7 Podcasts Every Author Should Listen to This Year

We know that authors are busy people, so we’ve taken the time to compile seven podcasts that can help you learn important skills of the trade and entertain you as they educate. These podcasts will help you master grammar, market your books, and give you some good stories to listen to for inspiration.

1. Helping Writers Become Authors by K.M. Weiland: K.M Weiland is an author herself, so her input on the writing process feels genuine and useful. She begins every podcast with an update on her writing, which helps you feel like you’re not alone if you struggle with writer’s block or think that outlining your book is difficult. She then launches into a brief tip about specific writing strategies. Her episodes are usually under 20 minutes long and are full of helpful examples and strategies to help make your writing better.

2. The Entrepreneurship Elevated Podcast by Mike Michalowicz: This energetic podcast helps entrepreneurs gain the skills they need to run a profitable business. The podcast is recorded with a few friends, and sometimes a guest speaker, and is primarily an enthusiastic conversation. However, woven into these conversations are good tips about how to market yourself, build community, and make a brand. Authors need to be the number one promoters of their work, so this podcast can help you focus on the business side of your work as an author. These episodes are usually about 50 minutes long.

3. The Marketing Book Podcast by Douglas Burdett: Every week, Burdett interviews an author of a book about marketing. The episodes include useful links and other resources that let you take your learning beyond the podcast. Every week’s author has valuable marketing information that they’re happy to share, and if you enjoy the episode, you know that the guest speaker wrote a whole book about the topic! Marketing your book is an important part of being an author, so these are valuable skills to learn.

4. Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips: If you’ve ever used Grammar Girl’s website, you know how helpful she can be when it comes to those little grammar or spelling tips that you’ve never quite mastered. These brief episodes (around 20 minutes each) give you two grammar lessons apiece, but she has a way of slipping in details so you learn way more than you expected. This podcast is a great way to refresh your grammar knowledge or search out an answer to a question you have.

5. Writing Excuses by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Daniel Wells: Brought to you by four iconic fantasy and science fiction authors, this podcast focuses on writing techniques that have a fantasy element but can be easily extended to other types of writing (such as world building and writing characters who are different from yourself). These podcasts are designed to be brief and informative and are usually under 20 minutes long. Between all of these big-name authors, there’s a lot of experience to be shared and learned from.

6. Copyblogger FM by Sonia Simone: This podcast is focused on content marketing and will give you tips on copywriting, building a social media platform, and understanding how to maximize your website. These episodes are usually around 25 minutes long, and each episode gives you tips on specific techniques. Maximizing your online presence is very important for authors, but it’s a difficult skill to master, and this podcast will help you feel more comfortable about it.

7. The Stoop Storytelling Series by Laura Wexler and Jessica Henkin: Every Sunday, Laura and Jessica post a new story from a guest speaker. The two introduce the episode, and then play a recording of the guest telling a story that relates to whatever the predetermined topic is (ranging from love, to immigration, to dogs, to holidays, and anything else you can think of). This is a great way to think of new ways to tell a story and to recognize the value that your lived experiences have in becoming an interesting story. The episodes range in length from 15 to 35 minutes, depending on how many stories they feature.

And as a little something extra, we’ve included an eighth bonus podcast: our own! WiseInk recently launched our own podcast, called Buzz: Book Marketing Made Easy. Based on their incredible book Buzz: The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing, this podcast is brought to you by Dara Beevas and Roseanne Cheng. This podcast gives tips to authors about how to best market your book!