Indie Fantasy Club

Excited to join Bald&Balding for a conversation about indie fantasy! This channel does a great job spotlighting new books and diving deeper into the ideas and experiences of fantasy authors.

If you'd like to join us, we'll be chatting on Thursday December 11 at 5 PM MST. Looking forward to this conversation and hope to see you all there!

Here's the link to stream the live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-JB0...

1 week ago | [YT] | 14

Indie Fantasy Club

Which one are you adding to your TBR based on first impressions?

Never judge a book by the cover, right? If only that were true. In reality, your cover is going to be one of your best marketing tools. So I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the titles in my submission TBR and just give my first impressions.

Now, I never let these first impressions bleed into my actual reviews. I always try to stay as objective as possible about the content of the story in and of itself. In fact, some of my favorite books in 2025 have had some TERRIBLE covers (*cough cough* Kings of Paradise). This is done in good spirit, and I hope we can have some lighthearted fun and discussions in the comments.

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 23

Indie Fantasy Club

We've got a busy schedule for November 😬 I have to read and review all the past SPFBO winners so I can rank them all before December.

Why?? Well, I sometimes create fake competition in my own head to push myself. And I noticed that two of the judges for SPFBO Champion's League have not submitted any of their reviews (Captured in Words and Hello Future Me). So my goal is to have all these reviews finished so I can shoot Mark Lawrence an email with my rankings and offer to fill an empty slot. The chances of that actually happening are low... but we'll have some fun while we do it! :)

Next month is going to be busy as well! I've done two author interviews that I need to edit and post (Serdar Yegulalp and Jeremy Bruce Adams), I want to do a video about improving blurbs, and also my top 5 reads of 2025!! So it's going to be busy busy busy.

To all the new Inklings to the channel, thanks for being part of the club! If there's any topics you'd like to hear more about, please let me know about it in the comments! :)

1 month ago | [YT] | 14

Indie Fantasy Club

Hello my Inklings! We've got a great lineup of content for October.

- Be sure to join the live review of Murder at Spindle Manor on October 4 at 5 PM Mountain Daylight Time. Share your input and let's see if we can agree on a score based on the INDIE ranking criteria.

- Are you ready for the studio upgrade?? I'm stoked to show you all. I know the backdrop color voting was close, but in the end, I think purple was the right choice. You'll have to let me know what you think when the reintroduction video drops!

- I posted a question on Reddit asking why fantasy readers are hesitant to read self-published books. We've gotten over 600 comments!! So I'll be breaking down those stigmas so we, as the indie fantasy community, can figure out how to improve our branding and public perception. If we know the current sentiment, then we can make improvements and start to really compete with trad authors.

We're coming up on my one year mark of making content and it has absolutely flown by. Thanks again for being a part of the Indie Fantasy Club! We'll see you in the next video.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 16

Indie Fantasy Club

We officially have 1,000+ Inklings in the Indie Fantasy Club!!! Thank you so much for helping me build this community 🙏

So what happens next?

First... we celebrate of course!! I'll be hosting a live book club on October 4, 2025 at 5 PM Mountain Time where we can all discuss and rate the SPFBO9 Winner 'Murder at Spindle Manor'. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and deciding what we think the final score should be for their INDIE ranking.

I'll also be upgrading the studio and bookshelf soon! I can't believe we're already running out of space. I can wait to fill the entire wall with incredible indie fantasy stories.

In order to further build connections in this community, I've established a discord here: discord.gg/wwhvYNKXCU. I've set up some channels that will hopefully be valuable to aspiring authors where we can network and share ideas and book recommendations with each other.

My next goal is ambitious... but I'm aiming for 10k as the next milestone. I believe in this community, I love making these videos, and I love getting exposed to all these new stories. I love being a voice for indie authors that are struggling to compete with the saturation and budgets of traditional publishers. We can do it if we work together!

What an incredible year it's been, my fellow Inklings. Keep reading. Keep writing. And I'll see you in the next video!

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3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 20

Indie Fantasy Club

Greetings Inklings!! Here's the content plan for September :)

For the upcoming live, what if we do a little book club discussion? I was thinking you could help me rate Murder at Spindle Manor (winner of SPFBO9). It's a pretty short book, so I figured that would be an easy/quick read for anyone that wants to participate. Bring all your thoughts and ideas using the INDIE ranking scale!

Looking forward to another great month of indie fantasy!

3 months ago | [YT] | 10

Indie Fantasy Club

We're getting closer to that 1k sub goal Inklings!! So it's time to vote for a new backdrop color :)

Choose wisely!! We're probably not going to change the background again until we get to 10k, so we'll be stuck with this for a while. Also, if you want a different color, you can add it to the comments, and if it gets more likes than the votes on the polls, I'll select it as the winner.

3 months ago | [YT] | 1

Indie Fantasy Club

Here's a dilemma for you.

What if you could snap your fingers to instantly finish one of the following fantasy series? HOWEVER, the other two that you don't select will remain UNFINISHED forever....

Which one are you picking to complete the series?

4 months ago | [YT] | 7

Indie Fantasy Club

I'm feeling optimistic, so I'm adding some extra videos to the queue this month. I might even add a few more if I'm able to get through my TBR faster than I anticipate. We shall see!

We've been growing the channel at a very consistent pace, which I'm happy to report! We had just over 50 new subscribers in July, over 5,000 views and over 200 hours of watch time. It was so much fun to do the first author interview with RD Pires and I've got several more lined up for the near future. You folks also mentioned you liked the IFC Rants, so I've decided to add a separate playlist for those videos (I've got plenty to rant about).

With that said, there are some changes coming to the channel 😬 so stay tuned for that!! I've been struggling to balance some things (content wise) and I just want to discuss those challenges with you all and how I'm planning to navigate it.

As always, thank you so much for being part of the Indie Fantasy Club! I really feel like I've gotten to know a lot of you through the comments and messages on the channel. As we approach 1,000 subs, I've got some fun plans to celebrate the next milestone!

I'll see you in the next video 🫡

4 months ago | [YT] | 11

Indie Fantasy Club

I'm starting to get the hang of a (relatively) consistent posting schedule :)

I just want you all to know how much I love being the host for the Indie Fantasy Club. I've been exposed to so many great stories and I have so many ideas for videos! My only frustration is just wishing I had more time to actually create all this content. But, if that's my only qualm with life, things are going pretty well.

The more I think about building this channel, the more I'm convinced that we've got something special here. The more books I read, the more I'll be able to make proper comparisons to trad published books. I'll be able to create tier lists for indie fantasy books. I'll have IFC awards for my favorite books of the year.

I also wanted to thank my subscribers. Do you know how psycho you have to be to be an early adopter of a YouTube channel in 2025? To subscribe to someone with less than a thousand subs? To put your faith and trust into a new booktuber in an already saturated market?? Just know I don't take that for granted, especially because I was one of those people who didn't give small creators a chance in the past. YOU are the true trailblazers!!

I've learned so much and am so so grateful for the chance to interact with a community of like-minded people. No matter what our religion, background, ethnicity, location, beliefs–we can all come together and enjoy indie fantasy!

Thanks so much for supporting the channel, and I'll see you in the next video :)

5 months ago | [YT] | 12