We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nilshree Yelulkar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nilshree, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I released my debut book in the year 2021, in February. The second one followed in March of the same year. Being new to this field, I chose self-publishing and it was a Herculean task to promote it. With the thought of making my struggles be someone else’s survival guide; A platform through which every writer can rightfully call their own. Initially, the plan was to churn out an e-magazine which will be available to read for free every quarter. However the support and motivation from our close-knit author community, we came up with a podcast where we invite authors to have a candid chat about their book. The mission was no rocket science, only a simple wish to help authors promote their work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Authoropod is a quarterly e-magazine and podcast exclusively for authors. All our editions right from April 2022 are available to read for free on our website. October 2023 marks our 7th edition and the first one to cross 1K reads!

Our podcast is available on 8 different popular platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iTunes, Google Podcast, etc.

This platform is open for all, published as well as aspiring authors. We hardly have any selection process (unless the content being shared is political, supports racism, or offends any religion)

We also host open mic and other interesting contests and writing challenges on our social media handles and anyone can participate. You may follow us to participate and win attractive prizes!

Website: https://authoropod-magazine.vercel.app/
Instagram Handle: @authoropod

How did you build your audience on social media?

There are a few things we religiously do: 1) We make sure our social media posts are clear. The steps and instructions are mentioned clearly.
2) Every Saturday we host #shoutoutsaturdays where we share selected posts from the latest lot on our stories letting our followers know what our author community is up to and they also get good visibility in turn.
3) In case there are delays in announcing results, we keep the followers updated about it so that they don’t lose faith in us.
4) Once a month we run Ice-breaker Wednesday where we ask our existing followers to recommend authorish accounts we should follow. And we take the initiative to follow them first!

We are trying to grow organically, but we have not done any paid promotions to date.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a person, I was someone who used to cut off cords, and close doors if things did not work in one go. After stepping into the role of Founder of Authoropod I realized most of the time, it is unavailability or prior commitments that restrict things from happening. So if things do not work out now, they may turn out to be a valuable resource later.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://authoropod-magazine.vercel.app/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/authoropod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077251216919