Ditching the Narrative

Johnny B. Truant, Creator of the Artisan Author, Centers His Fiction-Writing Career on Authenticity

One semester into his PhD in molecular genetics, yet-to-be indie author Johnny B. Truant was miserable. Although he loved books that used real science to justify the fantastical, he hated being a scientist.

He decided to drop out in 2000, leaving him with an unfinished fellowship and no job experience; he was what he called “unemployable.”

The persistent fear of office work motivated Truant to search anywhere other than the wanted section of the newspaper, so he entered rental real estate.

Then web design.

Then freelancing.

When work dried up in 2008, Truant became a full-time online educator and blogger.

Four years later, he was ready to move on again.

“I do this thing where I get restless and I’ll have something that is steady and makes sense and is a logical chain of income,” Truant says. “Then I’ll scare my wife by saying, ‘Well, this isn’t something I want to do anymore.’”

Then Truant met Sean Platt, founder of Sterling & Stone, and was inspired by his episodic writing. It was different from what Truant had believed authoring to be—writing an opus and pitching it to a traditional publishing house.

He began writing shorts, and he sought Platt and author David Wright to create The Self-Publishing Podcast in the meantime.

Photo by Michael Dailey

Truant describes his strategy as sensible and entrepreneurial. He priced his shorts at $0.99, $2.99, or $5.99 for a six-episode season. Emboldened by his fast writing, Truant soon developed a fan base and dug himself out of bankruptcy.

Truant’s vision began with The Fat Vampire in 2012, which was adapted to screen by SYFY in 2022. Today, his success continues in the form of hundreds of cross-genre books, a full-time writing career, and an approach to authorship that seems entirely opposed to what many indie authors say is the key to reaching readers. 

Truant’s focus is on writing slowly when many are writing quickly, on telling his own stories rather than those the market wants. He’s paving a different path in the publishing world, but he’s proud of it—and more importantly, his readers are following.

Write. Publish. Rapid Release?

Early into his publishing career, alongside his fiction, Truant co-authored Write. Publish. Repeat. with Platt in 2013. The book became widely known to self-publishers—and he believes it was widely misunderstood.

“It was supposed to be about persistence,” Truant says.

On the surface, Write. Publish. Repeat. appears to be a guide for rapid release. The book is a guide for authors seeking to stand out from the crowd by enhancing their story creation, editing, and marketing, and it was released to shelves around the time the indie author world began to center the rapid release strategy.

Truant says the two share DNA.

Credited to Paranormal Romance author Amanda Hocking in 2010, and popularized by Michael Anderle and Craig Martele with 20BooksTo50K® in 2015, the rapid release strategy encourages authors to publish books at a frequent pace, typically every few weeks or months, to strengthen their fan base quickly.

Truant’s book contained a similar strategy: Write, independently publish, then sell a few copies. Truant and Platt instructed authors to write series, claiming audiences would be more compelled to read an expanded storyline.

“It was never ‘Publish as fast as you can, anything else is secondary,’ which in my mind is the way rapid release has become,” Truant says. “You can do it with quality for sure, but it’s not primary. What’s primary is speed and quantity.”

He noticed the leap to rapid release while producing the early stages of The Self-Publishing Podcast. Truant began receiving messages inquiring how fast authors should write, what their word count should be, and how authors could hack the system. Truant recalls the term “rapid release” being thrown around more as his podcast series came to an end.

“It’s like they’re cousins,” Truant says. “Rapid release looks, symptomatically, a lot like the idea of Write. Publish. Repeat., and it’s easy to confuse them, but it’s like they just got the headline and stripped out all of the nuance, especially in the age of AI.”

Truant was skeptical of the hallmark algorithm the self-publishing world was leaning into. Despite the lingering question of how he’d make authorship into a sustainable career without the structure of rapid release, he committed to his decision to write stand-alones.

“It’s not in line with what you’re supposed to do,” Truant says. “I’m kind of stubborn that way. I’m artistic in that way; I’m arrogant enough to say the art matters first, then I need to find a way to sell it.”

Creating the Artisan Author

While the industry was maturing, Truant’s Artisan Author philosophy was in its adolescence.

Truant describes the Artisan Author as an intentional path to successful self-publishing that doesn’t require authors to give up their joys. More personally, it is an articulation of the values Truant has operated by since he began writing.

“For me, the whole thing has been about listening to the brainwashing less and leaning hard into what makes me me,” Truant says. “Because that’s each author’s point of differentiation. It’s not that they’re an artist and author or whatever. It’s that they are fully and completely themselves.”

A fan of late ’80s and early ’90s pop culture, Truant says that if readers looked closely, they’d recognize references to RoboCop and Escape from New York incorporated in his stories. Truant explained that by leaning into his quirks and avoiding the mainstream, he’s connecting with an underserved group of readers who desire authenticity.

Truant believes that readers can distinguish between artisan authors and mechanist authors. Previously, he says, the difference was small, and the gray areas blended together. As rapid release widened the gap in the author community, it did the same among readership.

“There used to be a little bit of a difference, but now the difference is so huge that this, to me, feels like the only viable option,” Truant says. “I think it’s something that people are looking for now and maybe the only way that you can stand out in the age of overproduction and AI.”

Truant clarified he is not against artificial intelligence; he often uses AI imagery for his Substack and personal website. Truant believes self-publishers can still be artisan authors and use AI as long as they’re not using it with the intention of hacking the writing process. 

Double Down on Being You

Aside from his website, Truant’s only social media is an author Reddit account to connect with other indie authors. No Facebook, no Instagram, no TikTok, proactive over email, and paying with cash, Truant adopts a Luddite-esque approach to life.

Without social media, Truant’s fans depend on his email responses and in-person presence. Readers can order direct for a lower price than third-party sites, or the ones near enough to him can find him live-selling at events and farmers’ markets.

Typically, authors that live-sell bring a smaller haul, so potential readers aren’t overwhelmed with options. But the expansiveness of the Truantverse means Truant has something for every reader, so instead, when people approach his stall, Truant asks them what books they like to read.

More than anything else, the response is often all over the place, he says.

“I want people to like me, which is why I’m so diligent about interacting with people on email and why I’m so proactive about interacting with people in person over anything else,” Truant says. “I don’t have anything else. If they don’t like me they might read a given book and move on, but my core true fans, they have to like me.”

The Artisan Author philosophy has been brewing for Truant long before he could articulate it, but now, he says he’s tired of the one-size-fits-all rhetoric that’s attached itself to the author world.

Truant’s upcoming project, The Artisan Author: Your Way Out of the Self-Pub Rat Race, launches July 15, 2025, on Kickstarter. Intended for authors at any point in their career, Truant’s latest project offers a sensible return to creativity without the burnout.

Photo by Michael Dailey

Truant encourages the authors that successfully use the rapid release mode to incorporate the Artisan Author approach into their lifestyle, though he recommends they step slowly because the process requires reinvention.

For the authors who struggle with rapid release, Truant recommends they ditch the tactic of the week and adopt a connective strategy.

“There’s no ninja tricks to being an artisan author; it’s unlearning all the ninja tricks,” Truant says. “It’s, really, ‘Write good books, and get them in front of people who you connect with, who want to read them.’ It doesn’t get more simple than that.”

Samantha Margot

Curious by trade, Samantha Margot is a passionate people-person with experience in the newsroom and behind the microscope. If she’s not writing her latest story, Samantha can be found tending to her plants or using any excuse to ride her bike.