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In this episode Mark talks with Matty Dalrymple, co-author of the book The Podcast Guest Playbook which was released earlier in 2025.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares recent comments, a brief personal update and a word about this episode’s sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK5 at checkout and save $5.00 off your own personalized report.
In their interview, Mark and Matty talk about:
- Something that Stark Reflections listeners might not know about Matty related to getting her private pilot license
- Having worked aviation into at least two of her novels
- The phrase that goes along with the very intentional passing of the manuscript from one co-author to another
- How long Matty has been running The Indy Author Podcast
- The genesis of the book PODCASTING GUEST PLAYBOOK that Matty and Mark co-authored
- The underlying importance of connections that can happen through direct conversation between two people, but also among people who listen to that conversation (such as in a podcast)
- An anecdote from meeting an author at ALA (American Library Association) who thought they’d met Mark in person before because they’d heard him as a guest on someone else’s podcast
- Wanting it to be a mutually beneficial relationship when making those connections
- A reminder about the old Storygraph tool that showed a visual representation of how books were linked (Back in 2007 this was a visual search tool where book covers appeared as thumbnails and “connections” between books (via “customers who bought this also bought this”) were drawn as lines.
- Some of the unique connections that happened when both Mark and Matty were at ALA in Philadelphia in the summer of 2025
- An example of how Damon Courtney of Bookfunnel is a great podcast guest who is more interested in providing value to all listeners rather than someone who is solely trying to sell his product
- How indirect opportunities can be better than a sudden spike in book sales
- The offer that Matty has for authors to help do a short interview for them to demonstrate their skills as a interview guest
- A special offer for patrons of the Stark Reflections Podcast to get a free coaching session from Matty with her pod-pro coaching
- An example of a guest who was very reluctant to provide valuable information in an interview (ie, being far more interested in selling something)
- The value of having a service mindset over a selling mindset
- Making sure that you’re pitching to the right podcast in the right way at the right time
- Advice Matty would offer to authors
- And more . . .
After the interview Mark reflects on a few different things, including the rise of the sophistication of the spammy author connection and service requests that arrive in his email a half dozen times a day.
Links of Interest:
- The Indy Author
- The Podcast Guest Playbook
- Matty’s POD PRO Consulting (Patron link to access offer)
- EP 439 – Rambling Reflections from the Road to Can-Con
- Manuscript Report (Mark’s affiliate link)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation – Affiliate link)
- Mark’s YouTube channel
- Mark’s Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author’s Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Matty Dalrymple educates and advocates for writers as The Indy Author. She is the host and producer of hundreds of episodes of The Indy Author Podcast and serves as the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors. She is the author of the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels and Lizzy Ballard Thrillers.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Mark, thank you so much for such a great conversation! I hope people will listen to the end, because your reflection on how AI has changed the landscape of email outreach since we recorded this conversation back in June 2025 is vital for people to know about. With the spike in faux personalized pitches, I have moved away from recommendations related to email outreach for podcast guest appearances and am leaning even more heavily into the importance of building and nurturing your writing and publishing communities.
This episode gives new emphasis to a couple of ideas that were rebooted when I got my copy of your podcasting book.
The first is this idea I’ve been playing with but don’t really have the skill to create, and that is to design a backdrop that would make it look like I was on the bridge of the ship in my stories while doing video interviews.
The second comes from a little tidbit I picked up where a podcast guest pointed out that writers and readers use different language, and if we want to reach readers we need to learn how to speak in terms they use.
To this is end I have been searching for podcasts that introduce readers to new authors in my genre (science fiction), which turns out to be easier said than done.