35 Episodes
1 Transcribed
15 Ratings
Bi-weekly Cadence
2025 First episode About The Written Word Podcast A podcast for authors who want to build successful writing careers. Each episode explores the business and craft of being an author, with practical strategies for selling more books, growing your audience, and navigating the publishing world. Presented by Written Word Media.
Publisher Written Word Media
Category arts · business
Language en
Explicit No
First episode 29 Jul 2025
Latest episode 27 Oct 2026 Latest episodes 1 of 35 episodes have a transcript.
27 Oct 2026
The 3 Phases of Holiday Book Sales (and How to Win Each One) The holiday season isn't just one big shopping rush; it's three distinct marketing windows, and indie authors can win all three. In this episode, Ricci and Ferol break down the full holiday timeline, from Black Friday through mid-January, and give you a concrete plan for each phase so you can sell more books and start the new year strong.
What you’ll learn:
The "Turkey 10" (Nov 21–30): why this is the time to discount, stack promos, and send more email than you think you're allowed to
The Holiday Hustle (Dec 1–shipping cutoffs): how to lean into gifting season, move physical inventory, and use urgency messaging
The Golden Window (Dec 26–mid-January): why ad costs drop, gift cards flood the market, and this is the single best window for launches and launches
What NOT to do in each phase, including the #1 mistake that leaves authors scrambling
Why Small Business Saturday is a hidden gem for authors
Whether you're planning your first holiday push or looking to level up your strategy, this episode is your playbook. Don't wait; inventory at promo sites sells out fast.
For more holiday marketing tips and the companion infographic cheat sheet, check out the Written Word Media blog at writtenwordmedia.com/learn (http://writtenwordmedia.com/learn).
Want to learn more ways to reach readers? Visit writtenwordmedia.com (http://writtenwordmedia.com) for author resources, book promotion tools, and more.
The Written Word Podcast is produced by Heart Centered Podcasting.
© 2026 Written Word Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
13 Oct 2026
Your Book Cover Is Your #1 Marketing Asset: Here's How to Get It Right with Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy Your book cover is the first thing every reader sees, and according to Ricardo Fayet, co-founder and CMO of Reedsy, most indie authors are getting it wrong. In this episode, Ferol Vernon sits down with Ricardo for a no-nonsense conversation about what actually makes a cover sell, how to work with a professional cover designer, when to consider recovering, and why the text on your cover matters more than the image. Ricardo has helped hundreds of authors land on the Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and has literally written the book on book marketing. He brings the same candor and data-backed thinking he's known for at conferences like NINC and AuthorNation to everything in this episode.
What you’ll learn:
Why your cover isn't just a design decision, but your single most important marketing asset
The three elements every cover needs to get right (and Ricardo's top three pet peeves when authors get them wrong)
What the text on your cover is actually doing, and why it matters more than the image
How AI is changing cover design and the copyright question every author needs to understand
Why cover design requests on Reedsy grew 40% from 2025 to 2026, despite AI image generation
The genre-fit vs. stand-out debate, and Ricardo's answer to the million-dollar question
When to recover a book and what to try first before spending the money
How to write a cover design brief that prevents 90% of the problems authors run into
What to do when you hate the first concepts a designer sends you
Why you should always ask your cover designer for the background image, and what to do with it
Want to dive deeper? Ricardo and his team publish free guides on cover design, hiring designers, and more at reedsy.com/blog (http://reedsy.com/blog).
Want to learn more ways to reach readers? Visit writtenwordmedia.com (http://writtenwordmedia.com) for author resources, book promotion tools, and more.
The Written Word Podcast is produced by Heart Centered Podcasting.
© 2026 Written Word Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
29 Sept 2026
14 Million Copies, 7 Years, and No Publisher: What Dungeon Crawler Carl's Success Teaches Every Indie Author What does it actually take to go from two people at your convention booth to 14 million copies sold and a TV deal with the creator of Family Guy? In this episode, Ricci Wolman and Ferol Vernon do a deep dive into the rise of Matt Dinniman, the indie author behind the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, a litRPG book that no traditional publisher would have signed and that is now hitting the Amazon and New York Times bestseller lists. This is the first in a new case study series on indie authors who made it big. The lessons in this episode apply to every author, regardless of genre.
What you’ll learn:
How Matt started as an illustrator selling cat and dog portraits on Etsy, and why that creative foundation mattered
Why he shelved Dungeon Crawler Carl in 2009, rediscovered it in 2019, and published on Royal Road before Amazon, and what that unconventional launch path taught him
The audiobook narrator connection that first ignited word of mouth (and how it happened through gaming culture, not publishing)
The Tipping Point framework: why starting in a small, hungry, underserved community is a faster path to critical mass than going broad
The Kickstarter strategy that charged $777 to live and $666 to die, and why the financial model mattered less than the story it created
How Matt used Patreon not just for revenue but as a collaborative creative process, and why the showrunner of his TV series was a Patreon subscriber before they ever met
Why he sold only his print rights to Random House (keeping ebook rights entirely), and what that says about the new power of indie publishing
The "village" theory of audience building: why depth of community beats breadth of reach in the early stages
Why human connection is now the single biggest competitive advantage authors have in an AI-saturated world
The 7-year overnight success myth, and what it means for authors grinding right now
More case studies coming: Ricci and Ferol already have the next one in the works. Each author's path is different, and that's exactly the point.
Want to learn more ways to reach readers? Visit writtenwordmedia.com (http://writtenwordmedia.com) for author resources, book promotion tools, and more.
The Written Word Podcast is produced by Heart Centered Podcasting.
© 2026 Written Word Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Inside a recent episode Hybrid Publishing Lessons with Erica Rooney: From Writing to Launch Published 7 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] I just don't want to do any more of the figuring it out. I tell people all the time, it's kind of like, so my husband and I got married in Mexico. And we legally got married in the US because I started doing the research and there were all these things that you had to do to get married in Mexico. […] Read the full transcript with a Pod Engine plan.
See plans Reach and audience Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US) 5.0 / 5 6 ratings
Spotify 4.9 / 5 9 ratings Shows with a similar audience Questions about The Written Word Podcast How often do new episodes come out? The show publishes bi-weekly, based on its RSS feed.
Does The Written Word Podcast take guests? Yes. Guests have been identified in episode analyses.
Where can I read transcripts? 1 of 35 episodes have a transcript on Pod Engine. Full transcripts are available with a Pod Engine plan.
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RSS feed Last successful check: 8 Nov 2026 .
Apple Podcasts ratings (US) Snapshot recorded: 18 Oct 2026 .
Spotify ratings Snapshot recorded: 14 Oct 2026 .
Transcript Generated: 9 Jun 2026 .
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