Making Content Work Harder: Repurposing Tips for Indie Authors with Matty Dalrymple

327 / How can you make one piece of content do more for you? What does it take to juggle fiction, nonfiction, and podcasting? Matty Dalrymple shares tips on how she builds an audience on multiple platforms, collaborates on nonfiction projects, and streamlines her business strategies.

• Streamlining social media to focus on meaningful engagement
• Leveraging Substack for podcasting and community building
• Collaboration tips for co-authoring nonfiction
• The mindset shift from scattered efforts to strategic synergy

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⚡Links:

• Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com
• https://www.mattydalrymple.com/about
• https://www.theindyauthor.com/authority
• Ep 241: Platform Building: Matty Dalrymple & Michael LaRonn on Platform Building for Your Personality Episode 241     
• Ep 117:  Focus on the Writing ttps://www.buzzsprout.com/2121723/episodes/13287805-matty-dalrymple-on-keeping-your-focus-on-the-writing

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

you have this huge wealth of information to share with other people. And so that turned into a kind of a who am I themed article, which I then recorded video that I can put up on YouTube. That becomes the article that I post on Substack. It will become a chapter of the eventual book. So I just think that this idea of making the most of all the content you create and looking for those synergies across different components of your content is something that has really helped me.

Jami 0:35

Welcome to With My Movement Podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette and I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Maddie Dalrimple. Yes making it return apparent. I always love having Maddie on.

Sara 0:48

She's so smart and she's just very professional. Yes she is she is she does such a great job and she does so much. We talk about how she does so many things and how she makes what she does go further. She gets the most out of each piece of content which I do not do. I do not do it either I just run on down the road going oh what's next I don't think about can this do anything else. So she gives us some tips on that. It was really good and talked about streamlining social media and how she's using Substack too. So that's a little bit different from what we normally do in the collaboration tips. So that's all coming up we should mention BookFunnel is our sponsor and we will talk about them a little bit more in a minute.

Jami 1:33

So how are you? I am fine. I just got back from vacation yesterday vacationing quotation marks is because we were with my daughter and her five children her husband her in-laws and us and so you know we have five kids around it's it's not the relaxing yeah yeah there's not a lot of like just lounging around right no no but we were in Florida and unfortunately Bertha decided to hang out with us for a few days so we had double red flags on the beach a couple of days so we couldn't even get on the beach but we were able to go to the pools and that was fine. So we really out of seven days only got four four good days on the beach the other days we really couldn't be there and they only were able to really get in the water two of those days. Wow so or we were it was still fun we still had a great time we all stayed in the same house and you know it's just fun and we had family pictures made which was great and then I also got them to take a couple of shots just of me because I I need some new headshots so we're I'm hoping some of these will work out work for that. So we'll see yeah did y'all do them on the beach the photos or yes we did do them on the beach and then some around the property where we were staying yeah so nice it was it was great it was really fun and yeah we just had a great time. How about you?

Sara 3:11

We're going out of town next week I guess when this comes out we'll be on our trip. So we're going to the mountains we're doing the opposite of the beach all I've been doing recently is just focusing on the revisions and I've made it through about a fourth of the book which is good but still three fourths left and working on setting up you know appointments for copy editing and proofreading and all that. And I sent a message to Adriel she was going to help me with it and I was like let's aim for late September I think I said then I got back the dates and I would that they could do it and I was like I'd forgotten I'd forgot to calculate I was going out of town next week and then we have other stuff going on and so I thought okay I'm going to say that's I've had some things I've I've remembered some things I some commitments I have. Yes. And so I will push that out and ask for a later date. And in the past I would normally just have done it just buckled down and got it done. Right. But this is part of my new trying to be more realistic and not schedule myself too tightly, you know? Right. Because I just can't I could do that. I could have picked the date and just made it happen but I think I'll be a lot less stressed if I can push it out a little bit further. I mean in my mind I'm like okay get this back do the you know do all the steps to get ready to go and then launch it before the end of the year because you know I will probably launch it to my list first and I wanted to do that but if I wait for the audiobook I don't know if I'll be able to get it out because I don't know that I want to launch anything in December or late November ish December. So I mean if you did the week after Christmas is usually a pretty good week but but there's a lot going on who knows now who knows now yeah there's a lot like readers have a lot there's a lot of advertising going on and a lot of so it could be good or bad. But anyway so that's all I've done is just make that decision not to kill myself doing the copy edits.

Jami 5:09

One more thing I'm going to mention I don't have all the data so I'm not gonna I'll just tell you what I know now. I did hire book talker to do two videos for my book the the new book she just mentioned she was gonna read it last Thursday just I'm gonna spend the day reading this book and then I saw an uptick in sales just with her mentioning it. Not a huge amount maybe 15 more than normal and I was like oh well that's interesting. Well then later that day she was reading it but she made a video the next day just saying oh my gosh I've sat here you know this book it's got five sisters they're officially loyal it wasn't even a full review it was just a hey the about the top of her head kind of I sold 95 books on that day and then the next day she did the review no there was a there was a gap and then she did the review on Sunday. All that to say I've made back what I paid her and have made a profit I don't know how much profit right now we're about a hundred dollars over what I paid which I'm like okay but more than that the rank on that book went from about twenty five thousand to forty one thousand I mean forty one hundred forty one thousand forty one hundred and it stayed around four to five thousand now since last Thursday which I think it just has to help you know what I'm saying like it just has to help the algorithm I'll know more next the next time I update you but it's noon on Monday oh my phone's dead I think I've sold almost 50 books today you know so she did the review yesterday it sounds like she hit the right audience for it and that's why and it's kind of a self-cycling thing where you're like if the right person finds an Amazon shows it to them they go oh this person likes it and they show it to more people like that that could keep it really really moving.

Sara 7:23

So that's great.

Jami 7:23

I felt like I mean it was it was not cheap but I it was reasonable for I could pay it that was not a big deal I did reach out to somebody else and I really like this guy but he's too expensive. I mean he he's with a management company and they sent me his rates and one one Instagram video is twice the price I paid for this and she posted on Instagram and TikTok and so it's like oh that's a bummer but I felt like this was something I could do if I could find more of these in this price range I might cut back on my ads and just do this because it seems to have a bit of a tail I'll know more in the next few days. But one thing I thought was interesting she did say when I post these videos I find it work they work better and I get more interaction if the author does not immediately go in and start commenting. She said if the author waits at least 24 hours to start commenting they seem to do better.

Sara 8:26

That probably makes sense because people would feel like it's maybe more authentic even though she's obviously reading the book and talking about it. But yeah that's interesting.

Jami 8:35

Good to know I'll speak it was shocking that's the best rank it's had in its whole life and again you know I mean I'm just I'm just seeing what works you know I mean I'm just seeing what I can do to get visibility on this book that has not done as well as I had hoped it would do.

Sara 8:58

So yeah yeah well we're in I don't know this uh brave new world of book publishing where we don't know what works yet or what's working right now. So you just have to figure it out.

Jami 9:08

I will say more exposure means you're opening yourself up to more criticism. As is always there were a couple of comments that were like I tried it's just too depressing or okay nope I'm not gonna do I'm not reading that. And that's okay. You know it's not for everybody. But but again I've not gotten any negative reviews on this book. So if you get more exposure you're opening yourself up.

Sara 9:34

So you have to know that yeah it's the double edged sword where you get comments but some of them may not be or you get broader exposure. Yes. And with that comes the good and the bad.

Jami 9:48

So you gotta be prepared.

Sara 9:49

Well let's see we have no no new supporters this week but thank you to our continuing supporters and if you want to support the podcast you could go to our website wish Idnumforwriters.com slash support or find us on Substack and sign up there and get access to the backlist of supporter episodes and we will have some new ones probably starting up in August I think I think we've haven't been able to do one in June or July but we'll have some starting up in August we'll get back at it. And thank you also to our corporate sponsor BookFunnel which just helps us out with the you know keeping the lights on with the all the software we use to get everything done for the podcast. BookFunnel they do it all they deliver reader magnets they send out advanced copies of your books they give you ability hand out ebooks at conferences and they fulfill digital sales to readers and they're in the business of making readers happy which I love I just had an email that from a reader who said she'd purchased my book on my store on my Shopify store and she messaged me and said I don't have an e-reader and I read on an Android I've never bought an ebook before how do I do this? And I just forwarded it to BookFunnel and I copied her on it and I said hey these people are the experts they can help you they will take care of you and I was like went on with my day.

Jami 11:07

Yeah and just trusted and knew they would handle it. That's the great thing like you can send people on to customer service and things like that but you're not always sure they're gonna handle it but absolutely you know they're going to with with book funnel.

Sara 11:22

So look for them at bookfunnel.com if you want more information. And do we have anything else? Nope I think that's it. Okay well here is Maddie we are really excited to welcome back Maddie Dalrymple to the podcast. Hi Maddie how are you?

Jami 11:37

I am doing great how are you doing we are great thanks for being here again. It's always a pleasure.

Sara 11:44

Maddie Dalrymple is the author of Thrillers and Suspense novels as well as suspense short stories. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. Maddie hosts two podcasts the Indie Author Podcast and From Expertise to Authority in From Expertise to Authority Maddie guides participants through a practical framework for building professional presence through three progressive stages to build influence income and long-term relevance.

Jami 12:08

So Maddie give us an update what's been going on with you since you were on our podcast last I think in October of 2024.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah a lot has been going on so I think in the October 2024 episode I was joined by Michael Laron who is my my partner in crime we had just come out with From Page to Platform how to succeed as an author speaker. So we were sharing information about that with your audience. And then since then I have written a second book with Michael called Collaborate to Create, which is all about co-authoring nonfiction because we figured we had co-authored nonfiction, why not write a book about our experience? Sure. And I think on the same day that book came out which I think was June of 2025 a co-authored book that I wrote with Mark Lefeb came out which was the podcast guest playbook which was I had written a book called The Indie Author's Guide to Podcasting for Authors, which was very focused on the host perspective. Mark and I collaborated on this book that was focused on podcast guesting. And it was funny because the those two opportunities to co-author kind of came up separately and they were both heading toward completion at the same time. And I was like, oh my God, which one do I launch first? Which one do I launch second? And I thought, you know what? I'm just going to cram it all into one day. Yeah. So we launched that and then I think that since then Mark and I also put out a second edition of the book we had co-authored about short fiction called Taking the Short Tack, Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction that covers all the activities on the nonfiction front. And then I think that since then I have put out one new edition of the Ancaneer Suspense novels, the Lizzie Balor Thrillers and I also launched a collection of my Ancineer short stories.

Jami 13:52

Oh wow goodness so you have been juggling a lot I don't know about y'all but I took a nap before we got on here.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

So I don't it doesn't have more tiring saying it out loud like that it sounds exhausting but you plug away at it and these things happen.

Sara 14:07

That's right. That's right. That is true. Yeah we'll probably come back to that juggling all these different things since you've been on before we have a little bit unusual questions this time.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

So what's the most important lesson you've learned recently so I would say that the most important lesson I learned recently is tied to this new platform I spun up from expertise to authority. And it came about because I have for years I've authored I've offered consulting services to writers and when I first spun up that service I thought that most of those consulting engagements were going to be some flavor of I finished a book, what should I do with it now? Which some of them are. But then I started getting a concentration of clients who were who already had a book they had already either published it themselves or they had worked with someone to publish it, gotten a publisher interested in it, whatever that might be and now they were looking for ways to get the word out there. And these were all nonfiction books. And as I would talk through options with them, I would say, oh maybe you'd want to consider guesting on podcasts as a way to spread the word or maybe you'd even want to consider hosting a podcast or you could consider doing speaking engagements related to this or maybe even partnering with someone to co-author and I finally realized I had written books on all these topics and they it and it was feeling one-offs like a menu but not like not the constructed meal that you would want it to be. I realized that there was a sort of more holistic way to look at this and that these could all feed each other in really productive ways. And that was very valuable for my own purposes for my own career but it was also something that I realized this kind of framework could benefit other people too.

Jami 15:46

That's very interesting. That's how the whole thing came about just you putting it all together like that. That's so amazing.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah I just started thinking about yeah that there was a need for this and then I think one of the other things maybe that wasn't a completely new learning but that was that this really illustrated for me is that whenever I've written a book it has not been primarily because I'm expecting to make big bucks from the book. It is because I'm looking for what the book makes available like speaking engagements or like consulting engagements. And so I thought oh I would love to I would love to pitch myself as a speaker on this topic. I would love to pitch myself as a consultant on this topic and it would be great to have a book really was looking for a way to get my brain around all the aspects of this and around that time I interviewed Angela Fawns for the Indie Author podcast and she was talking about how she uses Substack to support writers who are writing short fiction. And she was saying she liked it because what provided her with an outlet to get to people it she could use it almost as an email service because she was being able to communicate with the people who were interested in her work that way. And I found out that you can do a podcast through Substack. I was like, oh that sounds interesting because I really wanted the impetus I love the idea of writing articles on the topic that would help me think through this new area and that could then form the basis of chapters in a book and that I was doing in a platform that would enable me to actually interact with people about this stuff, which has been super helpful.

Jami 17:22

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

What's the big change you've had to make in your thinking or mindset about I think that a lot of it is around figuring out how to not only present all these things holistically but work on them holistically and find ways to make one piece of content do multiple pieces of work.

Jami 17:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Because that is really what enabled me to launch another podcast and the Substack and a YouTube channel and all that related to from expertise to authority because I would interview people like Sarah I found I would discover people who I was talking to them when I was like oh this person's story is exactly illustrating the kind of experience that I want to explore I would put those interviews up as podcast episodes via Substack. A lot of times the interview would spark an idea that I could then parlite into an article for example I think one of the ideas that Sarah you and I talked about was the idea of who am I? Who am I to write a book about writing a series or who am I to write a book about how to use tropes and mystery and thriller. I'm surrounded by I Sarah am surrounded by people who write mysteries and write series. So who am I? Forgetting that's 0.01% of the people that might be interested in this and that you have this huge wealth of information to share with other people. And so that turned into a kind of a who am I themed article which I then recorded video that I can put up on YouTube that becomes the article that I post on Substack. It will become a chapter of the eventual book. So I just think that this idea of making the most of all the content you create and looking for those synergies across different components of your content is something that has really helped me. Yeah.

Sara 19:11

Yeah and when I was on your podcast I was impressed with the way you did the podcast and then you did the article and it all especially I think because you're using Substack it all combines together and then you can reach people on Substack because it is a social media platform and you can share your content there and it's all built in, which is really nice. So do you like Substack?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

You use it quite a bit I just started posting I think that in December and so I'm still very much learning there was there's definitely a learning curve with any platform even down to the things like I would put some piece of metadata in when I was posting an article or posting a podcast episode and then I would see it later and I was like oh that's what happens to that piece of metadata. That's not what I expected that I'd have to go back and fix it all in all the other episodes. I just recently discovered that you can do this notes thing on just fortunately I interviewed someone Elle Griffin who who has both fiction and nonfiction content on Substack and I was learning some stuff from her and I was like oh that's great too because it's a much nicer way of interacting with people. But I do really like it because you get the discoverability of being on a third party platform as opposed to posting on your own website. And I think that people who go there it's like the thinking person social media because it's longer content. You're attracting a group of people who are willing to read longer content. And then I've gotten some of my article ideas have come from I'll post a question out there, someone will answer it and oh I never thought of that angle on it. So yeah I am really enjoying it.

Sara 20:48

Yeah we're very new to Substack and we're still figuring it out and yeah I like it because you can curate your feed a little bit you don't have to just have stuff served to you you can go to the people you follow and just read their things which is nice we don't get that choice very often in platforms anymore. So has this how has this changed your business model doing this new podcast and using Substack? What else have you changed and how has it evolved?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Well because this was a whole new suite of things I was trying to do of course you always have to think about what you're gonna stop doing. So I had already started pulling back on other social media platforms. I was focusing pretty much exclusively on Facebook. But now I'm finding I'm even pulling back on Facebook a bit because it's I guess it's a convenient way for people who have been following me there for a while to let them know that a new podcast episode is or let them know whatever book is on sale or whatever. But I just don't find the experience interesting as a consumer anymore. And I think if you don't find the experience interesting as a consumer it's very hard to create content for it. And I would just try to look back to judge as best I could what I was getting Of it. I'm like, I'm not really what I'm getting out of it is not commensurate with the time I'm putting into it. So I really pulled back on that. And I tried to find other ways to streamline what I was doing. So for example, I do want to let people on Facebook know when a new podcast episode is up. And I used to every day for the week of that podcast, I would put a clip up on Facebook, which was like fairly time consuming. And every once in a while I'd, you know, I'd have some people liking, and every once in a while someone would comment, but I wasn't getting any sense that anybody was waiting for this stuff to show up. And so I started just having one longer clip, putting it up and then boosting it for a week. Because once I do it, I can let it run. And then I don't have to be babysitting it or doing extra work those other days. So yeah, I think it is all about always just looking and seeing what is your goal? Is what you're doing helping lead you to your goal? Is your goal changing? Is something that was working for you a year ago still working? I just think that's a continuous assessment process.

Jami 23:01

Yeah. So do you find that boosting the post, does that help? It does help. I'm assuming you you do, you keep doing it, but I've never even thought of that. That's pretty smart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, I do I can see that I get more engagement if I boost it. And I'm boosting it for a tiny amount, two bucks a day.

Jami 23:19

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

So I it's not a huge investment. And I it's like very dumbed-down Facebook ads. So you can pick things like the country and an interest. So I always boost them to people who are interested in self-publishing. And I do get some more engagement. And I figure it's like a what's a low investment for the handful of extra people who seem to see it in comparison to when I don't boost it.

Jami 23:42

That's very interesting. We might need to think about that.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah, it's worth it, like just for a buck or two a day. Just see if you get a little boost.

Jami 23:50

Exactly. What mistakes do you see people making as they try to transition for from expertise to authority?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

I think that I see people making the same mistake I was making, which is doing these things in a scattershot way. And I think that in in any endeavor, this is very much a focus of my my consulting, is what are your goals and are your actions aligned with what you want to achieve? Are your goals realistic? And so the example I always use is if you're if you've put together a history of your family history and you want to make it easily accessible to your friends and family on a platform like Amazon, then your plan is going to look a lot different than if you want to retire on the proceeds of your work. And you can't put out history of your family on Amazon and expect to retire on the proceeds of that work, you know. And so you have to do that kind of assessment. And I think that understanding a person's goals and understanding what you like doing. I could talk to someone who's moving, moving into this platform or into this sort of phase of their career that I'm addressing, which is professionals who are entering a second act or sideline career. And so these are people who have probably built up a lot of expertise in their first or main career, and they want to move into kind of a different persona and a persona of authority. And in some cases, that is I've loved my career, I've learned a lot, I want to continue being engaged, I want to continue being relevant in my area. That's one kind of thing. Another kind of thing could be I have this day job that's paying the bills, but I have a passion that I want to move into. Maybe I'm going to leave my day job at some point and I'm going to be able to explore my passion full time. And so that's another set of goals. And just thinking through, you know, if somebody wants to be earning money, then theoretically speaking engagements is a way they could do that. But if they hate public speaking, probably not something they want to hammer away at. So I just think looking across the different opportunities that are available. Like I think that building credibility through written content, writing articles, is a great way to dip your toe in that pool. And then if you feel comfortable with that, you can expand beyond establishing your expertise to establishing more of a connection with people through things like podcast appearances or podcast hosting or speaking engagements. And then when you've really feel comfortable there, you can move on to another stage, which is building authority. And that's more when you're you're consulting with people and understanding what makes sense for each individual person to slot into each of those stages of building your presence.

Sara 26:31

Very good. And do you find that people tend to want to jump, like they want to skip the to the like the last, like I'm an authority? Do you feel that we kind of get it out of order at times?

SPEAKER_00 26:43

I'm sure that's the case. I fortunately haven't worked with people like that that are making the jump. I think it's more that they're not, they're not seeing it as a path that they can plan for. They're just seeing it as jumping at whatever opportunity happens to be there. And I think in the people I've interacted with, it's more the matter of who am I to offer this expertise? More so than people jumping the gun and saying, I've never written an article on this, but I think tomorrow I'm going to hang out my shingle as a consultant. But I'm sure those people are out there, but fortunately I haven't encountered them yet.

Sara 27:15

Good. Yeah. Your podcast is really interesting. It's got some, you've had some interesting guests and interesting topics. What I'm just curious, what is the most interesting or unusual pathway you've seen somebody take to go? They were going down one pathway and they've branched out into this kind of second act, like you called it.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

There, there have been a couple, like every interview has a surprising aspect to it. So, as an example, I just interviewed Jerry Williams, who is the host of the FBI Case File Review Podcast. She's a retired FBI agent. And she already knew when she was still an FBI agent that eventually she wanted to be able, she wanted to write fiction and nonfiction based on her experience as an FBI agent. And she had an opportunity to become a spokesperson. I actually think this might may have been, I know, I think she was a spokesperson for the FBI and also for SEPTA, which is the Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia area public transit system. And she took both or one of those jobs because she wanted the exposure that would pave the way to that eventual sideline or second act that she saw for herself. So that idea of you can ethically do things that are going to help you in your sideline or second act, even when you're still in your main career, right, with something that I hadn't really thought of before. There are lots of cases of where people have combined things that seem different into a sideline or second act. For example, Phil Marshall, who is who founded Spoken, which is the AI narration company, had background in medical transcription. And he was a novelist. And so he saw this need to say people who don't have the wherewithal to spend thousands of dollars for human narration still want to get their book out there to people who want to hear audiobooks. And so he combined those into a way that he established an area of expertise that didn't even exist before. He combined those things. So I think all the interviews, there's something that I'm like, oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

Sara 29:22

Yeah, that is interesting. It's a very interesting podcast to listen to. It's not your typical writer craft or business focused podcast. It's a different angle on it, which I think is great because it's always good to have your own angle. So you've got this second podcast. You talked a little bit about how you have fit it in and make the things you do, you make it work harder for you. So you get multiple pieces of content from it. But you still, you're doing a lot. You're writing fiction, you're doing all this nonfiction, you're doing collaborations. How are you juggling all this? And I know that we talked over two years, but still on a daily basis, how do you do this?

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Well, it all sounds very, very fabulous and well thought out up till now. But the honest truth is that I just work all the time. I work all the time. And I do that even recognizing that's probably not the best decision for me to make. I'm somebody who it will, it can be 11 o'clock at night, and I'll think, oh, I should go to bed. Oh, but there's this one task in Trello. I could just, I could just click off. No, check off. Yeah, I do this real quick. Yeah, the one learning is that it always takes longer to do anything than you think it's going to. And this is definitely one of those things where do as I say, not as I do, because I do see that when I do force myself away from my desk and I go out and walk the dog or whatever, that is where the good ideas come from. It's just constitutionally difficult for me to remember that. And so I do, I can get a lot accomplished because I'm investing a lot of time in it. But I also think that what's always a goal. I'm about to go on vacation. So I'm hoping this will be like a good idea.

Jami 30:58

You're about to go on vacation. Are you gonna work on vacation?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Absolutely. So vacations are my fiction writing time. I mean working on fiction in one way or the other, but my but I try to clear my calendar so that when I'm on vacation, I only have to do the only thing I have is fiction writing, which is is like a break for me.

SPEAKER_03 31:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

But yeah, I think it's important to balance the checking off the tasks with making sure you're still looking strategically at your career and what you're doing.

Sara 31:29

And are your fiction readers, are they okay with this? Because some fiction readers, you know, they expect book every season, every quarter or every year. So how does how do your readers feel about that? Do they just know that you'll let them know when there's a book and they don't clamor? They leave you alone to do your nonfiction stuff?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

More or less. I'm a book a year sort of person. So the only pushback I get is since I have two series. Sometimes I get when are you going to get to my series again? I have a favorite. When is the next book of that going to come out? I've never been someone who published more frequently than that. There, I have 11 novels out now. They've gotten used to that rhythm. And it does mean certainly that I have to reintroduce myself a little bit whenever I have a new book. But yeah, I just don't think that my brain doesn't work any faster than that. My brain is definitely benefits from having time away from it. Because if I was just trying to bang away at fiction, I just wear myself out. Yeah. I tap out my brain.

Sara 32:27

It is a nice break to switch back and forth from fiction to nonfiction or fiction to podcasting, something like this, like using a different skill set. Exactly.

Jami 32:36

Yeah. This is probably a giant question, but can you give us some collaboration tips? Like maybe four or five collaboration tips, three or four? Just something. Since you've worked with multiple people too. That's different than working with one person all the time.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I'm sure there are do's and don'ts, but yeah, I think that the common theme can be that it's what is your goal and how are you going to get there?

Jami 33:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

And so when I'm working with other people, a really important part of that is making sure we have the same goal and how we're going to get there. So as an example, I was working on the podcast guest playbook, basically because I wanted, I wanted material that I could give to podcast guests, prospective podcast guests. And then as I started writing these up, I would think, oh, I could talk about this. Oh, I could talk about this. And very clearly it became beyond just a little guide for guests and it had book potential. And so I was pretty happy with that. But I was at Author Nation and I had lunch with Mark Lefebv and I was telling him about that. And then we were walking back from lunch and he said, Oh, by the way, if you're looking for a co-author for that book, I'd be interested in that. And I was like, Yes, yes, in fact, I am. Because I had a lot of the factual detail, but what I realized Mark could really bring was the personal stories, the illustrative stories to demonstrate the points that we wanted to make. And so in that case, it was, I was quite far along with the manuscript at that point. So a lot in a lot of cases, it was me just sending Mark a note saying, Mark, I need a story about dealing with a difficult radio interview. Or Mark, I need a story about something you learned in the midst of an interview that you were able to implement in order to have the interview be more than it would have been otherwise. So at that point, when we were working in that, we had already co-authored a book. So we had a system down. Yeah. Yeah. So he was color commentary then. He was color commentary, exactly. And when I was working with with Michael, so we did our second co-authored book on co-authoring. We had written from page to platform. And when we started out, we thought it was going to be co-authoring both fiction and nonfiction. And then as we just started outlining what we wanted to include, it quickly became clear that the tips, first of all, the tips for fiction co-authoring were quite different than the tips for nonfiction co-authoring. And it was almost going to be like two books between one set of covers. Yeah. And also, although Michael had quite a bit of experience co-authoring fiction, I had only ever co-authored one short story. So there weren't that many circumstances where I could say, in my experience, such and such, which would have really put an unnecessary burden on him. And so that was one of those ones that we just changed what our goal was to be was just focus it on nonfiction collaborations. And so yeah, I think it's just what's the goal? How do you want to get there and make sure everybody's on board with that?

Jami 35:33

And always have a contract.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yes, I we would say always have a contract. Michael is someone who actually went to law school. Yes, it is. Yeah, it really was because it our contracts are very short, but they do cover things like what if something happens to one of us? And our heirs, we need to know who the heir is who should now be receiving benefits from the book we've co-authored. There's the set of things that are helpful to have legally signed. And then there's just another set of things that are helpful to be just an agreement, an informal agreement, like let's plan on having the first draft in about a month. Both of us have in the middle of one of our books, our house flooded. So I was like, you know what? I'm not gonna be getting the draft by the end of the month. And and that was fine. We've both been very flexible about that. So yeah, a combination of formal and informal agreements.

Sara 36:25

That's great. And flexibility is important because I remember that when I was doing the book with Jennifer Hilt, we drew up a contract. And then we had a loose idea of we'll do these this for promotion. And one of the things we talked about was doing a Kickstarter. And we thought that would be great. And then that ended up, she had to move, and then I had another thing going that same time. And we just scratched that off the list. We're like, yeah, that's fine. And we were both okay with that. So yeah, sometimes you just have to roll with life punches, like when your house floods, you just can't keep those deadlines.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Yeah. And I think that's suggests another good tip, which is just if you are thinking of entering into a collaboration with someone, remember, it's like a creative marriage, and you're gonna be in this for a long time, like way beyond just publishing the book. For years, decades, you're going to be enmeshed with each other in one way or the other. And in our in Collaborate to Create, we go through some of the practical things that you need to keep in mind when you're assessing a potential collaborator, but we end just by saying, and you've just got to pay attention to your gut. If you're coming up to the point of formalizing it and you're just feeling beyond just the natural butterflies of entering into a new partnership, then ignore that at your peril because it might be highlighting a potential problem down the road.

Jami 37:41

I can also see that a lot of collaborations come together or people get ideas for collaborations at conferences or things like that. Where and emotions are high, we're all loving each other. It's a big old love fest. So then you get home and maybe take a step back, think sleep on it for a little bit before you sign anything. Because you need to really consider who this person is and do their values line up with your values? And do you see this business the same way? If you said yes to someone and you were, let's take a really obvious big one, you are very anti-AI and they use AI in a lot of their stuff, then this might not be a very good marriage. So you need to really look at that and think about it. But at the time of talking about it and the initial idea, it's very exciting and it's hard to sometimes step, you just need to take a step back and evaluate.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

There's definitely a checklist to go through, and the use or non-use of AI is definitely one of those things for sure. And I think again, another example of where you want to make sure you're aligned is if one person is doing this because they're primarily looking for income and another person is doing it because they're primarily looking for a calling card for other opportunities, it's not necessarily a non-starter, but maybe you divide royalties differently because the person who's interested in income has incentive to continue running ads or researching cops or all those things. And the person who's looking for a calling card, once the book is out, may be kind of done. And if you know that ahead of time, you can say, okay, why don't you keep 60% and I'll keep 40%? Or there are ways around it as long as you identify those things early.

Jami 39:21

That's really that's very, a very good point too. Because Yeah.

Sara 39:26

Yeah, because I was thinking about promotion. You have your initial blitz when it comes out where you're getting the word out. But then if one person wants to continue to promote it, you know, every month for the next two years, and the other person's, oh, I'm done, I'm out. That's something you need to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Yeah, I would say that I do have this rotating schedule where every month I focus on one of my nonfiction books and I create, I create all the Canva images and I create the accompanying text and I put that all that out on Google Drive. Thank God it's for Google Drive. And I send links to either to Mark or to Michael to access that information. But honestly, they're both so insanely busy that I'm not really expecting them to sink a lot of time into this. And all these books were published under my imprint. So I feel like I'm supposed to be leading the charge on that anyway. That just seems right to me. But I will always flag them. I'll flag their name on Facebook or wherever I'm posting so they'll see it. And then they share it. It's low impact for them. And yet I'm being able to tap into their audiences, which honestly was one of the reasons that it was attractive to me to partner up with them. They both have large committed audiences that I wanted to get access to. And if I can make it as easy as possible for them to help me spread the word to those audiences, I'm happy to do that.

Sara 40:46

This has been great. Tell everybody where they can find out about you and your books in the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

Great. Thank you so much. It is always so lovely to talk with you guys. And if people are interested in my fiction, they can go to maddydalarmple.com and that's Maddie with a Y, M-A-T-T-Y. If they're interested in my nonfiction, they can go to the Indieauthor.com and that's indie with a Y, I-N-D-Y. And if they go to theindieauthor.com forward slash authority, they will find all the information about from expertise to authority and where they can go to read the articles and watch the videos and sign up for my Substack and all the other good stuff.

Sara 41:21

Yeah, that's perfect. Excellent. Yeah. We will have those links in the show notes. And you can find those at wish I known for writers.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to that same link slash support. You can also find us on Substack. And don't forget to check out BookFunnel. Thanks for listening today, and we'll see you everybody next week. Bye. Thank you. Bye.