The 7 pillars that actually matter in building a publishing career
The 4 P's of prioritization, understanding the underlying structure of a sustainable author career, and why most writers fail to master even one.
Break through your biggest idea blocks using Plotdrive
Most writers I meet are stuck in the same frustrating place, surrounded by a swirling soup of half-formed ideas with no clear path forward. They know they want to write…
…they just don’t know what or how to move from chaos to clarity.
I’ve spent the past decade+ helping authors break through that fog. And now, I’ve partnered with a company called Plotdrive that’s baking my methodology right into their software, so you can move from a vague concept to a complete, compelling project faster and with less stress than ever before.
This Friday, Sept 12 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET, I’m hosting a training with Plotdrive co-founder Jay Rosenkrantz to walk you through how to use this system to finally get unstuck and start finishing projects.
In this free webinar, you’ll learn:
✅ Proven methods for overcoming writing blocks
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✅ How to use Plotdrive to stay focused and finish faster
Even if you’ve never touched Plotdrive, you’ll walk away with tools you can use immediately to keep writing and finish stronger.
Plus, if you show up live, I’ll send you a free ebook copy of How to Write Irresistible Books that Readers Devour as a thank-you gift 🎁
Whether you’re outlining your next book, reviving a stalled draft, or just trying to get past the blank page, this session is for you.
Hi,
I’ve got good news.
Publishing is not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be. People love to drown you in tactics, hacks, and “secret” systems, but when you boil it all down, there are only seven things you actually need to figure out if you want to make a sustainable living as an author.
Before you ask yes, unpublished, self-published, or traditionally published I believe every author will need some version of all these eventually.
Seven pillars, though. That’s it. You barely need two hands to count them.
(Please note: I am not including mindset below, as that is a whole other can of worms that I have dealt with in many other posts and weaves through everything else. There are different mindset blocks that bubble up with each of these pillars, and at each stage of success. You normally have to break those blocks before you can have the success you want with any of the pillars below.)
Creation: This includes writing blogs, books, social media, podcasts, Youtube, etc.
Retailer/catalog sales: This includes bookstores and libraries, whether self or traditionally published, KU, and wide platforms.
Crowdfunding: This includes doing a special edition or anniversary edition of your traditionally published books.
Subscriptions: Even traditionally published authors or unpublished writers can and should eventually have these.
Landing pages/special offers: Even if your publisher sets them up, or you just need to push a signing event.
Your own web store: Even if you can’t sell your own books, there’s always merch.
In-person and virtual events: Including book tours and other types of events where you don’t have books.
And you don’t need all seven to succeed. You only need one (plus creating, obvi). In 2015, my one was conventions. Then, I added Kickstarter and, in 2017, had my first six figure year. Over time I added more and more, but I had a successful business with one, and a six-figure one with two.
If you can build systems around these seven pillars, you will not just survive in publishing, you will thrive.
Yes, they’re big categories. Each one is a rabbit hole that can consume years of your life if you let it, but everything else is just a variation on one of these seven.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that most authors never get even one of them working sustainably.
It’s not because they’re lazy. It’s not because they’re untalented. It’s because of two lies we’ve all been sold about success in publishing.
The first lie is that if you just write a good book, everything else will magically happen. That’s the fantasy the publishing industry desperately wants you to believe, but it doesn’t work like that. Writing is foundational, but it’s not a system. A book is just inventory until you connect it to readers through one of the other pillars above.
The second lie is that you have to do everything, all the time, and if you don’t then you’ll never succeed. It’s the lie of silver bullets, magic strategies, and overblown hype.
They are comfortable lies, so it’s easy for writers to fall into them. They bounce around doing everything at once and thinking they’re making progress. Maybe they try a Patreon for two weeks but it doesn’t get big enough for their aspirations immediately, so they abandon it. They dabble in Kickstarter, but don’t fund in 24 hours, so they call it a scam. They buy Facebook ads, lose $200, and decide ads don’t work.
That cycle guarantees you’ll never succeed.
Why? Because every single pillar has a failure period built in. The first few months are going to be messy. You’re supposed to get it wrong. Nobody hits the bullseye first shot.
I had ten communities flame out before I landed on Substack. Sure, when a community didn’t work, or didn’t feel right, I abandoned it so it didn’t weigh me down…but I gave it time first. I gave myself time to try different strategies, to try different platforms, and only when nothing moved the needle did I blow it up.
The team at Writer MBA gave our conference two years before we pulled the plug, and spent another year before that building toward it. After three years, the company failed, but we tried really hard, and had a lot of success, during that time. It just wasn’t enough.
I built an app for my writing years ago, at a significant expense, and only burned it down after trying everything for a year. It seems I have the capacity to handle long stretches of boredom and high levels of pain, as long as there is an end date and a juicy reward at the end of it.
Most authors won’t give themselves that grace. They panic when things don’t click instantly, so they pivot before the system has a chance to stabilize. Then they pivot again. And again. Until they’ve “tried everything” and built nothing.
This is why nobody gets even one pillar right. It’s not about talent. It’s not about luck. It’s about attention span. It’s about patience.
The market rewards people who can sit in the discomfort of those first broken months and keep showing up anyway. The ones who accept that three months of “kinda working” is not failure, it’s stage one. The ones who give the pillar enough oxygen to grow into something sustainable.
But most of us don’t. We don’t stay long enough in the fire. We jump before the bread is baked. That’s why the graveyard of abandoned Patreons, empty web stores, dead Kickstarters, and dusty catalogs is bigger than the field of working systems.
Each of these pillars is massive, and expansive, and overwhelming, but when you try to do all seven at once it’s no wonder everyone is burnt out.
That said…there are only seven of them. Anyone can learn how to do seven things well, right?
Oh, if only if were that easy. Even if you’ve with me so far (which isn’t a guarantee, or even likely), you’re probably saying “Okay, but how do you master these seven things?”
So, once you pick one of the seven pillars above to focus on, all seven roughly work on the same three levers:
Platform – Where you build this part of your business.
Product – What you’re selling through that platform.
Pathway – How you’re driving traffic to that product.
This is the engine. Platform, product, pathway. Over and over. Let’s take subscriptions as an example.
Your platform might be Ream, Patreon, Substack, or Shopify.
Your product could be bonus chapters, early access, behind-the-scenes commentary.
Your pathway might be Substack Notes, Facebook ads, SEO, ambassador marketing, or Royal Road.
Notice how the platform dictates the pathway. You don’t drive traffic to Patreon from Substack Notes, that doesn’t make sense. If you’re on Royal Road, though, Patreon works beautifully because it integrates seamlessly.
For years, I focused mainly on selling books (product) on Kickstarter (platform) through my mailing list (pathway). Now, I focus on selling The Author Stack (product) on Substack (platform) through recommendations (pathway). Before I retired from selling at shows, I focused on selling bundles (product) at comic conventions (platform & pathway).
Notice, I still launch books on Kickstarter, but I’ve systematized it so that I don’t spend lots of time thinking about it. When I started my Substack, I was still doing conventions at a good clip, but I was spending way less time thinking about it than before the pandemic.
This is the kind of strategic thinking most authors skip. They flail around, piling tactic on tactic, without ever seeing the pattern underneath.
Whenever I say this is the formula, people push back. “But what about things like licensing? What about courses? What about Tiktok shops?”
In this framework, licensing is a pathway. It’s just a way to move an existing product to an audience through someone else’s platform. If Netflix adapts your book, that’s licensing. It’s a pathway move, not a new pillar.
Tiktok shops are inside the web store pillar and Tiktok is a pathway.
And courses? Coaching? Speaking gigs? Those are products. They sit within one of the seven pillars, depending on where you’re focused.
Let’s get into the meat of it. Here’s what each of the seven pillars looks like, what it takes to win there, and how it can go horribly wrong.
1. Creating
This is the obvious one, but it’s worth stating outright that without writing, or creating of some type, you don’t have anything to sell.
How it works: Writing and creating is the foundation of any author business. It’s raw material everything else is built upon. Without it, none of the other pillars exist. But by itself, it won’t save you.
Example: You write a fantasy trilogy. That’s your product. You can now monetize it six different ways, through putting it on retailers, through Kickstarter special editions, through a Patreon that offers early chapters, through signed copies in your web store, through in-person sales at a con, and through special offers on your landing page.
Platform: Wattpad, Royal Road, Medium, Plotdrive, Word, Scrivener
Product: Serialized fiction, short stories, essays, experimental drafts, books, blog
Pathway: Cross-promotion with other authors, social media snippets (TikTok/Reels), recommendations inside the platform, writers group, critique sessions, writing sprints
Writing fuels the machine, but it’s not the machine. I have a whole book to help with this called How to Write Irresistible Books that Readers Devour.
2. Retailer/catalog sales
This is Amazon. Kobo. Apple. Barnes & Noble. The world of endless digital shelves.
How it works: You build a backlist. That backlist compounds. Every time a reader finishes book one, they roll straight into book two, then book three. By the time you’ve got ten books in the series, it’s a self-sustaining engine.
Example: A cozy mystery author with ten books in KU doesn’t have to “launch” anymore. Their catalog is the launch. Every month, the series feeds itself.
Platform: Amazon KDP, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Press
Product: Novels, box sets, series bundles, audiobooks
Pathway: Amazon ads, newsletter swaps, BookBub features, TikTok BookTok
Failure mode: One book won’t cut it. You can make a splash, sure. But without a catalog, there’s no gravity. Readers binge in series, not singles. You can’t build a career hoping lightning strikes every launch.
I don’t have a good resource for retailer sales yet, but my old business partner, Monica Leonelle, covers it extensively in her Book Sales Supercharged series.
3. Crowdfunding
Kickstarter. Indiegogo. Backerkit. This is pre-orders on steroids.
How it works: You fund production by letting fans invest upfront. They don’t just buy a book. They buy into an experience.
Example: You launch a graphic novel. Your campaign offers early bird specials, collector’s covers, stretch goal pins and stickers. You raise $25k before the book even goes to print.
Platform: Kickstarter, Backerkit, Indiegogo
Product: Special editions, signed copies, merch bundles, enamel pins, art prints
Pathway: Email list warm-up, Facebook ads, cross-promotion with other Kickstarter creators
Failure mode: Authors treat Kickstarter like a magical ATM. They show up with no audience, no hook, no compelling rewards, and wonder why they fail. Crowdfunding isn’t free money. It’s fan service for people who already love you.
I have a whole book on this called How to Launch Your Book on Kickstarter.
4. Subscriptions
Recurring revenue that keeps your business growing.
How it works: You deliver ongoing value, month after month, to the people who want to go deeper with you. It’s not about content dumps. It’s about belonging.
Example: You build a Substack. Free tier gets essays or chapters. Paid tier gets behind-the-scenes commentary and bonus content. After six months, you stabilize at $2,500/month recurring revenue. It grows from there.
Platform: Patreon, Ream, Substack, Shopify memberships
Product: Early access chapters, bonus commentary, serialized releases, community Discord access
Pathway: Substack Notes, ambassador marketing, SEO (blog posts feeding subscribers), podcast appearances
Failure mode: Authors expect everyone to subscribe right away. They set up a Patreon, throw nothing on it, and get mad when nobody pays. Subscriptions are for superfans. You need free readers first.
If you’re interested specifically on Substack, I have a book for that called How to Build a World Class Substack co-written by Claire Venus.
5. Landing pages & special offers
This is focused on setting up unique offers and pages on your site with entry points that pull readers deeper.
How it works: A landing page has one job, convert.
Example: You run a BookFunnel promo: “Get my prequel novella free.” Readers land on your page, drop their email, and enter your funnel. On the thank-you page, you offer a $7 bonus bundle. That bundle pays for the ad spend. Now you’re growing your list for free.
Platform: OptimizePress, Elementor, ConvertKit, Leadpages
Product: Free novellas/prequels, reader magnets, low-ticket tripwire bundles ($5–$9), discount codes
Pathway: Facebook/Instagram ads, newsletter cross-promotions, SEO blog posts linking to landing pages
Failure mode: Authors send traffic to their homepage. Or worse, to their Amazon page where they get no data. Landing pages exist to capture value. If you don’t test them, you’re flying blind.
I’ve written a direct sales book that deals with this called Direct Sales Strategy for Authors.
6. Web store
The store you find on an author’s website.
How it works: You cut out the middleman. You own the customer data. You keep 90–95% of the money instead of Amazon’s crumbs.
Example: You set up Shopify. You sell signed copies, exclusive editions, and box sets. Every sale drops the reader’s email into your system.
Platform: Shopify, WooCommerce, Gumroad
Product: Signed paperbacks, limited edition hardcovers, ebook + audiobook bundles, box sets, merch
Pathway: Email sequences (after free downloads), retargeting ads, TikTok/Reels pointing to “signed copy only on my site”
Failure mode: Authors treat their store as just another Amazon. “Here’s my paperback, same price as everywhere else.” Why would anyone buy from you directly if they can get it cheaper and faster from Bezos? The web store only works when you give readers something special.
My direct sales book, Direct Sales Strategy for Authors, deals with building out a great store.
7. In-person and virtual events
Conventions. Book signings. Virtual summits. Pop-up markets. This is high-touch, high-margin selling.
How it works: You meet readers face to face or live online. You build fans for life.
Example: You buy a table at a comic con. You bring your books, some posters, and a killer pitch. You sell $5,000 in three days and pick up dozens of new subscribers.
Platform: Comic cons, book fairs, local festivals, author signings
Product: Print books, signed editions, posters, book + merch bundles
Pathway: Table pitch (“It’s Buffy meets Sandman”), con programming (panels/workshops), local press or event newsletters
Failure mode: Authors sit behind the table, arms crossed, waiting for people to beg them to buy. That’s not how events work. They’re theater. You need energy, product depth, and the ability to pitch your book in ten seconds.
A whole chapter of my book, How to Build a Creative Career, deals with live events.
So far, I’ve given you lots of good news and a little bad, but the ugly truth is that it takes at least a year to master one pillar.
Three months to test.
Three months to stabilize.
Six months to make it sustainable. Then, maintenance.
Most authors quit before the twelve months are up. They decide it “doesn’t work” when there is no reasonable expectation that it will…at least not yet.
They haven’t put in the time and effort to make it work. Maybe they spend a year on a pillar, but they don’t spend a year going deep on it.
I tested ten communities before Substack clicked. I was on it for two years before I hit $29k recurring revenue and six months before the machine worked reliably.
That’s the timeline. Yes, you can cut that time once you have a couple pillars working, but it still takes time…
…and yet we keep telling ourselves success should be instant.
It isn’t.
🦄Hapitalists🦄 (members of my most transformative community) work differently. They don’t chase everything. They don’t try to spin up all seven at once. They don’t abandon a pillar the moment it wobbles.
They simplify. They study. They stabilize.
They pick one pillar and commit to studying it for three months. They pick one platform, one product, and one pathway.
Then, they go deep. It’s painful and hard. Often after three months, once they have no progress to show for it, they move on (for now). Now they know, though, that they gave it a fair shake. They don’t have to wonder. Either it gets circled on the list or they strike it off.
Sometimes, they do find something valuable, and then they commit an additional three months to see if there’s room to grow. Usually, after six months they are rocking and rolling, and now it’s about mastery.
Then they build systems to make it sustainable. Only after that do they move on. That’s how you build a career.
This is why the “P” in the HAPI compass stands for Prioritization. First, you pick a pillar. Then a platform. Then a product. Then a pathway. It’s the 4 P’s of prioritization.
Each step requires testing. Maybe Kickstarter isn’t right for you. Maybe you’d be better off running a TTRPG campaign than a novel. Maybe Facebook ads aren’t your best traffic driver, and you need a better mailing list.
Any of those can be a failure point.
That’s why you need at least three months to figure it out. If you’re still failing after three months, regroup, but if things are kind of working, give it another three months to stabilize. Then give it another six months to make it sustainable.
If you’re looking for some direction on how to plan this out and think about the structure, then in general, you can rotate:
Pillars - no more than once every quarter. Since Hapitalists only commit to a maximum of four pillars a year, they are very intentionally about which ones they pick.
Platforms - Almost never more than once every quarter. While Hapitalists often stick with a pillar for one year or more, it’s more common to change a platform every quarter. However, it’s equally common to link the pillar and platform together. In general, while you’ll always come back to pillars, you generally won’t come back to a platform once you realize it doesn’t work for you.
Products - as often as once a month. Especially with special offers, you’ll often run a promotion for a month and then rotate it out, so it’s not uncommon for somebody to choose landing pages for a quarter and then line up three different products. Same thing with a web store or in person events.
Pathways - as often as once a month. This one is hard because I truly think a pathway only starts paying off once you have it operational for more than three months, but we often start things that don’t feel right, or that aren’t a good pillar/pathway match. So, you might change this often. On the other side, it’s equally common to maintain a pathway for years while switching out and mastering pillars. A mailing list, for instance, could (and arguably should) be the hub pathway for all your pillars.
Success doesn’t happen overnight. Not with one viral TikTok. Not by praying Amazon will smile on you. By mastering these seven things, one at a time, and doing fewer things better.
How to pick the right combination
So, which of these should you start with? The one that gives you the most frictionless growth.
Not the easiest, the one you can do with the most ease. Easy means without difficulty. Ease means without friction.
When we ask “Why is this so hard?” People think we’re asking for things to be easy, but we’re not really trying to remove difficulty from the equation. If we did, the last thing we would be doing is becoming a writer.
Instead, what we’re really saying is “Why is there so much friction making forward progress doing this thing that I love and am supposed to be good at?” This doesn’t come from the reduction of difficulty, but the reduction of friction.
Frictionless means the energy you put in flows forward without resistance. It multiplies instead of grinding to a halt.
That’s exponential growth. Put in one unit of energy, get two back. Send one email, fifty people join. Post one chapter, a hundred new readers appear. It feels like the world is conspiring with you instead of against you.
Every day, I wake up having gained 25-50 new subscribers to The Author Stack for free without exerting much additional effort. When I do exert effort, like during a sale, I make far more than the effort I spend.
Most of the time, though, you’ll be stuck in arithmetic growth. That’s when you put in one unit of energy and you get back one. Or maybe 1.1, if you’re lucky. You’re working, and you’re moving, but it’s linear and exhausting. Life feels like a grind and never really pays off the way you want. That’s where most authors live.
I stopped producing new books in The Godsverse Chronicles because the energy I received was almost on par with with the effort I exerted releasing them. I don’t make much from it, but I didn’t abandon the series, either. It still does work for me, but it doesn’t return enough energy for me to focus on it for more than a couple hours a month.
I still have them up on all retailers, and I’m releasing one chapter a week for free on my Wannabe Press Substack. This brings people into the universe on autopilot with almost no effort, and a Kit autoresponder email sequence is selling them my series when they jump on my mailing list.
Sometimes, you don’t even get arithmetic growth, though. If the worst happens, you hit logarithmic growth. That’s when you put in effort and you get back less than you started with. You burn energy, you burn money, you burn time, and nothing sticks. It doesn’t even make sense. You’re screaming into the void, and the void keeps screaming louder.
One of the main reasons I retired from shows is because I was losing money and overexerting my energy doing them. Since the only way to make money at conventions is to be behind the booth selling, I had no choice but to walk away from them. I still go to writing conferences and signing events, but comic conventions used to be 25-50% of my writing business, and losing them was a huge hit to my bottom line. Still, when you’re putting in $1 and only getting $.80 back, sometimes you have to walk away.
If you plotted it on a graph, it would look like this, with arithmetic growth being the middle, straight red line.
You probably know the difference between these intuitively. You don’t need a spreadsheet. You instinctively feel when the wheels are greased. You can feel when your actions are compounding. You can feel when something is flowing forward without drag.
You’re looking for the pillar, platform, product, and pathway combination that feels the most frictionless.
Want more direction? I just happen to have a book for that, too.
Over time, even the most frictionless growth flattens. Facebook ads used to be exponential. TikTok used to be exponential. Substack Notes is exponential right now, but in two years it’ll just be arithmetic. That’s how this game works.
So you need to master the pillar while it’s frictionless, so that by the time it flattens, you’ve already built the system and moved on to the next pillar.
That’s how you leapfrog your way through the seven.
Not by forcing arithmetic growth to become exponential and calling it “persistence”, but by riding the exponential wave long enough to lock it in, then jumping to the next one before the wave breaks.
I know it feels different that what anyone has told you before, but look around. Does this industry work for almost anyone? Does it work sustainably? Is this how you want to live?
All you need to thrive is one pillar, one platform, one product, and one pathway. The key is figuring out which one, and how to make them all work together to amplify each other.
There is a better way, but it’s not the way it’s been done up until now. I believe everyone can build a thriving author business, but not on the back of a broken system.
If this resonates with you, maybe it’s time to check out our Hapitalist membership.
There are over 600 exclusive posts available behind the paywall, including tons of interviews, courses, books, and more to help you on your author growth journey.
