Make Friends, Make Money

To sell books as an Artisan Author, just embrace the power of people.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Ever since I started talking about The Artisan Author approach to writing and publishing, people have been asking me the same basic question:

“It’s all well and good to put freedom and creativity first and to stop letting Amazon control your career … but can you actually make any money selling books that way?”

The answer is yes. Unequivocally yes.

In fact, for a lot of authors, your chances of earning as an Artisan are better than earning through “Rapid Release,” which is the most common self-pub paradigm these days. Yes, some people are perfectly suited to Rapid Release and absolutely kill it by publishing only ebooks exclusively into Kindle Unlimited. Those folks know the dance. They love the dance. Some do their best work under that kind of pressure, and turn out great books that readers love at a gattling-gun pace.

But those writers are a very small minority.

By the numbers, the vast majority of authors are not perfectly suited to Rapid Release. Oh, they can force themselves into it, but it’s not a good fit. The average author might naturally and comfortably write a book or three a year, but sure: They can make themselves write one every three weeks for a while. It’s a stress factory. The books that used to be so lovingly crafted come out like products on an assembly line. They stop resting. Stop taking vacations. They rush their books to market — sometimes full of errors and cliche characters, despite wanting (and knowing how) to do better — because satisfying the bookselling algorithm has more to do with quantity than quality if they’re to make Rapid Release work.

This is where burnout happens. This is where “learning to hate writing even if you used to love it” happens.

When I gave my first presentation on the “alternative to Rapid Release” represented by Artisan Authoring, the response I got was relief. Those in the audience were delighted to hear that they didn’t have to grind out rapid-fire books for the rest of their lives …

… but we didn’t talk too much about money at first.

And so, once the good feels settled, some people thought I was just arguing for art over commerce. Creativity over profit. Integrity, perhaps, over money. They thought my message was “You have to grind too hard in Rapid Release … so instead, just write the books you want to write, and be happy not making any money.”

But that’s not what I’m saying. Not in the least.

Can you make good money as an Artisan Author?

Absolutely yes. In fact, a lot of writers actually have a far better chance of making money as an Artisan Author than as a dyed-in-the-wool Rapid Release author.

This isn’t because Artisan Authoring is a magic Easy Button or a plan to get rich quick. (It’s neither.) It’s because there are far more Rapid Release failure stories than success stories; it’s just that nobody talks about them. We’ve been duped, folks. Because those one-in-a-thousand success stories tend to grab headlines better than the more-numerous failures, we’ve come to believe that Rapid Release is something that everyone can do well and that always works. But in truth, neither is true.

(If you’re curious which side you fall on, here’s a test: Read this post. If you resonate with what’s there, I’d wager you’ll have an easier time earning a buck as an Artisan than in Rapid Release — especially over the long term. Easy? No. Guaranteed? No. But easier for your style in Rapid Release? Absolutely.)

But HOW do I make that “easier money as an Artisan”? you might be asking. Well, I wrote a whole book on the “how” of it, so I suggest just getting the book if you truly want to know all of the ins and outs.

But if you’d like a taste — to see how simple and straightforward selling books as an Artisan Author can be — read on.

First: Understand the Idea of 1000 True Fans.

Most self-published authors in 2025 don’t write their books for fans, or readers, or even human beings. Instead, they write them for algorithms.

On the surface, it makes sense: If you write a book that really makes Amazon’s bookselling algorithms happy, that algorithm will push it out to a bunch of readers who might like it.

There are big problems with that approach for a lot of authors, but they’re sideways to the point of this post. For our purposes, just keep that truth in mind: In Rapid Release, you’re writing to please an algorithm, not the readers behind it.

Okay. But what if we — as Artisan Authors — ignored the algorithms? What if we could find readers in other ways, and avoid the burnout and all-the-same-factory-mindset and anti-creativity that the algorithms tend to require?

What’s more, because Amazon’s most powerful algorithms target Kindle Unlimited readers (people who don’t usually like to pay more for their books than what they’re already paying for their KU membership — which, from Amazon’s perspective, is all that matters), what if the readers WE find were more lucrative customers than those the ALGORITHM finds?

What if instead of someone borrowing your book in KU (netting you a tidy dollar) or buying the ebook for the 99 cent price tag so many authorities today advise, the readers WE find were willing to pay $7 for an ebook? Or $25 for a paperback? Or $75 or more for a deluxe special edition hardback?

What if instead of writing for algorithms to hopefully earn a tiny bit of money on a lot of readers, we instead flipped that around? What if instead, we only needed to find fewer readers who were willing to spend a lot more money?

This is the idea behind “1000 True Fans” — the True North for any Artisan Author.

When finding readers, an Artisan Author focuses on quality, not quantity — on True Fans, not just casual readers. We don’t need all the fans in the world. We want the best fans in the world. We don’t need a ton of readers who like a book we wrote. Instead, we need many fewer readers who love us as an author.

Earn a True Fan once, and you won’t have to earn them again.

They’ll buy from you the next time you publish, almost automatically.

And the next.

With no advertising, keyword-optimizing, or metadata-tweaking required.

Hell, without even Amazon required.

Second: Set Sensible Expectations.

You’re starting to imagine a life full of Lamborghinis right now, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re just thinking that I’m about to reveal the secret to making all the money you want with absolute surety and zero effort.

If so, knock it off.

I guarantee nothing. There is nothing magical or assured about anything in publishing, and this approach is no exception. Yes, True Fans might just be your path to freedom, but they’re not going to be easy to get. This is a slow (but certain, if you’re patient, and stable) way to be an author. You’ll earn your True Fans one at a time … and yes, I do mean EARN them. You can’t push buttons to get it done. You can’t create the perfect ad-and-autoresponder sequence that will do all the work for you.

Growth will be slow, but it also won’t be subject to trends and whims. With a True-Fans, Artisanal approach to writing, you’ll be bulletproof in each success you have. You’ll be immune to the sudden and devastating algorithm changes that have happened several times in the past (destroying many author careers overnight) and that will definitely happen again. You’ll also be immune to AI taking your job … simply because AI can’t be you, and True Fans want you.

So don’t get lazy and don’t get greedy. Instead, roll up your sleeves and accept that good and lasting things always require effort.

The Artisan approach is the way commerce has worked since commerce was invented. It’s tried and proven, unlike so many get-rich-quick techniques people like to pretend work for everyone today. (Because they don’t. C’mon: We all know Easy Buttons are bullshit. We know that, right?)

Third: Just Make Friends

This is the part where I simplify a huge and multifaceted topic because this is a post rather than a book, and it’s frankly too damn long already.

So yes: The full explanation of how you earn True Fans is much more broad and nuanced than what I’m about to say, but we’re trying for quick-hit comprehension here. You don’t need to understand everything right now. I mostly just want you to say “A-ha!” and then maybe a little lightbulb will pop up over your head.

(Another Mitch Hedburg joke because I can’t resist: “Do you think that when some dude invented the bong, a blacklight popped up over his head?”)

Okay. Ready for some truthful but stripped-down simplicity?

All righty: To gain True Fans, just make friends.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it — though again, there are a million ways to “make friends” in this context and a million ways to collect enough potential friends together so that you can sift out the good ones from the assholes. To get the whole picture, I will again selfishly refer you to read The Artisan Author book, which is here.

(I’m just making a “friend” metaphor above, by the way. I don’t mean that your pool of potential True Fans will literally be full of equally potential assholes, though that’s probably true as well.)

I do love the framing, though: That of True-Fan-making as friend-making. Once the blacklight popped up over my own head on that one, it all started to make sense.

See, here’s my best sales tactic:

Being friendly.

Too simplistic? Okay, here’s another:

Being reasonable.

Too obvious? Okay, here’s a third super-secret ninja tactic I use all the time to overcome objections and close the sale and generally work that “yes ladder” like the pros teach you so that I can maximize my AOV and conversion rates like a real master:

Being open and honest.

Yeah. This advice sounds like total balls; I get it. But I found out that it honestly worked for me in an interesting and sideways way … and now that I see it, it makes all the sense in the world.

Being cool as an antidote to the uncoolness of the world (and discovering it’s a great way to sell books)

Honestly, I began doing all the rainbows-and-daisies stuff above simply because I’m sick of so many people in our modern world only looking out for themselves and seeing everyone else as an adversary or an enemy. I’m sick of discourtesy and entitlement and people bullying their way ahead, because apparently the rules don't apply to them. I’m sick of division. Of discord. It sucks.

(Example: This colossal assbag in my area used his substantial wealth to erect an enormous illegal billboard to show off his private rich-men’s club to everyone who drives by — a pure ego move that was never given official permits by the city but was instead put up under the philosophy of “try and stop me!” and “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission!” Personally, I’d kind of like to take a page from the same book: destroy it, then ask for forgiveness. Like this:

Aaaanyway, this is all to say that I first started approaching book sales from a perspective of “just trying to be reasonable and cool and friendly and not a dick” more as an act of rebellion than because I thought it was a wise sales tactic. There’s a lot of crap in the world right now, so I tried to engender less crappiness in my immediate circle of influence.

But then I found that readers opened up when I opened up. They were real and friendly with me when I was real and friendly with them. The venue didn’t matter. I could do it in email (taking the time to answer fully, rather than being dismissive and rushing) and I could do it in person. I could be cool when fans asked a question or made a request online, and I could be nice even if they didn’t want to buy my books at some live event and walked away empty-handed. When someone did seem interested in my books, I could let myself react genuinely: showing enthusiasm, not just acting too cool for school.

I de-automated my business. I started doing things that didn’t scale. I got so incredibly tired of big business and billionaires that (and okay, this is a personality flaw on my end), I made my approach smaller out of some weird sense of spite — as if I’d show those billionaires by being the opposite of them.

But then I found I liked it. I liked the one-by-one, treating casual maybe-readers as if they were already my friends approach so much better than the impersonal tack I used to take — and the tack that most of us use today to one degree or another.

In person, online … you can do this anywhere.

If a person I’m talking to seems politically or socially different from me, it doesn’t matter. We’re all just human beings trying to get by, so I do my best to treat everyone well even if we completely disagree.

Naive? Maybe. Simplistic? Yes. Likely to earn me a ton of money on the “be nice and get rich” lecture circuit? Absolutely not.

But it made me feel better about all the anger and division in the world. At first, that’s why I kept doing it.

But surprise surprise … it turned out that all those “human beings just trying to get by” that I’d met liked it, too.

And the more I treated them as friends, the more they came to think of me as a friend. (And no, I’ve had no stalkers or line-crossers yet. Turns out most people are just people, and there’s a lot less danger out there than we usually clench tightly against and expect.)

But get this: When it comes time to buy something (a book, for instance), people prefer to buy from people they like rather than people they dislike — or don’t know at all.

I’ve earned so many more True Fans recently than I was earning before. Yes, I need to find the “raw material” for those True Fans, and that means exposing myself and/or my books to a lot of people who might not be a good fit so that I can sift out the relative few who will fit my books and style like a glove. But that’s just about time, work, and patience.

Today, I earn far more from the “Artisan” stuff I do as an author than I do from hands-off sales on Amazon. I typically only earn $200 a month or so from Amazon despite having over 100 books there. In practice, all of my earnings come from direct sales of some sort or another.

But the upside is that if you can find those True Fans and do what’s necessary to nurture them and make them happy, you become bulletproof as an author. You don’t need to find buyers for your next book because you’ve already got them in your circle, and all you need to do to make that sale is to let them — your “reader friends” — know it exists.

And if it doesn’t work? If I put time into building a relationship and it doesn’t pan out? Well, who cares? Making friends and being nice can’t backfire. There’s really no downside.

And here’s a bonus: In addition to selling more these days than ever before, I’m a hell of a lot happier, too.

P.S: I know this post sounds pollyanna, but I actually mean it. The world sucks sometimes. This makes it suck less.

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If you like this Artisan approach and the idea of 1000 True Fans, definitely grab my book The Artisan Author. I’m walking my talk even in its Kickstarter (which is still going on for a little while): For those who want more than just the Artisan Author book, the “Artisan University” tiers of the campaign are my attempt to build community … and just like my readers, those who attend are people I’ll do my damnedest to see as — and treat like — friends.