We've decided to merge our Backmatter podcast interviews into our other podcast, Frontmatter, and going forward, we're going to publish all our in-depth publishing industry expert interviews there.

For an explanation of why we're doing this (it's good news!), please listen to this short recording wherever you've found it, or read this post on our blog: https://medium.com/@leanpub/a-tale-of-two-podcasts-ddb442a91ddc.

Many thanks to all our listeners and guests! We're looking forward to many more years of highly-researched, in-depth interviews with publishing industry experts and bestselling authors alike.

Nathan Bransford is a freelance editor and media strategy consultant, an author, and a former literary agent for Curtis Brown. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Nathan about his background, studying English at Stanford during the dot com boom, work as a literary agent, getting published, and current issues facing the book publishing industry.

This interview was recorded on January 9, 2019.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

David Vandagriff is known by people in the publishing industry as Passive Guy, his persona on his popular publishing industry blog, The Passive Voice.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with David about his background, how he got into the law after studying speech and literature, his early innovations with desktop publishing in the preparation of legal documents, his work in advertising and how he got into the tech world, as well as recent issues in the book publishing industry generally.

This interview was recorded on November 6, 2018.

Orna Ross is an award-winning author and poet who founded the popular Alliance of Independent Authors, an influential professional association for self-published authors.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Orna about her background in publishing, the changing roles of literary agents, getting her rights back from a big publisher, the huge transformation in the self-publishing in the recent past, Self-Publishing 3.0, her Go Creative! series, and a number of other topics.

This interview was recorded on October 30, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin about her background, her e-lending and Author's Interest projects, DRM and creator compensation, the potential role unfair competition law could play in regulating dominant companies, and author compensation in relation the economics of library ebook lending and the book industry generally.

This interview was recorded on September 18, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Bill Kasdorf is a partner at the consultancy Publishing Technology Partners, where he provides guidance and insight regarding the publishing industry. He has worked with many well-known companies and institutions, from the scholarly press at Harvard, to the World Bank and the British Library, amongst many others.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Bill about his background and how he got interested in the world of books, the importance of standards and interoperability when it comes to accessibility, how standardization fuels innovation, changes to the publishing industry in the past decades, from scholarly to trade publishing, and how the EPUB format is managed, and other topics.

This interview was recorded on September 18, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a bestselling and award-winning author who also writes a very popular blog on the business side of book publishing, which is an invaluable resource for authors in all genres.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Kristine about her background as a writer, journalism and politics in the US, the impact of war on the mail-order book business in the US in the early 1990s, the recent scandal involving alleged theft of revenue at a prominent New York-based agency, why Kris doesn't chase online bookstore algorithms, and a number of issues facing authors of all kinds, including those who are self-published and those who are published conventionally.

This interview was recorded on August 16, 2018.

Carla King is an author and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp series. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Carla about her background as a writer, how she got into motorcycles and travelling solo, the impact of 9/11 on travel writing and publishing in the United States, why every self-published author should set up their own company, and more.

This interview was recorded on May 24, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Marie Force is a New York Times bestselling author of romance fiction whose books have sold over seven million copies worldwide. In this interview, Marie talks about her interesting journey to life as a successful author, building a business around successful indie publishing, and about the Indie Author Support Network initiative, an organization devoted to advocating for the rights and interests of indie authors.

This interview was recorded on May 17, 2018.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Nate Hoffelder is the force behind The Digital Reader, one of the best sources online for up-to-date information and analysis about the book publishing industry and innovation in book publishing and reading technology.

In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Nate about changes in ebook technology and e-readers over time, about why some devices and approaches have failed, what Amazon is up to with its physical bookstores, and other important issues in the industry, including the choice every self-published author has to make, about whether or not to put all their eggs in one ebook distribution basket.

This interview was recorded on December 11, 2017.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Backmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

A Note About the Leanpub Backmatter Podcast

In the summer of 2017 we split the old Leanpub podcast into two distinct podcasts:

Frontmatter, which is a general interest podcast where you can listen to Leanpub authors talk with Leanpub co-founder Len Epp about their books and their areas of expertise, from data science to molecular biology, to the history of labor and management. And for those interested in the nitty-gritty of what it takes to be a successful self-published author, at the end of each episode Len asks the author about how they made their book and how they are spreading the word, and other publishing shop talk.

Backmatter, a new podcast focused specifically on the publishing industry and its latest trends. In each episode Len interviews a professional from the publishing world about their background and their insider's perspective on what's happening in the huge and evolving world of book publishing.