If you're finding it tough to get an audience to read your books, why not podcast them in installments?Andrew Adam Newman in the New York Times, tells how science-fiction horror writer Scott Siegler (left) was snubbed by publishers for years before he began to record his work and offer it via podcasts in installments for subscribers to download for free.
Before long, he had 5,000 subscribers. And now he has 30,000.
And of course, with a substantial fan-base, he's managed to attract a publisher.
Other authors (and it seems sci-fi writers are the most tech savvy!) are turning to website Podiobooks.com (founded by Evo Terrato, co-author of Podcasting for Dummies) to get their words heard. The site has about 100 titles, mainly science fiction and fantasy. There's a great deal of help and advice at the site about making a podcast of your book.
In case you feel a bit sniffy about it all, consider the case of Mark Jeffrey, one of the first writers to put his work on Podiobooks. The Pocket and the Pendant, a "Harry Potter-esque fantasy" novel drew about 20,000 listeners. The book was then self-published with Lulu.com and now the author is evaluating three Hollywood offers to put the novel onto the big screen and accompanying publishing deals.
So it seems that with a fan-base behind them, authors can expect publishers to start knocking at their doors!
7 comments:
did you get my email about my book?
yes ms d
http://literalsystems.org/abooks/index.php
just another audiobook site :)
Hmm, Sharon, you never did tell me why P.O.D. was a bad idea... (Can't remember the context, but you mentioned something to this effect during the Breakfast Club at BVII.)
Whoa! Now how come I never thought of that before? It makes sense, doesn't it, harnessing the power of the Internet to both market your work as well as build a fanbase? I wonder why more Asian writers aren't making it big with their work. I'm sure we could do just as well as J.K.Rowling or Stevie King or any of those bigwigs up in the clouds.
Sigh...I am SO in the wrong line of work.
kenny - it's actually a complicated discussion ...
IMHO in many ways POD is a very good thing, but ideally there does need to be an editorial process to ensure the book is as good as it can be.
also some writers think "oh i'll never get published" and don't even try (or try hard enough to go the conventional route)when their work actually IS publishable. (this has happened with one local writer who could have been published here much earlier but gave up trying). Publishers here are desperate for work of quality.
but the main problem for writers here is the matter of marketing. if you put your book on lulu.com or the websites of one of the other american based POD companies, your book can be bought by mail around the world, but if you want to bring in mulitple copies to sell through bookshops here it becomes extremely expensive as o tiam chim found
the technology exists to put books on both the US and local market at the same time but at the moment there is no company that has a presence in both countries
i think you might need to think about POD publishing twice - once with a POD publisher here and once in the US. since most of the cost of the POD book is in the editing/cover/layout, this shouldn't incur twice the expense
one hopes that in the long term a local company hitches up with one of the overseas players
angry medic - i'm sure there is a lot of writing talent here and yes, we may well have our rowling or king
what's wrong with being a writer and a doctor? writers need day jobs and a doctor's life is full of incident.
you already have a blog full of good stuff.
what other stuff are you writing? do show. and maybe when you're back you'd like to do a reading at seksan's???
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