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This page contains podcast episode extras and bonus content available only to patrons.
Thank you for being a patron of The Indy Author!
Thank you for being a patron of The Indy Author!
From Episode 087 - Looking Back and Forward at Indy Publishing with Dan Wood
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In this week's patron-only extra, Dan and I discuss what aspects of my successful Facebook ads I could carry forward to improve my success with Amazon ads, and which aspects don’t translate as well.
"That mentality of experimenting and knowing that you can't just make an ad and throw it out there and it works. You have to do AB testing. You have to try a couple of different variations, figure out which variation works the best, and then pump money into it." |
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From Episode 085 - Optimizing Your Keywords with Dave Chesson
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In this week's patron-only extra, Dave describes Kindlepreneur's new Atticus software, which is targeted to replace Scrivener and Vellum (and other packages like them) with one integrated tool.
"Wouldn't it be great if there's one that did all those things extremely well and allowed authors to collect? Collaborate with editors, collaborate with writers. And so that's exactly what we've been working on is Atticus." |
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From Episode 084 - Using Content Legally with Kelley Way
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Kelley Way discusses intellectual property, the differences among copyright, trademark, and patent, and how these do or don’t apply in the author world.
Kelley also provided the attached description of "What Is Intellectual Property" for podcast patrons. 
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From Episode 083 - The Six Rs of Maximizing the Value of Your Content with Abe Ogden
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Abe Ogden discusses how LinkedIn is the right social media platform for his business-to-business outreach goals, and how learning a markup language like HTML "allows your content to be mobile and doesn't trap you into a specific piece of software or a specific file format."
(If discussion of programming languages and meta data doesn't freak you out, check out Episode 042 - The Importance of Metadata with Joshua Tallent.) |
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From Episode 081 - Human-Centered Marketing with Dan Blank
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In this week's patron-only extra, Dan and I discuss an option for reaching out to libraries and librarians, the benefit of requesting expertise rather than a favor, and, to better understand your genre, the power of asking, "Where would you shelve this book?
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From Episode 080 - The Force of a Brand with Daniel Palmer
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In this week's patron-only extra, Daniel talks about the lessons he learned in his corporate career--including setting up the Barnes and Noble website--that he still applies to his author career.
"The main lesson is it's always about the consumer, it's what's the path of least resistance for the consumer. And that has to go into your books as well. Because when you write clunky prose, when you write too much description, when you have too much filler, when you have some kludgy or convoluted plot elements, your consumer just runs up against obstacles and hits walls. Your job is to make that experience as smooth and seamless as possible so that they don't get tripped up while they're either shopping on your site or reading your book. I write always with my reader or my consumer in mind." |
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From Episode 079 - Making the Most of Your Short Fiction with Douglas Smith
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In this week's patron-only extra, Doug shares his recommendations for books that will help you build your craft to further improve your chances of taking advantage of the “magic bakery” of short fiction.
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From Episode 078 - Living Your Best Creative Life with Zibby Owens
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In this week's patron-only extra, Zibby describes how she added children's book author to her already-impressive resume.
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From Episode 076 - BookFunnel with Damon Courtney
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In this week's patron-only extra, Damon shares some tips for simple email segmentation that can help you get the right information to the right fans.
"Really the simplest <segmentation is> organic / non-organic. So if you were going to start segmenting at all, that was where I'd start, so that you have a clear list of the people that have already read your stuff and the people who may not have actually read your stuff." |
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I'm including this snippet not because Damon and I came up with a perfect answer for getting promo codes to readers on a particular retail platform, but because I'm hoping someone might hear my dilemma and drop me a note about how to resolve it. : )
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From Episode 075 - Key Book Publishing Paths with Jane Friedman
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In this week's patron-only extra, Jane talks about translations.
"I think the challenge with a self-published translation is that you can get it into the stores and distributed, online retail, I mean, without a lot of trouble, but then how do you let them know that it's there? And then you also have to know the target language well enough to be able to write your marketing materials or to do the advertising or whatever it is that you're going to do. They're just so many add-on efforts required." |
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From Episode 073 - Author Websites with Pauline Wiles
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In this week's patron-only extra, Pauline and I discuss considerations for establishing public and private social media identities.
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From Episode 072 - Mentoring and Collaborating with Interns with Robert Blake Whitehill
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In this week's patron-only extra, Robert and Matty chat about airplanes (there's really nothing indy author-related in this week's extra). : )
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From Episode 071 - The Provider Side of Author Services with MK Williams
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In this week’s Patron-only content, M.K. Williams and I talk more about our indy author careers.
"It's a relief when you feel that you have those other legs of business built up because there's always ebbs and flows with book sales." |
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From Episode 070 - Copyright for Authors with Orna Ross
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In this week’s Patron-only content, Orna talks about mindset: how the day you put your book out there for sale, you've just started a business, and the importance of embracing this aspect of the author life, not resisting it.
"I think the most important thing for authors to understand is that the day you put your book out there for sale, be that through Amazon KDP, on your own website, or any other way, you've just started a business. And a lot of authors don't actually really understand the implications of that." |
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From Episode 069 - Writing Memoir with Beth Kephart
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In this week's patron-only extra, Beth Kephart and I talk about Cheryl Strayed’s book WILD, and how it does and does not meet the expectations of memoir.
"There's the sense one has that sometimes people give themselves challenges so that they can write about it, and it's about whether or not the reader feels that the challenge was organic or constructed." |
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From Episode 068 - Handling Difficult Topics in YA Fiction with Emma G. Rose
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In this week's patron-only extra, Emma describes the concept of the page-a-day challenge, and how it helped achieve her most prolific period in her author career.
"As any of us who write regularly know, finding time to write, finding inspiration or willingness to write, those are all challenges, right? So it helps if you create a sort of a framework for yourself." If you're intrigued by this topic, you might also be interested in Episode 017 - Story a Day with Julie Duffy. |
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From Episode 067 - Mistakes Writers Make about the FBI and How to Avoid Them with Jerri Williams
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In this week's patron-only extra, former FBI agent Jerri Williams discusses the new TV show, CLARICE, based on the FBI agent Clarice Starling from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, including what’s inaccurate about their portrayal of the FBI but why Jerri is looking forward to checking it out nonetheless.
"It's entertaining. It's exciting to see those things happen and that's what you need for a good story. We all know that. So I'm not mad at anybody who does that with their stories, but my job now is a social service to make sure people know how it really happens, and then they can make their own decision as to what they want to do about it." |
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From Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
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In this week's patron-only extra, listen in as Tiffany Yates Martin gives me some editorial advice on Ann Kinnear Book 4.
"The trap of something like this is, Oh, I've got a sagging middle. I need more exciting stuff. Which is great, but if it does not contribute to your characters forward movement along her arc, then it will feel like just extraneous stuff that as you said, you can lift right out." |
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From Episode 064 - Writing and Publishing Children's Books with Keith Wheeler
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In this week's patron-only extra, Keith Wheeler briefly discusses his experience with traditionally publishing his children's books.
"I mainly did it for the experience for my <YouTube> viewers. So that way, instead of just talking conceptually about the difference between traditionally published and indy published, I could actually tell them firsthand experience." |
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From Episode 063 - Wide for the Win with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
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In this week's patron-only extra, Mark Lefebvre lets us know how he really feels about authors who don't go wide for the win.
"We think we are woke and we think we're thinking wide, but we're not really thinking--we're very heavily prejudiced towards Amazon." |
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From Episode 062 - Mastering Point of View with Jon McGoran
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In this week's patron-only extra, Jon McGoran shares information on how to handle physical descriptions of characters, how much is too much, and the danger of jarring readers out of the story if you drop in a description after they’ve already developed their own idea of what the character looks like.
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From Episode 061 - Google Play with Brian Rathbone
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In this episode's patron-only extra, Brian Rathbone discusses options for reaching audiences with audio content such as fiction podcasts and readings.
"I don't think anybody who came out of that world would say, 'Oh yeah, you'll make money doing podcast novels. That's not it. It's all about audience building. This is kind of a long game, right? Audience building to sell your other products." |
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From Episode 060 - Mastering Action Sequences with Joshua Essoe
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In this week's patron-only extra, Joshua Essoe discusses how sex scenes are just another form of action sequence, and gives tips for writing them effectively, including considerations for the terminology you use.
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From Episode 059 - Author Newsletter Swaps and StoryOrigin with Evan Gow
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In this extra, Evan Gow, indie developer of StoryOrigin, discusses he psychology of giveaways and implementing reader magnets.
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From Episode 058 - Author Newsletters with Lee Savino
Two piece of bonus content from Lee Savino!
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I love this first extra, where Lee talks about the nuts and bolts of ensuring email deliverability, but then moves on to how the personal connection of the author newsletter really boils down to sitting down in a (virtual) living room with your readers and telling stories.
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In this extra, Lee talks about the types of freebies you can use to thank your newsletter subscribers, and how they can be used to lead readers to related content.
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From Episode 057 - The Pros and Cons of Pre-orders with Joe Lallo
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In this patron-only extra, Joe Lallo and I discuss the power of the brief note, and how you can use it both to capture your ideas and to stay in the flow when writing. Can you use the brief note in the shower? According to Joe, you can! Have those brief ideas become a collection of story ideas whose time is not quite right? Put them in the writer's "wine cellar" to allow them to age appropriately.
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From Episode 056 - Crowdfunding for Authors with Joshua Essoe
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In this patrons-only clip, Joshua Essoe talks about the logistics of getting his flip book printed—just one of the details he had to factor into his Kickstarter.
Click here for the full episode, including transcript. |
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From Episode 055 - The Costs of Self-publishing a Book with Michael La Ronn
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In this patrons-only clip, Michael La Ronn discusses some additional tips for working effectively with your cover designer.
Click here for the full episode, including transcript. |
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From Episode 054 - Futurist Trends We Can Prepare for Now with Joanna Penn
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Joanna and I discuss the tricky issues related to personalizing the listening experience for fiction works.
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Thought you'd also enjoy this video that Dale L. Roberts created when I mentioned that Joanna would be my dream guest. : )
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From Episode 053 - What Authors Can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin
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"Once we start to learn what story is and how storytellers achieve the reaction in us that engages us, or conversely turns us off of something, once we can figure out what they're doing, it's almost instinctive, it's almost a no brainer, to begin to infuse that into our own writing." --Tiffany Yates Martin
Click here for the full episode, including transcript. |
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