I love the idea of the Bookstore of You, as a road less traveled for we indie authors, rather than being down there on the clogged superhighway of high-churn publishing.

Artisan author is very rewarding alternative.

And artisan is more and more important these days.

Go for it!

I think of it like building equity, or passive income. The more you build loyalty to that bookstore, the less you have to do in the long term to keep people coming back. It's not one-and-done like so much of Rapid Release.

Love this! It's a one-by-one, very human thing. The #1 "marketing" activity for me is thoroughly and completely answering emails. I spend far more time on that than ads or anything else.

(Not that I think ads are bad! I absolutely don't. I do, however, think that they can -- and, for Artisan types SHOULD -- be done in an artisan way.

Fun is the key! That's what it always comes back to for me. I have a very good and very stubborn internal compass, and if I feel intuitively that something sucks, chances are it sucks. I actually want to enjoy my work, thanks.

By the definitions I've been using while writing the Artisan Author book, I would classify you as someone who releases rapidly rather than a "Rapid Release" author. I'm sort of defining Rapid Release in a way that makes it incompatible with Artisanship, so by my definitions (which aren't everyone's, obviously), you can't be both.

I also publish rapidly, when I'm on. (I'm off right now, but starting back up in about a month.) I think that was a lot of the confusion over Write Publish Repeat ... people saw that title, knew that one of the authors published a ton of books, and conflated them into Rapid Release. But that was never the point.

Writing and releasing quickly still makes sense to me, if it's natural for you to write that way. What DOESN'T make sense to me is when naturally slower writers feel they need to speed up no matter the consequences. There are also some the things that true Rapid Release requires that contradict my own definition of the Artisan way: Amazon exclusivity, playing almost exclusively to algorithms, prioritizing quantity over quality (no judgment; it's true that quantity matters most in the KU ecosystem), etc.

So I'm not sure if you agree, Harvey, but I'd vote that if you identify as a quick, Write Publish Repeat (by its intended meaning) kind of writer who also relates to the Artisan approach, you're kind of like me. You're Artisan by philosophy, and fast and persistent/consistent by nature.

And who wouldn't want to have fun with you, my friend? xoxo