Established patterns of best selling and popular authors to secure TV and book-signing appearances, talk shows and bookclubs, speaking engagements and workshops, remain viable and are still coveted opportunities. However the hard press for sustained interest is far more competitive and attention spans are much snappier even for the best writers, storytellers and mouth-watering celebrities to sail smoothly through. All power to the few.
A powerful medium - the podcast - has proven itself to be a far more penetrating option. Any sense that podcasts are primarily for niche players is far from accurate. The fact is podcasts have by far more viral capabilites and target audience reach and potential than any of the forementioned opportunities, and should be fully embraced by authors.
Don't podcasts have niche audiences? Absolutely. All the better for an author to find his or her audience of interest! Are there podcasts with broad appeal and fast penetrating reach? Resoundingly so, the answer is yes. With a podcast you do not only have comfort and congeniality available, you have its viral capability and all other pluses drawing listeners to their favorite podcasts. To enjoy opportunities this medium offers and to boost success, authors need to learn how to effectively employ the medium to find, engage and nurture their desired purchasing audience. Then voila! (Continued below).
WritersRoundtable
Holywood Reporter
How does an Author chart a SOLID course through the Podcast Jungle?
Let's HIGHLIGHT crucial steps to SUCCESS:
Know who you are (authentically) - understand clearly what aspect of who and what you are (authentically) you are willing and ready to share with your audience.
Realize you are asking a casually interested person to spend his/her hard earn cash to obtain a special part of you whiich he or she will be taking to his or her most private space to spend time with for a way longer time than you will ever spend knowing them. You bet your hiney your smart readers want to know who they are going to bed with! It is an author's obligation to show them the flesh! Un-enhanced. Are you obliged to lay yourself bare-naked to the world? No. Emphatically No. (This is the tricky bit an author must go deep into his/herself to figure out. Once you put it out, you cannot pull it back! Ooops.) BE YOURSELF! If you are not worth knowing, why did you publish what you are writing?
Know WHAT you have (precisely) - UNDERSTAND what you are offering and WHY. Precisely.
Unless yours is a pink elephant Christmas party, your preferred readers want to know that they are getting exactly what they expected AND MORE. You want to find readers who are looking for what you have to offer. They want to be thoroughly satisfied. You want them to be thoroughly satisfied, unless yours is a hoax. With satisfaction the premium, this is the perfect medium to let your people enjoy the relationship. With this precision this is an ideal medium for you to find them and them to find what you are offering.
No one comes to a podcast to buy your books - no one - they come for an enjoyable experience.
Authors who don't understand this thoroughly well is going to miss their big opportunity. The podcast host is their to please his audience. That's why you are there. The audience comes to enjoy that experience. That's why you are there. Both of you want to enjoy this time together. Your book is merely apart of you. The audience knows when you are selling AND they don't like that. The audience knows when you are there for them AND THEY LOVE THAT!
