Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Podiobooks



After getting the tip about Podiobooks from net@nite #17, I've been trying out Podiobooks. The concept is pretty simple: an audio book released on an RSS feed like a podcast. The price is compelling, yes, it's free, i.e. ad-supported.

Scott Sigler was the author interviewed, he had written and agreed publishing terms for Earthcore in 2001, but after the September 11 attacks the publisher clammed up. Desperate to get published, he started reading the book himself as a podcast in 2005 on Podiobooks. Now an established author, he has several other books for sale, see his website. Amazingly, he says his ad-generated income from Podiobooks is still higher than that which he gets from selling paper copies!

This kind of cutting out the middleman is exactly what the internet is good at, and it's great to see it succeed without any DRM or other nasty stuff. I'll go the same way with my novel, whenever I get around to writing one ;-)





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2 comments:

Scott Sigler said...

Yep, no DRM, none of that horseshit. Everyone needs to tip their hat to Cory Doctorow for all of this - he was the first guy to say "screw it" and give his content away via PDF.

Scott Sigler said...

It wasn't me, Evo, it was the Bizzaro Scott - you know, the one who uses the naughty words.