BOOK REVIEW: Johnny B. Truant, The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approac

[lobelia321]

I am a sucker for how-to books so this one sucked me right in. I listened to it on audio. I can't say that the author is the all-time-best at narrating but his voice was adequate.

Positive take-aways: Write what you like, and then find your 'superfans' who also like just that. Don't worry about the rest. I did like being reminded of the art in artisan; that was quite freeing.

A thing that annoyed me or that I found tedious: The author sets up a binary of 'artisan readers' versus 'KU readers'. KU is Kindle Unlimited, Amazon's subscription service. The author assumes that these KU readers are all 'whale readers' who care about tropes above quality and consume voraciously. I find this set-up to be a straw-reader set-up. 'Artisan readers', by contrast, are presented as discerning readers who follow an author (not a trope or a genre), who don't mind reading slowly and who care about quality above all.

Now, in my experience, this is a false binary that reminds me of the 20th C. opposition of 'literature' vs 'pulp' (and good riddance to that tedious binary). I am on KU on and off. I read a lot. I read 'high brow stuff' as well as 'genre pulp'. KU also includes 'high brow' stuff, especially classics. For example, two days ago I downloaded Petrarch's Triumphs via KU. I also read a lot of the 'pulp' variety. In my experience, neither I nor the readers of such fare, are un-discerning or indifferent to quality. Romance readers, for example, care a great deal about quality, give two-star reviews without reservation and with lengthy explanation and also have their favourite authours of whom they are 'superfans'. So Truant's straw opposition, worked to death chapter after chapter, holds no water and is a rhetorical device only.

The author also sets himself up as a remedy for 'rapid release'. I may not be the correct reader for this. The author assumes that a whole generation of indie writers, partly inspired by his own podcast of circa one decade ago, have succumbed to the 'rapid release' and 'write fast' model of production. I myself had encountered 'rapid release' and have, indeed, recently read a rapid-release novel in order to check if speed is detrimental to quality. But I do not hold 'rapid release' up as model to be countered so much of the polemic in this book was shadow boxing (in my eyes). However, I concede that there are doubtless writer-readers for whom this is a very real issue.

The author tends to assume men. 'Buddy', 'dude', 'bro' - these masculine-coded forms of address are used in an affectionate way but yes, I did not feel particularly embraced by them.

I give this author a great benefit of the doubt as he comes recommended by Joanna Penn of whom I am, in fact, a 'superfan'.

Oh look, there is a comma in the sub-title, so this fills one of my 52 book reading challenge prompts of 2026.