[Sig-bwp] NYTimes: Authors Find Their Voice, and Audience, in Podcasts

[Gerry Mckiernan]

Colleagues/

The Ultimate AudioBook [?]

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library 
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu  

March 1, 2007
Authors Find Their Voice, and Audience, in Podcasts 
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

[snip]

After being snubbed by publishers for years, Mr. Sigler began recording his first book, “EarthCore,” in 2005. He offered it as a podcast in 22 episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) that he posted online and sent free to subscribers for downloading. Before long, Mr. Sigler had 5,000 listeners; by the time he finished releasing his second novel, “Ancestor,” last January, he had 30,000, as he does for “The Rookie,” which is playing now.

With initial printings of novelists’ first books running as low as 2,000 copies, Mr. Sigler has a substantial audience, enough finally to attract a small Canadian publisher, Dragon Moon Press, which published “EarthCore” in 2005 and will release “Ancestor” on April 1.

Mr. Sigler also recently signed with a New York agent, Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Agency, who expects to park his latest, “Infection,” with a major publisher.

Others have turned to the Internet to build their audience, including Cory Doctorow, who offered the text of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” as a free download in 2003. But Mr. Sigler is among the vanguard of authors stapling their literary aspirations to the iPod.

[snip]

The business is brewing at Podiobooks.com, the Web site founded in late 2005 with just 15 titles, including books by Tee Morris and Mark Jeffrey, who began offering podcasts about the same time as Mr. Sigler.

The site was founded by Evo Terra, who wrote the book on podcasting, literally; he was co-author of “Podcasting for Dummies.” Today the Web site has about 100 titles, many science fiction and fantasy. 

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[ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/books/01podb.html ]