OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
This is a fantastic audio of the talk that best-selling authors Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood gave at the Writer's Digest Conference in September.
I highly recommend you download this and have a listen, especially if you are not convinced by podcasting yet.
Here are some of the top tips I loved from the presentation:
- Scott and Seth outline their journey to success using podcasting full length novels for free online – inspirational guys!
- Story-telling is an ancient form of communication and still just as effective. Podcasting is just serialising audiobooks with a subscription feed over the internet. You can reach more people this way!
- This is not a get rich quick scheme, this is a long term platform building and audience building technique that will eventually pay off with fans and sales if you persist. But then, writing is a lifelong adventure so why not start now!
- Reasons why podcasting your own books is so powerful, and why you don't need a professional to read your books. Your amateur voice brings the story to life in the best way possible.
- How to integrate your podcast into your blog, social networking and other platform building activities so you are not over-stretched
- Tips and Q&A on how to podcast including equipment
Scott and Seth have a course they run called Author BootCamp which will set you up as a podcaster. They also recommend Podiobooks.com for publishing and also listening to podcast novels.
You can also listen to their novels for free here: Scott's podcasts …. and Seth's podcasts
I have been converted to podcast novels, and if you want to try some, here are a few I've enjoyed recently:
- JC Hutchins 7th Son Trilogy (soon to be released as print novels)
- Scott Sigler Infected
- Philippa Ballantine Chasing the Bard and Weather Child
- Tee Morris Billibub Baddings & the Case of the Singing Sword
- Mur Lafferty Playing for Keeps
View Comments (3)
Wow, talk about seven degrees of seperation - amongst the cast of Philippa Ballantine's Weather Child is Tee Morris. Over the past few years, Tee has run a workshop for writers translating novels to stageplays with Lani Tupu. Lani played Captain Crais in the sci fi show Farscape and is ultimately responsible for starting me off as a writer.
And I write articles on Crais for the Parsec Award-winning podcast ScapeCast.
I'm tremendously amused.
I've been using Audacity to record my podcasts, but when I convert from a WAV file to an MP3 file, the sound gets distorted. It's not that bad, but I'd like it to sound better. I might have found the solution to this problem, but if it turns out I haven't, could you recommend a good MP3 maker program to use? I don't mind buying one.
Hey Ruth Ann,
I create a .wav from Audacity, then Add the File to iTunes - right click to convert to .mp3 and that works a treat.
I am now also putting it through Levelator (google it) which equalises the sound. It is free like iTunes.
Then I just upload the .mp3 as the podcast file.
All good!
Hope that helps - I am going to update Author 2.0 in the next month so this will go in there too.
Thanks, Joanna