The Indy Author Podcast

Matty Dalrymple talks with Katherine Ramsland about MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, including these commons mistakes and how to avoid them: They are used as profilers because detectives can't do this work; they visit crime scenes to advise on catching a killer; they profile a person; they interrogate suspects; they undertake hypnosis or therapy in the courtroom; they pronounce def...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Greta Boris and Megan Haskell about UNCOVERING YOUR AUTHOR PURPOSE, including understanding your priorities and circumstances; having a unifying theme as a "hub"; the importance of alignment between your creative and business focuses; mining your fiction preferences for clarity about your author purpose; writing with a goal of marketability; the danger of shiny object sy...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kathleen Donnelly about MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT WORKING K-9s AND HOW TO AVOID THEM, including whether a dog can track across water or track a person in a car; whether one scent can be disguised with another; what makes it difficult for a dog to track and how to evade tracking dogs (maybe); training rescue and human remains dogs; training the alert signal; identifying...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Chelle Honiker about THE SALES FLYWHEEL, including what a sales flywheel is ... and what it is not; building a community through the flywheel; finding the nugget of humanity; the danger of teaching readers to expect free; sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set; building cyclical, not transactional, relationships; the importance of not emailing people only whe...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Johnny B. Truant about MOVING THE NEEDLE TO A DIFFERENT TRACK, including the impetus for him starting his podcast, "The Art of Noticing" and what drove his creative pivot; the importance of not missing the magic that's happening around you; supporting the artisan writer; the age of the iconoclast writer; the power of being authentically you; the necessity to segregate yo...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Melissa Addey about THE BIG INDIE AUTHOR DATA DROP 2024, including author income data; whether trad pub income is spikier than indie pub income; the growth of libraries; the continuing popularity of paperback; selling direct; trends in KU; the power of the backlist; behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!); the fact that indie and trad i...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Jessie Kwak about CREATING YOUR OWN COMMUNITY. Our conversation was triggered by the fact that Jessie recently hosted the first Author Alchemy Summit, and I wanted to find out what had made her decide to dive into this huge community-building undertaking. But even if organizing your own conference isn't on your bucket list, the best practices she shares are generalizable...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Tiffany Yates Martin about CREATING CHARACTER MOTIVATION: THE FALLACY OF MAGICAL KNOWING, including an explanation of what "magical knowing" is, what leads a writer to fall back on it, and the signs that you're relying on it; the importance of understanding the character's overarching goal and of laying in brushstrokes of both context and specifics; the challenge of find...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Rob Hart about THE SOURCE CODE OF STORYTELLING, including the importance of making your readers laugh; getting rid of the rituals; doing a backwards editing pass; posing the villain as the hero of their own story; not counting out the Riders of Rohan; and writing an outline and throwing it out.   Interview video at https://youtu.be/X_rCsIB6Zdw   Show notes (including tra...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Michael La Ronn about THE POCKET GUIDE TO PANTSING, including honoring what your brain is trying to do; retrospective outlining for pantsers; cycling through your story; meeting the characters where they are; surprising the reader (and yourself); the challenge of writing into the dark across a series; using AI to create a story bible (but how spreadsheets still work bett...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Pamela Fagan Hutchins about DATA-DRIVEN PUBLISHING, including business and creative collaboration with a publisher; the rise of "super indie / alt traditional"; changing one's genre or plotting approach based on the data; battling imposter syndrome; the danger of violating reader expectations and the power of targeting the enthusiastic sub-genre fan; and the value of wri...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Bryan Cohen about WHAT HAS CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME WITH AMAZON ADS, including ads as a research tool; whether Amazon product pages are actually getting busier; the impact of A+ content; the advice to go deep rather than wide on ad platforms; how AI is (or might be) changing the ad game; budgeting for beginners; and whether one book is enough for an ad campaign.   Int...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Roland Denzel about AIM LOWER - THE SECRET TO HITTING BIG GOALS IS TARGETS SO EASY YOU CAN'T MISS THEM, including how big goals teach bad habits, how tiny dopamine hits mean the world to your habits, how habits need slack and an expiration date, and his advice: One at a time, please.   Interview video at https://youtu.be/-gdGMff0zG8   Show notes (including transcript) at...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt about THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SURPRISING OF KICKSTARTER. They offer their insider perspectives, covering both fiction and non-fiction books, including how Kickstarters enables authors to tap into a growing desire among readers for access to creators; which comes first, a Kickstarter campaign or a reader community; how Kickstarter has be...

Authors, who would like to tap into another 20% of the reading population? You can do that by making your works accessible to the community of potential readers with print disabilities.   Matty Dalrymple talks with Michael Johnson about HOW TO MAKE YOUR WORK ACCESSIBLE, including the requirements of digital accessibility, such as making images and graphs and charts accessible; tools and services f...

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I have Part 2 of a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS. In this episode we talk about BUILDING AN AUTHOR PLATFORM, including the importance of building on land that you own; NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY, and the options offered by in-person and virtual communities; and ADAPTABILITY AND PERSISTENCE, including whether persist...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS PART 1, including This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I have Part 1 of a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS. In this episode we talk about QUALITY WRITING, including how marketing serves as a force multiplier for our craft; the opportunities and the responsibility of being your own...

Matty Dalrymple talks with David Morris about FROM GATEKEEPERS TO GUIDES: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF AGENTS, including the decline of gatekeeper roles in the publishing world; the agent business model and how it is evolving, including the emergence of an indie equivalent of the agent role; red flags to watch out for when seeking that support; and the role of hybrid publishers.   Interview video at  http...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristina Adams about RIGHT-TIMING YOUR RELEASE STRATEGY, including the creative price of too-rapid release and the importance of choosing your own "right-timed" schedule; the need for sustainability in an author career; the influence of the writing communities you join or create; distinguishing burnout from temporary boredom; the importance of keeping the writing sacred...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Todd Fahnestock about SECRETS OF MAXIMIZING IN-PERSON SALES, including the background of Todd's less than successful early in-person sales experiences; his first success, and what he learned from it; how to find the opportunities, and the power of saying yes to everything (with some caveats); how to achieve a professional set-up, including advice on effective banner desi...

Matty Dalrymple talks with JP Rindfleisch about THE TOLLING BELL & THE STORY HYPOTHESIS, including the formula of Story Hypothesis (initial want + developing need + true need); the nine fundamental needs and identifying the driving needs; using the Story Hypothesis to create a resonating theme; the downside of how the concept of "theme" is usually taught; the power of a non-hierarchical approach;...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Mary Carroll Moore about PERFECTING YOUR STORY'S TRAJECTORY, including the value of having a visual map of your story's structure; the importance of understanding the triggering event that generates the crisis and the turn from outer to inner crisis; the power of considering how the question posed at the beginning of the story maps to the answer given at the end of the s...

Matty Dalrymple talks with Stephanie Chandler about LEVERAGING YOUR TRIBE OF INFLUENCE, including the power of tapping into your existing tribe and of expanding beyond that tribe; the value of beta readers to address the problem of obscurity; the downside of promoting outside your target audience, of selling to other writers, and of relying on the "rented real estate" of social media; the importan...

If you find the information in this video useful, please consider supporting The Indy Author! https://www.patreon.com/theindyauthor https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattydalrymple Matty Dalrymple talks with Michelle Glogovac about PODCASTING PLAYBOOK: NAVIGATING GUEST OPPORTUNITIES, including  pitching to a podcast is similar to or different from other pitches in a writer's life; the importance of pit...

Did you find the information in this video useful? Please consider supporting The Indy Author! https://www.patreon.com/theindyauthor https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattydalrymple Matty Dalrymple talks with John DeDakis about The Productive Power of Organization and Procrastination, including organizing content and research material and the value of compartmentalizing; organizational approaches with...