20BooksTo50K — The Philosophy and Community That Shaped a Generation of Indie Authors
20BooksTo50K is not a course — it is a philosophy, a 60,000-member Facebook community, and an approach to the author business that has produced more six-figure indie authors than almost any other single resource in the space.
Instructor / Creator: Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle (founders); Kevin McLaughlin (current community moderator)
Cost: Free — Facebook group open to any indie author
AI-Updated: Partial — the community actively discusses AI tools, direct sales, and automation; not a structured AI course
Primary Focus: Publishing velocity, author business mindset, catalog-building strategy, data-driven publishing decisions, community knowledge sharing
Best For: Indie authors who want to treat writing as a serious business and are willing to commit to regular publishing cadence. Particularly powerful for genre fiction authors targeting Amazon-centric or wide distribution strategies.
Official Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/20Booksto50K/
The Origin of 20BooksTo50K
The 20BooksTo50K methodology was created by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle — both prolific indie fiction authors — in 2016. The premise is straightforward: by publishing approximately twenty books in a category, an author can generate enough catalog depth, review velocity, and Amazon also-bought cross-pollination to earn $50,000 per year from writing alone. Hence the name.
The methodology is not a promise or a guarantee — it is a target and a framework. What made it powerful was the community that grew around it: a Facebook group of writers sharing their data, their strategies, their failures, and their successes in real time. That peer-learning dynamic produced a feedback loop of practical knowledge that no single course or instructor could replicate.
By 2025, the group had grown to more than 60,000 members — one of the largest active indie author communities in the world. The original founders have stepped back from day-to-day involvement, and the community is now moderated by Kevin McLaughlin and a team of experienced indie authors.
What the Methodology Actually Teaches
Publishing Velocity as a Strategy
The central insight of 20BooksTo50K is that catalog depth compounds. A reader who discovers and loves your work searches for everything else you have written. An algorithm that is rewarding one of your books looks across your catalog for related titles to recommend. An email subscriber who joins for one series is a potential buyer for every other series you write. The more books you have, the more each new book is worth.
Writing to Market
The 20Books community has always been closely aligned with Chris Fox's Write to Market framework — the idea that writing commercially positioned books, in genres with active reader communities, dramatically improves the return on every book published. The community actively discusses which genres are growing, which are declining, and what reader expectations look like in specific subgenres.
Data-Driven Decisions
The culture of the 20Books group is data-driven. Members share their actual sales numbers, ad spend, KENP page reads, conversion rates, and email open rates. This transparency creates a calibration mechanism that is hard to find elsewhere — you can see what working authors at different catalog sizes and genre positions are actually earning, not just what the most successful outliers report.
AI and Direct Sales
The 2023 and 2024 conferences (20Books Vegas and its successor, Author Nation) were dominated by two topics: AI tools for authors and direct sales strategies. The Facebook group reflects this — active threads on every aspect of AI integration, Shopify storefronts, and the shift away from KU exclusivity toward wide and direct sales.
The Conference Evolution — From 20Books Vegas to Author Nation
For six years, 20Books Vegas was the flagship gathering of the community — an annual conference at a Las Vegas hotel, attracting up to 1,700 indie authors for sessions, networking, and keynotes. In 2023, Craig Martelle stepped back from conference leadership due to health and family priorities. The conference was rebranded Author Nation under new leadership (Joe Solari, Chelle Honiker, and others), while the original 20BooksTo50K Facebook group retained its name and membership.
Author Nation 2025 attracted approximately 1,500 authors to Las Vegas. Joanna Penn — whose work is reviewed elsewhere in this series — spoke multiple times, including a solo session on AI collaboration. The conference continues to be one of the most practically focused events in indie publishing, with content oriented toward working professionals rather than aspirational beginners.
🤝 SC CONNECTION: Kevin McLaughlin — the current primary moderator of the 20BooksTo50K Facebook group — is also a ScribeCount subscriber and community participant. His involvement in the group's moderation means that ScribeCount's data-focused approach aligns naturally with the community's culture.
How to Use the Community Effectively
The 20BooksTo50K Facebook group is a firehose of information. Without a strategy for using it, it can become overwhelming. Here is how experienced members approach the group.
Search before posting — most questions have been asked and answered in depth. The search function is your best friend.
Filter for your stage — look for posts from authors at your catalog size and genre, not just the most successful outliers
Engage with data — threads that include real numbers (sales, ad spend, ROAS, email metrics) are the most valuable
Attend Author Nation if possible — the in-person energy and networking accelerates what the online group does more slowly
Combine with other resources — the group works best alongside structured courses (Bryan Cohen, Dave Chesson, Mark Dawson) that provide frameworks for the tactics being discussed
Tracking Your Results with ScribeCount
📊 Every course teaches strategies. ScribeCount shows you whether those strategies are working — in real numbers, across every platform you publish on.
The 20BooksTo50K community is built on data-sharing and evidence-based decision making. ScribeCount is designed for exactly that kind of author. Use ScribeCount's Sales Dashboard to bring the same data discipline to your own catalog that the 20Books community advocates collectively — real revenue numbers, platform breakdowns, ROAS by title and series, and historical comparisons that show whether your publishing velocity is generating the compounding revenue growth the methodology promises.
Final Verdict
20BooksTo50K is not a course — it is a philosophy and a community, and that distinction matters. You will not finish it and have a certificate. What you will have is access to the collective knowledge of 60,000 authors who are actually doing the work, sharing real data, and refining their approaches in real time. For the right kind of author — one who wants to build a catalog-based publishing business, is willing to engage with the community actively, and can filter signal from noise — it is one of the most valuable free resources in the indie publishing space.
✅ Bottom Line: The most data-rich free author community in indie publishing. Not a course — a philosophy and a peer network. Join the Facebook group, search before posting, and bring the same data discipline the community advocates.
About the Author
Hello, I'm Randall Wood. When I'm not pounding the keyboard or entertaining my giant dog, I like to build tools for my fellow indie authors. In these articles, you'll find lessons learned over sixteen years spent in the indie author world. I share it all here to help you get one step closer to where you want to be.