by Christine Munroe

Happy International Podcast Day! These days, it seems like everyone has a podcast (including us!). But there are only so many hours and days in a week, and it’s hard to decide how to optimize your listening time. We narrowed it down to the best of the best, a subscription hit list that will give you inspiring and useful advice you can depend on to improve your writing and gain insights into the publishing industry.

The Creative Penn Podcast – the OG of indie publishing podcasts, credited by many authors for helping them along their publishing and writing journey. The deep catalogue of episodes feature essentially any person and topic you might want to learn more about, so start downloading. (Disclosure: KWL is a longtime sponsor of this one). https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/

The Self Publishing Formula Podcast – “Your weekly dose of inspiration and education”, this podcast hosted by Mark Dawson and James Blatch has come out swinging in the last year, featuring heavy hitters including Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Peter James, and Adam Croft, an awesome overview of GDPR, marketing advice for all social channels, and more. https://selfpublishingformula.com/spf-podcast/

Sell More Books Show – Jim Kukral and Bryan Cohen focus on the latest publishing news and marketing strategies to help new and established authors to…. surprise! Sell More Books. http://sellmorebooksshow.com/

The Writer Files – Kelton Reid studies the “habits, habitats, and brains” of a huge range of writers, and offers advice to help you hit those word counts. Douglas Coupland! Emma Donoghue! Mark Dawson! Andy Weir! The list goes on – highly recommended. https://rainmaker.fm/series/writer/

The Story Studio Podcast – “Stories turn songs into symphonies, events into memories, and lives into legends.” This newer podcast from the prolific podcasters Johnny, Sean, and Dave explores how to tell stories better. https://sterlingandstone.net/series/story-studio-podcast/

Grammar Girl – These quick episodes should be mandatory listening for all writers! “Grammar Girl covers everything from punctuation and grammar to style and voice.” QuickandDirtyTips.com

Magic Lessons – Elizabeth Gilbert recorded two seasons of incredibly inspiring episodes, focused on helping aspiring artists to create more joyfully. If you haven’t listened yet, these episodes are a wonderful backlog to keep in your back pocket if you’re feeling stuck. https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/magic-lessons/

We would be remiss if we didn’t take one last opportunity to shamelessly plug our own Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we’ve recently chatted with BookBub, OverDrive, Lauren Blakely, and Julia Kent. We refreshed the podcast this year with a fantastic new co-host, Stephanie McGrath, and new theme music from Toronto band Tearjerker.

What podcasts inspire you to be a better writer? Share them in the comments – and don’t forget to leave them a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Happy listening, and happy writing!

Christine Munroe has the coolest job ever. She leads the KWL business team, helping authors reach millions of Kobo readers around the world.

She has a BA and MA in English Literature from McGill University and worked as a literary agent and international book scout in New York before joining Kobo. Her favourite part of her job is helping independent writers achieve great results and make a living from their writing, as well as working with her fabulous colleagues on the KWL team. Follow her on twitter @munroechristine