Saturday, April 14, 2007

Free Podcast Novels


Ever thought about writing a novel only to find that you have no audience to show your work to? What if you had something written, but you couldn't get it published because you can't prove that anyone's going to like it? Well, there's a whole world out there for this caliber of novel, called the podcast novel. And here's the best part about podcast novels: they're free.

Recently, I can back from Japan and started up my iTunes account. I love iTunes, for it's a wonderful program. Anyway, as I begin searching through the titles that the iTunes store has to offer, I come across this "Podcast" called 7th Son: Descent by J.C. Hutchins. I download all the available chapters of this novel and upon listening to the opening, I hear this phrase "You are listening to a Podiobooks.com presentation." I thought to myself, "Podiobooks?! What are they talking about?" So, curiousity got to me and I typed the address in my web browser.

Podiobooks.com is a wonderful website that opens you to a world of books recently in print or yet to be published. These "podio books" are read by the authors and usually put together in chapters, like a novel would be. This provides a great opportunity for an author to get their work out there and known, creating an audio portfolio for the publishing companies to see. And it also gives listeners a free opportunity to experience literature. For people like me, free opportunities to experience literature is heaven.

Recently, the publishing company Dragonmoon Press has been taking alot of these podiobook works and publishing them, giving rise to a whole new medium of publishing. Like the eBook, this new podcast novel seems to be the new literary magazine. Anyone with a microphone and a good sound mixing program can make a podcast novel, so there is hope for you aspiring writers. And never underestimate the power of the podiobooks, since some writers have recently shown that a fanbase can be created.

An example of the power of a podcast novel comes in Scott Sigler's recent victory over Amazon.com. Sigler has written 4 podcast novels and with the publishing of his novel Ancestor Scott Sigler reached 7th in the Amazon.com charts the first day of print. Dragonmoon press sold 3800 copies of Ancestor that day, and watched as Sigler's other novel Earthcore reached forth in the Sci-Fi genre. This is the power of the podcast novel fanbase.

Be that as it may, you may or may not want to jump on this podcast novel bandwagon; that's entirely up to you. But if you do feel like you might want to join me and my associates, you can download podcast novels through iTunes, iPodderX, podcastready, and Juice, or you can visit such sites as Podiobooks.com, Dragonpage.com, and podcastpickle.com. Or you could simply search for Podcast Novels through Yahoo! or Google. Good luck and happy listening.

3 comments:

J.C. Hutchins said...

Hey Heero! Thanks so much for mentioning my novel in your awesome and informative post about Podiobooks.com. I hope you continue to enjoy 7th Son and the other great stories available at the site!

--J.C. Hutchins

Evo Terra said...

I think J.C.'s comment sum it up nicely. Glad to see that the ID tag on the front of the chapters brought you back to Podiobooks.com!

E.

Heero2020 said...

Well thanks you guys. I've been benefited by Podiobooks and the authors and crew there, so I felt informing others about it was the least I could do.

And thanks for reading my posts. I hope that I will be able to keep writing informative and interesting reviews.

--Scott