Our 2025 keynote explores our mission to help authors develop their Q Factor (the ability to create emotional connections with readers) while expanding distribution channels, with a focus on emerging platforms and technology.
Our 2025 keynote explores our mission to help authors develop their Q Factor (the ability to create emotional connections with readers) while expanding distribution channels, with a focus on emerging platforms and technology.
Programming Director Chelle Honiker leads a fireside chat with two indie authors representing different stages and genres: Theresa Goodrich (travel writer turned fiction author) and Willow Winters (USA Today bestselling romance author with a seven-figure direct-to-reader business). The session establishs Author Nation's 2025 theme of "disruption as identity"—positioning indie authors not as victims of industry change but as active disruptors who build platforms, launch books, and create direct reader relationships without waiting for traditional publishing permission.
Drew Davis introduces a four-constraint framework for achieving creative breakthroughs based on the principle that constraints breed creativity. Davis—a bestselling author who has worked with the Muppets and MTV—developed this framework by studying businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, asking why some thrived while others failed when facing identical disruptive forces. The Cube consists of four essential constraints: Eliminate the Unnecessary, Define the Outcome, Limit the Options, and Raise the Stakes.
Digital marketing strategists Keanna Marshall and Louise Head argue that Pinterest is one of the most underutilized platforms in an author's marketing toolkit—and why that's exactly what makes it a competitive advantage right now.
Keanna Marshall and Louise Head present a framework for TikTok marketing that prioritizes emotion over plot. The core methodology is the PROSE Method—a five-beat slideshow structure encompassing Position, Reveal, Orchestrate tension, Showcase stakes, and End with cliffhanger.
Publicist Isabelle Knight argues author visibility in an AI-saturated publishing market depends on three pillars: authenticity, strategic storytelling, and intentional relationship-building. She explores how indie authors create credibility and familiarity with readers through multi-channel media presence—from local radio and podcasts to bookstore partnerships and newsletter launches.
Melissa Storm and Jessica Norris present a five-phase Facebook advertising strategy designed for authors navigating the post-Andromeda algorithm update.
ALLi Co-Founder Orna Ross presents her 2025 update on marketing for indie authors. Recommendations include refreshing book keywords and categories once or twice annually as well as conducting periodic reviews to analyze whether keywords are still relevant. The goal is to improve discoverability continuously as part of ongoing marketing infrastructure, not as a one-time publishing task.
Jynafer Yanez introduces the SIGNAL System, a six-step framework for building sustainable author brands that create emotional resonance and reader loyalty. The methodology emphasizes building brands around the author rather than individual books, enabling writers to maintain consistency across multiple series and genres.
Fantasy author AP Beswick delivers a comprehensive session on organic social media marketing strategies that enabled him to generate over one million dollars in book sales without spending money on advertising.
Optimize your Amazon ads in this comprehensive session.
BookFunnel CEO Damon Courtney presents a strategic framework for indie authors to build sustainable fandoms amid AI-driven publishing proliferation. With book publications jumping from 2.2 million (2021) to 4 million (2024), Courtney argues that AI-generated content creates no additional discoverability challenges because the core problem remains unchanged: authors must write compelling books and forge direct reader connections. The "Taylor Swift Formula" centers on cultivating 1,000 true superfans through "things that don't scale"—personalized email responses, bonus content, special editions, live events, and direct-to-consumer sales.
Reedsy Co-Founder Ricardo Fayet addresses the escalating competitiveness of book advertising through systematic automation strategies.
Jake Caleb — a cover designer with 2,300+ covers over 13 years — breaks down his "Sale, Tell, Yell" framework for book cover design. The session's core premise: authors should stop thinking about "book covers" and start thinking about "product packaging"—creating deliberate emotional distance between themselves and their cover to make strategic decisions.
Keynote speaker Drew Davis delivers a paradigm-shifting presentation challenging the traditional marketing funnel—a model invented in 1898 to sell cash registers—and introducing the Loyalty Loop as a modern replacement for author businesses.
Erin Wright explains how "wide publishing"—distributing indie books across Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play simultaneously—represents a fundamentally different business model from Amazon-exclusive Kindle Unlimited.
Most indie authors lose sales not because of poor marketing, but because of flawed metadata, weak book descriptions, and covers that don't convert—problems that exist long before a reader ever sees a TikTok video. Join PublishDrive Community Manager Danica Favorite to learn how their platform tools can help you use data to increase your revenue.
Self-narrating your audiobook costs time, not thousands of dollars. Cynthia Gunderson, who has produced over 60 audiobooks across three pen names (sci-fi, fantasy, women's fiction, paranormal romance), demonstrates that authors without acting backgrounds can narrate competitively by mastering core equipment (a $120 interface, a quality microphone, free or affordable DAW software), basic manuscript prep, and systematic recording workflows. The financial barrier to audiobook production—traditionally $4,000–$7,000 for professional narration—becomes a manageable skill investment.
The Pink Flamingo team explores their royalty, marketing, and partnership options.
The ElevenLabs team discusses how authors can use their platform to transform written content into professional audiobooks at a fraction of traditional production costs. With over 80 million global users and 25,000 audiobooks created in the past year, the platform addresses the 25% year-over-year growth in audiobook consumption while traditional publishing formats remain stagnant.
Simon Patrick delivers a ground-truth, operator-level breakdown of how AI voice cloning via ElevenLabs actually works in practice—financially, technically, and ethically—specifically for authors, audiobook producers, and voice professionals.
Phil Marshall, AI technologist and founder of Spoken Press, delivers a comprehensive session on the current state and future of digital narration for indie authors. He addresses the fundamental barriers that have historically limited audiobook production—cost, time, and workflow complexity—and demonstrated how AI narration technology has evolved from novelty to professional-grade tool.
Danica Favorite argues that indie authors consistently make costly publishing decisions based on emotion and gut instinct rather than data — and demonstrates how AI tools can make data analysis accessible to non-technical authors.
Women's Fiction author Jan Moran addresses the critical mindset shift indie authors must make from solo practitioner to business CEO, emphasizing the importance of calculating personal time value using the 2,000-work-hour annual benchmark.
Strategic book pricing determines whether indie authors achieve sustainable profitability or operate at a loss despite impressive sales figures. Author and former social worker John Peragine challenges authors to distinguish between gross revenue and net profit when evaluating the commonly cited "$20K-$50K author income" benchmarks.
New York Times bestselling author and CEO of Novel Publicity Melissa Storm reframes author entrepreneurship around strategy over tactics, arguing that most writers fail not from lack of effort but from misalignment between their goals, personality, and market realities.
Industry veterans Joanna Penn, Johnny B. Truant, Dan Wood, and Mark Leslie Lefebvre discuss sustainable author business models beyond launch tactics and short-term marketing.
IT professional and romance author Jordyn Kross explores how business continuity planning enables authors to maintain functional, profitable publishing businesses despite unexpected disruptions ranging from hardware failures to legal challenges. She establishes a four-pillar framework covering data protection, publication risks, reputation management, and real-life contingencies.
Founder of Writers for Diversity, Eliana West, introduces the concept of "default settings"—the unconscious biases that influence how authors construct characters—and distinguishes between vertical identities (traits passed down through family and tradition) and horizontal identities (traits acquired through life experience). The session explores code-switching as a character development tool, with examples on how to reveal identity through action rather than exposition.
Book coach and editor Jocelyn Lindsey identifies six structural failures that cause readers to abandon books — and provides a diagnostic framework authors can apply immediately to their own manuscripts.
TD Donnelly examines why authentic character transformation is the single most powerful tool for creating reader investment—the kind that turns casual readers into pre-order loyalists. Donnelly argues that audiences don't just want likeable protagonists; they want characters who transform before their eyes, which explains why Oscar-winning performances almost always feature the most dramatic change arcs.
Romance author Theodora Taylor argues universal fantasy applies to all genres and provides examples illustrating how it's fundamentally about relationships and attention dynamics.
ProWritingAid Director of Community, Haley Milliman, introduces the universal creative journey where writers begin with excitement, inevitably fall into a "dark swamp of despair," and frequently abandon projects—sometimes for years
Dana Claire, CEO of the InKfluence Agency and Ink Games Publishing, deliveres a masterclass on intellectual property expansion strategies for indie authors, drawing from her professional experience executing IP expansion for major brands including the NFL, MLB, Neutrogena, and Victoria's Secret.
The BookVault team presents their print-on-demand infrastructure for indie authors pursuing direct sales through special editions. A 30-year-old UK printing company, the company offers six binding types, seven paper stocks, and unlimited custom sizes while accepting standard KDP files without reformatting.
Award-winning screenwriter Shannon Valuenzela, 30-year Hollywood veteran TD Donnelly, and indie author / publisher Sean Platt explore the strategic and creative relationship between screenwriting and novel writing. The core argument: novelizing your screenplay creates "pre-awareness" — a Hollywood term for measurable audience proof that reduces a studio's risk and increases your odds of a deal.
Drew Strickland offers insights gained from his journey as a crime and psychological thriller author who built a six-figure indie publishing career starting from zero industry background.
Author coach Becca Syme identifies ten non-optional tools that guarantee publishing career longevity in an era where indie authors control their own destiny without traditional gatekeepers.
Keanna Marshall and Louise Head challenge the conventional wisdom that authors should wait until reaching specific income thresholds before outsourcing, arguing instead that the inability to hit income goals often stems from creative energy being depleted on non-writing tasks.
Sci-fi author Skyler Ramirez — who writes approximately one million words per year while maintaining a full-time corporate career, four children, and multiple small businesses — presents a strategic framework for indie authors who want to scale without burnout.
Katie Cross — a multi-million-copy-selling author who published a book per month for two years while narrating her own audiobooks — delivers a comprehensive session on implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to scale an author business.
Hollywood screenwriter TD Donnelly — whose career spans 30 professional years and began with a three-way bidding war in 1995 — makes a data-driven case that writing a novel is statistically six times harder than running a marathon, with NaNoWriMo completion rates at just 12% versus 70% for marathon finishers.
Diana Xarissa reveals how she maintains sustainable production as a six-figure cozy mystery author without burnout by staying 12 months ahead of publication.
Reader magnets are value-based incentives authors offer in exchange for email list subscriptions, functioning as the critical bridge between casual readers and committed buyers.
The session distinguishes between ineffective reader magnets (such as bonus chapters about characters unfamiliar to new readers) and high-converting alternatives including prequel novellas, sample chapters, short story collections, and genre-appropriate creative assets like maps, recipes, or character dossiers.
Ines Johnson covers types of "special editions" any non-standard book format — hardcovers, omnibuses, discrete covers, foiled paperbacks, and sprayed-edge books — and how to sell them live to readers at in-person events.
Erin Wright, Blaine Moore, and Bradley Charbonneau introduce WP Manage Ninja's Fluent ecosystem as a comprehensive replacement for expensive monthly SaaS subscriptions. They document saving $2,500+ annually by consolidating Teachable, MailerLite, Calendly, TypeForm, Gravity Forms, Circle, and numerous other subscriptions into WordPress-based lifetime-deal plugins with robust free versions.
Stuart Grant — web designer, digital agency founder, and creator of 400+ author websites — introduces authors to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the emerging discipline of making content discoverable by AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. With ChatGPT now among the top five most-visited websites globally at 700 million weekly users, Grant argues that authors can no longer rely on Google SEO alone.