Sell

Podcasting is a brilliant way to reach people with your brand, whether it’s through interviewing experts in your niche or podcasting your novel. Multi-media posts also enable people to get to know you in a more personal way. People need to know, like and trust you in order to buy your books so it’s critical to find some way to be more personal on your blog. Not many authors are doing podcasts either so it can be a way to stand out plus you can build some brilliant relationships within your genre/niche.

The Creative Penn podcast now has 80+ episodes, that’s over 40 hours of free audio on writing, publishing and book marketing based on interviews with experts from all over the world. I can truly say that podcasting has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. You have also sent me some brilliant feedback and the podcast now receives around 2000 downloads per month.

I’ve had a number of emails recently asking me how to create a podcast so here is how I do it. There are heaps of different ways but this is my process. You can use BlogTalkRadio or other free hosted solutions but I don’t think the quality is very good and iTunes is a great stand-alone market so it’s worth having your own feed. This post gets quite technical with the different software so please leave questions in the comments if you need further info.

What is a podcast anyway?

A podcast is just an audio file that you can stream and distribute over the internet. Podcasts can be talk shows or radio shows, interviews, university lectures, novels/audiobooks or anything else you fancy. The advantage of podcasts is that you can download the audio anytime instead of radio which is played at a specific time of day. You can also subscribe and have episodes download automatically to your player. The most common is iTunes but there are lots of different ways to listen. I love podcasts and listen to them in the gym, doing chores, commuting etc. There are millions of free podcasts out there, many of them amazing quality so I urge you to visit the Podcast area on iTunes as an introduction.

Step 1: Plan your podcast

I plan my interviews months in advance by contacting people with interesting stories and proposing an interview. I usually create a relationship on Twitter first and read their blog for a while, or I find an interesting interview with them on another site and contact them directly.

After arranging a time and date to call (across multiple time-zones), I email a week prior to the interview with the intro and questions for them based around the topic of the interview. I may veer off into other topics but it allows them time to prepare and gives me focus. I usually do interviews with Americans at 6am Australian time so advance planning helps!

Podcasting is an indirect form of marketing, it is more about awareness and I make sure my podcast is always focused on giving you actionable tips and information. However, I realize that people want to promote something at the same time, so I always ask the interviewee for their website address and to share more about what their books or products.

If you want to podcast your novel, check out Podiobooks.com which has some great resources (and lots of audiobooks).

Step 2: Create audio

I primarily use interviews for my podcasts and Skype is invaluable. If you don’t know already, Skype is free worldwide to other users and very cheap for calling phones with. I only use Skype for international calling and it has significantly reduced phone bills. You need an add-on piece of software/plug-in for recording.
For PC: Use Pamela.biz
For Mac: Use eCamm Recorder

You can also get the video recording version of either software, which is how I now do video interviews. It’s dead easy! You can also record your own audio in the editing software below. I use the computer’s internal mic as I am doing videos but also have a middle priced Logitech headset for audio interviews.

Podcasts usually have an intro and outro with some music and introduction, at least with the name of the podcast or the host saying hi. You must use royalty free music or creative commons licensed. I used Soundsnap to find my intro music. You just need a ‘loop’, a very short piece. Then record audio as above and save these mini-files to add into each podcast beginning and end.

Step 3: Edit audio

Firstly, podcasts are understood to be amateur i.e. you don’t need effects and fancy stuff unless you want to get that technical. You can just record with a good microphone and then edit the bad bits out. I leave umms, ahs, and little mistakes in as this humanizes people but I remove what I don’t want you to hear or if there are any technical problems (like lawnmowing noise!)

 

Editing software for PC or Mac: Audacity – free software and excellent to use
For Mac: Amadeus Pro

Both of these are easy enough to use. You just need to highlight and cut segments, drag and drop files. Then save as .wav or .mp3.

I usually save as .wav and then convert it to .mp3 in iTunes where I also add the meta-data (right click Info) which means you see “The Creative Penn podcast” on your iPod instead of just a file-name.

Now you have a finished .mp3 file.

Step 4: Publish podcast

I use Amazon S3 (with Bucket Explorer) to host my finished files so I upload the file there first. This gives me good download speed as my number of listeners increases as well as backing up the files on a secure environment. I also back up video and important files this way. It’s incredibly cheap cloud hosting.

I use the Blubrry plugin for WordPress blogs (free) to create the play button and also the download link. You just paste in the URL from Amazon S3 and it does the rest. Easy! Blubrry has its own feed service to iTunes and you can easily follow the steps in the plugin or Blubrry has great help. You get the initial iTunes feed by submitting to iTunes directly.

Then I listen to the final file and create the show notes in a blog post. I do this because transcription was too expensive to have done weekly, some people like to read it first to see if they want to listen and I like to get the extra SEO from having text in the podcast. That’s pretty much it.

It takes me around 30 mins to prepare, 45 mins to do the interview and around 1 hour to edit and do the post. This is quite a bit of work on a weekly basis but podcasting it’s definitely been worth it for me.

Do you have any other questions re podcasting or feedback on The Creative Penn podcast? I’m considering spinning off a new product teaching people how to do it with videos etc. Let me know if you’re interested.

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write It Forward blog on 1/9/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

I recently got caught up in a ‘discussion’ on Twitter about book trailers.  Not that you can really discuss anything on Twitter.  I’m not a 100% one way or the other type of guy on most things and that’s hard to do on Twitter.  Plus, it’s hard to convey sarcasm or irony in 140 characters, and once in a while I slide into both.

I call my book on writing a Toolkit because I don’t think there are any rules to writing.  There are guidelines and suggestions, but if you use the wrong tool, it’s you who are wrong, not the tool.  In fact, in Warrior Writer, I end the book and presentation pointing out that you have to break rules to succeed give and the paradoxical three rules of rule breaking.

Some people swear by book trailers.  These are usually:  people who’ve made one; more so, people who make money making them.

One comment several people made who’d done them was that they were ‘fun’.  That’s fine.  I’m not a Grinch.  But I’m also a professional writer.  I recently posted on the PAN loop of RWA a link to the Harlan Ellison video about Pay The Writer in response to a lot of writers talking about how they never charged speaking fees.  I was surprised at how many people suddenly spoke up after I posted that and said they agreed that we all needed to act more like professionals as writers.  (Ok, I’ll do another blog later about paying the writer) Hmm, interesting, I’m talking about book trailers and linking to a video.  So videos have a place.  Yes, they do.  I teach part-time at the University of Washington.  I try to show a video, usually from YouTube, every class to emphasize a teaching point.

But are videos useful for selling books?

Overall:  NO.

Why?

It’s a different media.  Check out professional promoters and advertisers.  How many promote across media?  How many book advertisements have you seen over the years on TV?  Very few.  Do you think the publicity departments at the big publishers were stupid?  They’ve tried it.  Rarely does it translate.

Someone sent me links to trailers they thought were well done.  And they were.  Except the number of hits was in the hundreds.  I’ve had over 52,000 hits on my video regarding Special Forces, which is excerpted from my appearance on the Discovery Channel.  I’ve seen zero cross-over from that to either my books or my Who Dares Wins consulting business.

To argue the other side:  you’ve got to do something different to break out.  If I knew what that different thing was, I’d be doing it.  If I had an idea for a really weird and unique video I thought would go viral, I’d do it.  But if we knew the formula to make things go viral, we’d all be doing it and thus it wouldn’t work.

The Wall Street Journal weighed in on trailers and overall, the consensus was a waste of time and money.

Here’s something writers have to realize:  when you read blogs, articles, etc. often you hear about the 1% of people who did something and succeeded.  Rarely do they write articles or do people blog about failure.

I’ve got nothing against making them for fun.  But also consider the time, money and energy you put into them and think what else you could be doing to achieve whatever your strategic writing goal is.

So, the forum is open regarding book trailers?  Love ‘em, hate ‘em, could care less?
 

An oft asked question by authors and small presses is, “Why can’t I get any reviews?” Let me share some insider info about the book review process and how to swim with the current.

Back in the early 2000s, I began writing reviews of books we sell in our bookstore to send to the American Booksellers Association for their consideration for inclusion in BookSense (now called IndieBound) reading lists that were sent to 1,200+ independent bookstores every month. I did enough of that with positive feedback to convince me I should start a book review company, HeartlandReviews.com , in June of 2002.

It didn’t take long for the word to get around that I was willing to take on all genres in both book and manuscript form. I developed a rubric-based review methodology, which I taught to a number of bright volunteers. The submissions began rolling in, and I and my helpful friends started picking and choosing books for review and posting them on line, all for free. I developed submission guidelines and expected that folks would abide by them—WRONG!  The following will explain some of the reasons why people find it hard to get a review.

Would you submit to an agent or a publisher without first checking to see what they are interested in repping/publishing and how they want to see submissions? You would think certainly, yet so many writers do that without doing their due diligence. Not doing so is just another filter to weed you out. The same is true for book reviewers. If a reviewer says, please don’t send such and such genres, why would one send something in that group and even try to convince the reviewer to take it on anyway. That raises hackles very quickly, and no, don’t expect him or her to send back your book, whether it’s on their dime or yours. Reviewers just don’t have time. I would get 400+ submission requests a month plus a large number of books that were sent without requesting permission.

Following submission guidelines and requesting first (if that is what the guidelines require) is just common courtesy. Initially, it would concern me, but I quickly developed an awfully hard nose. If the author didn’t submit as I wanted it, the submission went into the trash can without an explanation. I just didn’t have the time to explain the obvious. Oh, so you think you know the reviewer’s guidelines? You’ve submitted to him before, so now you’re an old pro—NOT! Conditions and guidelines change for good reasons. Before you send out another submission to someone who has reviewed you before, make sure the rules haven’t changed. I began charging a fee for book reviews about three years ago. Why and how are clearly laid out on my website http://www.heartlandreviews.com, yet I still get submissions from people who never bothered to check first. If there is no accompanying fee, I toss it—Read the Instructions!

You may ask, why would so many waste their books? Primarily because of mailing lists of reviewers. Some of them are offered free and some are sold by book marketing folks. Let the buyer beware. Don’t assume these lists have been vetted and are totally up to date. Again, do your due diligence. Check first before sending out your books blindly to a list.

What Else?

OK, so it’s common sense to learn the rules and to play by them. What else can you do to better your chances? Begin reading reviews on and off line. Look for reviews which are similar to or related to your book. If they got reviewed by a reviewer, maybe yours might be attractive to him as well. Be sure to refer to the other book and where you saw its review—reviewers are only human and like to be noticed, too. If you’ve read the other book, mention what you liked (don’t tear it down) and suggest yours has some attractive features as well. WARNING! Never, NEVER,NEVER, enclose a bunch of reviews by other reviewers or write one yourself and suggest the reviewer might find it helpful. BIG TIME INSULT! Let the reviewer do her job without anyone else’s unwanted help.

Don’t place any time constraints for when you need it. Your needs and timing are not his. Don’t bug them about if and when. You’ll get it if and when you get it. The exception to this is if you paid a fee for a review. That is a different situation entirely.

Get Real

If no one knows you, don’t expect much interest from major reviewing sites and journals. They have enough to do keeping up with major, established writers. Remember over a quarter of a million new books are being published each year and more are on the way. It’s hard to get noticed in a crowd like that. Don’t be afraid to send a strong query. You might get lucky, but don’t submit without asking. Get on Google, etc and search for lesser known reviewers and query them. A review is a review. Remember, it’s not so much about who sees it where, it’s about getting quotes that can be used on marketing pieces and book covers. Let me show you what I mean. The following is a review I did for free for one of my twitter followers, then I will show you how her mother took what I said and turned it into a strong NYTs advertisement:

Ms Carney reminds me so much of Christopher Paolini and his youthful start. She includes the best elements of a good fantasy without going overboard. Her characters are likeable and realistic. The plot has plenty of twists, with friends and family really being totally what they did not seem. There is humor, coming of age, values, and logic buried throughout the story. It’s a pleasant read for young and old. We rated this book five hearts.

And Now the NYTs Ad:

Ages 9-14 This YA Fantasy is exceptionally remarkable in that it is the first of a series (Reign of the Elements) of five books, all written by a 16-year-old.

Ms Carney reminds me so much of Christopher Paolini and his youthful start. She includes the best elements of a good fantasy without going overboard. Her characters are likeable and realistic. The plot has plenty of twists…There is humor, coming of age, values, and logic buried throughout the story. Five Stars

Bob Spear, Author/Reviewer

Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com

Result?

A NY agent contacted them and asked for a book to read. I’m not sure what came of it, but now you see why reviews used properly are important factors in your marketing plan.

Getting reviews and using them is a matter of common sense. Picture what a reviewer’s life must be like—harried and aggravated by people who come across rudely ignorant of the process. Then, try to structure any and all of your contacts with them in a friendly, no pressure, and courteous manner. The old saw about catching flies with honey applies.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends.