Podcasting Your Novel

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, podcasting is a blanket term used to describe a collection of technologies for automatically distributing audio and video programs over the internet via a publish and subscribe model. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated “radio shows,” and gives broadcast radio or television programs a new distribution method.

In the podcasting model, the publisher publishes a list of programs in a special format, known as a “feed”, on the web. A user who wants to see or hear the podcast subscribes to the feed in special “podcatching” software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks the feed and automatically downloads new programs as they become available. Typically, the podcatching software also transfers the program to a desktop or portable media player.

Podcasting is growing at a ferocious rate. A Google search run on Sept 24, 2004 turned up 24 hits on the word podcast. The exact same search run on November 14, 2005, roughly one year later, turned up 99,700,000 hits. Doing one today turns up 140,000,000 hits! In the last few years the ever-popular iTunes has begun offering a wide array of podcast shows (including my own!)

While a handful of amateur writers have podcast their unpublished novels, not a single major publisher had allowed a work currently on the shelf to be podcast and that, to me, seemed like a ready-made opportunity when I decided to podcast my novel back in 2006. I envisioned podcasting as a way to reach a wider group of potential readers and to generate greater buzz about the book once it has hit the shelves.

I set out to get myself some help in the form of sponsors for the experiment and was blessed to have been joined together with a team from The Podcast Network and the now defunct Horror Channel. Without their assistance, my podcast never would have gotten off the ground.

When I started the podcast of my novel HERETIC, I had a few thousand listeners. By the time I was finished some forty weeks later, I had over 100,000 listeners in 83 different countries. Talk about promotional outreach! While I’m assuming some of them were readers who had already encountered Knight Commander Cade Williams and his Echo Team in the pages of the book, I know that the vast majority of them were not. The potential impact of podcasting on a current books sales should be obvious.

Also of interest to me was the fact that my listeners came from eighty-three different countries. Folks as far away as Israel, Hong Kong, South Africa and Bulgaria (just to name a few) were tuning in to listen to the tale I’d created. With the ability for readers across the world to order books at the click of a mouse, this, too, was an obvious benefit. The more people interested in future adventures of Cade and company, the more books I’ll be able to write featuring them. It’s a winning situation for everyone.

Since I did my initial podcast, there have been several writers who have turned the podcasts of their unpublished novels into sales to major houses. Scott Sigler’s three book deal to Crown Publishing is one example. J.C. Hutchin’s deal with St. Martin’s is another. I’ll be featuring more information (including a full ebook devoted to how to produce your own podcast) on Rock Your Writing Career in the coming months

Tagged as: fiction podcast, novel podcast, Podcast, podcasting your novel, scottsigler