Classes and Workshops
Matty loves talking about any topic related to the writing craft and the publishing voyage! Some areas of specialty are below.
Indie Publishing in a Nutshell
Taking Control of Your Author Career with Indie Publishing
Beyond the Book: Expanding Your Reach as an Author Speaker
Collaborate to Create: Best Practices for Successful Co-authoring
Building Your Platform through Podcasting
Podcasting as a Guest or Host for Content Marketing
Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction
Be Your Own Gatekeeper: Indie Publishing Your Short Fiction
Publishing Tips for Frugal Authors
Pitching for Promotion: Getting the Gig with Podcasters, Bloggers, and Other Promoters
Creating a Story Frame
Matty's Fiction Work
Indie Publishing in a Nutshell
Taking Control of Your Author Career with Indie Publishing
Beyond the Book: Expanding Your Reach as an Author Speaker
Collaborate to Create: Best Practices for Successful Co-authoring
Building Your Platform through Podcasting
Podcasting as a Guest or Host for Content Marketing
Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction
Be Your Own Gatekeeper: Indie Publishing Your Short Fiction
Publishing Tips for Frugal Authors
Pitching for Promotion: Getting the Gig with Podcasters, Bloggers, and Other Promoters
Creating a Story Frame
Matty's Fiction Work
Indie Publishing in a Nutshell
"Indie Publishing in a Nutshell' is designed specifically for first-time authors looking to explore various options for publishing their work. Matty delve into the realms of ebooks, print, and audio publishing, providing participants with valuable insights to make informed decisions about their publishing journeys.
Understanding Ebook Publishing: Learn the essentials of ebook publishing, from formatting your manuscript to creating visually appealing covers. Explore popular ebook platforms and distribution channels.
Print Publishing Unveiled: Demystify the world of print publishing and discover the steps involved in turning your manuscript into a tangible book. Explore print-on-demand services and traditional printing options.
Venturing into Audio Publishing: Delve into the growing market of audiobooks and understand the production process. Learn about narrators, recording options, and distribution platforms for audiobooks.
By the end of this class, attendees will have a solid foundation in independent publishing, empowering them to make informed decisions about the format that best suits their work.
Understanding Ebook Publishing: Learn the essentials of ebook publishing, from formatting your manuscript to creating visually appealing covers. Explore popular ebook platforms and distribution channels.
Print Publishing Unveiled: Demystify the world of print publishing and discover the steps involved in turning your manuscript into a tangible book. Explore print-on-demand services and traditional printing options.
Venturing into Audio Publishing: Delve into the growing market of audiobooks and understand the production process. Learn about narrators, recording options, and distribution platforms for audiobooks.
By the end of this class, attendees will have a solid foundation in independent publishing, empowering them to make informed decisions about the format that best suits their work.
Taking Control of Your Author Career with Indie Publishing
Matty co-presents this workshop with Michael La Ronn of Author Level Up.
Have you finished your first book and are feeling overwhelmed by what it will take to get it into the hands of readers?
If you don’t know where to start, you might waste time spinning your wheels or make critical mistakes that make your author journey harder than it needs to be. But if you follow the right steps, you can take control of your publishing journey—and make more money—by taking the indie route.
In this comprehensive hands-on workshop, indie authors Michael La Ronn and Matty Dalrymple share the knowledge they’ve gained from more than a decade of independently publishing their fiction and nonfiction books.
You’ll learn the ins and outs of the indie publishing process in a structured format and understand why “independent publishing” is a more accurate term than “self-publishing.” You’ll also have plenty of time to get answers to your most burning questions.
This workshop will cover:
The publishing process doesn’t have to be painful. Join us for a hands-on experience and leave with the confidence and knowledge to publish your own work professionally and successfully.
Who Should Attend:
Have you finished your first book and are feeling overwhelmed by what it will take to get it into the hands of readers?
If you don’t know where to start, you might waste time spinning your wheels or make critical mistakes that make your author journey harder than it needs to be. But if you follow the right steps, you can take control of your publishing journey—and make more money—by taking the indie route.
In this comprehensive hands-on workshop, indie authors Michael La Ronn and Matty Dalrymple share the knowledge they’ve gained from more than a decade of independently publishing their fiction and nonfiction books.
You’ll learn the ins and outs of the indie publishing process in a structured format and understand why “independent publishing” is a more accurate term than “self-publishing.” You’ll also have plenty of time to get answers to your most burning questions.
This workshop will cover:
- Editorial—Self-editing tips and how to work with an editor
- Formatting—How to create industry-standard e-books and paperbacks (without pulling your hair out)
- Design—How to create a book cover that sells to the readers you want to reach
- Production and Distribution—The power of print-on-demand, and considerations about whether to sell only on Amazon or through a variety of platforms (including your own)
- Marketing—How to market your book like a pro without breaking the bank, and the resources every indie author needs, such as an email list and an online home base
- Promotion—Effective strategies used by today’s bestselling indie authors, including how best to deploy tactics such as price discounts
- Copyright and licensing—How to optimize the value of your work to make more money and leave a legacy
- Resources—The tools and services that will improve your productivity and smooth your publishing journey
The publishing process doesn’t have to be painful. Join us for a hands-on experience and leave with the confidence and knowledge to publish your own work professionally and successfully.
Who Should Attend:
- Writers who want to know if indie publishing is right for them
- Authors who want to indie publish, but don’t know where to start
- Indie authors who want to improve their business strategies
Beyond the Book: Expanding Your Reach as an Author Speaker
Stepping into the realm of professional speaking can significantly enhance an author's career. It's not just about sharing your knowledge; it's a multifaceted opportunity. It opens up new avenues for income, both direct and indirect, and allows you to forge deeper connections with your audience. It's also a chance to network with peers and contribute to the collective growth of the author community.
To excel as an author speaker, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of your own objectives, as well as the expectations of the event organizers you'll be working with. Knowing what you want to achieve and the value you can offer to your audience is key. Whether you're delivering presentations, participating in panels, leading workshops, or doing readings, each format requires a specific approach and an understanding of best practices.
In this workshop, led by Matty, you'll dive deep into these essential elements of a speaking career. Matty will help you assess your goals, understand the different types of speaking engagements, and recognize what makes each one effective. By the end of the session, you'll have a solid foundation and a practical action plan to confidently embark on your journey as an author speaker, equipped to inspire, engage, and connect with your audience in meaningful ways.
To excel as an author speaker, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of your own objectives, as well as the expectations of the event organizers you'll be working with. Knowing what you want to achieve and the value you can offer to your audience is key. Whether you're delivering presentations, participating in panels, leading workshops, or doing readings, each format requires a specific approach and an understanding of best practices.
In this workshop, led by Matty, you'll dive deep into these essential elements of a speaking career. Matty will help you assess your goals, understand the different types of speaking engagements, and recognize what makes each one effective. By the end of the session, you'll have a solid foundation and a practical action plan to confidently embark on your journey as an author speaker, equipped to inspire, engage, and connect with your audience in meaningful ways.
Collaborate to Create: Best Practices for Successful Co-authoring
Discover the benefits of collaborating with a fellow author on both fiction and non-fiction works, including shared expertise, double the oversight for higher quality work, reduced workload, and expanded audience reach, which can lead to increased financial and platform-building opportunities.
However, co-authoring comes with its challenges, such as creative disagreements, logistical issues, and personal conflicts. This workshop will provide you with a clear plan to effectively evaluate co-authoring opportunities, set up a strong partnership agreement, and manage the writing and editing process smoothly.
Matty Dalrymple, who has co-authored the book Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction with Mark Leslie Lefebvre and the novella Blood of the Wicked with Jane Gorman, will share practical tips and strategies to maximize the benefits of co-authoring while avoiding common pitfalls. This workshop is about making co-authoring work for you, ensuring a productive and enjoyable collaboration.
However, co-authoring comes with its challenges, such as creative disagreements, logistical issues, and personal conflicts. This workshop will provide you with a clear plan to effectively evaluate co-authoring opportunities, set up a strong partnership agreement, and manage the writing and editing process smoothly.
Matty Dalrymple, who has co-authored the book Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction with Mark Leslie Lefebvre and the novella Blood of the Wicked with Jane Gorman, will share practical tips and strategies to maximize the benefits of co-authoring while avoiding common pitfalls. This workshop is about making co-authoring work for you, ensuring a productive and enjoyable collaboration.
Building Your Platform through Podcasting
"I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of Matty's recent presentation on Podcasting for Authors at the Authorpreneur Summit Down Under, which made me think about starting a podcast. The benefits of a podcast that she has found were also a learning point. Her tips to research first, pros and cons of each format, the broad or niche question, and what kind of podcast topics to share are all sensible points for our author audience. I would not hesitate to include Matty in any future author summit." --Jennifer Lancaster, Authorpreneur Summit Down Under
Among the many options available to writers to build their platforms, podcasting--as a host or as a guest--is one of the fastest growing, and for good reason. “Getting in someone’s head” through audio is one of the most intimate connections you can establish, and a well-planned and well-executed episode or guest appearance can help you build not only a community of listeners but also of fellow writers (not to mention the possibility, as a host, of earning some money).
Matty Dalrymple, host of "The Indy Author Podcast" and author of The Indy Author's Guide to Podcasting for Authors, shares her learnings on how to use podcasting to grow your author platform. Based on her 5+ years and 180+ episodes of the podcast and capitalizing on her love of the nautical metaphor for the writing craft and the publishing voyage, she offers a step-by-step guide for navigating the podcasting voyage, from the most strategic considerations to the most tactical.
Matty walks participants through a “Captain’s Log” of considerations for optimizing your podcast experience, including:
You can see some of the venues where Matty has discussed this topic, including the 2022 Writer's Digest Annual Conference in NYC, here: https://www.theindyauthor.com/podcasting-for-authors.html
Matty Dalrymple, host of "The Indy Author Podcast" and author of The Indy Author's Guide to Podcasting for Authors, shares her learnings on how to use podcasting to grow your author platform. Based on her 5+ years and 180+ episodes of the podcast and capitalizing on her love of the nautical metaphor for the writing craft and the publishing voyage, she offers a step-by-step guide for navigating the podcasting voyage, from the most strategic considerations to the most tactical.
Matty walks participants through a “Captain’s Log” of considerations for optimizing your podcast experience, including:
- Why podcasting ... and why for authors?
- Determining your destination/goals (e.g., networking, paying it forward to the author community, learning, earning, etc.)
- Choosing your topic, format (e.g., solo, interview, panel, live or recorded), medium (audio only, audio and video), venue (virtual or in-person)
- Choosing your persona and brand
- Choosing the tech
- Preparing your space
- Finding great guests
- Being a great guest
You can see some of the venues where Matty has discussed this topic, including the 2022 Writer's Digest Annual Conference in NYC, here: https://www.theindyauthor.com/podcasting-for-authors.html
Podcasting as a Guest or Host for Content Marketing
The power of podcasting to form connections with people in your target audience makes it a great opportunity for content marketing! Content marketing is defined as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing content that is relevant, consistent, high-quality, and free in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, ultimately to drive profitable customer action. Participating in a podcast--either as a host or a guest--is an excellent way of acquainting listeners with your books, products, or services, while also providing value (whether or not they become a customer).
Matty explores each of the aspects of content marketing, and how you can use podcasting to achieve them:
Matty explores each of the aspects of content marketing, and how you can use podcasting to achieve them:
- Relevant content - How do you match the content you have to share with your target audience?
- Consistent content - How to you establish a brand and persona that will signal your target audience that this will be valuable content for them?
- High-quality content - What are the best practices for delivering the highest quality content specific to the podcasting platform?
- Free content - How do you deliver your content in a way that alerts listeners to your offerings while still providing value whether or not they become customers?
Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction
Based on information shared in her book Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction, which she co-authored with Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Matty discusses the opportunities that short fiction offers writers through the traditional short fiction market; via the ever-expanding pool of non-traditional options, such as audio; and how writers who are willing to act as their own gatekeepers can use the tools of independent publishing to get their work into readers' hands. You can see some of the venues where she has discussed this topic, including Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn Podcast, here: https://www.theindyauthor.com/short-fiction.html
Be Your Own Gatekeeper: Indie Publishing Your Short Fiction
Excellent short fiction craft skills are necessary but not sufficient to find placement in the traditional short fiction market—there are many more deserving short stories than there are slots in the trad market to accommodate. But you don’t have to wait and hope that those gatekeepers will find your stories in their enormous slush piles. With an indie mindset, you can not only reach the readers who will love your stories and entice readers to become fans, but also generate income from your short fiction!
Matty Dalrymple, the author of the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Suspense Shorts and the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, as well as Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction, will discuss:
Matty Dalrymple, the author of the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Suspense Shorts and the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, as well as Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction, will discuss:
- The opportunities available to authors to independently publish their short fiction as standalones, as collections, and in anthologies (and why she chose this path for her own stories)
- The logistics of publishing short fiction (editing, proofreading, cover design) and how to make it affordable
- How to maximize the value of your content (as long as you’ve retained the needed rights) by publishing it multiple times, on multiple platforms (especially with the rise of serialization), and in multiple formats (including audio and video)
- Other income opportunities such as patronage
- Opportunities to connect with readers by using short fiction as reader magnets or reader funnels, or for social media promotion (especially with flash fiction)
- Use of short fiction for market research
- How being an active member of the writing and publishing communities paves the way to short fiction success
Publishing Tips for Frugal Authors
Authors owe our readers professional-grade work, and we owe it to ourselves to deliver it as cost-effectively as possible. The two most important hallmarks of professional work—a cleanly edited manuscript and a brand-right, attention-getting cover—are also two of the most expensive components of book creation. In this session, author and publisher Matty Dalrymple shares her frugal tips for achieving a high standard of publishing excellence while also holding down costs.
Matty illustrates the concepts with examples from her own works, including the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Suspense Shorts and her nonfiction books for authors.
The Editing portion of the session will bring value to any author seeking to work more productively with their editor.
The Design portion will bring value to independent authors who are managing their cover design, as well as to any author, indie or traditionally published, who wishes to create brand-right images to support their marketing and promotion work.
- Editing – How authors can find and correct “housekeeping issues” like spelling, grammar, continuity, and consistency so that professional editors can focus on more substantive issues.
- Cover design – How authors, as professional wordsmiths, can partner with visual design pros to achieve greatest cost-efficiency, the flexibility to pivot as cover and genre conventions evolve, and options for creating brand-right marketing and promotional materials.
Matty illustrates the concepts with examples from her own works, including the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Suspense Shorts and her nonfiction books for authors.
The Editing portion of the session will bring value to any author seeking to work more productively with their editor.
The Design portion will bring value to independent authors who are managing their cover design, as well as to any author, indie or traditionally published, who wishes to create brand-right images to support their marketing and promotion work.
Pitching for Promotion: Getting the Gig with Podcasters, Bloggers, and Other Promoters
Much is made of the need for writers to know how to pitch to agents and editors, but the need to pitch yourself and your work doesn’t stop there. Getting the gig with podcasters, bloggers, and others who can promote your work is vital to connecting with the audience who will love your work. And if you take the right approach, the relationships you build with these promoters can pay dividends for both parties long after the podcaster airs your episode or the blogger posts the review of your book.
Attendees will come away from this session armed with the tools they need to ...
Attendees will come away from this session armed with the tools they need to ...
- Consider your approach--whether to pitch yourself or hire a pro
- Do your prep to understand your target audience
- Lay the groundwork for a successful pitch
- Make it personal to connect what you offer to the promoter and their audience
- Make it easy by providing the information the promoter needs upfront
- Be professional by delivering excellent value to the promoter and their audience
- Promote and repurpose to make the most of your appearance
- Deepen the connection and build a long-lasting relationship that will benefit you and the promoter
Creating a Story Frame
Expanding on her Writer's Digest article, available for download here, and using the metaphor of a boat frame, Matty discusses how writers can build their story more efficiently and provide their reader "passengers" with a water-tight story, using a frame. She also discusses how a frame differs from an outline, and how it can morph seamlessly into manuscript. You can see some of the venues where she has discussed this topic here: https://www.theindyauthor.com/creating-a-story-frame.html
Matty's Fiction Work
Of course, Matty is always happy to discuss her own fiction work, The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Suspense Shorts and the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, with reader groups or book clubs. Find out more at https://www.mattydalrymple.com/