How to Publish a Book Readers,

The last four days have been extremely "How to Publish a Book" busy, and I've got some really cool stuff to get up here on the blog.

Last Thursday night, I held the first How to Publish a Book and Write to Publish Organizational & Planning Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina at Cameron Village Public Library. Fifteen folks came to the meeting, and the major issues to come out of the discussion were:

1. Filing for Non-Profit 501 (c) (3) status for How to Publish a Book and/or Write to Publish;
   
   
2. Organizing workgroups with independent leaders for a:
   

• critique group open to the public,
  

• an organizational and steering committee open to the public,
  

• a marketing group for writers
  

• a self-growth group.

Friday night, I was asked to help set up and film an event at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh for two-time Academy Award Winner GENE HACKMAN. Mr. Hackman is on tour for his latest book Escape from Andersonville, co-written with Daniel Lenihan and published with St. Martin's Press. 

On Saturday night, I administered an Open Mic Night Contest for the Raleigh Write to Publish Group at Quail Ridge Books. We had 38 attendees, and seven folks were chosen randomly to read. The best reading was decided by audience vote, and she received about 30 bucks for her winning reading. That author was Ashley Steineger, and here is her reading... 

Then on Sunday, I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina and led a discussion at Pomegranate  Books on How to Publish a Book as a Podiobook. We had about 15 folks who came to the discussion, and there were many excellent questions. I hope to have the video of that discussion online in the next day or so.

Thanks so much for checking out the blog this week, and I hope you enjoy the videos!

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

On May 9, 2008, I began serializing my book THE COLORADO SEQUENCE as an online Audio Book at Podiobooks.com. The way this works is that a writer publishes his/her book chapter-by-chapter in a serialized format, basically publishing about 30 minutes per week online. Listeners at Podiobooks.com “subscribe” to your serialized book, and are notified when a new episode becomes available. They can listen to it on their computers, and they can download it to their iPods. They could even burn CDs of it in iTunes to listen on a CD player.

Podiobooks.com has a liberal acceptance policy and a low rejection rate, and in four years, they’ve built an audience of close to 50,000 registered members.

Since THE COLORADO SEQUENCE started to be published online on May 9, I’ve received close to 4,000 total downloads and now have 436 registered subscribers to the book. These numbers grow daily, and it’s possible that by the end of publishing the serialized Audio Book (probably sometime in December), I may have somewhere around 30,000 downloads and a couple thousand subscribers.

A Podiobook.com listener can start subscribing at any time and so as a producer, you’ll constantly be gaining new subscribers as episodes are published online (not unlike how a TV show gains new viewers as it increases in popularity).

Without getting too technical, I wanted to write a blog post here at How to Publish a Book regarding how to publish a book at Podiobooks.com

1. You’ll need some sort of microphone to record your reading. I actually have an actor-friend doing the narration for the book, and I loaned him one of my SAMSON CO1U mics and a pop-stopper.
2. You’ll need some sort of digital recording software program. I recommend AUDACITY because it’s free, and it's user-friendly.

And that’s basically it.

Once you learn how to record yourself reading, there are specific digital formats that Podiobooks.com requires producers to use in publishing their books at Podiobooks.com. You’ll want to spend some time reading all of the details at their site. Podiobooks.com does have a community mentoring forum, where you can ask questions online and get advice from more experienced book publishers.

What are the PROS and CONS?

The advantage of publishing a book via Podiobooks.com is that you can reach a whole other audience that you wouldn’t reach otherwise. In terms of building a readership and in terms of publicizing a book, I haven’t seen a better vehicle on the Internet in the past five years.

If you published 2-3 novels at Podiobooks.com and built your subscriber list up to 5,000, that’s solid SOCIAL CAPITAL for an up-and-coming writer.

The downside is that there’s very little money (read “no money”) to be made directly from publishing a book at Podiobooks.com. There is no charge to listeners to subscribe to books published at Podiobooks.com. Any money earned is based on donations, and I haven’t received a single donation to date.

That said, if you’re stuck with a book (or books) that can’t find a home at a traditional publisher, publishing your book as an online Audio Book at Podiobooks.com might be worth considering.

Thanks so much for reading this week’s installment of How to Publish a Book.

Sincerely,

Stacey Cochran