5 Steps To Make Your Own Author Podcast

by Joanna Penn on July 30, 2009

Podcast As more authors get their own blogs, it is becoming more desirable to have audio as well as text, and the technology is actually pretty easy. I believe authors should have a podcast (5 reasons here), and several people have asked me how I make mine. I have a full module on this in the Author 2.0 Program so I will only give the main points here.

Before you start, decide on what you will podcast about. I do interviews, information and inspiration for authors which fits with my blog. Authors who podcast their books often use a separate feed per book.

  1. Record your audio. I use Skype for my interviews and Pamela to record them. This gives me a .mp3 file ready for edit. I also use a handheld device for face-to-face, or a headset microphone with Audacity software.
  2. Edit the audio. I use Audacity software (free) which is very easy to use. Drag and drop the file in and then cut the bits out that you don’t want.
  3. Add Intro and Outro to the file. Make sure you get ‘royalty-free’ music for your podcast. You can add some of your own voiceover to make files you always add to the beginning and end of the track.
  4. Create your finished .mp3 file. I publish the file as a .wav from Audacity and then open it in iTunes. From there I right click to create a .mp3 file.
  5. Upload onto your blog and create show notes. I use Blubrry plugin for my wordpress blog and have a feed into iTunes. I create show notes as I edit the file which serves to give people an idea what the podcast is about, as well as provide text for Search Engine Optimisation (as Google can’t search audio right now!)

If you don’t want to host your own podcasts, you can use a service like BlogTalkRadio.

Have fun!

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{ 2 trackbacks }

Books in the Digital Age: The Future of Writing « Media – Suarez
August 3, 2009 at 7:42 pm
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August 20, 2009 at 9:52 pm

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Sam Caldwell July 30, 2009 at 10:25 pm

Your podcasts are always well done and sound great. So many don’t do a good job on post production and tarnish an otherwise good effort. By the way you can save the iTunes step to convert to MP3 by installing the Lame MP3 encoder. You can find instructions on installation at the audacity.sourceforge.net web.

Thanks for posting the info.
Sam
iNetSynch

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admin July 30, 2009 at 11:45 pm

Thanks so much for the tip Sam – that is great feedback!

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Matt Bader November 10, 2009 at 10:05 am

You should check out BlogTalkRadio.com. Its an easy, free way to record podcasts with live interaction.

Reply

Benjamin Straw May 2, 2010 at 1:19 pm

I have to say thats some good info on podcasting. if you want to record an interviews Skype is a good choice, I wrote an article on my blog about how to record skype calls http://www.how2podcast.com/articles/software/recording-skype-useing-software/
Thanks, Benjamin Straw

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