#8 - An Interview with Johnny B. Truant of the Self-Publishing Podcast

Oct 21, 2013

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Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre interviews Johnny B. Truant author of the Fat Vampire series, and co-author of The Beam and Unicorn Western. The two discuss:

How Johnny is continuing and concluding the Fat Vampire saga, which began as a joke during a discussion on the Self-Publishing Podcast, but became a series featuring a loveable, sympathetic and genuine hero (Reginald) rather than just a simple series of fat jokes.
Johnny’s evolution as a writer – specifically, how Johnny’s first novel, The Bialy Pimps, described as “Clerks” in a bagel shop, took him twelve years to publish it; compared to the incredible weekly word count he is currently producing (ie, 270,000 words for the Fat Vampire series in a single year)
Giving oneself permission to simply write fast
Johnny’s first collaborative novel project (along with Sean Platt) entitled Unicorn Western, and the hilarious origin story of how the series stemmed from a research argument on the Self-Publishing Podcast that led Dave to crack a joke about unicorns appearing in a western.
The Beam, an intellectual science-fiction series that Johnny is co-writing with Sean Platt
How outlining, or creating “beats” for a story helped Johnny to write fast
Johnny’s continuing experiments with his writing, including the layout and placement of the tools, such as keyboard, monitor, etc
Eminem as Johnny’s “go-to” musical artist to listen to while he is writing
Johnny’s evolving philosophy on pricing strategies and funnels for writers, including making the first book in various series free
The call to action including choice of links to the other books and bundles in a book published as part of a series.
How the product image for The Beam books one through six is a three dimensional image conveys something one might normally only see when holding or looking at a physical boo
How there is no instant fix or easy solution, but that being successful requires thinking long term, being patient and involves a lot of hard work
The satisfaction of helping other writers that Johnny receives from producing the Self-Publishing Podcast

For this episode’s side-bar note, Mark speaks about social media strategies, including how it’s not about “broadcasting” a message (such as “please buy my book”) but, rather, engaging with and participating and adding to a community (with a reference to Episode 004 with Mitch Joel)