Episode 317 - Insights From My Podcast Sabbatical with Matty Dalrymple

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Matty Dalrymple discusses INSIGHTS FROM MY PODCAST SABBATICAL, including how a podcast sabbatical sparked a strategic reset for her indie author business, reshaped her approach to direct sales and discoverability, informed new platform decisions, refined her consulting model, and led to building authority beyond books—offering practical insights for indie authors, nonfiction writers, and creators navigating publishing strategy, content repurposing, and second-act careers.

Looking for more information about my new From Expertise to Authority focus?

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In many of my articles and podcast episodes, I suggest you capture your thoughts about your own journey from expertise to authority, and I’ve created a worksheet you can use to do that—download it here.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast! Today my guest is, once again, me! : )

When I wrapped up the last episode before I took my December podcast sabbatical, I had planned to start out 2026 with a fantastic interview with Laura Goode about THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ADVOCACY, but so much happened in December that I decided to do one more solo episode to report back, and then return to regularly scheduled interview programming next week.

You’ll find video of this episode on The Indy Author on YouTube and a full transcript at TheIndyAuthor.com/Podcast.

Before we dive into my update, I’d like to send out a big thank you to my Patreon patrons, including Hsin-Yi and Heather, who became patrons in December of 2025! And I’d also like to thank Heather and Jeff, who each sent me 3 coffees via Buy Me a Coffee! It’s listeners like them—and you—who make this content possible.

Having some time set aside for something different than my usual routine was so helpful, and here are some of the things I accomplished in December ...

First, I made some changes to my “direct sales” approach by taking my Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts ebooks and audio off PayHip in favor of Curios. I had two reasons for doing this.

First, whenever I made a sale on PayHip, my business manager, Melanie, who handles all the finances for William Kingsfield Publishers,  would have to reconcile the multiple resulting transactions that came into QuickBooks, and the time it took her to do this often cost more than I made from the sale. On Curios, as with other third-party retail platforms, the royalties come in in chunks, which is much easier from a bookkeeping point of view.

Second, I was getting tired of contending with the fact that the only “discoverability” I was ever going to get was by sending people there—pretty much exclusively people who already knew about me or my books—and I wanted to focus on a platform like Curios where someone who was browsing for suspense or thriller or mystery might find my books. And I’ll have more to say about the benefits of discoverability on third-party platforms in a bit!

Just as an FYI, I know that explaining to buyers about the platform fee that enables Curios to pay creators 100% of the list price is a little awkward, and I’m lobbying them to provide a feature that would enable creators to cover the platform cost so that the cost to the buyer would be the same across all retail platforms, while, I believe, still resulting in a higher royalty on Curios. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress on that front.

Back to PayHip—in addition to moving the short story ebooks and audio off PayHip, I also took down my large print novels because I didn’t want to have to maintain inventory to cover the few copies I sold. I’m happy to suggest that readers buy these books Bookshop.org, where a percentage of each sale goes to support indie bookstores.

I’m still thinking of completely retiring my PayHip store in favor of Curios for ebooks and audio and directing readers to Bookshop.org for all print, maybe with the offer that if they send me a photo of them with one of my print books, I’ll send them a signed book plate. Let me know what you think about that idea.

The other thing I need to accommodate is that one of the benefits I offer to Patreon patrons and newsletter subscribers is 20% off purchases on my PayHip store, and at the moment at least, that’s not an option on Curios—although I will lobby for them to add it!—so I’m looking for another benefit I can offer those folks. Ideas always welcome!

On the consulting front ...

Last year my consulting rates were $175 for the first one-hour meeting and $125 for subsequent one-hour meetings, and in the last podcast episode, I announced that those rates would be going up to $195 for the first one-hour meeting and $145 for subsequent meetings. I had originally priced the meetings differently because I anticipated I would be spending more prep time on the first meeting—reviewing the material the client had sent me, checking out their books, their website, their social media presences, and so on.

However, I found that even after the first meeting, I generally had prep to do for subsequent meetings, so pricing them differently didn’t really make much sense. And since I had already announced $145 as the “subsequent meeting” rate in the last episode, I didn’t want to set the hourly rate higher than that, so all consulting meetings are now $145, with no premium charge  for the first meeting!

What else did I have planned for December?

Originally, I intended to spend most of my “spare” time in December trying to get Lizzy Ballard Book 6 ready for advance readers, and I got a bit sidetracked on another project—more on that in a moment—so I didn’t get as far as I had hoped, but I’m pretty close. The book is about 90 thousand words with about 90 chapters—I prefer short chapters when the story is moving among several point-of-view characters, as is the case in the Lizzy books—and as of the time I’m recording this, on January 4, I’ve completed the pre-advance reader polish edit on twenty chapters, and I’m still pushing hard to have the book reader-ready before I leave for vacation on January 9.

I also finally launched my long-anticipated (by me) collection of Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts: A YEAR OF KINNEAR: 12 SUSPENSE SHORTS FROM THE WORLD OF ANN KINNEAR, which is now available on all major online retail platforms in ebook and print.

I slightly underestimated the time I would need to spend on the launch of the collection, but what I didn’t factor in at all is that since I had added an illustration and an author’s note for each of the stories in the collection, all twelve standalone shorts would have to be updated with that extra content on all the retail and distribution outlets, so that’s taking quite a bit of time.

And here I’m going to take a moment to thank the wonderful Angelique Fawns for taking on a task that she didn’t anticipate for her holiday season: writing the foreword for the connection. Thank you, Angelique!

So in addition to a lot of unanticipated Vellum updating and content uploading, what did I spend my time in December on?

I launched a whole new platform: From Expertise to Authority! This my first offering that is targeted beyond a writer-specific audience, although I believe it will be valuable to many writers, especially of nonfiction. The purpose of this new platform is to ...

help experienced professionals exploring second act careers or sidelines transform their expertise into recognized authority through a proven three-stage framework of relationship-building. That framework involves Expertise-Based Relationships (which involves building credibility through written content), Personality-Based Relationships (which involves building deeper human connections through conversational content), and Authority-Based Relationships (which involves building recognized authority through direct engagement). And the goal of this framework is to enable these experienced professionals to generate income, expand their influence, or stay meaningfully engaged in their field.

In December I rolled out a bunch of new channels and content in support of From Expertise to Authority: an addition to my website, which you’ll find at TheIndyAuthor.com/Authority ... a revamped Matty Dalrymple YouTube channel focused specifically on the From Expertise to Authority content ... a consulting offering ... a new podcast: From Expertise to Authority ... and a Substack at Matty Dalrymple. I’m actually hosting the podcast through Substack, and I’d like to send out another big thank you to Angelique, who was one of my first From Expertise to Authority podcast guests and who clued me in to the ability to host the podcast through Substack.

I chose Substack over my own website for my written content for the same reason I’m prioritizing Curios over PayHip for my “direct” product sales: because of the benefits of discoverability. It someone is looking for content related to professional development or career transition or second act career or setting yourself up for success for a sideline or sidehustle, they’re more likely to find me on Substack than on my own website. (And before starting to post to Substack, I confirmed that Substack claims no rights to posters’ IP.)

Another reason for my experiment with Substack is that when I have spoken with writer audiences about sharing nonfiction content, I always got questions about Substack and was only able to address them with second-hand information, which is never my preference, so I figured I should really try it out for myself. Honestly, I dipped my toe in Substack a bit unenthusiastically, because I really wasn’t excited about taking on the care and feeding of another platform, but I’m really enjoying it—it’s social media for thinking people, providing the outreach that social media originally promised, but allowing for much more depth ... and actual (and productive) interactions.

The episodes of the From Expertise to Authority podcast will be a combination of solo episodes and interviews with professionals who have made that journey. When those guests are writers, I’ll share those episodes here on The Indy Author Podcast, and in a future episode of The Indy Author Podcast, I’ll share my repurposing strategy across the podcast, Substack, presentations, and an upcoming book. I really couldn’t launch a whole new platform without a heavy focus on repurposing.

As I mentioned, I believe that what I’m doing over at From Expertise to Authority, while not specific to writers, will be a benefit to writers—especially nonfiction writers moving from a first or main career to a second act or sideline career. And I thought that the best way to share with you what I’ll be doing over at From Expertise to Authority is to share my first podcast episode with you here. These episodes are bite-sized—this one is about seven-and-a-half minutes long, and if you prefer it in text form, it’s a quick read on Substack at Matty Dalrymple.

Next week on The Indy Author Podcast, we’ll resume our regular interview format with a conversation with Laura Goode about THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ADVOCACY, and that’s an episode you won’t want to miss. Laura is a writer with an MFA from Columbia University, a poet, a film producer, a writer of nonfiction that has appeared in BuzzFeed, New Republic, New York Magazine, and elsewhere, and she teaches at Stanford University, where she was honored with the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching. She was recommended to me as a guest by the wonderful Jeff Elkins, the Dialogue Doctor, and his recommendations are always top-notch. I’m looking forward to relistening to that conversation, and I know you’ll enjoy it as well.

If you’d like to revisit any of the information I’ve shared in this episode, a full transcript—not just a summary—is available at theindyauthor.com.

And now, the first, fast episode of the From Expertise to Authority podcast: How Real-World Needs Shaped a Universal Framework.

Read the article on which the first episode of the From Expertise to Authority podcast was based here.