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The Pulp Writer Show

The Pulp Writer Show

Auteur(s): Jonathan Moeller
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 Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel. Sometimes there are jokes.Copyright Jonathan Moeller Art Gestion et leadership Économie
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  • Episode 299: Draft2Digital Account Changes & Embracing The Grind For Writers

    Episode 299: Draft2Digital Account Changes & Embracing The Grind For Writers
    Apr 20 2026
    In this week's episode, we discuss the recent changes for new accounts at Draft2Digital, and talk about how there is no magic pill for success for writers. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store: MALISON2026 The coupon code is valid through April 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 299 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 17th, 2026 and today we are discussing Draft2Digital account changes and how writers need to embrace the writing grind. Before we start on that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week, and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Malison series at my Payhip store. That code is MALISON2026. This coupon code is valid through April the 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this spring, we have got you covered. And now an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that Blade of Wraiths, the fourth book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, is finally done. You can get Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, bookshop.org, Smashwords, and my own Payhip store. It has been selling strongly, so thank you all for that and I'm glad I was finally able to get it out into the world despite delays. Now that Blade of Wraiths is done, my next main project will be Dragon-Mage, which is the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series, and I'm about 29,000 words into it. I think it will be about 80,000 words, give or take. So I'm hoping to have that out in May, if all goes well. In audiobook news, the fifth book in the Rivah series, Wizard-Assassin, is now out in audiobook. You get it at Audible, Apple, Amazon, Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and all the other usual audiobook stores. In other audiobook news, Cloak of Illusion is being recorded by Hollis McCarthy right now and Brad Wills will start recording Blade of Wraiths on Monday, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Good progress all around. So it's nice to have a good progress update there. 00:02:00 Barnes & Noble/ Draft2Digital Changes Now, before we get to our originally planned main topic, we will pause to address a news item. A few people ask what I thought about recent changes that Barnes & Noble and Draft2Digital made for self-publishers. If you're outside of Indie Author World and haven't heard of any of this, the gist is that Barnes & Noble is putting new restrictions on indie author accounts and Draft2Digital is now charging a one-time $20 fee for anyone opening account and an annual $12 fee on any accounts that make less than $100 a year on the platform and if you make more than $100 a year on the platform, the yearly fee is waived. Now, as you can expect, there was a good deal of consternation about this online, especially among indies with only one or two books who might not make $100 a year from their books. So what is my opinion on this? My opinion is threefold. First, it's unfortunate they had to do this. In a more optimum world, they would not have had to do this, but I suspect they were forced into it due to circumstances. And because of that, number two, it is inevitable that something like this was coming along because number three, the reason this happened was the overwhelming flood of AI generated slop from scammers. The ultimate source of the problem, as is the ultimate source of many recent problems in the world, is generative AI. A small number of scammers are generating enormous quantities of AI generated slop books and uploading them to the publishing platforms. We're talking like tens of thousands of books a month or even a week, and the books are absolutely low effort as well: AI generated gibberish text, AI generated cover, and then thrown on the store. Since I wrote this podcast script, James Blatch of Self Publishing Formula put out a Substack stack article on it, and he mentioned that he was talking to someone from Draft2Digital. He mentioned an example of the kind of low quality slop books they're dealing with. Last year when US political activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, within hours, several nonfiction books on the murder appeared on the stores, and these books were essentially either copy and pasted Wikipedia summaries or AI generated books on the topic that, as you might expect since it was a very recent event, contained no useful information whatsoever. The scammers were just hoping that to take advantage of a contentious current event and make a few bucks along the way. Now imagine this multiplying tens of thousands of times over every single day, and that is the scale of the problem. Now, this has always been a problem with self-publishing, ...
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    14 min
  • Episode 298: STARFIELD - A Personal FAQ

    Episode 298: STARFIELD - A Personal FAQ
    Apr 13 2026
    In this week's episode, I answer questions I receive whenever I mention that STARFIELD is my favorite game of the 2020s. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: HECTOR50 The coupon code is valid through April 20th, 2026. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 298 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 10th, 2026. Today I'm doing an FAQ about my experiences with Starfield, which is my favorite game of the 2020s. Before that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's Coupon Code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), at my Payhip store. That coupon code will be HECTOR50. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. And this coupon code will be valid through April 20th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am done with the first pass of editing through Blade of Wraiths and then starting on the second. It's taken a bit longer than I've wanted because I've had a lot of Real Life Stuff to do, but if all goes well, I'm hoping to have the book out in the second half of April, so hopefully not too much longer now. I'm also 19,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. Hopefully that will be out in May, if all goes well. No, that might slip to June, but I'm really hoping to get that one out in May. In audiobook news, Hollis McCarthy has started work on Cloak of Illusion, so hopefully if all goes well, we'll have that out to you in May sometime. In fact, I'm hoping that will come out concurrently with Dragon-Mage, because it's always nice when I can stack an ebook and an older audiobook in the series like that together. So that is where we're at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:01:46 Main Topic: Starfield Now onto our main topic. This is ostensibly a podcast about writing and the business of writing, but I like video games, so we're going to talk about a video game this week. The reason for that is whenever I post about Starfield or share a screenshot from it, I frequently get a number of questions. I think it's because Starfield was an oddly divisive game when it came out. People have strong opinions about it and then have strong opinions about other people's strong opinions and I do not have these strong opinions myself. While I enjoy the game a great deal, if you don't like it, that's fine. There are lots and lots and lots of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft, which is the ultimate owner of Starfield. It's possible for two things to be simultaneously true that Microsoft has done a lot of sketchy things, and that Starfield is a good game that I enjoyed. I suspect it's a bit like enjoying a football game while at the same time knowing that the NFL is an unscrupulous cartel that could benefit from some thorough reforms. Despite that, I have to admit that I don't think it's super healthy to make gaming opinions, whether video games or sports games, a core part of your identity. A game in the end is just a fancy toy for amusement and idle moments. If God descended tomorrow and told me that Starfield would vanish from the face of the earth, I'd be rather disappointed, but my dinner would still taste just as good and my house would be just as warm. That said, I did enjoy the game quite a bit. Everybody needs a hobby and even I can't work every hour of every day. I wrote like a hundred novels in the last 10 years. Everyone has their own stresses in life, of course, but we seem to live in particularly stressful time these days, so a harmless hobby is a nice break from real life. The game's newest expansion came out a couple days ago on April 7th. And so with that in mind, I thought I would answer the most common questions I get whenever I post or talk about Starfield. Question: Did Starfield influence your Silent Order Science fiction series at all? No. But I'm always pleased when I get this question because it's easily answered. The final book of Silent Order came out on September the 4th, 2023, and Starfield came out on September 6th, 2023. I tried Starfield like the day after it came out, but I didn't actually start playing it in earnest until April of 2024, like I didn't actually finish the starter dungeon until April of 2024. So no, Starfield was not an influence on Silent Order. It would be fair to say that Silent Order was more influenced by James Bond, some H.P. Lovecraft,...
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    18 min
  • Episode 297: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Second Course!

    Episode 297: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Second Course!
    Apr 6 2026

    In this week's episode, I share samples from four of my previously published audiobooks, and provide an update on my writing progress.

    This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Cloak Games series at my Payhip store:

    CLOAKBOOK25

    The coupon code is valid through April 13, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered!
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    20 min
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