287: Five Lessons Learned From My Ten Bestselling Books Of 2025
    Jan 26 2026
    In this week's episode, I take a look back at my ten bestselling books of 2025, and consider five lessons learned from them. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Book #1 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: DRAGONSKULL50 The coupon code is valid through February 2, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 287 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 23rd, 2025, and today we are discussing five lessons learned from my 10 bestselling books of 2026. We'll also have Coupon of the Week and an update at my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is DRAGONSKULL50. And as always, links to my Payhip store and the coupon code will be available in the show notes of this episode. This coupon code will be valid through February 2, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am very nearly done with Blade of Storms, the third book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I am probably just going to stay inside and finish it this weekend because it is very cold. It is winter, but it looks like this week we are having super winter and I'm in the part of the US where we're not getting any snow thankfully, but it is in fact -20 degrees [Fahrenheit] outside, which makes it a good time to stay inside and work on Blade of Storms. So hopefully it will start going live by the time this episode goes live or shortly thereafter. I'm also 16,000 words into Cloak of Summoning, which will be the 14th book in the Cloak Mage series. And if all goes well, that should be my main project soon. It might come out before the end of February, but it will probably slip to March, the way things are looking. In audiobook news, we're very nearly done with the audiobook of Blade of Shadows (as excellently recorded by Brad Wills) and hopefully that should start getting through quality assurance on the various audiobook platforms before too much longer. Hollis McCarthy has started working on Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy series. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:09 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Lessons Learned from My 10 Bestselling Books from 2025 And now let's move on to our main topic this week, five lessons learned from the top 10 of my bestselling books from 2025. I have this growing pile of tax paperwork on my desk and that got me to thinking about what were my 10 bestselling books of 2025 because all the sales data is now in so I can parse it and look back and see which books of mine sold the best in 2025. I thought it'd be interesting to look at my 10 bestselling ebooks, audiobooks, and paper books for 2025 and see what percentage of them or what rather what percentage of book revenue came from new stuff published in 2025 and old stuff that I had published previously and then I would take a look at five lessons learned from that. So with all that in mind, let's take a first look at my ten bestselling ebooks of 2025 and what percentage of my book revenue for 2025 came from new books and from my backlist. So first up, my 10 bestselling ebooks of 2025: 1. Shield of Deception 2. Shield of Battle 3. Shield of Power 4. Ghost in the Assembly 5. Ghost in the Corruption 6. Cloak of Worlds 7. Blade of Flames 8. Ghost in the Siege 9. Blade of Shadows 10. Cloak of Illusion And for my total ebook revenue for 2025, 29.3% came from new books and 70.7% came from things I published prior to 2025. So let's look at the 10 bestselling audiobooks of 2025: 1. The Ghosts: Omnibus One 2. Cloak Mage Omnibus One 3. Ghost Armor Omnibus One 4. Dragonskull Omnibus One 5. The Ghosts Omnibus Two 6. The Ghosts Omnibus Three 7. Half-Elven Thief: Omnibus One 8. Ghost Exile Omnibus One 9. Cloak Mage Omnibus Three 10. Frostborn: The Shadow Prison: Frostborn, Book 15 So for audio, for my total revenue, 11.92% of it came from things that were newly published in 2025 and 88.08% came from things that had been published prior to 2025. Now my top 10 selling print books: 1. The Windows Command Line Beginner's Guide - Second Edition 2. The Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide 3. The Ubuntu Beginner's Guide 4. Frostborn: The Gray Knight 5. Shield of Storms 6. Frostborn: The Master Thief 7. Shield of Darkness 8. Shield of Deception 9. Frostborn: The Shadow Prison 10. Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife In terms of the percentages of my total print revenue, 5.57% came from things that have been published in ...
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    15 mins
  • Episode 286: Office Setup For Writers

    Episode 286: Office Setup For Writers
    Jan 19 2026

    In this week's episode, we offer four tips for setting up a comfortable and productive home office space for writers.

    This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store:

    DRAGONTIARNA25

    The coupon code is valid through January 26, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered!
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    13 mins
  • Episode 285: 5 Amazon Ads Tips For Indie Authors

    Episode 285: 5 Amazon Ads Tips For Indie Authors
    Jan 12 2026
    In this week's episode, we share five tips for effectively using Amazon Ads for indie authors. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Sevenfold Sword series at my Payhip store: SEVENFOLD25 The coupon code is valid through January 19, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 285 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 9th, 2025 and today we are discussing five tips for Amazon ads for authors. We will also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and publishing projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Sevenfold Sword series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SEVENFOLD25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through January the 19th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this winter, we've got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am about 68,000 words into Blade of Storms, which will be the third book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I think the book will be about 100,000 words, give or take, so that means I'm 68% of the way through. And I'm really hoping I can finish the rough draft by the end of the week of the 12th, if all goes well. So hopefully finishing up the rough draft by the 16th or the 17th, if all goes well, but we'll see if I can get there or not. I am also 9,000 words into Cloak of Summoning, which will be the 14th book in the Cloak Mage series. Hopefully that will come out a month or so after Blade of Storms. I'm hoping Blade of Storms will come out in January, but it might be tight. And then Cloak of Summoning will come out the month after that. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Shadows, the previous book in that series and Hollis McCarthy will start recording Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series, at the end of this month. And a few people asked if Wizard-Assassin was going to have an audiobook. It will. Leanne Woodward will record it in March, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:12 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Tips for Amazon Ads for Indie Writers And now let's move on to our main topic of the week, five tips for Amazon ads for indie writers. And let's not beat around the bush here. Amazon ads for writers can be extremely difficult to figure out, especially when you're just starting out. The advice you'll find online can be contradictory or confusing, and it doesn't help that books tend to act very strangely in terms of advertising compared to other products. A while back, I was chatting on Facebook with someone else who does Amazon ads, and he mainly does cosmetics reselling, and he was shocked by how much a click for an ebook would cost compared to a click for say like a six pack of shampoo or whatever. And that's just the nature of the market category that ebooks are in. Because of that, the advice you'll find online can be contradictory or confusing. Some Amazon ad experts insist that you devote at least an hour or even two a day to managing your ad results and then have intricate formula-filled spreadsheets for doing so, while others advise you to set them and forget them. Advice about the bids and spending vary wildly. It can be very easy to get overwhelmed or overspend starting out, but that doesn't have to be the case. I will say that compared to Facebook ads or BookBub ads, it is a lot harder to accidentally lose a lot of money on Amazon ads because regardless of how you configure your Facebook ads or your BookBub ads, Facebook in particular will cheerfully spend your ad budget and give you nothing in return if you haven't configured or targeted your ad correctly. By contrast, an Amazon ad that doesn't work tends not to display and therefore doesn't spend any of your money. So when I'm talking ad platforms for beginners, I tend to recommend that beginners start out more on Amazon ads just because it's much harder to lose money, but it's not impossible, which is something to keep in mind as we get into that. I'm not going to get into the individual specifics of how to set up Amazon ads today, since there's many other people out there who provide that information and probably do a better job than I would. That said, I'm going to just focus on broad principles based on things I've learned instead of providing a specific step-by-step guide for the topic. So without further ado, here are five lessons I've learned about Amazon ads for writers in the last eight or nine years that I've been learning them. #1: Do your research before you start. It can be tempting to ...
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    13 mins
  • Episode 284: Why is WIZARD-ASSASSIN in Kindle Unlimited?

    Episode 284: Why is WIZARD-ASSASSIN in Kindle Unlimited?
    Jan 5 2026
    In this week's episode, I explain my reasoning for putting my new book WIZARD-ASSASSIN in Kindle Unlimited, even though the majority of my books are wide and will remain so. I also examine the phenomenon of British Christmas chocolate boxes. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store: FROST25 The coupon code is valid through January 12, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction, Writing Updates, and British Christmas Chocolate Boxes Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 284 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 1st, 2025 and today we are discussing why Wizard-Assassin is in Kindle Unlimited. We'll also talk a bit about British Christmas chocolate boxes, something I just learned about recently. We will also have a Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and publishing projects. But first off, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year's holiday, whatever form that may take for you and I hope that 2026 turns out to be a great year. Now, let's move on to Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off all the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store. That code is FROST25. And as always, the coupon code and links to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through January the 12th, 2026, so if you need a new ebook series to dig into this snowy winter, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and publishing projects. I said I wanted to take the week off between Christmas and New Year's and I mostly did. Played a lot of video games, saw a lot of family, ate a lot of good food, but I do get a bit bored. So I did get some work in and I'm currently at 35,000 words of Blade of Storms, which will be the third book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I think the book's going to end up about 100,000 words or so, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, so that means I'm about 35% of the way through the rough draft. So that's good progress and it's back to full speed now that the New Year's and Christmas holidays are over. I am also 5,000 words into Cloak of Summoning, which will be the 14th Cloak Mage book. I'm hoping that Blade of Storms will be out in January and Cloak of Summoning will be out in February. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Shadows, the second book in the Blades of Ruin series and Leanne Woodward has signed up to record Wizard-Assassin, the fifth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and she's hoping to start work on that in March, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. And now for a brief digression into the subject of British Christmas chocolate boxes. Now, I'm grateful for all my readers, but I am surprised by how many UK readers I have. Mathematically, it is surprising because based upon which statistics you read, the UK has about 25 to 20% of the total population of the United States. So do you think that the UK book sales would be only about 20% of my US sales, but that isn't the case? In December of 2025, the US made up about 58% of my sales, but the UK did 34. I think the reason for that is that fantasy is generally a more popular genre in the UK than it is in the US. Like numerically speaking, the US probably has more fantasy readers because of the larger population, but the UK population's overall percentage of fantasy readers seems higher. Of course, maybe I'm completely wrong since the US and the UK are very different places, even if they both speak English. Anyway, that was a long-winded introduction of saying that before I started self-publishing in 2011, I knew practically nothing about the contemporary UK. I couldn't have told you if the UK was on the Euro or the Pound. However, in the 15 years since, I've absorbed a fair few facts by osmosis. One of them is Christmas chocolate boxes. I didn't know about this until recently, but apparently Christmas chocolate boxes are very popular in parts of the UK, with frequent debates about the best brand, quality, et cetera and this has been a tradition going back almost to the 1930s and the 1940s. Now, this was only an abstract fact I knew for a while, but a nice person got me a Quality Street chocolate box for Christmas. That's the brand name, if you're not familiar with it, Quality Street, which I suppose is better than Cheap Street. It was pretty good. There are apparently great debates about which chocolate ones are best, but honestly, I think I like the red cherry flavored ones the best. I know not everyone feels this way, but I do like that sort of artificial cherry taste that it has and that sometimes turns up in other things. So all in all, it was pretty tasty and [an] interesting way of experiencing a different culture. 00:04:28 Main Topic: Why is the Half-Elven Thief Series in ...
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    12 mins
  • Episode 283: Audiobook Sampler Platter For 2026!

    Episode 283: Audiobook Sampler Platter For 2026!
    Dec 29 2025

    In this week's episode, I provide an update on my writing projects, and then share samples from four of my audiobooks to start 2026!

    This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Power, Book #6 in the Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

    POWER2025

    The coupon code is valid through January 5, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered!
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    19 mins