Building Lasting Connections in Podcasting

Are you looking for new ways to connect with readers and market your books? Have you considered using podcasts but aren't sure where to start, or if they're even effective anymore? How can you turn a simple podcast interview into a powerful tool for building your author career? Matty Dalrymple talks about how to leverage podcasting for long-term success.

In the intro, Robert MacFarlane on How I Write Podcast; Are em dashes really a sign of AI writing? [Grammar Girl]; Publishing Pitfalls for Authors; ALLi Self-Publishing Services list; Writer Beware; Midjourney for video;

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Matty Dalrymple is the author of mysteries, thrillers, and nonfiction, and is the host of The Indy Author Podcast. Today we are talking about her new book, co-written with Mark Lefebvre, The Podcast Guest Playbook: Turning Conversations into Connections and Community.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why podcasts offer a deeper connection with potential readers compared to short-form video
• How to pitch podcast hosts effectively by providing value and demonstrating familiarity with their show
• Tangential topics and creative angles fiction authors can use to land interviews on a variety of shows
• The importance of building authentic, non-transactional relationships with hosts and other creators
• Practical tips on how to prepare for an interview and gain confidence as a podcast guest
• Why it's never too late to start your own podcast and how it can benefit your writing process

You can find Matty at MattyDalrymple.com or TheIndyAuthor.com. Matty also offers coaching for authors around podcast practice.

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Matty Dalrymple is the author of mysteries, thrillers, and nonfiction, and is the host of The Indy Author Podcast. Today we are talking about her new book, co-written with Mark Lefebvre, The Podcast Guest Playbook: Turning Conversations into Connections and Community. So welcome back to the show, Matty.

Matty: Thank you. It is lovely to be here.

Jo: Matty's been on the show before. I need to check when it was. It was in 2020, which is obviously like a lifetime away now because it was the beginning of the pandemic. It is like a completely different life. But you did talk a bit then about how you got into writing.

What does your author life and business look like now?

Matty: Well, I think this had just become true in 2020, that I am a full-time author, podcaster, and publisher. Since then, I've continued to add to my two fiction series, the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers.

I've also been working hard on my nonfiction books for authors. We're going to be talking about my new book with Mark. Back then we had been talking about Taking the Short Tack, which is the first book I co-authored with Mark.

Since then, I have also co-authored two books with our mutual friend Michael La Ronn on being an author speaker and on, appropriately enough, co-authoring nonfiction. So, yes, continuing to add to the portfolio.

Jo: And of course, you've got the podcast and—

You are also an advisor for the Alliance of Independent Authors, right?

Matty: That's right. I'm the Campaigns Manager, so I'm responsible for ALLi's campaigns which are: Open Up to Indie Authors, Ethical Self-Publishing, Self-Publishing for All, and Publishing for Profit. That has been super fun. I've been doing that for just over a year now.

Jo: Fantastic. So yes, multiple strings to your bow. So let's get into the book. I guess the first thing is, are podcasts even useful for book marketing in an age of short-form video? We're all told that it's all about TikTok and BookTok and social media.

What is special about podcasting that makes it worth investing time in?

Matty: Well, I think that the strength of podcasts is the depth of the connections you can form.

I have to say, I'm not super familiar with BookTok. When TikTok first came out, I spent about 35 seconds on it and I found it so not for me that it was clear I was not going to be providing content for TikTok or BookTok, and I probably wasn't going to be consuming that content either.

I think that obviously some authors are getting great connections on BookTok, but it doesn't feel like a deep relationship. It feels more like entertainment.

The strength of podcasts is that you do have a chunk of time—you know, 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour—to dive into your topic in depth, to describe your book, but more importantly, the stories behind your book in depth.

The benefit that those other platforms don't have at all is the benefits that come from forming a relationship with the podcast host, which is something that Mark and I spend quite a bit of time discussing in the book. I think that's kind of an underutilized benefit of podcasting.

Jo: A few things there. I mean, the in-depth conversation… people listening to this are people who listen to podcasts. So that is the kind of audience. But you are right, it gives people time to decide whether they even identify with this person in a deeper way.

I get so many of my book recommendations from podcasting. I think, “Well, that was interesting,” and I'll go and listen to their book or read their book. You obviously interview people all the time for your show, and you are also a listener to shows.

How does podcasting translate into book sales, since that is an important reason for it?

Matty: It is about letting people know about a book or a new book, but I think more importantly, it's about letting listeners know about you as an author.

The advice that Mark and I give very strongly is that if you go into a podcast interview with the mindset that what you're looking to get out of this is book sales, it's not going to be as effective, even for book sales, as if you go into it with the opinion that you're there to provide value to the host and to the host's listeners.

Then book sales and many other benefits are going to come from that. You intrigue people about your book by talking about it in a thoughtful and in-depth way, by sharing information. If you're writing nonfiction, you want to get the word out about that.

I have learned this from you: you can share lots and lots of information from your nonfiction book on podcasts and people will still buy your book because they want it in even more depth than you can provide in a podcast interview.

They want it there for easy reference. They want it as an acknowledgment of the value you've provided. So going into that with that service mindset rather than a sales mindset, I think is the most important thing for getting sales.

Jo: Yes, I totally agree. Let's talk about fiction as well, because you are a fiction writer. Both of us write fiction and nonfiction, but I do think it is harder for fiction authors to find appropriate podcasts to pitch and to talk about different angles.

So what's your advice to fiction authors who might feel like it's not so worthwhile?

Matty: Yes, I agree that it is more of a challenge for fiction authors. I think the thing to keep in mind for those authors is, first of all, to find the podcasts that are focused on your genre.

I think certain genres are easier for that. I write in the general crime fiction genre, and there are a number of podcasts that are focused on that, that are specifically targeted to crime fiction readers.

I think that there are probably other genres where there isn't maybe that same breadth of availability of podcasts focused on reaching readers of those genres. I think in all those cases, the thing to do after you've identified the target podcasts is to think of the stories behind the story that you can tell.

We don't recommend that you go into an interview with the idea that you're going to share a summary of the plot of your book. That's just not going to be interesting to anyone and may deter people from buying the book if they've heard what they think is the whole story.

Readers love to hear about the fiction process. Fiction readers love to hear about the research you put into your book, or if your characters are based on real people, or even if you can come up with interesting answers to the “where do you get your ideas?” question. That can be great fodder for these conversations.

Think of those things as what you would chat about if you met a reader who loved the same genre that you write in. You might, in your podcast interview, not even focus on your own book. You and the host might get into a really interesting conversation about other books in your genre.

Listeners will think, “Oh, that person had such an interesting take on horror, or on thriller, or on romance,” and now they want to see what your take is in your own book. So I think there are lots of angles that fiction writers can take that make for an interesting and engaging interview.

Jo: And for me, it's about place. I have my Books and Travel podcast as well. As this goes out, the episode that should be up is on cruise ships and the mystery author Wendy Jones who writes cozy mysteries set on cruise ships.

She was an entertainer on cruise ships, and so we have an episode all about being on cruise ships and cruise ship life. Actually, she writes cozy mysteries, so some percentage of that audience will go on and have a look at her books, but it is that tangential thought.

Wendy pitched me on Books and Travel and said, “My books are set around cruise ships. We could talk about that.” And I'm like, “Yes, that is interesting.” Which was a much better pitch than maybe pitching me on this show to talk about cozy mysteries, because I've done that before.

So I think it's thinking tangentially. What are the themes? Like you mentioned characters.

What are the topics that you have in your fiction book that might be appropriate for a different podcast?

Matty: Yes, and I can imagine that a very successful pitch for the Books and Travel podcast would be, “Here is an aspect of travel that maybe you haven't hit before, and I think that your listeners would really be interested in this.”

Some listeners are going to have been on cruises and will be intrigued for that reason. Some of your listeners will not have been on cruises and are probably equally intrigued for different reasons. So emphasizing how this topic is going to help the host and be interesting to the audience.

Jo: Yes, exactly. You mentioned it before: providing value to the host and the listeners.

In the end, it's not about you, the guest, even though it is about you. It is about giving value. So let's talk about that.

What are some other tips for pitches that will land an interview and make the host want to talk to you as soon as that email arrives?

Matty: In addition to emphasizing the value you provide, I think the other key aspect of a successful pitch is making it clear that you understand the podcast you're pitching. That this is not a generic pitch.

You are sending the pitch and you're describing the value based on what is obviously your experience with that podcast.

For example, “Knowing that your listeners are interested in travel, I have an interesting spin on travel that I can share with them,” or “I think this would be a great follow-up to a previous episode where you talked about the Caribbean. I cruise to the Caribbean and I think this would be a nice companion episode.”

Sometimes I'll get pitches… as listeners of The Indy Author Podcast will know, I love the nautical metaphor for the writing craft and the publishing voyage. Every once in a while, I'll get a pitch that is completely based on a nautical metaphor that is instantly attention-getting to me.

So I think that combination of providing value and then demonstrating your familiarity with the podcast you're pitching is important. No generic, “Dear Sir or Madam” kind of pitches.

Jo: Or “Dear Podcaster.”

Matty: “Dear Podcaster.” Or even worse, when it's personalized, but wrong. I got a pitch for The Career Author Podcast once, and I was like, “That sounds fascinating, but that's not my podcast.”

Jo: I think some of the worst pitches at the moment are from traditional publishing. I don't know about you, but I just get these—they're literally, they get my name right, but then they just copy and paste a press release and say, “You would love to interview this author.”

They're not even really pitching for a podcast. They're just scatter-gunning.

What are some of the things that people should find out about the host before they email?

Matty: Well, one thing I wanted to mention, because you had mentioned getting pitches from publishers or PR firms. I get a lot of pitches from PR firms and people are always really interested to hear that I actually set a higher bar for inviting a guest on the podcast if I'm being pitched by a third party.

It makes it very difficult for me to really get a sense of who the person is. I also feel as if third parties don't necessarily always have the same incentive or ability to communicate the essence of the person they're representing as the person does themselves.

So I think sometimes people who are thinking about pursuing podcast appearances think, “Oh, it's going to look much more professional if I have a PR firm or my assistant approach them.” But for me, that's not true. Hearing from the person directly is more attractive to me.

I think some of the other things to do or not to do are to be very flexible about what you're asking. I can encapsulate many of the aspects of an unsuccessful pitch easily.

If the pitch is, “I have a new book, can I come on your podcast and talk about it?” That's just wrong in so many ways. First of all, my podcast is not that kind of podcast.

My podcast is specifically with guests who have demonstrated expertise in an area of writing or publishing through writing a book about it, or writing an article about it, or speaking at a conference about it, and they're demonstrating their expertise for books outside their own books.

That's really the key for The Indy Author Podcast. You can't come on just talking about your own book; you have to discuss what you've learned from your own experiences that can be generalized to my listeners.

And so, “I have a new book, can I come talk about it?” is also not demonstrating any value for the people you're pitching. You're only emphasizing what you're trying to get out of that.

Summarizing what I was just running through:

Make the contact direct, emphasize the value, emphasize your familiarity, and mention other episodes from that podcast —

that you think would be good companions. I think that combination is the recipe for a successful pitch.

Jo: I like having a few bullet points, maybe three to five, that show there are multiple angles. You can obviously mention your book in the pitch. For example, you'd say, “I'm the author of The Podcast Guest Playbook, and here are some topics we could cover.”

I've definitely said yes to pitches like that because they've given me different angles that are potentially interesting—

Rather than a generic, “I've written a book,” you can say, “I'm the author of this book, and these are the angles we could cover.”

You could pitch The Podcast Guest Playbook on all kinds of levels—to an entrepreneur podcast because they are people who want to go on these shows, or to professional speaking podcasts—but on each one, you would have different bullet points as to how that might apply to that particular podcast.

I would also say, on referring to previous episodes, I think this has become a bit of a copy-and-paste hack that I get from so many now. They will literally say, “Dear Joanna, I really enjoyed the episode on The Podcast Guest Playbook with Matty Dalrymple, and I think you would like this book on flower arranging.”

They've literally just chucked in the last episode without thinking about it, and it makes you read the first sentence and then you're like, “Oh, delete.”

Matty: Yes, unless there's a legitimate connection, don't do that. The benefit of making a connection is if you're acknowledging, for example, that the host has had a guest on about podcasting previously, and you're acknowledging that you recognize that, and yet you feel like your topic is different enough.

That's another way of acknowledging that. I'm glad you also reminded me about the flexibility aspect. The idea of providing different options is great. Then the other aspect of flexibility is that a lot of authors want to have their podcast appearances grouped around a book launch.

First of all, I think that's not always realistic because I know you, for example, record your episodes way in advance. I also have a backlog of episodes. There are a whole bunch of considerations for podcast hosts about how they order the podcasts.

For example, I might have had a couple of episodes that are focused on publishing, and now I want to make sure that I get back to craft. So I need the flexibility to do that. Being insistent about when your episode airs is not good form.

I also think, in general, there is a benefit to not grouping a lot of podcast appearances around a book launch.

The danger is that if I was pitching podcasts to promote one of my mystery novels, I might pitch a bunch of mystery reader-focused podcasts, and if I landed them all around the launch of the book, it's very likely that a lot of those listeners overlap and they may be hearing me on several podcasts in a short period of time.

Now, if you have different aspects you can address about your book, then you can make sure that even if someone hears you on several podcasts, they're not hearing the same thing over and over again. But still, for podcast hosts, it's not appealing to know that their show is number four of seven appearances you have lined up.

So you can really make a benefit out of what might initially seem to be a challenge by not trying to group all your appearances around a launch.

Jo: I absolutely agree, although it's a double-edged sword, especially these days with Kickstarter, because people do want things within a window. So maybe say to the host, “This is my window.”

As we record this, my show's booked out for the next six months. I get all the time, “My launch is next week.” I'm like, this just doesn't work. We put this in the calendar four months ago.

Let's be really brutal about it. I got a pitch even this week that said, “I'm still writing my first book, and I would love to come on your podcast to talk about writing.” I literally didn't know what to say to this person. Maybe you could give us some tough love, Matty.

Why is that not a good pitch, and why is that person maybe not expert enough for a show?

Matty: Well, first of all, they're clearly not conveying any value that you or your audience are going to get. I suppose there could be podcasts out there that focus on early creators and what their experiences are.

I can imagine a podcast where the host is more like offering advice to somebody early in their career, and they're looking for guests who are willing to have that kind of conversation with them, but obviously, that's not The Creative Penn Podcast.

A lot of times, podcasters, just as with agents in the traditional publishing world, will post what they accept. The advice is, if they say they're looking for thrillers and you've written a cozy, then don't pitch them because you're wasting your time and theirs.

The same thing with podcasts. If the host has posted what they're looking for, then don't pitch them if you don't meet that requirement.

Even people who are representing well-known organizations that are clearly coming on a podcast to encourage people to use their products need to be able to focus on providing that value. I'm going to use Damon Courtney of BookFunnel as an example. I've interviewed Damon for The Indy Author Podcast.

Obviously, Damon has an understandable interest in educating people about BookFunnel, but we had a great conversation that never really mentioned BookFunnel until the very end, when I gave him the opportunity to let people know about it, because he had great information to share about cross-promotion and how to get the word out about your book.

I think everybody should follow Damon's example. If you're providing that value, then people are going to come to the product or book you're hoping they will get to.

Jo: Damon is a great example of a very entertaining and engaging speaker. He's got an interesting voice, he's very animated, so he brings a lot of personality as well. I think that is important.

Let's just give people some other tips.

You do have to know what you are doing, and you are only a good interview for the host if you've done this before.

Someone once sent a wonderful pitch, and I was like, “This is a great pitch. Come on the show.” Then when we turned on the recording, it was very clear this person had never done an interview before.

It was so bad I had to stop the interview and say, “Look, I just think you need some more practice at this. This is a really good topic, and I'm really interested. How about you come back in six months? In the meantime, go practice and do some other interviews.”

You and I have been doing this for a long time. There is a hierarchy of podcasts. There are brand new podcasts that maybe only have a couple of episodes and are new, and then there are long-running podcasts that have a bigger audience.

How can people work their way up to bigger podcasts and also get experience so they feel more confident giving interviews on shows, radio, and TV?

Matty: One tip I would share is that if you're starting to pitch podcasts and you don't have other interviews to point them to, which should be part of a pitch letter, you can create a demo reel.

I got one pitch years ago from J.W. Judge, and he sent me a video where it was his pitch, personalized to me, in video format. He said, “Hi, Matty. I write as J.W. Judge, and I would love to join you on The Indy Author Podcast to talk about these things.”

It was great because at that point, he didn't have any other interviews to point me to, but he was very clearly comfortable on camera, had everything set up, and was engaging. I appreciated the time he had spent making this specific pitch for me.

If you are really uncomfortable with the concept, I think there are a couple of things you can do. One is to be an enthusiastic podcast listener. As with any kind of content, you are most successful doing it well if you enjoy consuming the content before you start trying to create it.

That can provide comfort, especially if you're becoming familiar with a specific podcast that you want to pitch yourself to, because you'll understand the rhythm of it, the tone, and the gestalt of the podcast. I think there are certain expectations that podcast listeners develop about how a podcast interview works.

Also, practice with people you know. Find someone you can sit down with over coffee and say, “Hey, here are some questions that I would love to be able to answer as a podcast guest. Let's chat through them.” Do that a couple of times with a couple of different friends and refine your answers each time.

The great thing about that is you're sitting right across the table from them and you can kind of see when their eyes start to glaze over and when they're sitting forward and more engaged. You do less of the first thing and more of the second.

Once you have done those preparatory steps, podcasts can be really nice because you're not in front of an audience.

Obviously, you hope that there will be an audience, but unlike speaking in front of a group at your local library, it can feel like you're just chatting with the host, especially if you have a proficient host who's good at making guests feel comfortable. It can be a good entrée to other speaking engagements.

Jo: I just want to comment on that video thing. Do not send me videos, anybody, because I literally never watch videos and will not watch them!

When people send me a link to a video, I think it's a scam. What I would say is have an author website.

One of the first things I will do if someone pitches me is go and look at their author website.

It is amazing how many times something's broken or it's just not professional. You can have a landing page, like your author website name, forward slash media, and you could put a video there. Then I can choose to watch that video on a website as opposed to through my email.

The other thing is, I always have notes. I always send questions before every interview. I think that's part of being an introvert and needing a lot of preparation.

ChatGPT is very good for this. If you say to ChatGPT, “I'm going on Matty Dalrymple's The Indy Author Podcast. Tell me about Matty and some of her catchphrases and some of the things she likes. How does my book overlap with Matty's interests? What are some of the things that her audience would like?” That's a really good prompt.

Then, just on the notes, I have notes as a host and as a guest, but a big tip: do not read the notes!

Matty: Over time, I've evolved to an approach where I communicate with the guest and we land on an overall topic. When I ask them to schedule, I use Calendly, and one of the questions in there is to provide five subtopics related to the general topic that we've discussed.

They provide those, so they can prepare for those subtopics, and it just gives us some sort of points in the conversation. Generally, I find that sufficient because as a host, I'm standing in for the listener.

So if Damon's coming on the podcast to talk about cross-promotion, by having five guiding points for our conversation that I can ask him questions about, I feel like that's sufficient for my needs.

But it's a great point that the more you can get insight into the preparation process of your host, the more you can be serving them by making that process as easy for them as possible.

Mark and I talk about the three P's: politeness, professionalism, and preparedness, and the importance of these in your interactions.

If they ask you to provide a list of URLs for your social media sites, then don't just provide them with your handle; actually provide them with a link. If they want a bio that's 100 words, don't send them 500.

Every way that you don't comply with what they ask for, you're just making their lives a little harder. For many podcast hosts, this is a labor of love. You can't interact with them as if they were a service provider to you.

If you think about hiring an editor, you and the editor have come to an agreement, you're paying them money, and for that, you expect certain deliverables. You can't go into an interaction with a podcast host with that mindset because you really have to recognize they are doing you a favor, even if they're getting benefits for themselves.

My guess is that very few podcast hosts are making money from this. They're doing this as a service to the community.

Jo: And even more than that, I do make money from this podcast, so it is part of my business, but I've been doing this for 16 years. At least seven of those years, it was not monetized.

We put our time into connecting with an audience, and listeners come back to a show for the host.

They might listen to a guest, but they come back for the host. The trust of our audience is what I value so highly, which is why I cannot bring somebody who doesn't bring value to the show.

I'm not going to interview someone unless I'm like, “That is going to help the audience.” We've spent years building up trust with our audiences so they know what they're going to get when they listen to our show.

Now, you mentioned Damon Courtney from BookFunnel, who we've both met at events. You and I met at ThrillerFest, about a decade or so ago. This is another tip. We mentioned friends before; both of us have co-written with Mark, who is a long-term friend. We met on Twitter originally, and then we met in person.

How can people develop authentic relationships that can possibly develop into things like this?

It is much easier for you to say, “I've got this book coming out, can I come on your show?” than it is for a blind pitch. How can people do that authentically? The book does talk about connections as well.

Matty: I'm realizing that there's a connections aspect to every nonfiction book that I've written for authors.

This is so interesting to me that I think my next book is going to be specifically on the connections that authors and other creatives can develop with the audience they want to reach, but also the real value of making those among your creative colleagues.

I think there are just general tips that can lead to podcast appearances and lots of other benefits, and I'm going to go back again to value. If you meet somebody at a conference and they're a short fiction writer, and you've been thinking about putting together an anthology of short fiction, that is something you can offer them.

Even things like interactions on social media. When I got that video from J.W. Judge, I had already met him. I had had interactions with him, so I could feel comfortable that it wasn't spam.

If I see people who I recognize as being Patreon patrons or somebody who follows me on social media and comments in a productive way on my posts, that just paves the way to good feelings.

If I have a whole list of potential podcast guests I'm looking at and there's a name I recognize and I've already had a good experience with them, then that obviously paves the way to me wanting to say yes more than no to that pitch.

So fully understanding where your audience and interests and the audience and interests of your creative colleagues overlap can open up fantastic opportunities for podcast appearances and a whole lot of other things, whether that's co-authored books or just a collaborative friend that you may be able to provide mutual benefit to.

Jo: Just to come back on the authentic connection, as we said, you and I met a decade ago at ThrillerFest as thriller writers. There was no transactional thing going on. We met as peers at a writer's conference. That's what I would say to people—

Go to conferences, meet people, and make genuine relationships. You never know what they're going to turn into years later.

It's not a case of, “Oh, nice to meet you. Can I come on your podcast?”

Matty: Right, and that idea of not treating it as transactional is so important. This is where I think that even if you've gone through all the earlier processes of doing your research, finding the right podcasts, making your pitch, preparing for the interview, and conducting it with all the best practices.

What a lot of podcast guests do is they sit back afterwards and say, “Phew, glad that went well. Now I'm onto the next thing.” I think that's a very transactional attitude.

If that's where you feel like the transaction has ended, you are really under-representing the benefit you can gain from it and the benefit you can provide.

Do those things to keep that relationship alive. If you are speaking on evergreen content, then every six months, maybe re-post on social media, “Oh, you might want to go back and look at this conversation I had with Jo.”

Make sure that you, as the podcast host, know that I'm doing that, that I'm continuing to point people to your work. Nurturing that relationship with a host can pay you back way more than just that one transactional interview appearance.

Jo: Last question, as we're almost out of time. You have your long-running podcast, The Indy Author, your co-author Mark LeFebvre has his long-running Stark Reflections, and I have this long-running show. Now some people will say, “Oh, well, it's all right for you lot, but now it's too late to start a show.”

I've just rebooted my Books and Travel podcast, and I think we need new voices more than ever.

Why do you keep podcasting, and any tips for those who want to start their own show?

Matty: Well, I would first point people to my book, The Indy Author's Guide to Podcasting for Authors. In that, I walk through what is really driving you to think about hosting a podcast. You want to make sure you think through your goals and if they're realistic before you venture into that.

The primary reason that I keep doing The Indy Author Podcast is because those relationships I build up are so worthwhile for me. I first met Mark because I was a listener to the Stark Reflections Podcast.

An interaction I had with him related to a topic he talked about on that podcast is what led to our first co-authored book. It later led to me inviting Mark to be an advisor for ALLi. I feel like that connection we built long ago through Mark's podcast has paid off.

Michael La Ronn and I have now co-authored two books together, and that has been based on many appearances that Michael has made on my podcast. It's that idea that if I'm really interested in whatever the topic is, I'm developing a network of people that I can reach out to.

So I continue doing it because of the learning opportunities it offers me, the community-building opportunities it offers me, and because I just feel good about paying it back to the community. I feel as if, if I'm gaining these benefits from my guests, then I want to share those benefits with my listeners as well.

Jo: Yes, I totally agree. From my Books and Travel show, what I realized as I rebooted it is that it enabled me to write my memoir, Pilgrimage.

A lot of the episodes had helped me shape what that book became, and even though I didn't necessarily realize it at the time, it made a huge difference to me.

One of my reasons for rebooting it again is because I have a book that's gestating on English gothic cathedrals, and I've got another one on the idea of home. I am interviewing people whose books I'm reading as book research on that show, and I'm so sure that it's going to help me to bring those books into the world.

That show is not about the writing process or publishing or book marketing. I want to make sure people know that those podcasts are also wonderful.

I would recommend people start shows on what they are really passionate about, where other people are also passionate. Yes, you are a writer, but there are lots of things that intersect with that.

Where can people find you and your podcast and your books online?

Matty: If they would like to listen to The Indy Author Podcast, that is “Indy” with a Y. If they'd like to find out more about all my nonfiction work, they can go to TheIndyAuthor.com. If they would like to find out about my fiction work, they can go to MattyDalrymple.com, and that's “Matty” with a Y.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks for your time, Matty. That was great.

Matty: Thanks so much, Jo.

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