PODCAST · arts
Novel Marketing
by Thomas Umstattd Jr.
The longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. This is the show for writers who want to build their platform, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about. Whether you self publish or are with a traditional house, this podcast will make book promotion fun and easy. Thomas Umstattd Jr. interviews publishers, indie authors, and bestselling traditional authors about how to get published and sell more books.
Episodes
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The 5 Kinds of Author Kickstarter Campaigns
Most authors know only one kind of Kickstarter campaign, and for many of them, it isn't the best one. This week on Novel Marketing, you’ll hear from Russell Nohelty, a USA Today bestselling author of over 70 books who has run dozens of successful Kickstarter campaigns. Russell wrote the book on…
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Your AI Is Lying About Your Book
The chatbot told him his manuscript was brilliant. The humans gave his manuscript a C. That's what happened to one author who trusted AI as his editor. If you use AI to help with your editing, it's probably lying to you too, and not just once in a while. In this week’s episode, I talked with...
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How to Relaunch Your Book
Your book may not be dead. As Miracle Max would say, it might only be mostly dead. A book that flopped three years ago could sell better today than it did on launch day, but only if you fix what actually broke. This week, I talked with Julie Broad, founder of Book Launchers and host of...
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How to Write Short Stories with Joanna Penn
The slowest way to write a novel is to start writing a novel. It sounds backward, but it’s not. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn. She’s spent years exploring short fiction as both craft practice and creative outlet, and she pushed back a bit on my claim...
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Should You Leave Kindle Unlimited in 2026? The Math May Surprise You
Authors on KDP Select get access to $700 million a year in the Kindle Unlimited fund. One login, one dashboard, one algorithm, one company to deal with. But that same company won't let you talk to a human with authority when something goes wrong, and it runs an algorithm that can end your career...
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Get More Time to Write by Using a Grok Bot
Authors have historically lamented all the administrative, technological, and marketing tasks that go along with being a writer. How many times have you sighed and said, “But I just want to write!” We have just gone through a massive transition in how authors use AI. You can now have AI agents do...
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Will Your Back Matter Get Your Book Banned on Amazon?
It's 1:30 in the morning, and a woman in Cleveland has just finished your book. She meant to go to bed hours ago, but she just couldn't put it down, and now she's at the end, feeling that particular ache that comes from finishing a book you loved. She turns the page to see what you have for her...
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SEO for Author Websites: The Only Guide You Need in 2026
If a reader Googled your name right now, what would come up? An abandoned LinkedIn profile from a career you left behind? A neglected Goodreads page? An insurance agent in Albuquerque who happens to share your name? There's only one number-one spot on Google, and if you don't claim it for your...
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The Comprehensive Guide to BookFunnel
You know you need an email list. You've heard about reader magnets and maybe you even have one, but you're stuck at a handful of subscribers, wondering how other authors build lists of tens of thousands of engaged readers who actually buy their books. Damon J. Courtney knows how. He's an author…
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Why Your Cover, Blurb, and Hook Are All Just Guesses
Every month, traditional publishers lose more ground to indie authors. One reason it’s happening is that in trad publishing, a committee or the highest-paid person in the room makes the call on book covers, marketing copy, and even what they suppose readers might like. Both get it wrong far more...
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The 5 Tiers of Audiobooks: Which One Should You Publish?
For most of publishing history, creating an audiobook meant writing a check for thousands of dollars and hoping you'd earn it back in sales. Because of the expense, many authors decided it wasn't worth the risk. So, they skipped audio entirely. Here's the problem. That decision now backfires in a...
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Estate Planning for Authors: How to Protect Your Books (and Your Family) After You Die
You will die. It could be today, it could be 15 years from now, but no one lives forever. Your books, however, can outlive you. In fact, seventy years after you're gone, they’ll live in the public domain. That means your grandchildren's grandchildren could end up responsible for your intellectual...
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Why Amazon Is Terminating Innocent Authors
What do you do if your Amazon account gets suspended but you didn’t do anything wrong? Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't care if you're innocent. That's not pessimism. It's strategy. Once you understand what Amazon cares about (hint: it's not you, the law, or fairness), you can start speaking a...
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Author's PR Playbook: How to Get Media Coverage Without a Publicist
Is hiring a publicist a waste of money or not? A typical book publicist charges between $3,000 and $10,000 per month, and they often require a three-month minimum. At $3 of profit per book, you'd need to sell 5,000 copies just to break even. Most PR campaigns don't come close to selling 5,000...
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How to Level Up Your Writing With Chris Fox
Do you feel like an imposter as a writer? You probably are. Most authors who experience imposter syndrome are imposters, but they don't have to be! As the saying goes, “There are no good writers; just bad writers who didn’t quit.” Every author starts off as a bad writer. To make a living at…
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How to Revive a Dead Book With a Promo Stack
Are your book sales stuck? Maybe sales have slowed. Maybe your launch never took off. Or maybe you're spending money on ads without seeing results. This week on Novel Marketing, Amazon ad specialist Bryan Canter explains how "promo stacking" can revive a struggling book and put it in front of new...
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Why I'm Giving Away a $249 Course This Month
Instead of a guest interview or a marketing deep-dive, in this week’s episode I'm inviting you to something I've spent years building for authors who want to be taken seriously. You’ll discover: How you can get lifetime access to my $249 course this month for $0 How you can get your questions...
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Announcing the 2027 Novel Marketing Conference
A writers conference with no pitch appointments, no breakout tracks, and no recordings? What’s left? A conference that sold out last year! The Novel Marketing Conference is different, and every single attendee that responded to our survey said they were glad they came in 2026. In this week's...
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The Four Loves That Drive Book Sales
Have you ever finished a book you loved, handed it to a friend, and heard back, "It was fine"? That disconnect has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It has everything to do with a principle C.S. Lewis understood well enough to write classics that have endured for decades. In this...
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Rules for Book Advertising with David Gaughran
The difference between making thousands of dollars on your next book and losing money can come down to a few cents per click. If your ads generate even a few pennies of net profit, you can run them until you've sold tens of thousands of books. But if you're losing money, no amount of spending…
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My Worst Takes & Mistakes Over 500 Episodes
We’ve arrived! It’s the 500th episode of Novel Marketing. To celebrate, I’m giving away the MacBook Neo I reviewed a few episodes ago, but I’m also revealing my worst takes and biggest mistakes over the past 500 episodes. Some of those takes were correct, but when circumstances changed, the…
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Stop Guessing: How to Know If Your Book Marketing Is Working
Most authors can tell you their royalties but not their net profit per book. They spend money on ads, see sales come in, and assume things are fine. But are they? Sales and profit are not the same thing. How can you find out if you’re making money or just making sales? In this week’s episode,...
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The Cultural Zeitgeist Shift That's Making Indie Authors Rich
There’s a culture shift underway that most authors aren’t seeing. Even traditional publishers can’t figure out why their titles are resonating. If your book isn’t selling, it could be a cover or craft problem, but it might be a zeitgeist problem. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from fantasy…
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Apple's Cheapest Laptop Ever: Should Authors Buy It?
I bought and tested Apple's cheapest laptop so you don't have to. I stress-tested the MacBook Neo with a 250,000-word document, ran every major writing app, and pushed the machine to its limits. Whether the Neo is right for you depends on what you use your computer to do, because authors do more...
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Your Friends Lied About Your Book Cover
Your author friends are lying to you about your book cover. Well, not on purpose. They can’t help it. When authors are trying to pick a book cover, they often ask their friends which cover they like best. But that strategy doesn’t work because your friends look too closely. They think about your...
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Reader Magnets Are Dead? Why Most Reader Magnets Fail
Many authors say reader magnets don’t work anymore. But when done right, a good reader magnet can grow your email list from zero to thousands of subscribers before your first book even launches. In this episode, you’ll hear from author, podcaster, and producer of the Novel Marketing podcast…
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Your Author Toolbox: Part 2
Do you ever wish you had a team of writing, publishing, or marketing professionals to consult? Do you wish you had an assistant to help with the business and marketing side of writing? What if you could have both for less than the cost of a couple of lattes? In this week’s episode, you’ll hear...
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How to Become a Professional Writer With Joanna Penn
Is your writing a hobby or a profession? The answer to that question changes everything. Many authors claim to be professionals but act like hobbyists. They write what they want instead of what readers will pay for. They try to fit a finished book into a genre instead of studying the genre first....
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Why Your Book Isn’t Selling: Metadata
If your book isn’t selling, it may not be your writing. It may be your metadata. In this week’s episode of the Novel Marketing Podcast, you’ll hear from Dave Chesson, creator of Publisher Rocket, and learn about the hidden engine behind book sales on Amazon. Even if your book is well-written and...
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How to Format a Book with Vellum
Many authors assume book formatting is complicated, expensive, or something only professionals can handle. In this week’s episode, I talk with Bryan Canter about why that assumption is outdated, and how tools like Vellum have changed what authors can do. If you’ve ever wondered whether you need...
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How Authors Can Stay out of Tax Jail
American Taxes, pay too little and you go to jail. Pay too much and you lose the money you need to reach more readers with advertising and promotion. If your records feel like a mess of Amazon deposits, Ingram payments, Kickstarter funds, affiliate income, coaching fees and dozens of random...
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Productivity Secrets from Bestselling Author Jerry B. Jenkins
Do you ever feel like your book is taking forever to write? Maybe you’ve been working on the same manuscript for years, and then you look up and see other authors publishing a book a year, or more. How do they do it? In this week’s episode, I ask Jerry B. Jenkins that very question. He has sold...
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Networking for Authors
Most authors begin writing as a solitary pursuit and soon realize they don’t know other writers or industry professionals who can help them grow. So how do you go from a solitary outsider to a connected insider who knows designers, editors, marketers, and more? In this week’s episode, we talk…
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The 5 Year Plan to Become a Professional Author
If you ask a bestselling novelist how long it took to go from aspiring writer to published success, the answer is usually about ten years. One reason it takes so long is that most authors learn about writing in a haphazard way. They read a blog post here, listen to a podcast there, attend a...
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Why Some Authors Are Ditching ChatGPT Entirely
ChatGPT used to be the go-to AI for authors, but it's no longer the best choice for every task. New models like Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok are outperforming it in specific areas, from creative writing to research to automation. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from The Nerdy…
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A Nonfiction Author’s Guide to Substack
I am not a big fan of Substack for novelists. Most novelists are better off using the free version of Kit and WordPress. However, Substack is a completely different story for nonfiction authors. If you’re a nonfiction author who wants to grow your platform without juggling five different tech...
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Should You Create a Premium Hardcover Edition of Your Book?
Hardcover books are back. Beautiful, premium, collector-quality editions are gaining momentum with readers who want books that look and feel special. But how do you know if you should create a premium hardcover edition of your book? In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from author Paul Millerd…
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Amazon Algorithm Secrets That Separate Bestsellers from the Slush Pile
Authors talk about “the algorithm” the way the little aliens in Toy Story talk about “the claw.” Does the algorithm randomly choose your book, or is someone else controlling the claw? In this week’s episode, you’ll discover what we know about how Amazon decides which books to show, and how to get...
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The Shopify Trap: Why Authors Keep Losing Money
Lately, I’ve been getting swamped with emails from authors asking about Shopify. Many are losing money and wondering what went wrong and how to fix it. Here’s the truth most authors don’t want to hear: Shopify is usually a bad deal for most authors. In this week’s episode, you’ll learn ✅ Why...
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Stop Wasting Money on Ink: 2025 Printer Guide for Authors
Are you wasting money, time, and paper by using the wrong printer? Before you buy your next printer, make sure it has the features every author needs. The wrong setup can cost you hundreds of dollars a year or, worse, stop working altogether when your Wi-Fi service fails. In this week’s episode,...
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How to publish your audiobook through ACX
Audiobooks have been the fastest-growing segment in publishing for a decade, and for many readers, an audiobook signals a real, human-written book. In fact, audiobook sales have recently outpaced ebook sales! Now is the time to get your book on audio. But where do you even begin? In this week’s...
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How to Build an Email List before publishing your novel
Many authors make the mistake of writing a book first and then trying to find readers. This is backwards and rarely works. However, if you follow these three steps, your book will be set up for success. Step #1: Identify your target reader. Step #2: Start growing an audience of readers like that...
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Triple Your Writing Speed with Dictation
The faster you write, the more books you can publish and the more money you can make from your writing. We all type slower than we speak, and if you’re typing and creating a story at the same time, you type even slower. But what if you could regularly produce 50 words or more per minute? You’d be...
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How to Boost Sales With Permafree Books
Giving away your hard work for free doesn’t seem to make good business sense. So why do authors give away ebooks for free? What if “free” didn’t kill your revenue, but primed it? In this week’s episode, we’ll dig into the permafree strategy with Dale Roberts, author of Secrets of the Permafree...
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How to Get More Book Reviews
So you wrote a good book, but you can’t seem to get reviews. Do you just throw up your hands? Why do reviews and ratings even matter? Well, the more reviews a book has, the better it will sell and the more reviews it will get. Without the social proof of reviews, readers scroll past your book...
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The Author’s Guide to AI with Joanna Penn
Most authors either avoid AI or use it badly. Let’s fix that. Authors who learn to use AI find that they have more time to write better books. In this week’s episode, Joanna Penn and I break down where to start, which tools are actually worth using, and how to get useful output instead of bland...
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When to Ignore Your Editor
Every author needs editorial feedback. But not all feedback is good. If you accept every edit, you risk losing your voice and writing something bland. If you ignore all edits, you risk writing something sloppy that readers won’t buy. So how do you know which edits to take and which to toss? In…
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Announcing the 2026 Novel Marketing Conference
Most writing conferences teach you how to write a better book or how to pursue a literary agent. But what if you have already written a great book and you need help selling it? Is there a conference for you? Yes! Announcing the 2026 Novel Marketing Conference, a live, in-person event focused on...
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How to Get Started with Author School Visits and Make Your Book Playground Famous
If you write picture books, chapter books, or middle-grade fiction, you know the challenge: kids read your books, but adults buy them. So how can you let young readers know about your books? Where can you connect with your readers? By meeting them in person in school classrooms! In this week's...
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Zeitgeist, Dystopian Fatigue, and the Rise of Ruthless & Noble Heroes
What’s up with ruthless heroes and romantasy? And what if the real reason your book isn’t selling has nothing to do with your writing and everything to do with the zeitgeist? In this week’s Novel Marketing episode, we’re featuring an episode of Author Update. We unpack the massive cultural…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. This is the show for writers who want to build their platform, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about. Whether you self publish or are with a traditional house, this podcast will make book promotion fun and easy. Thomas Umstattd Jr. interviews publishers, indie authors, and bestselling traditional authors about how to get published and sell more books.
HOSTED BY
Thomas Umstattd Jr.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Novel Marketing have?
Novel Marketing currently has 514 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Novel Marketing about?
The longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. This is the show for writers who want to build their platform, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about. Whether you self publish or are with a traditional house, this podcast will make book promotion fun and...
How often does Novel Marketing release new episodes?
Novel Marketing releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 514 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Novel Marketing?
You can listen to Novel Marketing on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Novel Marketing?
Novel Marketing is created and hosted by Thomas Umstattd Jr..
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