Review: Podcasting: The Do-It-yourself Guide

The book is broken down into five sections:

• Listening to the Podcast Revolution
• Joining the Revolution: Your Own Podcast
• Recording Your Podcast and Performing Postproduction Tasks
• Hosting and Preparing to Publish Your Podcast
• It's Show Time

The first section, Listening to the Podcast Revolution, looks at what podcasting is and discusses getting started with podcasts.

It provides a good overview of the podcast clients that are available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Charts lay out the features of various applications, and short descriptions and screen captures of the podcast clients provide additional information.

This section also looks at finding podcasts, introducing some directory options and using a podcast client to subscribe.

The next section, Joining the Revolution: Your Own Podcast, looks at things to consider before you create a podcast. A chapter on Choosing Your Podcast Format covers a lot of ground and introduces many of the ideas and issues that podcasters need to be aware of before jumping into podcasting seriously. He also delves into creating a podcast setup with only minimal expense, and then creating a semi-pro podcasting setup.

The third section, Recording Your Podcast and Performing Postproduction Tasks is where Cochrane gets into the nitty-gritty of recording your audio. Audacity is covered fairly deeply in this section, along with details like getting levels right, normalizing and file naming.

In this section, Cochrane does a great job of covering what works for him. A new podcaster should be able to use this as a guide to get started and also to avoid many potential pitfalls.

The fourth section, Hosting and Preparing to Publish Your Podcast, looks at requirements for podcast hosting. It also does a great job at looking at the issue of bandwidth. This isn't something fun or exciting for new podcasters to think about, but it's certain be a topic of interest when your podcast takes off and your web host starts billing you for excess bandwidth use!

Cochrane also discusses creating your podcast newsfeed. This section looks seriously at using Blogger, Movable Type, or Radio Userland for creating blog-based podcasts.

The final section, It's Show Time, looks at the last steps in the process, uploading files, promoting your podcast, and advertising. This section is the shortest, perhaps because this is an area, especially advertising and promotion, that is rapidly evolving.

Cochrane's book is a good read and a recommended purchase for anyone seriously interested in podcasting. There are a few areas, though, where there's room for improvement.

The book does very little to get potential podcasters interested in podcasting. The first chapter only discusses four podcasts in any depth. It would have been helpful to have an exploration of more podcasts, a discussion of why people are podcasting and a deeper look at the podcasting phenomenon. This would give potential readers more of a reason to get excited about reading the rest of the book.

Cochrane's book also has a fairly strong Windows bias. Early on, Cochrane notes "Prior to writing this book, the closest I ever got to a Mac was when I walked by someone with one." Unfortunately, this is reflected in the book. There's no discussion of Garageband, which many podcasters are using. The Linux coverage is limited even further. Mac and Linux users are likely to be disappointed by the book's operating system-specific coverage.

One final caveat is that Cochrane makes several hardware recommendations without much explanation. He recommends spending up to half your budget on a good microphone, and purchasing hardware compressors and effects. More discussion would help readers determine if a $500 mic purchase makes sense for them.

Besides these concerns, Todd Cochrane's Podcasting: The Do-It-Yourself Guide is well worth the $19.99 list price. It covers a lot of information, and should provide most podcasters with food for thought.

Windows users especially should find this to be just the ticket for getting started with podcasting. More advanced podcasters are likely to find answers to some of their questions, along with a lot of information that should help them make the most of their podcasting efforts.