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About Substack Writers Salon
A place where Susbtack Writers Chat and Discuss Ideas Live! natashatynes.substack.com (https://natashatynes.substack.com/s/substackwriterssalon?utm_medium=podcast)
- Publisher
- Natasha Tynes
- Category
- arts · business
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- No
- First episode
- 30 May 2025
- Latest episode
- 5 Nov 2026
Latest episodes
32 episodes in the feed.
5 Nov 2026
How to sell thousands of books with Marcin Pilarczyk
I sold only five books in September. Sigh! I’m telling you that up front because I said it on air yesterday, live, to an author who sold 8,131 copies in 2025. I’ve done Amazon ads, TikTok, newsletters, author networking. Everything short of dancing on camera. So I asked Marcin Pilarczyk (https://substack.com/profile/106818220-marcin-pilarczyk), who writes from Warsaw and was laid off twice before building a sci-fi portfolio, what I was missing. His first answer surprised me: five sales a month already puts me ahead of most indie authors, many of whom never sell a single copy. With roughly 10,000 new books hitting Amazon every day, by his estimate, visibility is the whole game. Then he told me how he plays it. 1. Write the series before you publish it Marcin started his first book during COVID and planned it as a trilogy from day one. By early 2025 he had two finished drafts and half of the third. That let him release one book a month, three months in a row. Each launch got Amazon’s new-release push, and his timing lined up with an algorithm shift that favored series. In April and May he earned about $5,000 a month, roughly 50 books a day. 2. Price the first book to be found Book one sold for $2.99 and went into Kindle Unlimited from the start. The later books were $5 to $6. At one point he hit the top 10 in military sci-fi. When sales dipped, he dug into his data and found most of his income came from KU page reads, not purchases. He’d passed 2 million pages read by the end of 2025. So he moved the entire series, plus companion novellas, into KU. 3. Know what your ads are actually doing Marcin exported his KDP data and had AI analyze it. He spent about $4,000 on ads in 2025 and could trace only about $400 in sales back to them. Sounds bad. But he only advertised book one, and 91% of book-one buyers went on to buy book two. The ad numbers don’t capture that read-through. His tool of choice: Amazon Attribution, found in Amazon Ads. It lets you create a separate tracking link for each channel- Facebook, TikTok, a promo site- so you know exactly where buyers come from. 4. Newsletter swaps over social posts His biggest growth lever was newsletter swaps through BookFunnel and StoryOrigin. You offer a free reader magnet, connect your email platform, and trade promotions with authors in your genre. Every swap gets a tracked link. He ended 2025 with about 800 subscribers across three pen names. His theory: those clicks drove outside traffic to his Amazon listings, which nudged his rankings up even when readers didn’t buy. His quick comparison: StoryOrigin is better if you write under one name, since it includes beta reader and ARC tools. BookFunnel wins if you juggle multiple pen names. 5. Match the channel to the genre This was the line I keep thinking about: different genres have different funnels. * Romance: Drop everything and make TikTok videos. No face required. A slideshow, music, and a passage from your book can work. * Military sci-fi: Newsletter swaps, plus genuine participation in Reddit and Facebook reader groups. Share worldbuilding, not sales pitches. * Nonfiction for writers: When I asked about my upcoming book on memoir ghostwriting, his answer was simple. Promote it on Substack, because that’s where readers interested in the writing life already are. He also keeps genres under separate pen names so one failed experiment doesn’t drag down everything else. Can you actually live off your books? I asked him directly, because I can’t. My books don’t pay my bills; my publishing house, consulting, and ghostwriting do. His answer: yes, it’s possible, but once it’s your full-time job, it’s a job. Sometimes you write what readers want, not only what you want. I’m opening a BookFunnel account this week. I’ll report back. Find Marcin on Substack at theindielab.net (https://www.theindielab.net/?utm_campaign=profile_chips), (https://www.theindielab.net/?utm_campaign=profile_chips) and check out Authors Haven (https://authorshaven.io/) the beta-reader platform he built, which has a free tier. Read and Write with Natasha is a reader-supported publication. For $99/year, paid subscribers get lifetime access to $300+ of my courses and masterclasses, a signed copy of my novel (US only), and my full archive. Ready to finish your book? Upgrade to paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe (https://natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
31 Oct 2026
How to Sell Books Without an Algorithm
On the latest Substack Writers Salon (https://natashatynes.substack.com/s/substackwriterssalon), I sat down with Tim Jacobs, The Publishing Edge (https://substack.com/profile/12570654-the-publishing-edge), author of 19 books and more than 450 articles, and owner of JWC Publishing (https://www.jacobswc.com/) Tim’s path looks a lot like mine. He was the kid reading under the covers with a flashlight. He wrote his first book. He learned the business from the inside, and eventually he started publishing other people’s books. What began around 2010 as Jacobs Writing Consultants (Tim plus five editors doing editing and proofreading) grew into a full publishing company. We talked about publishing myths, distribution, marketing, and protecting your own writing while running a business. Here’s what stood out. 1. Followers are not buyers This is the myth that some authors fall for: I have 10,000 followers, so I’ll sell 10,000 copies. You won’t. I tell people that if you have 1,000 followers, you’ll probably sell three to five copies. People can love your content and still never buy your book. Tim added a layer I think matters even more: engagement beats follower count. He has seen people with 20,000 followers get two likes on a post, and people with 1,000 followers get hundreds of comments. The second person has a real audience. The first has a number. 2. The book that made $250,000 by being given away So if followers don’t buy your book, who does? For many of Tim’s clients, the honest answer is: they don’t sell it. They give it away. About ten years ago, JWC wrote and produced a book for a real estate brokerage in Fort Myers, Florida. Over six years, the firm printed 4,000 copies and handed them out to realtors, at conferences, and at open houses. The book brought agents under the firm’s umbrella, where they could start their own brokerages and pay fees on every transaction. The firm told Tim the book brought in more than $250,000. It cost them about $12,000 to produce. Give away 100 books, land four clients, and you’ve likely made far more than you would have selling those 100 copies. The book isn’t the product. It’s the proof that you wrote the book on your subject. 3. How Tim sold 2,000 copies in one summer with zero social media In 1996, Tim set out to write a fictional ghost story set in Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House. When he went looking for a history of the building, there wasn’t one. A friend pointed out that he now knew more about the opera house than anyone, so why not write the book he’d been searching for? He self-published it (through a printer he found in Writer’s Digest's classifieds) and released it in early summer. There was no Facebook, no LinkedIn, barely an internet. By the start of September, he’d gone through 2,000 copies. How? * Stores. He went shop to shop asking if they’d carry the book on a 50% split. * Free talks. He offered to speak at Rotary clubs and Friends of the Library groups at no charge, as long as he could sell books. They’d have paid him maybe $30. Selling ten books earned him around $200. * Free press. He’d open the local paper, find the reporter covering events, and call with a pitch: Would you like to interview the first person to write the full history of the opera house? Then he’d show up for the interview himself. Instead of buying an ad, he got a half- or full-page story with his photo, the cover, and the list of stores selling the book. None of that requires an algorithm. All of it still works. 4. Build a street team When I asked what works for him now, in our digital and AI-saturated moment, Tim’s answer was refreshingly analog: a street team. That’s six or seven people who act as the pillars of your launch. They’re the loud cheerleaders saying Did you see Tim’s new book? I just got it. That message lands very differently than the author saying please buy my book. His method for building one: * Go through your connections on LinkedIn, Substack, Facebook, wherever. * Find the people with the most engaged audiences. * Send each a personal message: I’m releasing my book on this date. I’d love a shout-out. Here’s the cover. I’m not asking you to buy it, review it, or even share a link. The team changes with each book. The people who help launch a horror novel won’t be the same ones who amplify a book on publishing basics. 5. Podcasts sell books, slowly Podcast tours are replacing traditional book tours. So I asked, "Do they actually sell books?" Tim’s take: yes, but on a longer fuse. At an in-person table, it’s immediate. We talk, you buy, we shake hands. On a podcast, a listener might check out your profile, absorb your content over a week or a month, decide you know what you’re talking about, and then discover you have a book. Don’t expect a dozen sales the moment the episode ends. Expect a slow build. 6. Where to print: Amazon vs. IngramSpark JWC uses Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital, and sometimes skips all of them when a client just wants 1,000 copies printed and shipped to their door. The difference Tim highlighted between Amazon and Ingram: * IngramSpark gets your book into the distribution channels bookstores order from, both indie shops and Barnes & Noble. That doesn’t guarantee a store will stock it, but it puts your book in front of buyers. Ingram also allows returns, which bookstores need. * Amazon doesn’t offer returns, which is why bookstores won’t order from it. Tim also chose Ingram for his latest family keepsake book because he wanted a cloth hardcover with a wraparound dust jacket. If you want bookstores or a premium hardcover, Ingram belongs in your plan. 7. Thirty minutes a day Then I asked Tim the question: how do you protect your own writing while running a business full of clients? His answer: he’s up between 4 and 5 a.m., and he doesn’t touch work until after 8. Mornings are for reading, a quick crossword and Wordle to warm up, and 30 minutes of his own writing. He started his newest family history book in July. By the time we spoke, he had surpassed 20,000 words and was nearly done. Thirty minutes a day. Your window might be late at night after the kids are asleep. The point isn’t 4 a.m. The point is a protected, non-negotiable block that belongs to your book before it belongs to anyone else. 8. Substack for relationships, LinkedIn for clients Tim spends about 45 minutes on Substack each morning: liking, restacking, commenting, replying, then posting his own note. He hasn’t landed a client here yet, and he isn’t trying to. Most of his business (around 80%) comes from referrals, with some clients from LinkedIn. I see the same pattern. LinkedIn is where clients find me. Substack is where community happens. And Tim pointed out something I love about this place: no one has ever pitched him in his Substack DMs. That’s also how this conversation happened. We’d been commenting on each other’s work, and I invited him on. He said that if a project isn’t the right fit for him, I’m one of the people he’d refer it to. Same here. My motto: competition is for losers. Collaboration wins. The short version * Followers aren’t buyers. Engagement matters more than follower count. * For nonfiction, the book can be a business card. Giving it away may earn you more than selling it. * Old-school tactics still work. Local stores, free talks, and pitching reporters sold 2,000 copies in one summer. * Build a street team of six or seven engaged people for each launch. * Podcasts are a slow burn, not instant sales. * Use IngramSpark if you want bookstore distribution or a premium hardcover. * Thirty protected minutes a day can produce a book. If Tim’s 30-minutes-a-day habit is the part that hit home, The Book Finisher Sprint (https://thebookfinisher.com/products/the-book-finisher-sprint) ($9.9) is my do-it-yourself system for building that daily practice and getting your draft done. Connect with Tim * Website: jacobswc.com (https://jacobswc.com) * Email: tjacobs@jacobswc.com (mailto:tjacobs@jacobswc.com) * Find him here on Substack (https://timjacobspublisher.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips)and on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timjacobspublisher/) Thank you Susan (https://substack.com/profile/321104096-susan), Marie Peace (https://substack.com/profile/543495736-marie-peace), and many others for tuning into my live video with The Publishing Edge (https://substack.com/profile/12570654-the-publishing-edge)! Join me for my next live video in the app. The Book Finisher is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe (https://natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
21 Oct 2026
Transform your podcast into a profit center with Jen Rogers
I’ve been running my podcast Read and Write with Natasha (https://www.readandwritewithnatasha.com/) for almost four years. 123 episodes, which I’m really proud of. I’m consistent and love all the conversations, but I've always been worried about the money and investment I have been putting into it without a return. And until recently, I didn’t even ask listeners to subscribe. I record, send it to my editor, upload it to Buzzsprout, and move on. I love the conversations. That hour with a smart guest is my gateway drug to podcasting. But a hobby that eats hours every week should probably earn its keep. So I invited Jen Rogers🎤︎︎Mic Drop Mastery (https://substack.com/profile/474300724-jen-rogersmic-drop-mastery) the founder of the Virtual Podcast School and host of the Substack Podcast Studio (https://thejenrogers.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips) to my live show. I won’t recap the whole conversation. You can watch or listen above. But here are the moments that stuck with me. * Every episode needs a job. Jen says each episode should answer two questions before you hit record: What’s the business purpose? What does the listener walk away with? Then give them one clear next step. * Your voice should come first. I open every episode with a clip from my guest, the way the big shows do. Jen pushed back, kindly but firmly. A new listener needs to know whose show they’re on. Her line on copying the big podcasts: once you hit 500,000 downloads, you can do whatever you want. Until then, you lead. * Nobody cares about the bio. Open with a hook that makes the listener feel seen, not a list of your guest’s credentials. * Easy lift, then heavy lift. Jen uses at least three calls to action per episode. The first is free, like subscribing. The later ones ask for money. None of them sound like a commercial break. * The part that comforted me most: Jen’s first year of podcasting brought in 52 episodes, 1,066 downloads, and zero dollars. Everyone starts somewhere. And yes, I became a paid subscriber to her studio live, mid-interview. ____________________________________________________________________________ P.S.: Are you working on a book you can’t seem to finish? That’s what I do. DM me here or visit natashatynes.com. (https://www.natashatynes.com/bookcoaching) Read and Write with Natasha is a reader-supported publication. For $99/year, paid subscribers get lifetime access to $300+ of my courses and masterclasses, a signed copy of my novel (US only), and my full archive. Ready to finish your book? Upgrade to paid This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe (https://natashatynes.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
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