6 Realizations That Will Change Me as an Author in 2025

I just got back from the Author Nation conference in Vegas ... and because of it, shit's about to get real.

I’m writing this to you from 35,000 feet, aboard Southwest flight WN358 from Las Vegas to Austin. I’ll load it into Substack to post when I get home, but I didn’t want to wait to actually write it. For one, I wanted to capture the enthusiasm I’m feeling right now. More importantly, though, I don’t want it on my To-Do list for later. I need to have nothing to do for a day or two. I feel like I’ve been beaten for seven days straight with the world’s most wonderful baseball bat. Rest and recouping is required.

That “wonderful baseball bat” was a conference called Author Nation, plus a bookselling event at its end. I was in Vegas from Sunday to Saturday (yesterday, as you receive this), but for three weeks prior, I was burning the candle at both ends trying to prepare for Author Nation. I knew I’d be on two panels and presenting a solo session, so I needed to get ready for them … but I also knew I’d be hand-selling (and signing) books all day Friday and needed to prepare for that, too. I’d never hand-sold books before. It was a lot to figure out.

I LIVE for weeks like the one I just had. The intensity of creative energy and inspiration is beyond intense. It’s so intense, in fact, that I need to be taken away from it by the end for my own health and sanity. I don’t like to miss opportunities to interact and share ideas with my friends, peers, and inspirations, so I kept right on burning that candle at both ends. I figured I’d sleep when I was dead.

(I was also working the entire time. When I wasn’t out on the floor talking to people or having a meal with cool people, I was in my room, putting in time on projects that needed doing.)

Here are a few things I learned during my insane week that will shape me as an author in 2025 and beyond:

THING I LEARNED #1: I’m playing too small

I met so many new people whose author careers are far beyond mine, despite my starting many years earlier and having many more books, one of which was made into a TV show. A lot of them were people who knew me even though I didn’t yet know them, leading to a weird mixed-mentorship situation: We admired each other’s accomplishments in entirely different ways, making for something truly mutual from which both of us were able to benefit.

Seeing what others were doing made me realize that I haven’t been playing a big enough “author game.” Their examples showed me that I’m bigger RIGHT NOW than the game I’ve been playing. So, yeah ... expect some mighty cool shit from JBT over the next year and beyond.

THING I LEARNED #2: I know a lot of exceedingly cool people

I flew to Vegas from Austin with Sean Platt, the co-author of many of my books. Sean and I hadn’t spent a lot of time together since I left Sterling & Stone and we separated professionally, other than a few times we’d gotten together to walk and talk. Flying together and hanging out on and off throughout the conference was a throwback to an earlier time … and very cool.

Emma Lee Jayne (who you may have heard with me on the One Drink Book Club podcast) also flew with us. I see Emma all the time, though — more than Sean lately and far more than the other people I saw there. It was wonderful to get all my writing friends together.

The best thing about these events is the sense of coming home I always feel. I get to see old friends again — and at this point, we’re getting to be truly old friends. I don’t mean we’re getting old (though everyone is; we all are). I mean that we’re “the OGs” in a more and more obvious way each year.

With every year that passes, I value those friendships more and more. I won’t list them all because the second you try to make a list, you accidentally forget someone and offend them. I do have pictures, though!

Here’s me and Mark Leslie LeFebvre, FKA “Mark from Kobo” if you’re an OG too. These days he’s with Draft2Digital, but increasingly I’m actually able to think of him as “my friend Mark” instead of some professional affiliation.

PRO TIP: If you want to get Mark’s attention, buy him a beer or take him to a brewery. The man loves his brew.

Mark and I were supposed to go zip-lining down Fremont street, but by the time our opportunity arrived, we were both too exhausted. Next time.

And here’s a pic of me with Joanna Penn, who’s even more OG than I am. Joanna is the Taylor Swift of this community. She can’t walk anywhere without being stopped ten times by people wanting to praise and thank her (and she deserves it!).

And here’s one of us with Sean, waiting for the closing keynote by Kevin Smith to begin. (Leave it to a group of writers to notice all of Kevin’s language tics. He ends most sentences with “and shit like that.” I thought it was only bugging me, but everyone commented on it later.)

I got to spend a lot of time this past week reuniting with old friends and meeting some new ones. I’m especially grateful for all of the people who came up to me as well (and there were a lot of them) to say flattering things I can’t take credit for. Maybe we helped to get this ball rolling (see "Thing I learned #6” below), but the only one responsible for all the careers that keep taking off amongst writers in the community are those writers themselves. I’m glad, though, to light a spark wherever I can.

THING I LEARNED #3: The world wants more art

Most independent authors today use a publication strategy called “rapid release.” It’s what it sounds like. In order to keep up with the algorithms that sell books for them (a high-stakes game wherein “failing to keep up with the algorithms” will completely destroy a rapid-release author’s career in a matter of months), these folks publish a book every month at the least. Every two weeks is common. They can’t afford to take their time at all, and often have to settle for “good enough” because there’s no time for anything more.

Rapid release isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just not for people like me. I should be clear that it does work for some authors. Many enjoy working that way and are very successful. Some of those books are quite good, too, and obviously plenty of readers like them.

However, it’s also really common for authors to be wrong for rapid release, but they do it anyway because it’s presented as the default. Many don’t think they have any other options.

What’s even sadder to me is when new authors — those with stars in their eyes, high on completing the book that was in their hearts — believe that rapid release is the only choice.

Think about it: Here those new authors are, having finally completed the novel they always dreamed of writing. They come to their first big conference with hopes of sharing it with the world … only to be told that their single book doesn’t stand a chance of being seen, and they’d better get to work writing more books faster and start spending half their days buying Amazon and Facebook ads and posting ten times a day on social media.

After being disheartened by those things at the 2023 conference, I pitched a session for 2024 called “The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race.” I gave that session on Wednesday this week, and was floored by the reaction it received.

First of all, the room was packed. Standing room only. People told me later that interested participants were being turned away at the door. They should have given me a bigger room.

Second, authors who’d been in the session came up to me for the rest of the week, thanking me for the message. It’s not something others are talking about. The “rapid release” side of the see-saw is talked about much more — and sometimes seems to be the exclusive “way to succeed” presented in the author community.

Authors told me that they wanted to take the time to create the best books they could, but hadn’t been given permission. They wanted to trade high-octane, tactical promotion strategies out for a more personal philosophy of connecting genuinely with readers, but thought they’d go broke if they tried. They wanted to embrace their artistic sides, but had been told it was a fool’s errand.

So don’t give up hope, lovers of humanity and true creativity. Neither is done yet … and you wouldn’t believe the hunger there still is for more and more of it in our depersonalized, faster-faster world.

I’m also starting to think I should pitch a follow-up Artisan Author session for 2025’s Author Nation. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to share by then.

THING I LEARNED #4: There’s a market for that art that’s beyond thriving.

I thought I was taking a risk by deciding to claim the title “artisan author.” In the past, I made a solid income publishing books in what used to be “the old, tried-and true way” but now feels more to me like a high-stress race to the bottom. I didn’t want to do that anymore, so instead of continuing to try to stay afloat in Amazon’s bookselling algorithms like most authors, I decided to focus instead on serving the readers I already had, many of whom are superfans. The idea was to trade higher numbers of books sold for higher-quality readers with higher levels of dedication who are willing to spend more on what I offer. I figured it was one or the other: have a lot of readers and sell a lot of books, or have fewer readers and fewer sales but focus on higher quality.

I learned this week that I don’t have to choose. I met people like Willow Winters and David Viergutz, whose insistence on artistry isn’t just a creative stance, but also an excellent choice for their businesses. Willow, David, and others are thriving because they’re choosing artistry, not in spite of it. They’ve both pushed “artful books” far, FAR beyond what I have so far.

So yeah. You can expect more wonderful things from me in the coming years, beyond what I’d thought was reasonable before. And you can expect me to be more me than I’ve even been being so far (and I’ve really “been me” so far). These awesome others have given me permission to be as nuts as I want to be.

(Fun quote from Willow about that, by the way. She kept saying, “Be delusional.” And I’m like, “I’m there, dude.”)

THING I LEARNED #5: Apparently I’m an extrovert now

I’ve noticed over the past few years that I’ve been tending more and more toward extroversion. I’m much more outgoing than I used to be.

I knew that, and I knew I like public speaking. I didn’t realize until this week, however, that I truly love it. I absolutely loved giving my presentation about the Artisan Author and wished it could have gone on longer. Expect more of that sort of thing from me: more emerging from "the writer's cave" to meet people in person.

But as it turned out, speaking was only part of my Vegas extroversion.

The day after the conference was the Reader Author Vegas Event (RAVE), wherein authors set up booths to sign and sell their books. I decided to participate in RAVE after being comped a table as part of my speaker contract but expected nothing at first. Only after I'd agreed did I start researching. And as I researched, I start to get excited.

RAVE went amazingly well. Here's a pic of the stack of books I took with me to RAVE, which I had to somehow pack into my luggage. It was heavy as shit, and I had to check two bags with the airline. I never check bags.

On Friday, after being on a panel about writing good villains, I set up my table. Here’s what those same books look like with some context.

I love the shit out of that banner. I designed it myself. Over and over, I saw people stroll by, then double-take at it. It was a real attention-getter.

The way that my own behavior at RAVE unfolded shocked me. I didn’t sit down once, and only left the booth one time during its 6-hour run to visit the restroom. The rest of the time, I was acting like someone I didn’t know I could be: talking to everyone who walked by, telling people excitedly about my books, getting THEM excited, and making deals.

A few hours in, my table looked like this:

And by the end, this was all I had left to take back home with me:

RAVE went so well and was so incredibly enjoyable that I now need to find more live events at which to sell my books (ones within driving distance. I’m not flying with all that stuff again). I couldn’t believe how fun it was … and how well I sold. The event taught me a lot, and validated a lot of what I’d been hoping was true.

To me, hand-selling books and appearing in person is just an extension of the slow-down, make-quality-connections artisan way of authoring I've been all about all along. I don’t want to pander to bookselling algorithms. Instead, I want to meet real human beings one at a time.

Fortunately, I attended another Author Nation session put on by Mark Leslie about selling to libraries, bookstores, and in person … and that validated everything so much further.

THING I LEARNED #6: You never know how one small action might change the world

This last one sounds grandiose and self-congratulatory. I don’t mean it to be. This is more a lesson about how our actions have consequences we sometimes never see — and how vital something you do might end up being.

Follow me down a rabbit hole for a bit, will you?

The conference I attended (Author Nation) is the largest indie author conference in the world. It’s a change-maker and precedent-setter. It — and the community that orbits it, whether everyone attends the actual event or not — is largely responsible for (or at least highly influential in) how most independent authors will write and work in 2025 and beyond.

Author Nation is the successor to a conference called "20 Books to 50k," which was held the same time of year in the same venue until 2023, after which Author Nation replaced it. If there’d been no 20 Books, there’d be no Author Nation.

Before that, from 2016 to 2019, Sean Platt, David Wright, and I held our own conference in Austin, Texas. It was called the "Smarter Artist Summit." We held that conference for four years: three amazing years and one that definitely sucked a little. For the sucky year (year 2), we ended up in a shitty little conference space where participants had to sit pressed tightly between two other participants. We made the conference work in terms of content and community, but oh man … THAT SPACE. We felt terrible, but there was no way to fix it.

Some participants were rightfully pissed off about the SAS Year Two venue. One of them was a guy named Craig Martelle, who took his discontent to a guy named Michael Anderle and said, “Fuck the Smarter Artist Summit. We can do better than those assholes.”

Craig and I are friends now. We’ve joked about it. I was talking to him this week and he said, “It's actually a good thing you pissed me off, because all of this came out of it.”

Meaning that if we hadn’t had our shitty year at SAS, 20 Books wouldn’t have been created. Which means that Author Nation wouldn’t have been created.

Sean and I started the Smarter Artist Summit after our book Write. Publish. Repeat. took off and became an industry bible. But honestly, we only wrote WPR because for a few years prior, we’d been hosting the very popular Self Publishing Podcast and needed a book to put all of our scattered podcast advice in sensible order.

And yet, The Self Publishing Podcast almost didn’t happen, either. Sean and I didn’t even know each other before we started it. We met briefly at Blogworld in something like 2009, having known each other from the same internet circles (blogs and social media before it became a soul-sucking shit-show). But then I heard a guy named Pat Flynn say in an interview that his entire world and business came about as a result of his podcast. Starting a podcast changed everything for Pat. So I went to Sean and said, “What if starting a podcast could change everything for us, too?”

Sean was initially resistant, just because he’s always got too much on his plate. I had to convince him. But what if I hadn’t?

If there'd been no Self Publishing Podcast, there'd've been no Write. Publish. Repeat. No Write. Publish. Repeat, no Smarter Artist Summit. No shitty year at SAS, no pissed-off Craig and hence no 20 Books conference. And if there'd been no 20 Books, there'd be no Author Nation today.

I realized that with a few days of the conference remaining. I’ve got a lot of acclaim in that crowd, but this time it truly hit me what it all meant. I’m not claiming I shaped publishing by myself. I didn't -- not in the least. But there is a clear causal chain of events between my decision to start a podcast with Sean and the way the indie world looks today. If I hadn't pushed the podcast, none of what followed would have happened.

That's crazy for me to think about.

All the people I saw this past weekend might be doing entirely different things if the Self Publishing Podcast never existed -- nothing to do with publishing or writing at all. All the writers who took inspiration from any link in the chain might not be writers today. There’d be something going on in indie publishing, surely ... but it would look very different. Some of what exists now might not have had the perfect kismet required to exist at all.

And again, to be perfectly clear: I’m not taking credit in any way, shape, or form. But it’s a humbling and inspiring reminder that you just never know what little thing you do might end up meaning everything.

OH: and by the way, you can still get the recordings (“digital access”) of the Author Nation 2024 sessions including my “Artisan Author” talk, as well as join the list to buy Author Nation 2025 tickets, which should go on sale very soon. If you’re on the fence about attending, just do it. If I can learn and be inspired so much, so can you. Conferences are game-changers. Don’t rob yourself of what could be one of the most valuable experiences you ever have!

It’s amazing and humbling every time I re-immerse myself in the world of my fellow friends and authors. Expect big things from me in 2025 as I step into areas I haven’t realized fully until now …

… and for you, if you’re an author, I hope you find the same.