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November 2007
Podcasting for Broads
Mur Lafferty is a freelance writer, podcast producer, and mom. She is co-author of Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, which was rated as #3 in Amazon.com's Best of 2006 list in the Reference category.
They—you know, them, the ubiquitous "they"—say writers should start leveraging themselves online for exposure. Get a website, a blog, a MySpace, Facebook, Twitter... it can overwhelm a writer. Well, now there's another thing you can do to connect with readers—or grab them for the first time if you're unpublished—podcast. Now, technically, a podcast is any file you can send via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). This means images, PDFs, audio and video. However, the majority of podcasts are audio or video. Podcasting began in August, 2004, and it only took some savvy writers a couple of months to start using it to distribute their work, or to talk about the craft itself. Podcasting is quite easy after a minor learning curve. Cheap microphones are available everywhere (I'm talking $20 cheap), and audio software is also affordable (Audacity is free and available for Mac and Windows), and hosting is free in some places, and quite affordable in others (Libsyn.com offers hosting for $60 a year). Lastly, most blogs these days have built-in syndication capability, so there's little you need to worry about to make your podcast available. (I like Libsyn's built-in blog feature and Blogger for easy podcasting). That was a whirlwind tour of podcasting, I'll admit. I fully recommend picking up a book on the subject: Podcasting for Dummies, by podcasters Tee Morris and Evo Terra is a favorite. For the slightly more advanced podcaster, my own Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, written with Rob Walch, gives tons of time from veteran podcasters. OK, now that we know what a podcast is, the questions rise: why would I want to podcast? What should I podcast? How can this help me as a writer? Writers can use podcasts in several ways, but the most obvious is to podcast your writing itself. Now hang on, I know what you're thinking. When I heard of people starting to podcast their writing, I balked too. Why would I want to give away my work? What about the loss of audio rights if a publisher comes knocking? Is this considered "published" and therefore all first rights are gone? So I hung back and watched. The first two podcasting authors, the aforementioned Tee Morris and Scott Sigler, podcast their work for different reasons. Morris wanted to promote the sequel of his firs book, so he released the first book via podcast. Sigler had run into several roadblocks with publishing his first book and just decided to release it in podcast form to see what would happen. Both writers received amazing results: Morris had a successful launch of his second book, Chronicles of Morevi, and Sigler received small press publication of his first two podcast novels and received a major three-book deal with Crowne for his fourth. Unknowns aren't the only ones getting into this. Tracy Hickman released an out of print book via podcast, Spider Robinson has started podcasting his short stories, and James Patrick Kelly attributes his Hugo award for his novella Burn to the popularity the book received via the podcast. Cory Doctorow, advocate of giving away things online, has been podcasting his short stories and novels—and the creative commons license he places on his work means that you can podcast it too. (More on CC Licenses later.) Doctorow has written several articles on why it's beneficial to give away work. He claims the worst thing facing new writers today isn't your work being stolen (a common fear—that someone will steal your work and get rich instead of publishing you), it's obscurity. People will be attracted to free fiction and want to see more from you. Think about it in the terms of Charles Dickens: he wrote stuff on a serial level. When his readers were done with his latest serial, they worked themselves into a frenzy waiting for the next installment. This is the same concept: release a chapter a week and see how people react to it. If your book is already in print, the impatient ones will seek it out. If it's not, they'll ask you to publish it. Trust me. For new authors, or more established authors who want to reach a new audience (or breathe life into an OOP book), podcasting is an excellent way to market yourself. Still, you will want to protect yourself. Luckily, there is a way to do this. Creative Commons licensing ( creativecommons.org) is the happy middle between Copyright All Rights Reserved and placing your work in the public domain. Several different licenses exist, and you can create your own based on whether you want your work to be commercial or non, if you want people to make derivative works or not, and if you want to be attributed as your original work. For example a popular license is "Attribution Non-commercial No-derivatives" which means you can take my work, copy it, distribute it, but you can't change it, you can't sell it, and you always have to say the work is mine. Creative Commons licensing is vital to digital media, especially podcasting, because you want your work distributed as widely as possible. If someone puts your podcast on a CD and distributes it, that's not stealing, that's marketing. Personally, podcasting has changed my life. First seen as an outlet for me to "publish" my essays, which were too geeky for National Public Radio, but it's grown to so much more. I've podcast my own stories, and my first story sale was to Escape Pod ( escapepod.org), the science fiction podcast magazine (paying market, people!). Last year I decided to do an experiment and write a serial story just for podcasting, write an episode, podcast it immediately and then write another one. Heaven soon gave way to Season Two: Hell. I came to a realization halfway through Hell: I had a novel on my hands. Very strange feeling. I was accidentally writing a novel. The novel is now in the hands of a publisher who asked to see it before I could even send it out to woo an agent. Podcasting has enabled me to build a base of listeners—I estimate about 14,000 people have heard my work. I can take that number to agents and publishers and say, "This is who I can bring with me if I am published." Many podcast authors are underdogs, non-mainstream or otherwise unpublished authors. Scott Sigler's (scottsigler.net) second print book, Ancestor, hit the top 10 of Amazon sales in April due to his tens of thousands of listeners running out to buy the print version of the novel they had already heard (for free). This got the attention of several publishers, who then went into a bidding war for his next book, and he got a three book deal. JC Hutchins (jchutchins.net), author of the 7th Son trilogy of novels, also brings tens of thousands of listeners to whatever publisher picks up his books. However, his immense popularity was instrumental behind him getting another novel deal, a secret project he can't name yet. Does podcasting reach a demographic that would have otherwise fallen through the cracks? Not necessarily—but it is new enough (I estimate 200-300 authors are podcasting now, and I may be a little generous here) to where an author who begins a podcast will have a large audience to tap and few authors to compete against. Actually, we don't see ourselves as competing. We are a closely knit and welcoming group who cheer each others' successes and encourage our listeners to check out other podcast novels (podiobooks) that we think they might like. As I said, we're an eager, welcoming group, who are happy to welcome in new writers who want to try podcasting. If you want to try, I recommend Podcasting for Dummies for technical help, and my own Tricks of the Podcasting Masters for a more content-heavy look at what works in podcasting. For community, Yahoo! has a podcast group, and if you check out podiobooks.com, the largest collection of podcast books/short story collections you can find considerable help. (They also offer free hosting for your book and split site donations, with 75% going to the author). Oh, and do not worry about your voice. I fully believe that most everyone hates their voice. It's something you get past. If you honestly believe that a bullfrog being strangled by a grackle makes a better sound than your voice, you can ask a friend or pay a podcasting pro to do it for you. But I recommend the DIY approach: there's nothing like hearing an author reading her own work. If you have a novel you believe in and can't get published, or you have an out of print book you want to give another chance—or even if you have a publisher who is open to new marketing attempts, check out podcasting. Audiobooks are expensive, and suddenly there's a way to get books to your MP3 player for free, and people are waking up to the possibility, fast. |
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