The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. MaxGuernseyIII, Author of No Direction

In a Leanpub podcast episode, software engineer and author Max Guernsey III discussed his fantasy novel 'No Direction: The Severed World, Book One,' which he publishes as a weekly serial using a GitHub Actions workflow that automates releases via the Leanpub API. He also shared marketing strategies for reaching executives and promoting fiction without spoilers, and explained his selective use of AI for research and editing rather than writing or coding.

Leanpub Podcast https://leanpub.com/blog/tag/leanpub-podcast/ The Leanpub Podcast 🎙 Feat. MaxGuernseyIII, Author of No Direction A man threatens civilization itself, even though he shouldn't be able to affect much of anything at all. It's 1022 AD. For more than a millennium, the Council has ruled the known world. Now it is terrified of a man who should hardly matter at all. Young and weak, he is on the trail of s... Episode Details 1. Leanpub Podcast: Max Guernsey III on Serial Fiction, Automation, and Self-Publishing In this wide-ranging episode, Len Epp sits down with repeat guest Max Guernsey III — software engineer, consultant, and Leanpub author — to talk about his multiple book projects, his creative use of the Leanpub API, and his pragmatic take on AI in writing and software development. 1.1 Automating a Serial Novel with GitHub Actions Max is currently publishing No Direction: The Severed World, Book One https://leanpub.com/no-direction?ref=leanpub.com , a fantasy novel set in 1022 AD, as a weekly serial. Because his writing output varies week to week, he built a GitHub Actions workflow that checks for scheduled chapter files and automatically pushes releases via the Leanpub API — including release emails. As a result, he thinks not in terms of what is published, but what is queued in the hopper. Each chapter aims to contain one small narrative arc that advances the larger story, typically running around 12 pages, with the book itself being the first installment in a planned four-part series. 1.2 The Leanpub Progress Badge and Chapter Ornaments Max had previously suggested that Leanpub add a visible writing-progress indicator to book landing pages, and Len confirms that feature is now live. The conversation also touches on chapter ornaments — decorative images at the start of each chapter — which Max requested and a Leanpub co-op student subsequently built into the platform’s Markdown and visual editor. 1.3 Marketing Nonfiction to Hard-to-Reach Executives For his nonfiction title Fixing Software Delivery , Max’s biggest challenge is getting in front of executive readers. Len offers several concrete tactics: building coupon campaigns timed around industry conferences using Leanpub’s new leanpub.com/coupon entry page, which allows human-readable coupon codes , speaking at conferences with a QR code on the final slide, mailing physical print copies to senior leaders, and cultivating relationships with journalists by sending them genuinely novel insights related to their published articles. 1.4 YouTube, Pinterest, and Marketing Fiction Without Spoilers For The Other Half of Coding , Max has found YouTube — clipped with tools like Opus Clip — and, surprisingly, Pinterest to be his most effective marketing channels. For No Direction , the challenge is different: how do you promote a slow-burn, drip-reveal fantasy world without giving the story away? Max has been experimenting on X Twitter with theme-based posts and community building, and is exploring a dedicated YouTube channel for the series. He is also considering video readings of individual chapters, drawing a parallel to the reading tours of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, even though the idea has met skepticism from others. A particularly inventive asset-reuse strategy emerged from Max’s world-building work: he built a program to generate glyphs for the constructed language and script of No Direction , and was advised to post those visual assets to Pinterest — where they have generated significant daily impressions and driven traffic to the book. 1.5 AI: Useful for Research and Editing, Not for Writing or Coding Max uses AI selectively. He values it for research — describing it as a sophisticated curve-fitting machine well suited to finding patterns — and as an editing and chapter-review aid that catches errors and occasionally surfaces a better turn of phrase. He does not use it to generate prose or code, arguing that the genuinely hard part of both is the thinking, not the typing. He also raises economic concerns, suggesting that current AI pricing is heavily subsidised and that a significant price increase is likely once investment capital recedes — making generative use cases much harder to justify financially, while research use cases may still hold value. This interview was recorded on interview-date . The full audio for the interview is here: episode-audio-url episode-audio-url . The Leanpub Podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub https://www.youtube.com/leanpub?ref=leanpub.com , in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/Leanpub/id517117137 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/Leanpub/id517117137?ref=leanpub.com , and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts. About the Book A man threatens civilization itself, even though he shouldn't be able to affect much of anything at all. It's 1022 AD. For more than a millennium, the Council has ruled the known world. Now it is terrified of a man who should hardly matter at all. Young and weak, he is on the trail of something that could destroy the Council... and drag the world down with it. Three powerful Ascended are sent to find him and stop him, but they can't seem to pin him down. Every time it seems like they've backed him into a corner, he breaks the rules they thought governed the universe and slips away. The chase leads the Hunting party across continents and seas, exposing a hidden world of arcane knowledge and lost technology, of constructed beings and terrifying monsters. The man they hunt is difficult prey, but challenges come from within the Hunt, too. Bad roads, dwindling coin, hunger, and tired horses constantly slow them down. Different motivations threaten to fracture the party. Brutal methods threaten to tear it apart. While the Hunting party frays under the strain, the quarry only seems to grow more dangerous and evasive. --- NOTE: This book is being developed incrementally and thus uses progressive pricing. I am trying to release one chapter a week. Buying now gives you access to all current and eventual chapters at early adopter prices. About the Author Max has over three decades of experience as a software engineer, architect, and consultant. For more than a decade, he has helped leaders diagnose and remove the root causes of software delivery problems.