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

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)

OTHER LINKS/RESOURCES

• Johnny's books on Kobo
• The Self Publishing Podcast
• Episode 003 of KWL Podcast (with Johnny's podcast pals Sean Platt and David Wright)