Épisodes

  • The Black Herron: Episode 40

    The Black Herron: Episode 40
    Feb 1 2026

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number forty between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    49 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 39

    The Black Herron: Episode 39
    Jan 1 2026

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-nine between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you haven’t read The Anatomy of a Best Seller, what are you waiting for? Grab my latest craft book and start deconstructing so you can write your own best seller today.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    54 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 38

    The Black Herron: Episode 38
    Dec 1 2025

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-eight between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create perfect prose, then you’ll love my guide to crafting sensational sentences. Read The Anatomy of Prose today and start creating kick-ass stories.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    53 min
  • Lessons Learned from Ten Months of Direct Sales Book Distribution

    Lessons Learned from Ten Months of Direct Sales Book Distribution
    Nov 26 2025
    The History I started my shopify store around the 10th December 2023 after a viral video on TikTok on December 8th. So I integrated with Bookvault and stayed with POD shipping until February 2025. Since February 2025, I’ve been distributing and fulfilling all orders from my website in my own warehouse. These are the lessons I’ve learned from the last ten months of running my own website sales and distribution. And yes, I will talk numbers, but I’m making you wait till the end! Please note, I will talk about finances, systems and the occasional legal thing. Absolutely nothing I say is financial, legal or tax advice. You must seek advice from professionals in your own countries and tax territories. I recognise that this model is not for 99% of authors. It’s a LOT of work. It’s a lot of logistics, a lot of peopling, team building, paperwork and problem solving. This is as far removed from sitting behind a desk and writing 24/7 as you can get. Do not listen to this with an open heart. Be skeptical, that will keep you on the right track for creating a business you love. But know that I do love this and I am framing these lessons learned from that perspective. Why Direct? I’d always had a transactional website for Sacha Black work but it barely did £20 a month. So I knew the work I was about to scramble to do for Ruby may be for nothing. But I didn’t want to be beholden to TikTok the way I’d been beholdened to other sources of income and I knew if I’d gone viral once, I could do it again and that would lead to relying on TikTok. What do I mean why? Two reasons: why should you as an author have a direct store but also why should readers come to you? For you, you can earn more per sale. POD companies integrating with shopify automatically give you more as there are no hidden fees. But when you shift to print runs you more than half the cost of printing each book. Of course you also give yourself a host of other problems like fulfillment and overheads, but you gain a lot more product flexibility and potential meaning you have the opportunity to make bigger profit. BUT and this is a big but, you have to work out what you want your business to look like. That said, there are consequences. I usually write and publish 3 books a year and this year I’ve dropped to 2 published. Though I will have written a 3rd and a short story by the end of the year. But I wasn’t able to get that third one published. Despite that, this is going to be my biggest year ever for income. It already beat last year in 7 months. Which goes to show that you don’t have to be rapid releasing anymore to make good money. The fact I’ve not published three, is a direct consequence of the warehouse and also the increasing team size and the need to train staff. Thankfully due to the Kickstarter, some rights deals an big increase in direct sales of products and merch, I haven’t seen a dip in income. Which goes to show that you don’t have to be rapid releasing anymore to make good money. There are other benefits like reader loyalty because you’re treating them better, you are able to provide higher quality books and with extra goodies and sign all the books for example. And that’s really the heart of the mindset shift you need to have and how you should frame thinking about a direct store. Why should a reader bother coming to you when they can get next day shipping for free on Amazon? Can you answer that before you set up your store? For me this looks like three promises: Every book that leaves the warehouse is handsigned by me (I do this in batches and sign for 4-5 hours and get several thousand books signed in one go so it doesn’t disturb writing time.)They get extra bonuses for ordering directly like stickers, bookmarks and character art.Last, if they preorder a book in any format I have for sale on the website, it will get shipped BEFORE the public release date. We aim for delivery a couple of weeks prior but it depends on print runs and me hitting deadlines. Things to consider before leaving POD direct and moving to self fulfillment: Where are you going to stock your books? Do you have local warehousing facilities or somewhere you own you can use? Stock requires more space than you think. Because it’s not just books you need space for, it’s packaging, and space for parcels before collection and space for a computer and printer etc.What is your cash flow like? Do you have the capital that you can risk losing to spend on investing in this? Thanks to great advice from one of my closest author pals, I didn’t buy shipping containers for conversion to put on family land which was a circa 40k investment. Instead I rented a warehouse so that I was only risking the cost of one year’s rent circa 9k and I’d also be able to up and leave and close everything down if it went wrong.What’s your problem solving resiliency like? Solving problems, if it’s not your bag, is relentlessly exhausting. Problems arise ...
    Voir plus Voir moins
    1 h et 20 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 37

    The Black Herron: Episode 37
    Oct 1 2025

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-seven between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    44 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 36

    The Black Herron: Episode 36
    Sep 1 2025

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-six between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create perfect prose, then you’ll love my guide to crafting sensational sentences. Read The Anatomy of Prose today and start creating kick-ass stories.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    47 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 35

    The Black Herron: Episode 35
    Aug 1 2025

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-five between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    46 min
  • The Black Herron: Episode 34

    The Black Herron: Episode 34
    Jul 1 2025

    Hello Rebels and welcome to fireside chat number thirty-four between Rachael Herron and I.

    To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

    *

    If you haven’t read The Anatomy of a Best Seller, what are you waiting for? Grab my latest craft book and start deconstructing so you can write your own best seller today.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    57 min