We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Steve Beaulieu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Steve thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with important influences in our lives. Is there a historical figure you look up to?

My answer to this is either cliche or controversial depending on who you ask.

But my ultimate guide in everything I do is the person of Jesus Christ.

Whether it’s life or business, the age-old question “What would Jesus do?” permeates my every thought.

It directs how I treat my authors, artists, editors, formatters, and customers. It motivates me to run Aethon Books as the kind of publisher who pushes authors to the forefront, rebels against non-human replacements for jobs AI is becoming increasingly capable of performing, and determines the level of integrity with which I handle customer service problems.

For the sake of all those who work with us, I should say that this isn’t some company policy, and we aren’t a Christian publisher—this is simply my own personal motivation for doing good work that I can be proud of.

In my personal life, I try to live by the creed: Give until you feel it or maybe scarier, give until it hurts.

What we’ve created with Aethon is an empire and I want to never let it make me Caesar.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Aethon Books sells the best damn science fiction and fantasy books in the world. We specialize in LitRPG, an offspring of fantasy highly inspired by the eastern market. Imagine a book written like your favorite tabletop or videogame, including stats and progression. However, they are not “Choose your own adventure.”

I founded the company with Rhett C Bruno in 2018 in a moment of confusion and desperation. After spending years touring as a metal singer and musician, I entered into full time ministry, working as a pastor for 14 years. When things got dicey, and the church structure flipped on its head, I found myself without a job.

Rhett and I were already writing books together (The Buried Goddess Saga, Luna Missile Crisis, The Black Badge and more), and had learned that we knew how to sell books. When I approached him as a friend, stating that I didn’t know what direction to go with my life now that I was unemployed, he immediately quit his job as an architect and we started Aethon.

From a $4k Kickstarter, we built the business from the ground on our own. No debt. No capital. Just a few bucks and a hell of a lot of grit.

We decided the publishing world was too niche, and it was too difficult to get picked up by a traditional genre publisher, so we wanted to throw the doors wide open to people who told great stories, no matter who they were, what they believed, or what stance they took in their personal lives. We didn’t (and still don’t) require an agent. We have an open submissions email that gets thousands of subs a week, and we do our best to read every single one of them.

We believe in our authors. We are authors. Wr love our readers. We are readers. We have a great passion books.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Treat people how you want to be treated. That means good pay, grace during difficult times, and freedom to enjoy life without feeling like a slave to their jobs.

I think the biggest complaint we hear today is that people don’t have time to live life. I had several periods in my life where I did nothing but work, and it was absolutely exhausting.

Aethon has a simple agreement with our employees: be available 24/7 for emergencies in your department (since Aethon is a global business? Time never stops), take as many vacations as you can handle as long as your job gets done, and enjoy your family. If that means an employee isn’t chained to his/her desk from 9-5, so be it. I don’t care when the job gets done as long as it does.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We had to unlearn the entire publishing industry. It’s based on archaic concepts built around brick and mortar stores. Big publishers base which books they sign on the opinions of solitary readers.

We believe that we don’t have to love a book for others to love it. And that proves itself time and time again. We have tons of readers, and we know our market. We base our model around what people are reading, not what we want them to read.

This can likely be applied to most businesses. In our industry, we call it “writing to market.”

All too often, we see businesses trying to break the mold and be innovative when in reality, most people just want a better version of what they love. Hell, in 2025, most people just want a person to answer the phone when they call.

Deliver to the customer what you as a customer would want. Be personably. Be transparent. Be willing to say “I don’t know.” Be willing to give people raw and real information. Set their expectations right the first time so you’re not over promising and under delivering.

And for the love of all that’s Holy, drop the corporate speech.

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