David Viergutz has dialed into something old made new again. It started with Scare Mail and is now a full story service at Epistolary Fiction.
And he made $ 4 Million last year doing it.đź’°đź’°đź’°Prefer to watch?
I was scrolling Facebook last year and froze the screen when I saw an ad for Scare Mail. What? As a horror fan and writer, I thought, this is sheer genius. Who wouldn’t want to find something that cool in their mailbox?
Because, let’s face it. All I normally find in that green box outside my farmhouse is bills, ads for politicians and the occasional truly terrifying letter from the government.
David Viergutz has a solution to one of my problems. The mailbox is no longer boring or just full of bad news.
Plus, he may have solved another one of my problems… How to be profitable as a writer?
(Give me six months and I’ll let you know how it’s going!)
If you prefer to watch your interviews, here is the link to our chat on YouTube.
These interviews dive deep into the truth of the publishing world in a friendly, accessible way for authors. To keep receiving all the best hints, join the next tier!
AF: David, for people who are just discovering you, how did you get here? You’ve had such an unusual path into publishing.
DV: My history is probably very similar to a lot of authors. At some point, you always wanted to be an author, then maybe you forgot about it, got a traditional job, and later found your way back.
Along the way, I was in the service and in law enforcement, and that didn’t leave a lot of room for creativity. I became a personal trainer and had that business for a while. I remember standing over a client one day and saying out loud, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” At that point, I had written my first book.
So I sold my gym. I was making about a hundred thousand dollars a year with it, and the year I sold it and published my first book, I made $220. My wife was thrilled to see how much money we were making.
I’m a true overnight success. I wrote overnight for five years straight.
(Authorial note: The more you hear the story behind successful authors, the more you realize there are almost NO overnight successes. It takes years of work to get to the tipping point.)
I wrote 23 novels, stealing every second I could. I was always listening to podcasts on how to write better. I was reading books on how to write better. I got my master’s degree while standing in the evidence locker typing my thesis for six months straight. My chief gave me extra time so I could work on it.
I spent a lot of time studying writing and the business of writing. I come from a true entrepreneur background. I come from sales. I come from selling very expensive personal training packages. So I’m kind of the reverse of most authors. Most authors are writers first and figure out the business later. I take a different approach. I’m a businessman who happens to do the writing, and I really enjoy that. If I want to write something, I think about how I can sell it first.
I’ve spoken at Author Nation and at the Self Publishing Show in London. I’ve been featured in Indie Author Magazine and Writer’s Digest. And when you talk about ScareMail, really, that’s a brand, or several brands, that I own under a company called Epistolary.
We are the world’s premier publisher for story letters and epistolary writing. As far as I know, I’m the only publisher on the planet focused specifically on story letters and epistolary writing. We don’t accept traditional novels. It has to be epistolary.
AF: I love that. I’d also love to hear how far you’ve come, because I just listened to your interview with Joanna Penn when you didn’t even have your first warehouse yet. Your wife and kids were still stuffing envelopes. How did you go from that stage to where you are now?
DV: I took the traditional approach like everybody else when it came to publishing. I had my books on Amazon because that was the easy place to have them. But I was always iterating on something different. Every single novel was something different, and I was always stretching the boundaries of where we are in sales, how we communicate with readers, how we sell to them, and what kinds of extras we can offer.
So I spent about five years building an email list. My funnel at that time, right before I launched ScareMail, was to get free subscribers any way I could. Everything was focused on the subscriber. I didn’t care about sales. I cared about the subscriber.
I spent about five years building that list and around a hundred thousand dollars to build it. I had 30,000 readers, and it was a cold list.
AF: What do you mean by a cold list?
DV: A cold list is a list where people come on, then disengage. They stop clicking on things, they stop reading, and you have to cull the herd. You get rid of them.
If they’re not doing anything, you send them a series of emails asking, “What the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you clicking my stuff? Why aren’t you reading my stuff? Do you still want to be here?”
So I built this list and hadn’t really hit them with anything big. I’d done book releases, but special editions never really interested me. I didn’t want to do what everybody else was doing.
Then I had this idea for ScareMail. At that point I was all in on Amazon and KU, but Amazon’s algorithm wasn’t giving me any love, so I wasn’t going to give any love to Amazon. I thought, if it’s going to be this hard for me to make sales, I might as well sell my books myself. I can price them at full price and not worry about Amazon taking a big chunk for no visibility at all.
So I made a website, and I sent this email to my KU list. This is still my favourite email. It said, “Hey, I’m going direct. My prices are going full price because my work is worth it. There is no difference between my books and trad books. Somebody tell me otherwise.”
Then I said, “If you want to stay here and support me, click this link to buy my books on my website, or click this link to buy them on Amazon.” If they clicked the Amazon link, it automatically unsubscribed them.
AF: You are the bravest author I’ve ever met. (Authorial note: Does this not drop your jaw to the floor?)
DV: The point was standing up for the work we put in. In the indie community, we understand there is value behind our books. There’s no reason a traditional publisher can charge $15 for an ebook, and we act like that makes sense only because they’re trad.
I’ve asked people on stages why trad publishers can publish a $15 ebook, and they say, “Because they’re trad.” So we’re making excuses for traditional publishers charging a livable amount for a book that we spent six months on and thousands of dollars producing. They can charge full price. Who decided an ebook was only worth $3.99? I want to know who that person was.
In my mind, I put in the exact same effort a traditional publisher does, maybe even more, because there’s nobody else doing the job for us. Once we release that manuscript, it’s on us.
The strongest way to make money as an author, without the luck of Amazon’s algorithm, is to go direct, price your books at full price, and then learn how to make a good sale. That’s it. There is no magic strategy here.
AF: So, where do your first-time buyers usually come from? Are they coming in through ScareMail, through books, or both?
DV: Both. Typically, right now, what makes the money for me is ScareMail and my story letters, so it makes the most sense for me to continue selling that. But I still sell a hundred thousand dollars a year in books. I just don’t advertise them as much.
AF: What is the key to getting top dollar for your books?
DV: A lot of it comes down to the fact that we don’t see value the same way a reader does. We look at how many words we wrote, how much time we put in, how much editing we did. A reader is looking at it and asking, “How is this going to make me feel?”
People will pay anything to feel something.. If you can make a person feel something, or at least let them know they’re going to feel a certain way by the end of whatever you’re selling, you can charge anything for that.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a short story. Then you think about content and medium. Is a short story going to perform better in audio or as text? Probably audio for some people, because audio has inherently more value to an audio listener than an ebook does. But if they’re primarily a reader and they want something that will punch them in the gut on the subway in six minutes and make them feel something for the rest of the day, then you’ve got exactly what that reader is looking for.
At that point, it’s just about finding a way to convey that price value in a way that makes sense.
AF: Where can people find you?
DV: I’m centrally located. You can find me at epistolary.com. For speaking engagements and that sort of thing, davidviergutz.com. But we’re all in on epistolary writing. We’re bringing story letters to the world. We have some of the most powerful indie authors on the planet publishing with us, and we’ll have 14 story letters out by the end of the year.
SOME HUGE DEVELOPMENTS in Angelique’s writing life. All this research is paying off!
-2026 has some big news! New sales, a new novel, possibly a short story to film adaptation, new jobs + life-changing revelations.
* I’ve made five sales so far in 2026.
* After the Storm Magazine bought “The Case of the Tiny Tea Toys” for their April issue.
* My latest sale is out now:
Polar Borealis is a Canadian Speculative Mag with a good rep.
My story “The 6ix Trials” is on page 12. It’s a dystopian game show flash.
* AHOY Comics has bought two of my upcoming shorts for 2026. “She Cracks” and “Elena and the Belligerent Zeno Beets.”
* Zooscape, a pro-pay market I’ve been trying for since 2018, finally purchased a story called “Pirate’s Crew of Misfits.”
Drumroll please…
* Novel #2 is in the mail!
Dancing into the Dark is on it’s way to Cherry Weiner. the first time I sent it to her, she said it was confusing, had too many characters and the magic wasn’t working for her. 🤞🏾🤞🏾🤞🏾 She likes this version
* Though the contract isn’t signed yet, I’ve finally (hopefully) made a sale that will see my short story pitched to TV/Film. More when the ink is dry…
* After this chat with David, I’m applying to be one of his Scare Mail writers. Stay tuned, I will update you here.
My career-changing trip:
I’ve been in Arizona for almost a month, and the time here has been transformative, especially for my writing career. When this post goes out, I’ll have been home for a few days.
I met so many goals and moved things forward in a lot of different ways. Finally, I totally get why you hear about authors going on cruises and sequestering themselves in cabins to finish novels, or renting a hotel room just to get away.
Truly, when you stay at home and have to deal with all the day-to-day issues that come with having a husband, a daughter, laundry, pets, taxes, and the list goes on, it’s very hard to dial in and get something done. So, I took the time in the sun and away from my fam to finish Dancing into the Dark.
Novel number two came in at 97,500 words. Once again, it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever done, after finishing novel number one.
Sometimes I worked from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., pausing, of course, for breaks. I’d go for a walk in the mountains in the morning, and I do have some motivational moments from the mountains — click here.
Then I’d take a swim in the afternoon around five, have some dinner, and go back to writing.
And by the way, breakfast and lunch were eaten while working.
It feels so liberating and satisfying to have that novel done and in the mail.
Now, I know my agent is going to have some notes, but because this is the second time I’ve rewritten this novel from scratch, I’m hoping they’ll only be slight.
And then I did more.
NEW PART-TIME JOB ANNOUNCEMENT
One thing I’ve been struggling with since losing my job in November 2023 at Global TV, after 28 years, was this: what is my next career going to look like?
Obviously, as we’ve all discovered, becoming a full-time author doesn’t happen right out of the gate.
Like in the interview above, David Vergutz was an overnight success that took five years. And when I talked to Cindy Gunderson — check out her interview here — it took her five years too.
So, considering I’m only seriously contemplating a part-time author career this year, I don’t think immediate sustainability is realistic.
But I did find a job with my wonderful friend Jennifer Jones, who’s a real estate agent, helping her publish her books and produce her podcast. You can see the podcast I produce here.
She published her last book with a vanity press, and I am going to help her (for far less money) create her future books.
Win-win, right?
And in the meantime, I’ll also be learning skills and tricks that will help me in my own publishing career.
This Substack is also another growing concern.
I’m losing paid subscribers, which I think is natural, because I suspect a lot of them were comped by Substack, and then dropped off when it was time to pay.
But it takes a lot of time to create these posts. A lot of time that could be spent writing.
So I’m going to have to find a way to continue with my Substack, keep communicating with this wonderful community I’ve found, and keep providing my lists, but in a way that doesn’t take too much time away from my writing or my working time, because the bills need to be paid.
Okay, happy writing.
And what do we always say?
Submit, submit, submit.
