Meet the author

chadswhite on August 17, 2025

Grew up in Houston. I lived in the same house in Sharpstown in southwest Houston until I went away to college at Texas A&M.

Didn’t travel out of USA until 22. Prior to going to the UK to study abroad, I’d only left Texas twice—once to go to Disneyland in California and another time to go to Disneyworld in Florida. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have visited 22 other countries, including Panama, Russia, Germany, and Australia.

Pug doggy daddy. Our 4-year-old pug is named Peppa Pug after Peppa Pig. She has her tongue perpetually out, even when she sleeps. (It’s her birthday today! 🎉)

Cuts own hair. I bought a pair of Wahl clippers during the first month of the pandemic and I’ve never looked back. It’s super convenient and only takes me 15 minutes to do.

Married on April Fools Day 19 years ago. My wife Kate and I got married in midtown Manhattan on W. 51st St. and got a price break by getting married on April Fools Day. We had our wedding photos taken at the Top of the Rock with the Empire State Building behind us.

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

Book review: “Story” by Robert McKee

chadswhite on August 15, 2025

Don’t be fooled by the fact that the subtitle of this book includes the word “screenwriting.” This book is for anybody who wants to understand storytelling at a deep, technical level. 

It covers story structure, down to the level of beat. Idealist, pessimist, and ironist controlling ideas. Character development and inner, personal, and extra-personal conflicts. How to handle the inciting incident. Designing acts and scenes. Selecting your cast of characters. And all with great examples from famous films you’d likely seen.

If I were creating my own masterclass on creative writing, this would be one of the core books.

I give it 5 stars and 13 dog-ears and 4 Post-its.

In Story, there are two concepts that were particularly helpful to me as I’ve been writing my sci-fi trilogy …

Become a Patron on Substack to read the entire post →

The Fat Tail of Book Publishing

chadswhite on August 13, 2025

In my day job as a marketer, I sometimes come across things that make me think marketing and book publishing aren’t so different. That happened recently while I was listening to the Future Commerce podcast, which had as their guest Rory Sutherland, the chairman of Ogilvy, one of the marque branding, advertising, and PR agencies.

He talked about the fragmentation of market segments into lots of smaller artisan brands. That sounds a lot like the rise of indie publishers and self-publishing.

He talked about brands co-creating products and content with their customers. That sounds like what happens in some author communities, on Substack with some serialized stories that are driven by reader feedback, and with some Kickstarter campaigns with tiers that bring funders into the story.

And he talked about how marketing is fat-tailed, saying, “10% of what you do delivers 130% of the value, but you don’t know what the 10% is in advance.” Now that sounds an awful lot like publishing—except the 10% figure is too high. We know from the Penguin Random House antitrust trial that just 4% of book titles account for the majority of publishing profits.

It’s an understatement to say there’s a fair amount of chance involved in success and, just as in R&D, you learn from your failures. Just today I was reading an interview in Agents and Books with Lindsay King-Miller, the author of This Is My Body, The Z Word, and Ask a Queer Chick, and she said, “Just because my first book didn’t launch my career like I hoped doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. … I made friends and connections and developed skills that I still use.”

I found that inspiring, and I hope any other inspiring novelists reading this do, too. I’m prepared to roll the dice a few times and see if I get lucky. I’m also prepared to learn from my mistakes and keep going. Whatever your dreams are, I hope you’re prepared to roll the dice and take some chances on yourself, too.

Listen to Rory Sutherland on the Future Commerce podcast

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

How to generate writing momentum

chadswhite on August 9, 2025

Writing is hard. It’s gratifying to finish a scene or chapter you’re really proud of, but all the time spent getting up to that moment is difficult. As Stephen King argues in his book, On Writing, completing a novel is a game of momentum. That’s why when he starts on a new novel, he has a strict schedule where he dedicates himself to finishing the book in 3 months or so by writing and editing many hours each day.

I remember being incredibly despondent when I read that. I’m glad that Stephen King has the ability to do that, but I don’t. I’m not a multi-millionaire. To help support my family, I have a full-time job, which I happen to really like. And I have 3 kids, two of which are still at home, and one of which has special needs. Between therapy for kid 1 and piano lessons and jazz band for kid 2, and then making dinner and taking care of the house and myself, I’m feeling pretty fortunate if I have 2 hours a day to write on an average weeknight. Plus, I dedicate one entire evening a week to spending time exclusively with my wife, which I think has served our 19-year marriage very well. 

Weekends are usually better for writing, but there’s still a lot to balance—and I want to balance all of those things because they’re all important.

But the issue of momentum remains. I do agree with Stephen King that it’s important to have it, and if you can’t get it by going fast, then there’s only one other way to get it…

Become a Patron on Substack to read the entire post →

Book review: “Fight Write” by Carla Hoch

chadswhite on August 7, 2025

Fight Write by Carla Hoch is fantastic for any author who wants to write a believable fight scene, whether it’s with guns, blades, or fists—especially if, like me, you’ve never been in the military or mastered a martial art. But, honestly, even if you have, you’ll find this book valuable.

First and foremost, it’s a great reference guide, detailing different fighting styles, attacks, melee weapons, guns, and more. But as much focus as there is on creating a credible fight, Carla also focuses on the build up to the fight and the aftermath. Those have to be credible, too. So, there are discussions of intimidation and posturing, as well as post-fight injuries. She also has a number of interviews sprinkled throughout that bring more visceral first-hand accounts of fight-related experiences.  

I give it 5 stars, and 12 dog-ears.

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

Confession: I love em-dashes

chadswhite on August 4, 2025

Because generative AI engines like ChatGPT use them a lot, some writers are starting to reconsider their use of em-dashes (which are so named because they’re the width of a capital M). I get it. No one wants to be accused of using genAI when they didn’t. 

But the fact that genAI produces copy with a healthy number of em-dashes only means that em-dashes are well-represented in their training material, and are therefore a staple of good writing. Cutting the versatile em-dash from your writing will only leave it worse off.

For what it’s worth, I use them all the time in my business writing. Heck, there are five in my latest article for CMSWire. And in the draft of book 1 of my sci-fi trilogy, I have more than 600 em-dashes. That comes out to one about every 150 words on average.

That may sound like a lot, but I use them …

  1. When a character’s speech is interrupted—by another character, a door slamming, or an explosion
  2. When a character stutters when they’re flustered (e.g., “I— I think”)
  3. For labored speech, like when they’re out of breath
  4. When a character’s thoughts are labored and fractured, like before they pass out
  5. To offset a clause more emphatically than a comma can
  6. For asides in speech, instead of using parentheses
  7. Before a list, instead of using colon

Beyond that, they’re just a fantastic tool for controlling the rhythm of a sentence. So, no matter what genAI spits out, I’m going to keep using em-dashes. And for the record, I’m going to keep using periods and commas, too, even though those are also suspiciously common in genAI copy.

From Issue 192 of Total Annarchy, a wonderful newsletter by Ann Handley

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

Where to draw the line with genAI

chadswhite on August 2, 2025

I’m a member of the group that’s most bullish on generative AI and the group that’s the least. That’s because I’m a marketing strategist at a tech company by day and an aspiring novelist by night. The latest survey from Substack illustrates the extreme divide between these two groups.

Wearing both of these hats, here are major issues I see:

  1. Anything created substantially using genAI can’t be copyrighted. (And if governments are smart, that will never change.) This is why agents and publishers want to know if you’ve used AI in your book, because it could potentially zero out the commercial value of your book. AI-generated images for covers are similarly problematic.
  2. Using genAI opens you up to plagiarism lawsuits until the law gets settled here, which could take years. This is why some of our Fortune 1000 clients write into our agency service contacts that we can’t use genAI for any of the work we do for them. They don’t want the legal risk since they’re big legal targets already. The Big Five publishers surely feel the same way.

Of course, many writers feel genAI is morally wrong because it’s essentially a plagiarism engine. And their minds won’t change even if the courts rule that genAI’s use of copyrighted material is transformative (which is highly likely to happen).

But putting those feelings aside for a moment, let’s recognize that some genAI uses don’t run afoul of those two issues above because they’re noncommercial. For example, turning your human-authored book summary into social media posts to promote your book. Or creating AI-images of your protagonists based on the descriptions in your book to use on social. Or taking the short author bio you wrote for your jacket copy, adding a bunch of details, and having genAI draft a long bio for your website.

Let’s also acknowledge that genAI is a huge boon for people with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as non-native English speakers.

All of that said, I’ve made the personal decision not to use genAI in any way for the writing of my novels, including AI-infused editing tools like Grammarly. At the end of this very long road, for better or worse, I want to be able to take full credit (along with my editors and beta readers) for everything in my novels, including the human imperfections.

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

What you can make out of 462 Rubik’s Cubes

chadswhite on July 30, 2025

Inspired by Rubik’s Cube art we saw at our local Red Robin, my youngest son Dexter and I created this massive Charizard that weighs in at more than 100 lbs. Dexter contributed the cubing skills, doing all the difficult cube configurations, while I did the easy ones and all the construction. Limited by the six cube colors, we had to adapt the colors of the Charizard sprite a bit, in essence creating our own shiny variant.

Charizard created from 462 Rubik's Cubes
In process construction of Rubik's Cube Charizard

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

Work in progress update

chadswhite on July 26, 2025

📚 My dystopian new adult near-future sci-fi trilogy

Book 1 

📗 Manuscript complete!
✍️ 90,000 words, 23 chapters
▶️ Currently querying agents 🤞

Book 2

📕 Draft complete!
✍️ 100,000 words, 27 chapters
▶️ Out with beta readers 📤

Book 3

📘 WIP …
✍️ 30,000 words, 9 chapters
▶️ Goal to finish draft by end of year 🥂

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →

Why I self-published my nonfiction books

chadswhite on July 20, 2025

Honestly, I didn’t give much thought to trying to get my nonfiction books traditionally published. Here’s why:

  • I’d worked at two book publishers, Texas A&M University Press and Marlowe & Co., so I was familiar with the publishing process.
  • I knew platform size is the primary determinant of nonfiction book success and that I already had a solid platform.
  • As a former managing editor at a magazine, I was confident in my page layout skills.
  • I knew Amazon had 70% of the book market, so being present in that one store would give me exposure to the majority of book buyers. (That made publishing through KDP a no-brainer.)
  • I knew self-publishing would be much faster.
  • I also knew I’d have much more control and already had a clear vision for the book.

Thankfully, all of those things turned out to be true. In less than a year, I was able to write the 214-page first edition of Email Marketing Rules, have it edited by some of my trusted industry friends, get it professionally copyedited, and publish it.

But there were additional benefits of self-publishing I didn’t realize until later. For example, a traditional publisher would have never allowed me to publish a 322-page second edition 18 months after the first edition. And they definitely wouldn’t have allowed me to publish a 677-page two-volume fourth edition.

Did all of those decisions maximize profitability? I’m sure they didn’t. But I don’t regret any of them, because those decisions capitalized on my excitement and allowed me to create books I’ve always been proud to put my name on.  

Self-publishing gives you lots of control. Make sure you’re using it to maximize your vision.

All four editions of 'Email Marketing Rules' by Chad S. White

All four editions of Email Marketing Rules

To receive future public posts or to become a Patron and receive exclusive posts that include previews of what I’m working on, subscribe on Substack →