Self Publishing Insiders
Brought to you from the indie author experts at Draft2Digital! Each week, Self Publishing Insiders features an interview with a new guest, covering self-publishing topics from writing and craft to marketing and promoting your books, and anything that can help you build and grow your author career. Learn about new tools, new software, new markets—and of course, all the inside information that D2D can provide! This show features interviews taken from our live D2D Spotlight, available on YouTube and Facebook. Join us, and get your questions answered during the live broadcast, when you visit D2DLive.com!
Episodes
Daniel Willcocks is an international bestselling author, a podcaster, an international speaker, and a coach who has helped dozens of authors turn their creative dreams into reality.
Daniel joins us to discuss lessons from his bestselling book, The Self-Publishing Blueprint.
We'll discuss:
• "The Why Framework" and setting yourself up for success at the start
• Polishing your book until it's ready to publish with editing and for...
M.T. Zimny is a young adult author in the Pacific Northwest, putting her knowledge of human physiology to use in her fantasy novels.
M.T. enhances her larger than life fiction with medical realism, and she's been sharing tips with the Tiktok author community so they can do the same.
We discuss:
• Why medical realism can improve even fantastical settings
• Common mistakes authors make when harming their characters
• Fo...
Dianna Gunn decided she wanted to be a writer at eight years old. Her writing accelerated when she participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time and unlocked the power of community.
Now she runs her own writing community, Weeknight Writers, who are introducing First Draft Fall, a new writing challenger for authors in need of community.
We'll discuss:
• The Weeknight Writers and what they offer authors
• The benefits of author ...
In the current attention economy, it's important to be on your readers' radars. Keeping in touch with your readers by offering them content between releases can turn readers into devoted fans.
Our own Nick Thacker joins us to walk authors through setting up their newsletter.
We'll dsicuss:
• The benefits of maintaining an author newsletter
• How to get a newsletter started from scratch
• Best practices to ensure you find ...
Publisher of Indie Author Magazine and Founder of Indie Author Training, Chelle Honiker's a passionate advocate for the success of Indie Authors. She's taking that passion into a new author education venture with indieauthortraining.com.
We'll learn:
• How training and education in the indie publishing space is changing
• What sets Indie Author Training apart from other education platforms
• How AI has made action and impl...
Claire Taylor is a humor and mystery author and the mind behind The Liberated Writer. As a certified Enneagram practitioner and a long-time editor and story consultant, Claire helps authors understand themselves and their characters more deeply to tell iconic stories.
In this episode, you'll learn:
· What readers want out of character relationships
· How the Enneagram framework can help you create memorable characters
· Ho...
Ashli O’Connell is the author of the historical novel Emmaline. As a debut author, she earned five figures of royalties in ten weeks— all without having her book in Kindle Unlimited.
Ashli joins us to share insights into her author debut and lessons learned from her successful book launch.
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital i...
Dale L. Roberts is an accomplished indie author and host of Self-Publishing with Dale on YouTube. His specialties include book publishing, video production, public speaking, and networking.
We dig into:
· What authors can get out of YouTube
· How to start building your platform on YouTube
· What video content you should be making to help your author brand
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Lo...
Before a novel hits shelves, some authors are inviting readers into the process—one chapter at a time. This episode explores pre-publication serialization with novelist Matty Dalrymple, who's serialized her twelfth and latest novel to subscribers.
We dig into:
· For authors: real-time reader feedback, revision insight, and built-in pre-launch buzz
· For readers: early access, behind-the-scenes author not...
Tara from Author Support joins the D2D Team to answer author questions and bust common myths about publishing with Draft2Digital.
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We’ll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way.
• Get started now: ...
In this episode, we delve into new data from Edison Research that found U.S. fiction audiobook listeners prefer Spoken’s multi-cast AI narration to that of human narrators. The study surveyed over 1,000 fiction audiobook listeners who blind-tested human narration against Spoken's Multi-Cast™ AI narration.
To help us understand the data, we’re joined by Phil Marshall, founder of Spoken, and Megan Lazovick, vice president...
Sometimes discovery writing leads to dead ends, character inconsistency, or stories that wander off track. USA TODAY Bestselling Author Paul Austin Ardoin joins us with tips to help pantsers looking for practical tools to strengthen their stories without losing what makes them discovery writers.
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the...
Author Nation is the world’s largest indie author conference, built around a simple belief: successful authors are built through community, strategy, and consistent action.
But Author Nation is more than a four-day Vegas Convention; it's a community meant to help authors build sustainable, prosperous creative careers in the golden age of content creation.
In this episode, you'll learn:
• The mission and...
Substack for indie authors: where to start, what to post, and how to grow. Sinem Günel of Write • Build • Scale joins the D2D Self Publishing Insiders podcast to give you the playbook — from setting up your publication to landing your first subscribers and building a readership that follows you from book to book.
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing succe...
The Draft2Digital team discusses the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale and how authors can get the most out of our Smashwords Sales as marketing opportunities.
//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We’ll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whol...
Tikiri Herath is the award-winning author who went from working in federal intelligence to writing her own worlds of suspenseful thrillers. Changing careers can be an intimidating prospect, but Tikiri took a new path and built a thriving author business along the way.
This week, we'll discuss:
• Pivoting mid-career from corporate work to full time novelist.
• Running indie author-dom as a business.
• Writing thrillers wit...
Amy Award is a spicy romance author who believes that all bodies are beautiful and deserve their own love stories with Happy Ever Afters. This week, she joins us for a deep dive on building connections with fans.
You'll learn:
• Why direct author-reader connection is indie authors’ secret superpower
• Proven strategies for turning casual readers into lifelong superfans
• How Amy built a devoted community &mdas...
Romance Writers of America® (RWA) has a long history of advancing the common interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy and by increasing public awareness of the romance genre.
In this conversation you'll learn about:
• The RWA's historic mission of uplifting the romance genre
• The many ways RWA helps career-minded romance authors advance their careers
• What's in ...
NYT Bestselling Author Alessandra Torre and co-founder of Inkers Con joins us to discuss opportunities authors should be considering in 2026.
In this episode, we'll learn:
• 3 areas where authors should focus their efforts from 7x NYT bestsellling author Alessandra Torre
• What's in store at Inkers Con 2026, a premier online author conference and one of the only conferences to offer a money-back guarantee
• Challeng...
As authors, we strive for success, but without the right mindset, it can be impossible to build a sustainable author career. Russell Nohelty of Hapitalist joins us to discuss how authors can find career success without sacrificing joy.
In this week's episode, you'll learn:
• The importance of balancing passion and business.
• The Philosophy behind Hapitalist.
• How to build a serious author career ...
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DISGRACELAND is an award-winning music and true crime podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. Jerry Lee Lewis's 5th wife? Dead. Sid and Nancy? Both dead. Why? Because musicians are insane, and insane things happen to them. Why did we lose Amy Winehouse at 27? Was Debbie Harry really abducted by Ted Bundy as she claims? Is Patti Smith not just the "Godmother of Punk", but also the "Original True Crime Girl"? What really happened the night of the Jay Z nightclub stabbing? What do the Diddy indictments truly reveal? All these stories and more, on artists from every genre and their true crimes, in our massive 260-plus story archive. The Dead, the Stones, Johnny, Willie, Frank, Kurt, Courtney, Gaga, Lana, Taylor, and too many to name. DISGRACELAND is music history come to life through audio storytelling as you've never heard it before, with revealing facts: yes, assassins are the real reason the Beatles quit touring—reclaimed myths: no, Mama Cass didn't die from choking on a ham sandwich––and constant reckoning between art and artist––all told through the lens of true crime. This is the podcast for the self-proclaimed "Disgos", the musically obsessed and the true crime heads; the outsiders, the independent thinkers who know that the best history is the history that gets buried. DISGRACELAND is where host Jake Brennan tells the stories they didn't want told. The kind you'll end up telling someone else. Get ready to uncover hidden truths and buckle up for truly edge-of-your-seat storytelling. New, fully scripted, sound-designed episodes are released every Tuesday. Bonus chat-style episodes where Jake responds to voicemails, texts, and emails from Disgos hit on Thursdays, and "Rewind" episodes from our archive drop on Sundays. DISGRACELAND is not a journalistic podcast. It's an entertainment podcast inspired by true events. Certain dialogue and scenes are dramatized, as is common in scripted entertainment based on real stories. Sources and credits for each episode are available at www.disgracelandpod.com. To unlock ad-free listening, exclusive content, and connect with your fellow Disgos, go to www.disgracelandpod.com to become an All Access member. Rocka Rolla.