After Grok recommended it, I started a dedicated author channel on YouTube.

I already have a channel with 13K subscribers, and at first, I thought I could simply add my author content there as well. However, these videos didn’t perform very well. My existing channel is focused on video and photo editing tutorials, so my author content doesn’t really fit the channel.

Since Grok recommended creating a dedicated author channel, I decided to start over. It’s tough to start from scratch once again with zero subscribers, but does it really matter if you have 13K subscribers and none of them are interested in your author videos because it’s completely off-topic?

Once I had made that decision, the next question was: What does Grok recommend when it comes to starting a YouTube channel as an author?

Consistency on YouTube

Try to connect your YouTube channel to your overall author platform. Look at your X, Instagram, website, and other platforms and make sure your YouTube channel fits in with them.

That specifically means:

• Use the same name on YouTube that you use everywhere else.
• Use the same design style for your profile image, header, and thumbnails that you use elsewhere.
• Consistency is key. All your content across all platforms should contribute to a bigger picture that is recognizable from the beginning.

How to Start for Free on YouTube

Don’t spend money in the beginning—you don’t have to.

Use your smartphone camera, a free screen recorder, and edit your videos with CapCut, which is free in its basic version. Use Audacity for audio editing, which is completely free, and design your thumbnails with Canva, which also has a free tier.

If you have some money to spend, invest in a good microphone first. You can already get a decent one for under $100.

What Content Can Authors Make for YouTube?

• Book trailers for your novels
• Reviews of books by other authors
• Your author journey (for me, that’s currently my Grok project)
• Behind-the-scenes content / Day-in-the-life vlogs
• Writing and publishing tutorials (these will attract other authors rather than readers, but they can be useful for networking)
• Livestreams are great for community building, but they are much more effective once you already have an audience.

YouTube SEO Basics

Video Titles | Focus on clarity and honest value. Titles should be specific. Numbers often work well. Examples:

• 5 Habits That Help Me Write Every Day
• My Top 3 Sci-Fi Books in 2026
• Grok Recommended These 5 Ways to Find Readers

Keywords | Use YouTube Keyword tools and Google Trends to find relevant keywords. Apply the same basic principles on YouTube that you would use for blogging SEO.

Keyword Stuffing | As with blogging, think about the audience first. Don’t stuff unrelated keywords into your videos. It can only hurt your platform in the long term.

Clickbait | Finding long-term readers is about building a good community, especially for indie authors. So be honest and authentic. Never lie to your audience. Clickbait is one of the worst things you can do when you’re trying to build a community.

Collaborations | Search for other indie authors, review their books, and then reach out to them. If they are legitimate authors, you’ll often find their email address on their channel’s About page. Aim for people with a comparable audience size who write in the same genre as you. In general, give something to these authors before you expect them to give something to you.

Lead Magnets | If you have a freebie to offer in exchange for email subscriptions, add a link to it in every YouTube video description. Mine is a link to the free book I offer to my newsletter subscribers.

Are Other Video Platforms Worth It?

Currently, I don’t think so. You can use Rumble or Odysee as backup platforms, but the audience for fiction authors is on YouTube. It seems that the alternative platforms currently attract mainly people and audiences interested in non-mainstream political content.

YouTube Expectations

From my experience, YouTube is a marathon.

I published content almost daily for three years on my tutorial channel until I had more than 1K subscribers. If you publish weekly content on a fresh author channel without an existing audience elsewhere, it’s probably going to take years to build a channel that can become a meaningful asset.

Only a few people achieve overnight success on YouTube. Be aware of that before you start.

To Conclude

YouTube is the most important video platform, and it will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. If you have some time to spare, it’s worth getting into.

But weekly videos are not going to make you famous overnight. Use YouTube as a supplement to your overall author platform. Writing novels and running your own website and mailing list are still the most important outlets.