The Indy Author Podcast

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kat Caldwell about WRITING BETTER CHARACTERS WITH THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY, including what the five traits are and how they function as a spectrum rather than fixed categories; why a character's "need" is really about the unconscious ways their personality causes hurt to the people they love; how to use the Big Five as a diagnostic tool when your story feels like somethi...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Gordon McClellan about HYBRID PUBLISHING: GREEN FLAGS, RED FLAGS, AND WHAT TO EXPECT, including the key difference between a genuine hybrid publisher and a publishing mill, why a publisher saying "not yet" is actually the green flag authors should be looking for, how to evaluate a hybrid publisher's marketing commitment before you sign anything, red flags in contracts, a...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Austin S. Camacho   about CONFLICT, CHARACTER, AND MOTIVATION, including why conflict is about opposing goals rather than violence, how to find conflict in every scene including ones between characters who agree, how internal conflict distinguishes heroes from villains, why motivation has to be personal to feel real, how to make large-scale stakes relatable by grounding...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristen Tate about INTERIORITY: THE SECRET SAUCE OF GOOD FICTION, including how to calibrate the depth of interiority across multiple point-of-view characters; the difference between overt and subtle interiority, and why the "she thought" tag is usually unnecessary; how interiority functions as the glue that connects plot events and reveals character motivation; how to u...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Dale L. Roberts about SMART MARKETING OVER HOT GENRES, including why consistent promotion matters more than genre selection, how going wide on platforms like Kobo and direct sales tools like Curios and Payhip can boost profitability, what your Amazon product page must get right to convert readers, and how author community and tools like Booksprout can give your book a su...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Rene Gutteridge about THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF A SCENE, including how to identify the purpose of every scene before you write it, where to enter a scene for maximum impact, how to balance propulsive moments with the quieter character-development scenes your story also needs, and why every element in a scene—from minor characters to setting—should be doing more than one job. W...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Carlo J. Emanuele about STORY FIRST, MARKETING SECOND, including why authors make the same mistake corporate executives do when they lead with features instead of value, how to move beyond genre labels to find the emotional core of your pitch, why comps should describe an experience rather than a category, why marketing tasks feel productive but often aren't, and how ent...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Todd Fahnestock about THE ECONOMICS OF CON LIFE, including the real costs and revenue thresholds of selling books at cons, why five books is the minimum for a viable booth, how selling sets instead of singles and leaning into cover art and merch changed his income, the break-even math that determines whether a con is worth attending, how face-to-face interactions at cons...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Elle Griffin about SUBSTACK FOR FICTION AND NONFICTION WRITERS, including why she chose Substack over social media, and how she built her audience through direct email outreach instead; how she serialized a gothic novel and earned $120,000 from roughly 150 paid subscribers; a Substack app issue that may be hiding your posts from thousands of your subscribers; and why she...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Jeniffer Thompson about YOUR HUMANITY IS YOUR BRAND, including how AI search actually rewards the content you've already created, the SEO fundamentals that still matter including the KDP keyword trick most authors miss, why your brand is your promise and not your logo, how to choose platforms based on your emotional bandwidth rather than what everyone else says you shoul...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Melissa Addey about FROM DATA TO DISCOVERY: ALLi's INDIE AUTHOR BOOKSTORE, including what three years of income surveys reveal about indie versus traditional publishing earnings, how ALLi's new Indie Author Bookstore works as a curated shop window for thousands of indie books, what browsing thousands of listings has taught Melissa about cover quality and metadata mistake...

 Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristen Tate about WRITING RULES YOU CAN BREAK, including why the longer you edit the fewer hard rules there seem to be, when adverbs earn their place and when they're redundant, why telling is a tool novelists have that screenwriters envy, how passive voice can actually sharpen a mystery, what separates a prologue that hooks from one that delays, and how the convention...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Sara Rosett about TROPES AS TOOLS IN MYSTERIES & THRILLERS, including the differences among tropes, genre conventions, and clichés, how scars and secrets function as plotting engines, how to scale the same trope for different genres, using tropes to inject new energy into a series, and what international mysteries can teach you about inventive plotting.   Interview video...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Rene Gutteridge about WRITING THE MOMENTS THAT MATTER, including how real-life dramatic events translate differently to film and to fiction, why interiority is the novelist's greatest advantage over screenwriters, how to slow down a high-intensity scene so readers feel every decision, choosing the small unexpected details that make a scene feel real, why every chapter ne...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Robert Lee Brewer about A POET'S GUIDE TO CRAFT, PUBLISHING, AND COMMUNITY, including how to recognize when an idea wants to be a poem, two very different approaches to revision, the publishing landscape for poets from journal submissions to full collections, how to handle rights and track simultaneous submissions, the annual Poem-a-Day challenge on WritersDigest.com for...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kevin J. Anderson and Johanna Parkhurst about LEARN TO WRITE IT, LEARN TO PUBLISH IT, about Western Colorado University's master's programs in publishing and genre fiction, which treat commercial fiction as worthy of serious study and teach students every step from manuscript to market. They discuss the hands-on anthology project that drew nearly a thousand submissions,...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Jonathan Maberry about MEDIA TIE-INS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, including what media tie-in writing is, how the licensing works, the creative constraints of writing in someone else's world, how to find open calls and pitch editors, the career strategy of when to pursue tie-in work and when to focus on your own brand, and why the writers who treat editing as a business interacti...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Brenna Bailey-Davies about STORY FIRST, GENRE SECOND: LESSONS FROM ROMANTASY FOR EVERY WRITER, including why genre works best as a marketing tool rather than a creative constraint, how to signal genre in your first chapter without over-promising on tropes, the danger of trope-stuffing and why narrative should drive genre decisions, what genre-bending fiction offers in th...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Tiffany Yates Martin about why reveals are one of the most powerful yet mishandled tools in fiction, techniques for concealing and timing information using POV, structure, and reader assumptions, the dangers of being too cryptic or too obvious, how beta readers can diagnose whether your reveals are working, and a practical checklist for crafting reveals that are intrinsi...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Jennifer Probst about WRITING ENSEMBLE CASTS THAT KEEP READERS HOOKED, including strategies for developing believable character relationships and chemistry, balancing primary and secondary characters in series fiction, keeping relationship arcs consistent across books, and practical craft tips for writing complex casts that keep readers engaged.   Interview video at http...

 Matty Dalrymple talks with Angelique Fawns about NAVIGATING THE SHORT FICTION MARKET WITH AUTHORITY, including how a broken ankle and a thousand dollars in failed contest entries led to a thriving short fiction career; why the intersection of your day-job skills and your creative passion is where authority gets built; how compiling a free resource for short story markets created a recognized plat...

 Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristen Tate about BECOMING A BETTER WRITER BY BEING A BETTER READER, including how novel study helps authors analyze story structure, scene design, pacing, and sentences; practical strategies for rereading fiction with purpose; learning craft lessons from the books you love and even the books you don't love; balancing reading for pleasure with analytical reading; and u...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kevin Tumlinson about OPTIMIZING THE ROI OF AN AUTHOR ASSISTANT, including how authors can use an author assistant to improve marketing ROI, which publishing and marketing tasks make sense to outsource, how to evaluate return on investment, how AI can support an author assistant's work, and how indie authors can free up time to write more while building a scalable, susta...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Jessie Kwak about THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO FINDING COMMUNITY, including practical strategies for building a strong writing community, how to connect with other writers at author events, approaches for overcoming isolation and joining the right groups for your goals, tips for confident author networking and collaboration, and ways a supportive creative community can fuel you...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Karen Williams about HOW AND WHY TO MARKET NONFICTION BEFORE YOU WRITE, including how nonfiction book marketing can start before a single word is written, why early audience research and conversation-based marketing strengthen book positioning, and how authors can use podcasts, surveys, content repurposing, and community building to create demand in advance. They also di...