The Publishing Performance Show

Dakota Krout - The LitRPG Method: How Gaming Logic Creates Bestselling Fantasy Fiction

• Teddy Smith • Episode 119

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Dakota Krout is a pioneering LitRPG author and visionary founder of Mountaindale Press, one of the leading publishing houses specializing in LitRPG, GameLit, and cultivation fiction. With a unique background combining computer science expertise and military communications experience, Dakota brings systematic, logical thinking to both his world-building and his publishing empire. His methodical approach to creating intricate magic systems and character progression has made him a standout voice in the rapidly growing gaming-inspired fiction genre, while his publishing house has become a launching pad for numerous successful authors in these specialized niches.


In this episode:

  • Demystifying LitRPG and GameLit: What these explosive genres are and why they're dominating
  • The systematic approach to building believable magic systems and character progression mechanics
  • From author to publisher: The complete journey of founding and scaling Mountaindale Press
  • Inside publishing metrics: What success looks like and the standards authors must meet
  • Niche genre marketing strategies that build devoted readerbases in specialized communities
  • The power of community engagement in genre fiction and reader retention
  • Computer science principles applied to creative writing and world-building
  • Military precision meets creative storytelling: How systematic thinking enhances fiction
  • Building a publishing empire while maintaining quality and author relationships


Resources mentioned:


Book recommendations:

  • "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034
  • "Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity" by Peter Attia: https://www.amazon.com/Outlive-Longevity-Peter-Attia-MD/dp/0593236599
  • "Something, Anything, and Everything" series by Dakota Krout: https://www.amazon.com/Anything-Full-Murderhobo-Dakota-Krout/dp/163766074X


Connect with Dakota Krout:

  • Mountaindale Press website: https://www.mountaindalepress.store/
  • Dakota's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DakotaKrout/
  • Mountaindale Press Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MountaindalePress/
  • Discord community: Mountaindale Press server


Connect with Teddy Smith:

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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hello and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. I'm here with Dakota Kraut, who's an international best selling author, and he's also the owner of Mountain Dale Press. So, welcome to the call, Dakota. 

[00:00:17] Dakota Krout: Thank you so much for having me, man. This is, uh, it's really nice to be here, and I love what you're doing with all this stuff, so, um, thanks for inviting me on the show.

[00:00:23] Teddy Smith: Oh, great. Thanks for that. I really appreciate those words. Um, so, with your books, let's start with your books first. Because you, most of your books you write in the lit RPG and the game lit genres. So what does, tell me a bit about how you got started with those genres and also for people who are maybe new to this sort of writing, what do those genres mean?

[00:00:44] Dakota Krout: Sure. so I started writing my first book, Oh, I want to say early 2016. I published it in late 2016. And I, I wrote my, my first book just completely out of, love for the idea I was having at the time. And so I have a background in computer science. So I. I was in the mil, I was in the military for a long time.

[00:01:05] I did a lot of communications work. I went out, from there, went joined the, joined the university program for computer science. And, so it just kind of really impacted how I thought about things. And so what I wrote was a book that has kind of a rule system, so it's like epic fantasy with a.

[00:01:24] Overlay of kind of video game rules that define the magic system, define most of the other things that are going on in the books. And that was, as it turns out of a new burgeoning genre. Like there was 3 or 4 other authors. In total at the time in America who were writing in that genre and so literally it was just starting and thanks to, a really cool, book reviewer drew Hayes.

[00:01:52] So he was, he was, he's an author. He was also reviewing books at the time. He sent a bunch of his fans to me because, and he told me this later, he said, he said he did it because he was trying to like, Get them to calm down so he could actually write. So he's like, here, just here's a cool book. I read that.

[00:02:08] And then he's like, Oh, you're typing as fast as you can. And, um, and so he sent a bunch of people my way. And so that really picked up my series picked up. And then the career just kind of took off from there. And so let RPG in game lit. So as it turns out, is. That is a solid definition of those genres is fantasy or science fiction with an overlay of video game rules that are a clear magic system that the user, the reader, can participate in just by kind of reading.

[00:02:40] It's a genre meant to give you the experience of playing through some really high intensity, like, role playing games without having to Without having to go and like spend 300, 400 hours playing a game, right? So, it is obviously full on novels, full, regular, like fantasy series, but just with a little bit of extra on there for you to see,

[00:03:02] Teddy Smith: so could it be, for example, if if, if in a type of game you collect points or, or something like that in the book, you'd also be doing that sorts of thing as you're playing the reading the book.

[00:03:12] Dakota Krout: Absolutely. Yeah, the character is so it's not like a choose your own adventure or anything. So it's, it is a full novel, right? So that character is doing quests, doing all these other adventures, all these other fun things, just like you would see in a video game. And then leveling up their skills, leveling up their, everything that they have and then increasing their characteristic points and just growing as a person.

[00:03:33] So it's, it's a, it's a fantasy. It's progression. It's, it's usually a weak character to a very strong character by the end of the series. So, so on and so forth with that. 

[00:03:42] Teddy Smith: Oh, brilliant. Was it, are you a bit of a gamer yourself? Is that where you got the inspiration to start writing in these? Oh, yeah. So, 

[00:03:50] Dakota Krout: I've always been a huge fan of like, D and D and, I'm a huge board gamer.

[00:03:54] every five years or so, I'll pick up a new video game and play it to death a little bit. Just when I, when I do have free time, which is fun. Fairly, fairly rare, but it can be really fun, man. And just kind of seeing the creativity that other people bring to these things really can drive my own creativity.

[00:04:11] So that's why I make sure to spend some time. Not just doing one thing, but trying lots of stuff. 

[00:04:17] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So with your writing process for a book that is in this sort of genre, do you think it's different to people who have a, who are writing a more regular novel, do you think? Or is there, is there other things you have to factor in that which may be I would have said it.

[00:04:31] Dakota Krout: Yeah. So the, the main, the main driving difference between this. So LITRPG and just epic fantasy, because we write big books, we write, you know, hefty stories, really good world building lore all of this stuff. Like, I build a full economy of, of everything. Magic people, all, all of the stuff that goes into, like, Any other epic fantasy.

[00:04:54] The biggest difference is that although usually it's extremely character driven content. The most important aspect is actually the system, right? So the, the magical system that you put in place. So if you go into your books if you go into writing this genre, and you say, hey, you can't do this, but you can do this, but then you do this thing anyway because your character is like super special, you know, whatever it is, That's a good way to lose audience quickly, right?

[00:05:25] Because, uh, the laws of the system are meant to be immutable, just like in a video game, right? Like, you're not supposed to be able to change what is and is not possible. Like, you can push the bounds, you can adjust things, you can make variations on stuff, to just a hard point of, say, I'm just gonna break the rules, is not supposed to be allowed to happen.

[00:05:44] And so, typically what you'll see in a lot of fantasy or epic fantasy stuff like that is, They'll say, well, I can do this because I'm the chosen one. I can do this because I have the king's blood running through me or whatever it is, right? And in this, it's like, no, that doesn't matter as much because this, right?

[00:06:02] Because the system is the, the, the foundation of the books. And so that's kind of the big difference I would say between this genre and even really closely related genres such as epic fantasy. 

[00:06:15] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. Have you ever had readers call you out on, like, sometimes when there's been a lapse in that judgment or you've missed the rules?

[00:06:24] I 

[00:06:24] Dakota Krout: have. I've had people call me out on, so in, especially in some of my earlier books, I'll have, I'll show. I'll show what things, what are, what is going on to like the hundredth decimal point, so not like, not like a hundred out, but like, like 0. 01, I'll have people correct my math years later. Like they're going through and doing the math and they'll send me this thing.

[00:06:45] They're like, Hey man you're off by 0. 01 in this page in this book. And I was like, y'all, that was six years ago. Um, I can't do anything. Think about it at this point, but thank you. I'll try, I'll try. And so then eventually what I started doing was I started rounding down to the 10th and, avoid prime numbers at all costs.

[00:07:06] Oh my gosh, seriously. Like it's, it's really cool though, because it just shows immense. dedication and, immense love of the genre by those fans. And so I still love that. And I always call them out and say, Hey, that's super cool that you pointed stuff like that out to me. It's really nice that you care so much about this book and this series doing super well.

[00:07:25] So it's a really fantastic fan base. 

[00:07:27] Teddy Smith: Great. So with your writing process, do you come up with the idea for maybe the world first and then build the characters around it? Or because with a lot of books, I feel like a lot of writers I speak to, they've kind of got this concept of a story and where it's going to go, but it sounds like for you, it's like the world is the important part and it's the way that people interact in that world.

[00:07:44] Is that right? Or is that kind of different? 

[00:07:47] Dakota Krout: Uh, yeah, so I actually have a whole, hour long lecture I do on this. Okay. Which is, which is pretty neat. So I, I, I'm sure you can find it out there for anyone who wants to look it up. It's it's, I call it a system first series creation. And you might be able to find that out now.

[00:08:04] So system first series creation is essentially what I do is I, I make this system, right. And remember I come from computer science and, and, and that world. So it's pretty well put together, right? Like it's, it's intended to be put into video games directly. So they can be fairly intricate. Uh, so I do the system first and I say, okay, now that I have this system, right?

[00:08:27] So this is the concept. This is the magic system. This is how I want things to progress. How am I going to. what sort of power set within these rules will a character need to follow in order to make an interesting story, right? And so, it, I take, I make the system, and then I say, alright, so this character is going to start with this skill set, and it's still going to follow all these rules, but it's going to be cooler just because it has really unique properties.

[00:08:55] And then I say, okay, well, now that I have this character and here's going to be his progression path through this system that I've already built, what sort of personality are they going to need to use that in an interesting way? So I take, I make system, and then I make power progression, and then I put personality on that.

[00:09:13] And I say, okay, so in order to get from this power level to this power level with this personality type, what's, what's going to be happening in the background, right? Like what, what sort of enemies are we going to have because of this to, to make this, to really showcase how unique and cool this can be.

[00:09:31] And so then I have my enemies that will show up here. I have my enemies that are going to be the final boss. And so. Then once I have the system, I have how he progresses through it. I have their personality. I have the enemies. That means I have basically everything I need. And then the the story kind of writes itself at that point.

[00:09:48] So that's the, that's the really quick and dirty version 

[00:09:51] Teddy Smith: of it. So it's kind of backwards to how a lot of other authors go approach writing books, I think, because it's, yeah, it sort of turns it on its head. 

[00:09:59] Dakota Krout: And I'm sure you've heard many times where people are like, Oh, yeah, sometimes I'm planning on writing this and the character just takes over and they just go off and do their own thing.

[00:10:08] And I'm just like writing the experience. It's like, that's cool. But the reality in that situation is that it. If you're writing and you're intending to write one thing and something entirely different comes out, that means that you have a really deep, intrinsic knowledge of what that character and their personality type should actually be doing, right?

[00:10:30] So you say like, hey, I'm going to do this. But it comes out different. If you go in and you look at pers at, at various personality models, you can, you can really find like, Hey, people with these types of personalities react in this way when things are going well or react in this thing, in in this direction when things are, are going poorly.

[00:10:48] And you'll find that oftentimes when at, at that point of deviation in, in the book, you'll be able to say, Hey, if I were actually following this personality model. I would see that this is actually the way that they should be reacting and I just I knew that because I know these people like I know people that would actually react this way.

[00:11:09] And so subconsciously, you're following the real path of what's going on. But if you can't clearly like codify that, if you can't clearly say this is how this person would do it, then it's really hard to repeat it, right? It's really hard to make a repeatable, scalable. System or book series, and that's that's when people write themselves into corners because they don't know where to go from there.

[00:11:31] Yeah, of course. 

[00:11:33] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah, really fun. Yeah, it's quite a different concept to me because I've never really been much into video games myself. So I'm trying to like, conceptualize how that's just that's just psychology, man. 

[00:11:45] Dakota Krout: Like, that's straight out of the books. I, that's one of the things is I don't only read what I, you know, the genre that I write in.

[00:11:52] Like I, I'm reading everything like right now, this is my, this is my go to book, uh, Outlive the Science and Art of Longevity. So that's, that's a fun one. Eat spinach, basically. 

[00:12:01] Teddy Smith: From 

[00:12:03] Dakota Krout: that to, to negotiation tactics, to Theology to psychology. I was reading just a giant book of logical proofs the other day, trying to figure out ways that can make a more interesting character set.

[00:12:16] And, yeah, I mean, that's just 1 of those things is as a career writing is is a difficult 1 because you need to do an immense amount of continuing education to to still remain viable as an author and writing. Really cool and interesting stories over a long period of time, and you also need to have a lot of interesting experiences so that you can write about cool things.

[00:12:41] If you stay in a small dark room the whole time, you're going to have a really hard time, um, coming out with new and interesting stuff. 

[00:12:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah. With, with your books, all of the worlds that exist are invented by you. They're sort of your creations, but it sounds like a lot of people could create worlds sorry, not create worlds, write books around games or worlds already exists using those or those structures that are already there.

[00:13:05] Is that something people do? Yes and no. Right. 

[00:13:07] Dakota Krout: yes and no. So, there is such a thing as, you know, copyright law, right? Yeah a lot of people originally started trying to do stuff like straight D& D and, and there, there were people that were contacted by Wizards of the Coast and they were like, Hey, you can't do this stuff.

[00:13:22] So, Yeah. You do typically have to generate new and interesting concepts when you're doing stuff like that, or you need to figure out, like, if you're trying to use a system directly from something else, you just rip it whole, whole cloth, you're gonna, there, there's like legal consequences to that potentially.

[00:13:39] Teddy Smith: Right, okay. It's just one 

[00:13:40] Dakota Krout: of those things. Yeah. So 

[00:13:41] Teddy Smith: people should be careful, like, when they are creating their worlds, that they are really are creating them and not just You know, taking other people's work. Yeah. Fine. 

[00:13:48] Dakota Krout: Absolutely. I mean, just like any other art form, like you can, you can draw inspiration from places, but if you just.

[00:13:56] plagiarism and, uh, you know, their words, not mine. A 

[00:14:02] Teddy Smith: lot of your books, cause they're based on those rules that you get with games. Have you, or any other writers had it taken that one step further and been made into a game or, you know, into slightly further extended worlds? 

[00:14:14] Dakota Krout: Yeah. So that's, that's a, it's an interesting thing because yes, that's something that we've all been attempting to do.

[00:14:20] I've done board games. Like, I have a board game of one of my books. The actual process of turning something into a video game is a years long process and, and disastrously expensive. Right. And so, we've, I've had times where I've been made offers to have stuff turned into video games, but it's just not not good offers.

[00:14:42] Or they kind of just vanish after a short while or whatever it is. And and so, yeah, it's, I think it's something that will happen eventually. But. So some of the most popular people in the genre don't have the most clearly defined systems. And so they would have to do. There would have to be a lot of work that goes into those in order to turn those into video games.

[00:15:04] And so right now I'm starting actually talks with a, tabletop RPG designer. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm working to turn one of my series into a tabletop RPG and then use that as the basis for turning it into like, anime or I'm sorry to, into what are they called? Graphic novels, which would then hopefully be turned into anime.

[00:15:25] And then once you have those things, typically it's pretty easy to add in that. Extra route of, of making a video game out of it or something else. Similar. Oh, 

[00:15:35] Teddy Smith: interesting. I was speaking to Kevin J. Anson recently, and he's actually creating like tabletop type games or card games using Kickstarter as a launch process for his Dan shambles zombie series.

[00:15:46] He said it was really interesting process because it's, it gives a good chance for fans to get a bit more involved in the series and you know, also make more money, of course. Yeah, 

[00:15:56] Dakota Krout: every revenue stream is cool. That's that's definitely a neat thing, but I would. So, since this talk is specifically mostly for authors, correct?

[00:16:04] Like, who's going to be seeing this? Okay. So, 1 of the thing I'm going to caution everyone to and and I say this as the owner of a publishing company and as an author myself. And I do a huge amount of career counseling. I would say, I would say I have three or four sessions a week, right. That I'm, I'm talking to people and trying to help them get to where they want to be.

[00:16:26] If you're, if you're finding success in writing double down on that, you know, don't like don't, don't say, Hey, like I'm, I'm starting to do well with writing. Now I'm going to go do a podcast. Now I'm, now I'm going to go and do a. Start designing a video game or I'm going to go completely off script and join a new genre or go like hog wild and just, I don't know, like, if you're if you're finding success in this, just realize that you're already one of the very few people that are really that that are finding success in writing.

[00:16:58] And so if you. If you double down on that and build that career, like, do what you know you're good at, and get even better at it, do phenomenally, and then other people with skill sets in those arenas will come to you, hopefully, and help you make those revenue streams. So that you don't have to learn a whole new career while you're trying to build your career.

[00:17:21] Right. It's, it's just a, it's a really tough thing for a lot of people to kind of wrap their heads around, but it's, it is a very necessary thing for reaching higher levels in Indian, any industry. 

[00:17:34] Teddy Smith: Yeah, for sure. There's a really good quote by Jimmy Carr, who's a British comedian, but he says, you can do anything you want.

[00:17:40] You just can't do everything. And it's really personal. It's like, you know, you can do everything, anything you want, but you know, concentrate on what you can do. It's the best thing way forward. Absolutely. So you've got, as well as being a book writer, you've also got Mountaindale Press, which is a publishing house for specifically, nice logo on you.

[00:18:01] Nice branding. There's a publishing house specifically for people in the lit RPG genre. Why did you start that? 

[00:18:11] Dakota Krout: So, I started that because I, so I've always been self published and I love I love all of the things that go into this. Like, I really enjoy writing books. I love the communications between editors and narrators and and artists.

[00:18:30] I love doing all those things. And I even like making ads and advertising and marketing and doing all this stuff. And, and so, the first year I started doing all this, I said, how can I do this better? And so I threw a ton of time and effort into learning how to market and advertise and find cool artists.

[00:18:50] And, and I studied like art, which is really hard for me because I'm partially colorblind and like just trying to figure out things that were interesting. And, and before I knew it, I had spent like 30, 40, 000 on like just learning stuff. And at the at the time, I was not writing fast enough to justify these, these huge expenditures of time and investments in just promoting my own books.

[00:19:19] And so what I did is I reached out to 3 authors. And I said, Hey I would love to give you a sweetheart deal so that I can. Practice publishing and make sure that the things that I'm learning are not only applicable to my own stuff. And so my first original 3 authors got a really sweetheart deal in my company and but they also knew they were going to be used as guinea pigs.

[00:19:43] And on the plus side for them, they, they made out like bandits because it was successful. And and their series did phenomenally. And we got to test and mature and optimize our processes. And then that turned into a whole on full on publishing house for cultivation, lit RPG and game lit.

[00:20:02] So three sister genres that are really closely tied together. And that's the only things we publish. Like we don't go outside of our, our lane. We stay right in that lane. 

[00:20:11] Teddy Smith: And so what's the, how, what's the process of working with Mountain Dale press, because obviously you've got to be in that those genres, but what are the criteria you look for from either authors you want to take on or even successful authors who wants to come work with you?

[00:20:26] Dakota Krout: I'm going to say the really, the hard parts first, and then I'm going to say kind of the results of that. First off it has to be in our genres. That one's pretty straightforward. And then when we, when we talk to someone who is wanting to write a new series from scratch, like as in they don't have any, any work done on that series, but they just want to, they want to work with us.

[00:20:45] So they reach out and they say, Hey, look, I want to work with you. And I say, okay, cool. Well, first off we take on one person per quarter. If we have. If we have space, right? So we, we try to stick at about 15 frequently publishing authors, right? So at least twice a year. And at maximum, we'll go to 20 authors if some of our authors are going to be having long, longer leg times.

[00:21:10] But at maximum, we'll have 20 active authors in our company at any given time. Just because we're, we're Boutique, we want to make sure that everyone in our, In our company is getting the best possible experience and the best possible like attention marketing, all this other stuff. So if they come to us, then we say, okay, here's what we're going to need.

[00:21:31] We're going to need to see the system that you're going to use for your books, like your, your magic system, all this stuff. We want to see that as fleshed out. I want to see outlines for the first three books. And I want a 10, 000 word sample that I can give to my acquisition editor. And he's going to look at all he, she, whoever they all are at the time are going to look at all the, different things that are sent in.

[00:21:54] And if we like what we see, then we'll offer feedback on that. Like, and, and so we'll say, Hey, look here, that's great. Here's things, here's ways that you could improve. Here's things that like you could do with all this. And at that point, we still do not offer them a contract, right? We say, all right. So with these recommendations.

[00:22:13] Come back to us with a, the first book written in the, in, within six months. So, six months is the upper limit and the faster that they can do it, obviously the better for them, the better for their, for everything. Right. And so if they come back to us in the first six months and they say, look, I, uh, you know, using this, then we'll take a look at the book compared to the outline that they, that they sold, like sold to us, like the sold us on, I should say, And if it kind of mat if it matches up well obviously there's going to be deviation, but whatever.

[00:22:42] But if it matches up well, and like, the story that we saw is the one we liked, and written out is the one we liked, then we'll have another conversation and kind of do a vibe check. Sometimes I'll, like, fly over to wherever they are and meet with them, have dinner. And if we can't, you know, otherwise just meet in person in another easier way.

[00:23:00] And and, uh, if, if we pass that vibe check, then we offer them a contract. Right. And so in our contracts before we'll publish that first book, we need three books total. So, in, in one series. And so when, once we have those three books, then we will start publishing them. it's like 1. 25 percent of the people that originally applied to us actually make it through that process.

[00:23:25] Okay. It's, it's, it's not. It's, it's not, well, here's the thing is, it, Most people fall off because they don't really want to do that amount of work. Right? So, so you do that. You're like, here's a submission. And then you have 6 months to write a book. Well, like, we lose 80 percent of people right there because they either come in and say, look I don't want to do that.

[00:23:49] That's too tight of a deadline for me. Okay. Well, that's, that's my genre, right? Like it's six, six months, like four books a year is considered average. Like for my, for my genre. So four books at about 115, 000 words pop. And so that's, that's the thing is we have a huge production, huge production requirements.

[00:24:08] Otherwise they come in and they say, look, I figured out how to do all this. I learned, I like, I found that I can write these books on my own. And so I'm going to take these and do them myself. That's fine. Other people will get through that and they'll say, wow, this was a really involved process. And this is the starting step.

[00:24:22] I can't imagine what all of the actual work looks like. And, and those are the people that get a chance to, to, you know, do the vibe check. then basically the reason for this is when we work with someone, we want to, we're investing in the person, not the series, right? I really want to work with someone who wants longevity with my company and who I want to work with for years and years at a time.

[00:24:43] And that's kind of the thing is, is I want to work with people for a really long time. Now here, so that's the hard part. Now, let me tell you the cool part about this. Kind of the stats of my company, we have, of currently 12 authors. That's, that's what we have currently. Because, it fluctuates a little bit.

[00:25:01] And, and what I mean by that is people that are currently writing series, right. Or I'm sorry, that have currently published with us, not the people that are currently writing series and not yet published all of the people that write with us like 85 percent are six figures plus take home, right? Per year, right?

[00:25:18] Three of them in almost form just shy, just shy three of them are seven figure take home authors. And so that's the thing is we have a track record of phenomenal success with the people that work with us. Because we give fantastic royalty rates, we have a really great community, we're open to a lot of discussion we have standardized operating procedures for how we make things happen, and so there are no surprises for our authors once they're in, right?

[00:25:46] They, they can see exactly what's coming, they know exactly what is gonna be happening next. And so they can, they can put their book out with us and I can't say guarantee because no one can guarantee anything, but they have a, compared to the industry at large, a phenomenal chance of high earning potential.

[00:26:06] And so that's why we remain boutique and just kind of a small house is because we don't need hundreds and hundreds of authors. We, we, we want to elevate our our authors as much as we can individually. 

[00:26:21] Teddy Smith: Right. 

[00:26:21] Dakota Krout: So that's, that's what our company looks like. 

[00:26:24] Teddy Smith: That's amazing success rates to have that many people doing that much, you know, turnover and take home.

[00:26:30] Yeah, absolutely. With, if a lot of people who've been listening to this maybe haven't done your exact genre yet, but may have done something adjacent. So they might be writing fantasy, for example, and they think, okay, this genre sounds interesting. I like the idea of building these magic worlds. What are the sorts of things that you need to do differently to their normal writing to, in order to have a great application with you?

[00:26:52] Sure. So first 

[00:26:53] Dakota Krout: I would say read the genre. So if you like, if you want to write in the genre, make sure to read the genre, do a lot of research on it. See, because the thing is, if you don't actually like the genre, you probably shouldn't write in it. Right? That's why there's a lot of genres. I don't write in horror, for example, like, I'm not, I'm not a horror fan, because I write clean, lighthearted, fun, like dad joke, pun fantasy, right?

[00:27:19] I don't, I don't like the whole creeping existential dread. Like, it sticks in my head too long. I don't like it. But, so that's the thing. Like, I don't write that because I don't, I don't want to. So, it's, it's really easy for people in the genre to tell when someone is writing the genre because I They want to write the genre, or just write in the genre because they think they can pull one over on the community.

[00:27:43] Yeah, if you don't kind of understand what you're doing, it's like the tropes, all this other stuff. So that's that's the starting point. So just read it, make sure you like it. Secondly just kind of make sure that you're very detail oriented, because if you come in and you try to do a character character driven only story in lit RPG, it's, it's going to have less of a success rate than, than you are thinking because other, other genres are very forgiving.

[00:28:09] Sometimes this one is much closer to how like a military sci fi presents itself with pretty strict and harsh requirements for hitting, hitting tropes. So it's just one of those things. You just gotta, gotta figure those out. 

[00:28:23] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. Okay. And you talked at the beginning about building out your magic system and making sure that's really clear.

[00:28:28] What would a clear magic system look like? Do you have any examples of ones maybe you've done that could help the audience? Yeah. So I, I have upper and lower bounds on each different tier of, of magic, right? So what I mean by that is I have like tier 1 to tier 10, well it's tier 0 to tier 9 really, but 1 to 10.

[00:28:51] Dakota Krout: And so, essentially what I do is I say, if a magic is within this realm over here, it has these uses. Like, so what I like to say is a tier 1 spell is anything at touch range, right? So, if I'm gonna, if I'm going to use the spell, I have to touch them with it in order to make it happen. And so then there's 10 levels within that, that, that build up that spell.

[00:29:15] So it's at level one tier, like level one tier zero, which is the first tier, but yeah, so it looked like zero one in terms of skill level. I have, I can light my hand on fire and smack someone with it. Pretty, pretty straightforward, right? Or I can grab them and burn, burn into them. Right. So like, right.

[00:29:35] So once I maximize that to level 10, it switches over to tier zero. One or so it's one. So then it would look like skill level 11, right? Right. So, so it's tier tier one, level one or tier tier one level zero, because then it goes up and now in this, in this one, I can throw. This or I can use it at range.

[00:29:58] So now instead of like a hand that's on fire, it turns into a fireball that I can throw right straight forward. And so just having like kind of like that. And then it goes up all the way up until I can like light the world within a certain distance around me just on fire, right? Yeah. at the maximum, maximum thing.

[00:30:15] And so, yeah, so that's just kind of thing is knowing what progression looks like throughout. Yeah. Every part of that journey, even if you're not going to actually reach that in your books, because then you can at least show characters who have reached that pinnacle of power and you know what it should look like and you don't say, Oh, man, I have no way to fight these godlike creatures because I never figured out what The actual bounds of power in that are supposed to be right.

[00:30:46] So, yeah, so, really clearly defining how things work, no matter what the spell is, is kind of what I would say is one of the most useful things to 

[00:30:57] Teddy Smith: do. Okay. That makes sense. So just make it as clear as possible and how each of the different magics interact with each other as well. Yeah. The, the success of your particular authors is, was quite remarkable.

[00:31:10] You said like however many that over 85 percent were over a hundred grands, a hundred thousands a year. do you the way that you market your books, do you have specific fans of Mountain Dale Press and all of the authors that come with it? Or is there any other specific marketing that you do for this kind of genre?

[00:31:26] Dakota Krout: Oh yeah, I mean, so if you, if you think about marketing or advertising anything else, I mean, it's, it's the same here, right? So, I say, I see those as very separate things because marketing is how we reach and maintain relationships with our fans, and advertising is how we reach new fans through paid Sir, like paid marketing, paid advertising, right?

[00:31:47] So we make ads, do this stuff, try and bring them in. We do have fans that are specific to Mountaindale, which is really cool. Where they just come in and they're like, look, if, if Mountaindale is putting it out, I'm reading it because I know that I know what the standards for Mountaindale are. And so they're like, I know I can.

[00:32:03] I can read this and it's not gonna my wife won't see it and be shocked. My children, if they get the book, I don't have to snatch it away from them. That, that sort of thing. Right. And so they, they know what they're getting when they come in and work with us just fun, awesome books, escapism, like good quality stuff.

[00:32:20] And yeah, but otherwise, yeah, we do marketing everywhere, man. Like. Name a social media platform. And we have ads there. So, um, it's, uh, even Tik TOK. Yeah. 

[00:32:34] Teddy Smith: Yeah. For people who are just wanting to start in this niche, what, or maybe they have written this niche, but haven't come to yet, what, what are the marketing strategies you think that the best ones to start with?

[00:32:45] Dakota Krout: So I, the first thing I would recommend is joining lit RPG game, lit communities on online. So find them on Facebook, Reddit, wherever, wherever they exist. Join them and just be a part of that community for a while. Like engage with people, comment on posts, read books when people put them up. Because a lot of my genre is extremely relationship based, right?

[00:33:11] So, we meet up at different conventions over like during the year. So if you, if you go to dragon con, there's a massive lit RPG presence to the point where they've given us like 15 different panels in different tracks now, because it's, it's gotten so large there. And, yeah, I mean, just just going and being a part of things will kind of give you a feel for not only the authors, but the readers, because everyone is very involved with each other.

[00:33:35] And if you build up that relationship ahead of time before you're trying to sell to them, you're going to have a better understanding of how you should speak to them when you do go in with advertisements or ads advertisements or marketing. Yeah. 

[00:33:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Cool. Can you see any changes with the industry at the moment in terms of new trends, for example, like the genres that you think are coming in?

[00:33:57] What's, what's, what's kind of hot? 

[00:34:00] Dakota Krout: So constantly. So here, here's the interesting thing is that it does change fairly quickly. because someone put something out that does really well. And then immediately there's going to be a lot of people that have variants of that. Right. And, and there's, there's people that write very fast in this genre.

[00:34:15] And so. My recommendation is always, if, if you're writing what you think is going to be the hot new thing, keep your mouth shut until you publish it and then put it out, right, and then talk about it everywhere. But, currently one of the things that was really hot is like deck builders. So, and that was, I mean, that was all, all the rage in this last year.

[00:34:36] And so I think it's kind of coming to a close, but You know, it's, it went from pretty standard, like RPG style to there was a brief moment of like first person shooter, let RPGs and chef let RPGs, like doing cooking magic, stuff like that. Then it went to like deck builders where like you, you fight monsters and they turn into cards and then you can, you can like use those cards for cool things and, and so on and so forth.

[00:35:01] So it's the, the cool thing is I like to say that let RPG is the cranberry juice of, of the. Of writing, because it goes with everything, right? Like, you got apple juice over there, have a little bit of cranberry juice, and you got cran apple, hey! Orange juice, cran orange, yeah, perfect, you know? So, it can go with anything.

[00:35:18] And, it, like, if you give me an example, like, even if we were talking about, like, Romance, real world romance, right? I could say, Hey, the system that you use here is the legal systems because, because it's like, Hey all of this other things, all these other things going on. And like, here is the actual system in place in reality that you can use.

[00:35:41] In order to like work through this romance in or whatever else to make sure that you come out with a good ending. Right. And, and that's, I mean, a whole thing. So, yeah, I mean, it can go with any genre, which is really neat. Even horror, which, Matt Dinniman has been showing with, Dungeon Crawler, Carl.

[00:36:00] So, yep. 

[00:36:02] Teddy Smith: Okay, nice. Yeah. So I think maybe with this genre, I mean, all genres, it's important to do that networking within the community. And that's, you know, we've talked about so much on these podcasts, but it sounds like with the lit of RPG and gamelet specifically, you really do need to be on the forums, like chatting to people, building up that sort of, that network so that you can understand what's going on in the industry and understand those trends.

[00:36:25] I kind of missed the actual question there. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. I'll start the question again. We talk about a lot on this podcast about the importance of having that author network and speaking to people within your industry, like you just mentioned on Reddit, joining forums, but it sounds like it's specifically important for this industry, like game lit and lit RTPG, because you need to be on top of those trends and what's happening.

[00:36:49] Dakota Krout: Yes. So the trends are really important. And again, just maintaining positive relationships. one of the cool things about my about lit RPG is that we. communicate really heavily in between even the publishing houses, right? So like, I'm really good friends with all the other publishing houses, like that are major players currently, like some new ones have kind of popped up.

[00:37:13] And so I might not know them as well. But I know a ton of authors and, and I'm, I try to be helpful and Someone who is giving good information, no matter what, like, especially when I'm meeting someone for the first time, I always, I always try to be like, super nice, listen to what they have to say try and I always want to make a good impression and keep it up with my actions over time, because you never know when someone is going to come out of nowhere and just be like, Hey look at like, this guy over here was super nice to me.

[00:37:45] And so, like, I'm going to go out there and. Just do cool things and say positive stuff about them too. And, and so that's kind of what it is. This is like a mutual admiration society where we all just say really nice things about each other and build each other up as far as high as we can. And it's, it's a great place to be if you are really into what we do, cause everyone here just loves it.

[00:38:05] So it's good stuff. 

[00:38:07] Teddy Smith: Amazing. I love that collegiate atmosphere. That sounds very, that sounds very fun. Now what are, have you got any upcoming projects that you want to talk about either with your books or specifically with Mountain Dale Press? Any exciting things that are happening? 

[00:38:20] Dakota Krout: Sure. So I, I always have exciting projects coming out.

[00:38:23] Um, cause I, again, I write really fast. I have a new series that's going to be coming out next year. That is I'm actually kind of keeping a little close to the chest for now, but I'll talk about another one that I have coming out next year. It's going to be called chance encounter. Which is actually a romance term, which is really funny.

[00:38:40] But that's the character's name is chance encounter. And like, Hey, you haven't seen this chance encounter. Right. Um, and so, that one's going to be on Mando press dot store. I'm going to actually self publish that one only on my website. I'm going to keep the whole six book series there for a year.

[00:38:57] Before porting it out to any other websites and then any other distribution I should say but otherwise I have. 57 ish, 58 books out on the market right now. So if, if you're looking for, uh, if you're looking for something to read, I have, I literally have a book titled something, so, it's, it's something, anything, and, believe it or not, I can and did do everything right.

[00:39:19] So, but I will, I will warn you if you read something by Dakota Kraut. Soon you'll be reading anything by Dakota Crout, and then you'll read everything by Dakota Crout. Is that your tagline? Yeah. Yeah. So I designed that series for easy marketing. 

[00:39:37] Teddy Smith: Really good. So if someone wants to read your books, that's kind of the best place to start is something or everything.

[00:39:41] Start with something, 

[00:39:42] Dakota Krout: you know, it's a good place to start. That's a 

[00:39:44] Teddy Smith: good place to start. 

[00:39:45] Dakota Krout: Otherwise, 

[00:39:46] Teddy Smith: I don't 

[00:39:46] Dakota Krout: know. When is this, when is this, oh I'm sorry. When is this stream going to go out to people? Oh probably in about a month or so. Okay, so yeah, I have a Kickstarter that will be over by then, so otherwise I would talk about that too.

[00:40:00] Teddy Smith: Okay. Um, cool. yeah. Well, brilliant. It's been really great speaking to you. Thank you so much for spending some time chatting to me. I think, you know, I didn't know anything about this topic, so it's great to actually, you know, learn about a new genre, which I didn't know anything about. So that's pretty good.

[00:40:16] Dakota Krout: Yeah, absolutely, man. And I really appreciate it. And it's, it's really cool. Like we've, we've built this up in the last eight years from four or five authors to hundreds of authors. Now last year we got a, a bisect code. So we got a actual library category code, which then gave us an official category to have to like home on Amazon, Audible and all these other places.

[00:40:37] Cause they mirror what the library system has. So, in under a decade, we went from zero. To recognized by library systems and Amazon as a whole. So 

[00:40:48] Teddy Smith: yeah, really cool. So it's so interesting to see these new genres come out, like we're out of seemingly nothing, it's, it's amazing. Right. If people want to get in touch with you, where's the best, where's the best place to do that?

[00:40:59] Dakota Krout: So you can go to mountaintopress. store. And that's, that's a great place. There's contact information there, wherever you want to, whoever you want to talk to. Otherwise, Facebook is always great. I have a large community over there. You can go to Mountaintopress Facebook page, or you can go to the Dakota Crout Facebook page.

[00:41:12] Both are awesome. I, and I mean, I had my, my personal favorite is just the, the, the, you know, yeah. Shine the spotlight on Dakota, but I do love bringing everyone to Mountaindale because I love building up all of my authors in my company. And that's 1 of the cool things about having this community is that we can all work extremely well, closely knit together to, Um, but yeah, so Facebook discord if you're going to search Mountaindale press, that's where I am.

[00:41:42] Yeah, everything. I mean, anywhere you want to find me, just look for Mountaindale or Dakota crowd. Brilliant. Thank you very much. one last question is what is the book you recommend that everyone should be reading at the moment? The book that everyone 

[00:41:56] should read. So I'm, I'm actually going to point this outside of what my full genre is.

[00:42:01] I'm going to go and, and say that if you're going to read one book and, and digest that information look at how to win friends and influence people. Yeah. So it is a spectacular book. And if you, if you take the principles from that, not only are you going to be able to be a better person, which is always a nice thing but it's also You're going to be able to write characters that have more human interactions with each other.

[00:42:27] You're going to be able to take those principles and apply them to marketing and to advertising and to just having a community online, right? And so I would say that that book is the number one read I would recommend for anyone who wants to do this as a career or have any career at all. Yeah, yeah, 

[00:42:46] Teddy Smith: definitely.

[00:42:47] I've read this great book. It's a classic, isn't it? So yeah, I really recommend everyone read that one. Well, thank you so much to go to. It's been great. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person when we go to alternation. But apart from that, yeah, thanks for joining us. And we'll speak again soon. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

[00:43:02] And I really appreciate being here. Thank you so much for tuning into the publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about Publishing Performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but are not really sure where to start.

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