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The Pulp Writer Show

The Pulp Writer Show

By: 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 Economics Leadership Literary History & Criticism Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Episode 256: Spring/Summer 2025 Frozen Pizza Review Roundup!

    Episode 256: Spring/Summer 2025 Frozen Pizza Review Roundup!
    Jun 23 2025
    In this week's episode, I take a look at the frozen pizzas that I enjoyed in 2025, and give my recommendations for the best frozen pizzas. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store: WARDEN25 The coupon code is valid through July 14, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we’ve got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 256 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 20th, 2025 and today we are looking at my favorite frozen pizzas from Winter and Spring 2025. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing progress, and then we will do Question of the Week this week. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store, and that coupon is WARDEN25. This coupon code is valid through July 14th, 2025. So if you need a new series of really long ebooks to read for this summer, we have got you covered and as always, the links to the store and the coupon code will be included in the show notes. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. As I mentioned before, I want Summer 2025 to be my Super Summer of Finishing Things because I want to finish The Shield War, Stealth and Spells, and Ghost Armor series this summer before I start on new things. I'm pleased to report that I have reached a milestone of that. The rough draft of Shield of Power is done at 101,000 words. This will be the sixth and final book in the Shield War series. I am currently writing A Consort of Darkness, which will be a short story that newsletter subscribers will get a free copy of in ebook form when Shield of Power comes out. I am also 109,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest and hopefully that will come out very quickly after Shield The Power is out. I'm also 10,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will likewise be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. In audiobook news, recording is still underway for Ghost in the Corruption, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and Shield of Battle, which will be narrated by Brad Wills. Hopefully we will have some more updates on that soon and I don't think it'll be too much longer before both audiobooks are out and available. 00:02:02 Question of the Week Now let's go to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: when was the last time you went to an actual movie theater to see a movie? No wrong answers, including “I don't go to movie theaters.” As you can guess, we had a range of responses on this one. Justin says: Last month we saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail (fifty year release) in the theater. Yes, we have the DVD. David says: I guess Dune Two is the last time I went to a theater. For the price of going to the theater, I can wait and stream it later. If I don't like the price, I can even wait a few years. I'm not so quick to give them my money. Haven't gone to the theater yet in 2025. Nothing called out to me. William says: Except for 2020-2021, I've been going to the movies frequently every year since the Hobbit movies first came out. It's not that my habits has changed, just that they started making the kind of movies I wanted to watch like Star Wars, Jurassic World, the Disney remakes, and so on. Before 2012, the last time I went was in 2006 for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It probably helps that it's only two tickets each time and not four or five for a whole family. Randy says: Top Gun: Maverick. It was a throwback to the days when movies were fun to watch. Everything doesn't have to have a deeper meaning and make us think. Just have an unlikely crew of misfits take out the bad guys. Bonnie says: Last one was Mary Poppins Returns with granddaughter in Spring 2019. I can't see spending the price for a one time deal. Cheryl says: The last time I went to the cinema…when did American Beauty come out? That's how long ago it was and the movie was disappointing. Jenny says: Thunderbolts! I wish movies weren't so pricey. Elizabeth says: Last time I went to the movie theater was to see Jumanji 2 with my now husband as our first date because both of us are terrible at first date ideas. I don't know- if Elizabeth's first date with her now husband was Jumanji 2, it seems like that was a very successful first date. John says: War of the Rohirrim, December of last year. A different John says: Dune Two and A Complete Unknown are the only two I've seen in the theater in the last two years. In both cases it was because A: the movie deserved to be experienced completely, and B: there was someone I wanted to share it with. Otherwise, modern tech in the home works just fine. Michael says: Last movie I saw in ...
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    19 mins
  • Episode 255: A Look Back At My Favorite Scenes Of 2023

    Episode 255: A Look Back At My Favorite Scenes Of 2023
    Jun 16 2025

    Due to an unexpected time shortage, this week we're looking back at Episode 182, where I discussed the favorite scenes I wrote in 2023.

    This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

    CROWN50

    The coupon code is valid through July 9, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!
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    15 mins
  • Episode 254: Ebook Pricing Strategies

    Episode 254: Ebook Pricing Strategies
    Jun 9 2025
    In this week's episode, we look at five tips and tricks for optimal ebook pricing. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless Worlds series at my Payhip store: TOWER25 The coupon code is valid through June 30, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we’ve got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 254 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 5, 2025, and today we are looking at ebook pricing strategies. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless World Series at my Payhip store, and that is TOWER25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to the store will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 30th, 2025, so if you need a new ebook series to read this summer, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 53,000 words into Shield of Power, which will be the sixth and final book of my Shield War series, and that puts me on Chapter 13 of 29. I feel like the book is going to be between about 105,000 to 110,000 words in rough draft, but we will see when I get there. I'm hoping to have it out before the end of June, but there's a good chance it may slip to July, so listen to this space and watch my website for updates. I am also 104,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, which as the name implies, will be the third and final book of the Stealth and Spells trilogy. I am right in the middle of writing the climactic scenes of the story and because of the length and how far I've gotten and I've been chipping away at this since October, it will come out very quickly after Shield of Power, possibly even in the same month. I'm also 5,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, and that should probably come out towards the end of summer, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is recording Shield of Battle and Hollis McCarthy is recording Ghost in the Corruption right now. I know they're hard at work at it because both of them sent me emails with questions about pronunciations today. Hopefully we'll have some exciting new audiobooks for you later this summer. 00:02:12 Main Topic: Ebook Pricing Strategies [Note: All Prices Referenced are USD] And now let's move right into our main topic, ebook pricing strategies, which is often a contentious topic for indie authors. We're going to go over five different ebook pricing strategies to look at when they're the most effective or why you might want to try them. I'll talk about when I have used each of them and why I chose to do so or not to do so, as the case might be. As I said, this is often a contentious topic for indie authors, especially newer indie authors who often have in their head an idea that their book is worth X amount of dollars because the amount of work they put into it, like for example, “my novel should be a minimum of $9.99 or $14.99 because of all the work I put into it. It was a year's worth of work, and if you can buy a fancy latte at Starbucks or $6 or $7 or whatever, then you should be able to pay $9.99 for this novel upon which I toiled for a year.” And that is a nice sentiment, but in reality it doesn't work that way for a couple of reasons. For one thing, people are only willing to drop that kind of money on authors that they've known for a long time, like hardcore Stephen King or James Patterson or Jack Reacher fans dropping $20 or $30 for the novel in hardcover when comes out the first time. That kind of loyalty has to be earned over the long term, and if you're brand a new indie author or a newish indie author, charging $9.99 for your ebook is something of an ask. For the second thing, an ebook is not a physical object, and there is a point where people blanch at paying a lot of money for an item that is essentially electronic and digital. If you're paying $9.99 for a paperback, at least you're getting the paperback, the physical object. Paying $9.99 for something utterly intangible like an ebook is a much harder sell. Because of that, the optimal price point for ebooks tends to be a bit lower than that. For the sake of not adding too many caveats to each point based on genre and format, let's assume for each of these strategies, the ebook we are pricing is a fantasy novel of about 90,000 words without any maps or images and is not being traditionally published by an established author. In an interview, Smashwords founder Mark Coker presented data from Smashwords that showed most indie authors selling full length fiction will see the most success setting their ebook prices at either $2.99, $3.99, or $4.99 (depending on ...
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    15 mins
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