How To Redesign Your Author Business For The Environment That Actually Exists, With Tracy Cooper-Posey
The Creative Penn Podcast For WritersShow Notes
How can you redesign your author business for the publishing environment that actually exists, rather than the one you wish you had? And how do you decide which marketing efforts will still bring readers to your books in ten years' time? Tracy Cooper-Posey shares her solar sail theory after more than 25 years as an author.
In the intro, reviving your backlist [The Indy Author]; AI as a medium [Tim O'Reilly]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn.
ProWritingAid Storyteller sale: Thursday, 3rd September until September 13th 2026 — 25% off all annual licenses as well as Story Critique credits.
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Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
Learning to write again after chemo, one sentence at a time
What enshittification means, and why it is the environment rather than you
The hallmarks of an indie author business that persists over time
The solar sail theory of long-term discoverability
Why social media and paid ads have such a short half-life
How to find and reduce the operational drag on your business
You can find Tracy at ProductiveIndieFictionWriter.com or StoriesRulePress.com.
Transcript of the interview with Tracy Cooper-Posey
Jo: Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer. So welcome back to the show, Tracy.
Tracy: Hi, Jo. It's great to be back.
Jo: Yes. So you were last on the show in October 2023 talking about The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, and we went into depth then.
So give us a bit of an update on your author business and also your life.
Because it has been a bit of an up and down.
Tracy: Yes, it's been a very interesting three years, because I had just gone into remission with cancer when we were talking last. Now I'm out of remission again and facing treatment in the next few weeks. My husband got cancer and went through treatment, and he's cured.
So life has been pretty interesting. All that has made me do a lot of deep thinking about the indie author business and my own business and writing in general.
So I'm still here. I'm still publishing, 200 plus books now. I had to learn how to write again. But the writing has shifted a lot towards science fiction and fantasy, including cosy science fiction now, which is the new genre that's just creeping in.
All three pen names have been Aurealis Award finalists, which is nice. I'm still continuing the nonfiction work, which is something that you said the last time that we spoke. You said, “Now that you've written one, it's likely you'll write more nonfiction.” And I did.
Jo: You did. They're excellent books. Just on that, you mentioned cosy sci-fi. For anyone who might not know, where is that genre?
What's in that genre of cosy sci-fi?
Tracy: It's not really officially a genre yet. It started off with cosy fantasy, which was where the cosy started.
Actually, technically it started with cosy mystery, an
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