Scott Sigler, one of the first authors to publish his fiction exclusively as a serialized podcast, has more recently been one of the first podcasting authors to land a (paper) book publishing contract. His book Infected was released in the US in April, and was published in July in the UK.

In this exclusive interview, Scott talks about his experiences and shares his views on podcasting, social media and the future of book publishing.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Lately, it seems like you’re all over the place. I heard you on National Public Radio, and saw you profiled in The Washington Post. Do you want to trumpet what it is you’ve done that gets you all this notoriety, if not infamy?

Scott Sigler: Sure, I give away my fiction novels as free podcasts, as serialized audio books, and that has resulted in enough listeners to get me a publishing deal with Crown Books. And Crown just released the hardcover of INFECTED, which is the first book in their five-book deal, and it just came out April 1st. And their media people have done a great job of pushing the podcast-to-print story, which has resulted in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, NPR– even got reviewed in Entertainment Weekly. So it’s just crazy.

On Pioneering the Podcast Novel

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: That’s exciting and fun, too, for your fans. You have an incredible, very active, very devoted fan base, and you’ve successfully pioneered the use of podcasting and new media to promote your work.

As far as I know, you were really the first author to start to really actively promote new work as downloadable, serialized podcasts. Was there anyone podcasting their books before you did?

Scott Sigler: There were three people who kind of came up with it at the same time. We didn’t know each other then, but we’re pretty good friends now, and that’s Tee Morris, who did a book called Morevi, Mark Jeffrey who did a book called The Pocket and the Pendant, and myself when I put out a book called EarthCore. And Morevi and The Pocket and the Pendant were already in print.

The unique angle for me was that the only place you could get the story was in the podcast. You could not peek at the end, you couldn’t get it, you just had to wait every week. And that got kind of a kind of core audience rolling along with it. And then I rolled into the next book, which was Ancestor, and then Infected, and then a couple more after that.

And it’s just- it’s really been growing since then. So that’s become the default model for me, to give it away as a podcast first and then to follow up with a print book.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: So you had enough of a dedicated fan following that Crown Books took notice of you. Was it a coincidence that the book came out on April Fool’s Day, or was that a special contrivance?

Scott Sigler: Well, I put out a book previously with a small indie press — the book was called Ancestor– put that out last year on April 1st. We picked April 1st because it was a good marketing day. If you asked anybody, “When’s St. Paddy’s Day, when’s Memorial Day?” you don’t really know, you have to look on a calendar. But for like, “When’s- what’s April 1st?” everybody knows it’s April Fools. So it sort of sticks in the head.

What we were trying to do was get people to go buy the book Ancestor all at the same time on Amazon.com, to kind of “game the charts” there. And we didn’t know that it was going to do as well as it did. It hit number seven overall on Amazon which really– that’s what showed the power of the social media community, that you could get a significant number of people to act at the same time, in a very coordinated, concerted effort.

And that’s what Crown saw: this small, independent book with no advertising, no publicity, no media coverage of any kind, zero dollars in marketing, hit number seven on Amazon, which is something that they can’t do 99% of the time. So that’s why they wound up signing me to the bigger deal, and from then on I just- we’ve kept April 1st. That’s the day my books are always going to come out, on April 1st, because now the fan base, “the junkies,” identify with that and it’s like a national holiday now.

Using Social Media To Build an Audience, and To Create and Promote Books

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: There was a lot of excitement, not just through your website but also through Twitter and other social media. You use a lot of different online media to mobilize people, and even to create characters for your books by soliciting input. Tell me about all the different social networking pieces that you use and how they fit together.

Scott Sigler: Well the biggest pieces are probably the social networking platforms; MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are the ones that I use, and Bebo should become more significant as my books start to be released in Europe in a couple of months. But right now it’s primarily Facebook and MySpace.

I do several promotional videos around the book, like book trailers, and those are up on the pages and so are the audio trailers for my books. So as soon as people stumble onto my page, they’re getting exposed to what the podcast sounds like, getting exposed to the story, they’ll see the video, and it makes it really easy for them to communicate and interact with me. All my handles [usernames] for all my social media stuff are up on my website. People can just reach out to me anytime they want, also via email and via other instant messaging.

What I’ve found is that this is not something that most authors do. People will read the work or find out about the work, be curious enough to ask the reader a question, even if it’s just “are you really out there listening?” And I reply to absolutely everything. Everything gets responded to; every instant message, every email, every tweet, everything. And that, combined with the social networking sites, makes such a strong connection with the readers. They really feel like someone actually took five minutes just to reply to them, and even if they only email once, it’s totally locking in fans for life.

It’s a really phenomenal thing. I think it’s just that in most of our entertainment culture, a fan can reach out to the stars of a TV show, or directors or authors, but they’re never going to get a reply back. But in our social media world, you can get a reply back. And when you get that reply, it means a lot.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Well not only that, but you’ve actually actively solicited the participation and the input of the people who listen to you and read your books. We wrote an article at one time about “Scott Sigler wants to kill you.” It was amazing to see how people responded to that. Can you talk a little about that particular project?

Scott Sigler: Yes, it’s kind of a twofold thing; primarily it’s trying to keep track of my fans and be able to motivate them to go do whatever I need them to do. We have– ScottSigler.com is a full-blown social media site. There’s a wiki where the fans are listening. All the information on the characters in all the books? I don’t do anything with that. There’s chat rooms, there’s forums, and that’s where people really communicate a lot, and people who are signed up there and have their profile filled out are eligible to get killed in one of the books.

So when it’s time for another corpse to show up in a book, I’ll go into the website, find a profile of somebody who’s been having fun and being active in the community, and just put him in the book. We recently checked with Crown’s, my publisher’s, legal department, and we can keep using those names, because people have “opted in” on the site. So therefore, once you are picked as a corpse in a story, it’s going to go into print, and the fan’s name is going to be forever immortalized as yet another body in the long body count that is my books. So there’s that part of things, getting people to participate and spread the news, be on the site.

The other part is, when I first podcast these books, they are [only] about 90% finished; but for that last 10%, I tend to get a lot of feedback from the fans. I’ll find that certain characters were way more popular than I thought they would be. I have a huge amount of fact-checking that goes on among my podcast listeners. I put out the podcast episode, and then I’ve got cops, firemen, military people, doctors, scientists. All these people will start emailing me about anything I got wrong.

It winds up letting me kind of market-test the book in a way, see what plot points and characters are really resonating, and maybe blow them up a little bit more. And it also helps me get a lot of my facts straight. I write hard science thrillers. There’s only so much that I can actually know, because my primary focus is the story, and then that gets out to fans who really know all this stuff. They correct me when I’m wrong.

Drawing on the Skills of 30,000 Experts

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Unlike Michael Crichton, you don’t spend the first third of the book trying to really tell me about virus theory and things like that; for which I really I say thank you.

Scott Sigler: Yes, I’m very much into the science side of things and all my plots are heavily grounded in science. And the basic concept of a Sigler book is, when you read it, you could say to yourself, “I could see this happening.” You know it’s fiction, but you could see– it’s not like a ghost story or vampires or werewolves where it’s more supernatural.

But at the same time I’m not a professional scientist. I don’t bury myself in the journals and I don’t profess to know all these things. So the science functions for the story and provides the foundation and makes it more realistic, and then I tap on a lot of fans to go out for the more hardcore science stuff.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Do you have a formal science background, or is it just a lifelong passion? How do you marry your fiction with your fact in your books?

Scott Sigler: Well it’s more of a lifelong passion. I almost went into Biology. But I’ve taken English at Washington State where I was [inaudible]. So I went into Journalism instead. So really it’s mostly been that I watch all the science shows, I read a lot of science magazines. Most of the time that just gives me ideas for stories. I’ll see something on genetics, and in my imagination I’ll combine that with something on evolutionary theory, and something on population behavior, and how all three of these things could go together. I’m like, “ooh, that would be really cool.” So I kind of take the popular science stuff that’s out there that you’ve probably already heard of, put it together in a unique way. Then I’ll go back and I’ll fact-check everything with actual scientists who will either tell me that would work, or that it’s crazy, you’re going to have to change that.

“I wouldn’t have a publishing deal if it wasn’t for podcasting.”

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: So tell me about the podcasting angle of this. Has podcasting, do you think, enabled you to do things that you otherwise might not have been able to do?

Scott Sigler: Yes, absolutely. I mean, (a) for all of the fact-checking information, that I said earlier, there’s no way I could have 30,000 people checking my story for me, to make sure there’s no errors. That’s the first thing.

And (b) the second thing is, I wouldn’t have a publishing deal if it wasn’t for podcasting.

I was doing this for 12 years before I started podcasting. I had well over 100 rejections. Because my stuff’s a combination of suspense, thriller, horror and hard science fiction, none of the publishers would touch it. They didn’t know what shelf to put it on, what category to put it in. That was the line I kept getting, they didn’t know how to sell it.

So when I started podcasting, it built up an audience; it also showed that audience would actually go out and buy print books. That enabled me to get to the point I’m at now, which is being a “majorly featured” hardcover, at the front of bookstores and all this crazy stuff, in airports even. It wouldn’t have happened without podcasting.

On The Future of Publishing

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: How do you see podcasting as one of a lot of media fitting into publishing overall, book publishing in particular?

Scott Sigler: Well, I think book publishing is heading for a very serious change. You go back to the heyday of publishing which was maybe 20, 25 years ago, when you had three channels on TV, four if you count PBS; you had no Internet, you had no videogames. All of these new entertainment options are being put in front of the customer. That’s why readership could be down: there’s just better options available for some people. So publishing needs to learn how to compete with that…. well, maybe not compete with it, but somehow merge with it and embrace it.

So a lot of what’s coming is the kind of things like I and the other podcast novelists are doing, or the people over at Podiobooks.com are doing, which is just give it away. Give the audience a chance to get to know you as a content creator, and as a performer, and know whether they like your stories. Then, once the audience develops that relationship and that affinity for you, then they’ll go out and buy your books, knowing that it’s going to be money well spent. They know what they’re going to get. So you’re allowing people to try it before you buy it.

And the other thing that’s really going to come into play heavily is story extensions and expansions. You’ve got your core story, which will be in the hardcover book. You’ll probably be having to give that away as a podcast, just to compete. But then there’s a lot of other things you can do. You can do the “back story” of your characters. You can do all kinds of background information. You can combine the extra podcast content with wiki content, with links to websites. The book sort of becomes the “gem in the tiara of entertainment,” if you will, instead of just the whole crown all by itself.

Defining Success: “You don’t even need a print book at all”

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: That was kind of going to be my next question. Do you think that publication of an actual paper book is the be-all, end-all piece, or could you define fiction podcasting success without an actual printed book?

Scott Sigler: Yes, you can definitely be successful at it without a printed book.

Here’s an example: Right now I’m hosted on PodShow, and PodShow is generating some advertising revenue for me. So for 2007, I made more in advertising revenue. And I think it’s somewhere like 90% of the advances that are paid to authors, those authors usually never earn out the advance. You’ve got to keep in mind that the vast majority of books published don’t sell for crap. So somebody might get a $5000 advance, which is great. But that’s the only money they’re going to see from the book for five or six years, until the publisher makes that back.

So right off the bat, the advertising revenue that PodShow is bringing me is more financially lucrative than a print deal for 90% of the people writing a book. That’s the hard reality of what’s going on. So the potential to make it the focal point– and if you measure your success in dollars, then yes, definitely there.

And a lot of people who don’t have the book deal aren’t necessarily pursuing it, either, because their enjoyment is creating the book and interacting with the audience. And as podcasting becomes more of a supporting mechanism for videogames, for movies, for TV shows, when you’re doing original stories in there, then yes, that can be the whole thing. You don’t even need a print book at all.

But I don’t really see it as one or the other. I see writers going forward with the idea that it’s the author’s job to put the content out in as many forms as possible– print book, e-book, podcast, even putting the text on the blog, into email, whatever the customer wants– then let the customer come find you and get it that way.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: So do you think your experience, which really by all accounts is extraordinary, is that something that you think others can repeat?

Scott Sigler: Oh yes, I think I’m just the tip of the iceberg. The success I’ve had has been a combination of right place, right time, a combination of really strong storytelling and being a good writer, and having a marketing background.

A lot of what I’ve done has just been instinctively knowing how to capitalize on things to get more ears listening to my podcast, knowing that it’s a numbers game. The more people I get to come listen, who listen for free, a certain percentage of them I’m going to lock in as fans; so it’s just a matter of getting it out in front of as many people as possible.

But now we’re starting to institutionalize the processes a little bit. When I started out, there was no Podiobooks.com. Now, somebody can put their book on Podiobooks.com, and potentially have 40,000 listeners the next day. So it’s a whole different ballgame that’s going on. So, absolutely, other people are going to be able to repeat the success I’ve had.

I think the next “big thing” to come out of podcasting will probably be some 18 or 19-year-old author, because they will have grown up with social media. They’re so intuitively connected to social media, that when the audience, who’s primarily of that age group, finds out that one of their own is doing something like this, I think that person is going to have huge success.

So I’ll probably be– I’ll be dwarfed in a couple of years, I’m guessing, but for right now– I’m the fair-haired child now but it won’t last, somebody else will do it.

Elisabeth: And then you’ll be the venerated father of the medium.

Scott Sigler: Yes!

Encouragement and Advice For Writers and Podcasters

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: So what’s your routine for writing? Do you make yourself sit down every day in the midst of book tours? How do you knock out a book in just four months?

Scott Sigler: I don’t know yet because I’ve never done it. It usually takes me two years to write a book. So I’m a bit under the gun now. My wife and I have, we’ve gotten together and worked out a schedule, a plan. I’ll be writing five or six hours a day, every day, for the next 2 months to get through the first draft. And hopefully that’ll go okay. It remains to be seen. And yes, but it’s just right now it’s a combination of factory line, assembly line, this has to get done, and trying to combine that with making cool stuff that my fans, some expected and some things they won’t expect so they’re surprised.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: What would advice or encouragement would you give to aspiring writers and podcasters?

Scott Sigler: Well, for writers the main thing is the story is the boss, and [your] two bosses are the story and the fan base. So lose your ego and make sure you’ve rewritten the book a few times. There’s a few people who are podcasting first draft stuff. For some formats that works out okay, but I think for most people, you’ve got to make sure the book is good.

I get a lot of emails from people asking, like, “I’m halfway through my book, should I start podcasting?” No, finish your book, revise your book, get it edited. Come to the market with the best product that you can bring to bear. And then when you do publish it, make sure you consistently put the whole book out. Work with the people at Podiobooks.com. They have a full FAQ on what you need to do to put out a fiction novel. They’re awesome, they’ll take care of everything you need, and that’s all totally free.

And in general for podcasting, oddly enough, [my advice is] consistency. The more frequent– if you podcast every week, then at the end of three years, if you’ve done it every week, you’re going to have a sizable audience. The people who lose audience podcast once, skip a month, come back, podcast two more times.

The audience depends on your consistency, just like they watch their weekly shows on TV or they get their daily newspaper. The quality of content is entirely subjective. There are shows I listen to that I think are just horrible, but that have huge audiences. There are shows I listen to that are phenomenal, and no one’s listening to them. It’s all up to the marketplace. Just put out what you want to put out and just do it consistently.

Siglermania, Big Boy Numbers, and Some Final Words

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: I want to hear a rundown of all the stuff that’s going on for you now and all the stuff that’s coming up next. If you look at ScottSigler.com, there are several different serialized books that you’re juggling episodes of. There’s the new hardcover book– and a book tour. You’ve got a blog on AMC writing about scary movies.

So run down the brag list of what you have going on right now.

Scott Sigler: Well the primary thing is Infected coming out in hardcover as a featured title. So that came out April 1st.

We’re also giving Infected away as a free podcast, the whole thing, unabridged, at ScottSigler.com. And we’re five episodes in [in mid-April 2008] and that’ll continue for about another two or three months, depending on how long it lasts.

We just did a book tour to support Infected, which took me to Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and then finishing up in Houston. And Houston, by the way, was a location selected, voted on, by the fans at ScottSigler.com, and we had 75 people there.

Elisabeth: And you had a guy that came all the way from Minnesota to Texas.

Scott Sigler: He flew in, he flew in from Minnesota.

Elisabeth: Which is, it’s a hell of a long trip for a book-signing.

Scott Sigler: Yes, it was pretty crazy. He flew in, and a lot of people drove four and five hours to come to that Houston thing, which was very humbling. So the book tour was a huge thing. We averaged 50 people a bookstore.

We sold an average of 45 books which, from what my publisher tells me, is “big boy numbers,” that’s really strong. For even an established author that’s really strong. For somebody new like me it’s ridiculous. And that’s from the involvement and support from all from the community.

So we’re finished up with that now and then we’re also in the middle of a book called Nocturnal, which is the next book that I’ll have out with Crown on April 1st, 2010. So giving that away as a podcast.

We’re blogging at AMCTV.com. There’s a couple of different blogs going on at ScottSigler.com, including Sigler Science, which is wherever anything pops up that even remotely reflects anything I’ve written about, I take full responsibility for it. I claim everyone in science is ripping me off and I put it on the blog. So that’s a lot of fun. There’s all those things, and then potentially working on a videogame deal to write for somebody else’s videogame, hopefully in the next year. We’ll see how that turns out soon.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: And isn’t there also a movie?

Scott Sigler: Oh, yeah, and Infected has also been optioned by Rogue Pictures, who are the makers of Shaun of the Dead and Doomsday, and they’re actively trying to get that turned into a movie right now. So that’s about a 50/50 shot, which is really strong. When your book is optioned for a movie, to have a 50/50 shot is about as good as it gets. So there’s all that.

And then right now, I have four months to write the sequel to Infected, on top of doing all that other stuff. And the sequel is called Contagious.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Any other parting words that I need to tack in here?

Scott Sigler: Just that Infected is available in hardcover. It’s in pretty much every bookstore in America now, and in the U.K.; including England, Australia, New Zealand. It’s coming out in Russia, Bulgaria and Japan and Denmark by the end of the year.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Shall we lobby Crown to send you on a book tour in Europe and Australia?

Scott Sigler: Yes, that’s what I’m working on right now, is trying to figure out how to [convince] my publisher to send me to Europe to support the book.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Thank you very much, Scott.

Scott Sigler: Thank you.

Our friend, radio producer Chris Vallance, sent word that he had recently interviewed PodShow – er, Mevio – executive Adam Curry for his BBC Radio Five Live Pods and Blogs program.

Our regular readers will remember that Mevio co-founder and Chief Executive Ron Bloom raised eyebrows last month by explaining that the reason for the name change was essentially to “distance itself from user-generated content.”

In the meantime, the UK arm of PodShow, BT PodShow, recently announced a full consumer launch of its video network. On that occasion, Curry, the BT PodShow President, said that the network would be “what we call a brand-safe network. There is an expectation about what is going to be delivered, an advertiser won’t just find themselves next to a video of someone shooting a firecracker out of his bum.”

In the interview, Vallance talks with Curry about “his take on the commercial future of podcasting.”

More after the break…

BT Podshow had its official launch May 13, although it had been around and in beta for the past 18 months. During that time, Curry says, they were “dilligently building a network of producers and an audience around the programming those independent producers make.”

On The Role Of PodShow

Vallance asked about the role of BT PodShow in the podcast industry. For example, Vallance, says, actor Stephen Fry’s “Podgrams” podcast is popular of its own accord, and circumvents the need for distributors.

In response, Curry sees the role of BT PodShow as “helping build the brand for lesser-known independent producers who are not technically or business savvy.” Independent content producers “wait for the video to go viral, but by the time it does, everyone has already seen it, so unless you already have another equally big hit waiting, there’s no way to make money, at least not with advertising.”

Also, Curry says, BT PodShow is developing partnerships with media entities, like the Express Group (?) who are print-savvy, and know their audience and their market, but are not experienced with producing video. “We work with them to make an editorial partnership for delivering great stuff.”

Curry’s Take On Leaving Behind “Podcasting”

Vallance asks about the reason for the name change in the United States. “You’re now called Mevio in US, but not in the UK?”

Curry: “The understanding of what podcasting is, a word I didn’t invent but just came out in the US is typically percieved as amateur-in-basement-with-microphone. By the way, you and I know very well that amateur-in-basement-with-microphone can produce some beautiful results. The advertising community thinks a little narrower, and wants to buy stuff the way they buy television and radio advertising – for the time being. That will change, but those types of industries change very slowly…”

“In the UK, the concept of a podcast has nothing to do in people’s minds with amateurish work or a guy in a basement. Could be Dr. Cockney on the streets of London or it could be BBC NewsPod. The scope here in the UK is well understood. The [name]change in the US is for the media buying community, who did not want to have to explain podcasting to the advertiser. They just want to say ‘it’s a media network, and you buy it in much the same way you do tv or radio.’”

Vallance asks Curry to address “the perception in some quarters that PodShow is turning its back on the independent producer.” Is that perception wrong?

Curry: “Entirely wrong! If you look at our network, who are all the stars? They are all independent producers… that we have business relationships with. However, I will say there is a definite market we’re experimenting with now in [repurposing] pre-existing material from the DVD retail market… We’re repackaging existing excellent material, into podcasts – it’s episodic, you can subscribe to it, so I call it a podcast…”

Audio Vs. Video

Vallance: “Video or audio, which is more important?”

Curry: “I come from audio, so I’m very biased… I like theatre of the mind. I think [audio i]s severely misunderstood and misused (although the BBC gets it) …That remains really important to us as a business.”

“The big brands, we’re seeing now, big consumer goods, want to advertise on video, they want to do pre-roll… We’re already seeing and pitching a combined type of deal, which satisfies both the audio and video… Right now I’d say our entire network is 60% audio vs. 40% video, but it’s about 50/50 on the busines as to where that breaks down.”

You can subscribe to the Pods and Blogs’ weekly look at the news as seen by bloggers and podcasters here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/pods/rss.xml

The Guardian reports that BT PodShow, an online TV portal, is getting its full consumer launch:

The service is a joint venture with US-based Podshow (now Mevio), in which the backers of Google and YouTube have invested, and which has been running for several months. It has over 1m hours of content.

The two companies signed their original deal in September 2006 and, since then, Podshow has been looking for British talent and helping with production costs.

“We are what we call a brand-safe network,” said BT Podshow president Adam Curry. “There is an expectation about what is going to be delivered, an advertiser won’t just find themselves next to a video of someone shooting a firecracker out of his bum.”

Highlights of the network include an alternative healer and the self-styled sex therapist Dr Cockney.

Todd Cochrane is the CEO of Raw Voice, a longtime podcaster at Geek News Central and helps connect podcasters with advertisers via his Blubrry podcast network.

He’s also known for having strong opinions, on topics ranging from the PodShow/Mevio name change to the quality of podcasters’ RSS feeds.

I asked Todd about his perspective on user-generated content and the state of podcasting:

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: PodShow changed its name to Mevio recently, in part to distance itself from “podcasting” and user-generated media. Does user-generated media, in your estimation, mean amateur or poorly-produced media?

Todd Cochrane: I think many people have lost focus on the fact that we live in a period of time when anyone can create content. The barrier to entry is nearly non-existent. With the barrier to entry being low, the quality of the content is going to vary.

The beauty of the space remains that anyone can create content. But when it comes to judging content this is a very subjective subject. There are millions of people in the United States alone, and what I may consider to be poorly-produced content may in fact be content that my neighbor connects with.

Podcast content is not about the production quality, it’s about message and the ability to connect with others that have a similar interest.

For example – When we started my mom’s show, the goal was to reach a single person. She does not care if the show reaches thousands. She wants to reach people that can take what is said and use to their benefit. The content is produced by me.

While it may not be the highly-produced content (Mevio CEO) Ron Bloom is referring to, the important thing is that she is connecting with a lot of people worldwide that she would not otherwise. Thus, the payoff has been reaching and affecting people worldwide.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Does the term “podcast” carry a stigma? If so, is there something that podcasters should be doing to correct this?

Todd Cochrane: I do not hear this from media buyers or people that consume the content.

Those creating podcast in the mainstream media and Mevio would like people to think the user generated content carries a stigma. The failure of a company to meet their financial numbers is not because of the content.

I think the comments by Mevio leadership is part of a bigger strategy…. What I think is being attempted by the folks at Mevio is to establish a “podcast class system.”

It appears on the surface that they are in trouble as a company, and they need to make the appearance that somehow the produced content on their site, much of which they have no rights to, is superior to all others in order to demand higher advertising rates. Ron (Bloom) took the first step in establishing a class system, by slamming user-generated content, and spitting on those that allowed them to get two big rounds of funding.

I cannot even imagine what we [Blubrry and Raw Voice] would have been able to accomplish with that kind of money. I can guarantee we would not be spitting on those that have supported us and [would] have a lot more to show for it.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: You wrote recently on your blog about your frustration with incomplete shows – podcasts that are missing important information, descriptions, artwork, categorization, etc. Where do these incomplete shows come from?

Todd Cochrane: Many are being auto-added by new people in the podcast space who are just desperately trying to get exposure, but do not take the time to complete their profiles. Part of it is because many simply do not know the benefits of good show listings and rich meta data.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Do these half-baked podcasts perpetuate the (mis)perception that podcasts are amateurish or poorly produced?

Todd Cochrane: I think what happens is, people have great intentions, but then figure out creating content over a long period is hard work. This is why more than 50% of shows never make it past show #7.

It may add to the “amateurish” perception, but from a business model, it impacts nothing. Generally, those new shows have not yet decided to monetize their content.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: In another post on the Blubrry blog, you set a deadline and threatened to get rid of those shows with incomplete feed information. What has happened with that?

Todd Cochrane: So far, as house cleaning goes, we suspended about 400 shows.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: What do you see happening with podcasting, both on your podcast network and with podcasting in general?

Todd Cochrane: This does not directly answer your question, but I asked a podcaster recently, that was making a very significant amount of money with his show, if we could use his show as a case study. The podcaster declined — because he was making full-time wages on a part-time basis. He did not want his employer to find out he was making more money with his podcast then he was on his 9-5. The podcaster is loving life as he can double dip and have the best of both worlds.

On the other hand, we have shows to which we pay very small checks. They are happy because they understand that their “micro audience,” based on their content, is not in a position to make big money.

This is why podcasters need to pick the ad[vertising] deal they are in carefully. For instance, we have a show with 3000 listeners, which is out-performing a show with 50,000 listeners, simply because the show producer of the 3k show has amazing engagement with his audience. That show with 3000 listeners is making more than $8k a month on one of our media buys.

The subject of money is a tough one for sure.

So far as what is fair, my only hope is that companies will be transparent.

For the record:

• CPM-based buys that I have dealt with range in the $20.00 to $45.00 level.
• Flat sponsorships for specific buys have had CPM comparables much higher than the $45.00 level.
• Flat sponsorships can pay very well.
• We also have a variety of CPA buys.
• To date the most we have paid a single podcaster on a “monthly” basis on a CPM buy is well over $10k monthly.
• The most we have paid a podcaster on a CPA buy has been between $6500 – $8300 on a monthly basis, for over a year.

But I have to caution your readers, the focus should not be on the big payment numbers. The focus should be on the thousands of content creators. They have the simple ability to make something, and get what they have to say out there. If they so choose to monetize, we are here to help them with no strings attached, along with providing the audience-building tools we are known for on our communities.

That philosophy, focusing first on the content, not on the money-making, as applied to our business model: we treat each and every content creator exactly the same. But we temper that with some realities. Some shows have the ability to generate significant revenue, other shows may only be capable of generating enough revenue to pay for hosting and or take the wife out to dinner.

PodShow has officially announced that it has changed its name to Mevio. Along with this announcement, the company announced updates to its site.

The name change has been greeted with skepticism by many podcasters, and there’s already a “Mevio” entry in the Urban Dictionary.:

The act of renaming a company / business, thinking that the new name will make up for fact the business model was either flawed or poorly executed.

That Web 2.0 company just laid-off 25% of their staff and now they are going to Mevio their name in hopes of bringing in new investors.

According to Mevio, though, there’s more to the name change than just rebranding. They say that the name change “is the culmination of PodShow’s transition to a complete broadband entertainment network for the social Web.”

Mevio Distancing Itself From Indie Podcasters

One of the reasons for the name change is that the company is trying to distance itself from amateur content and the term “podcasting.” The company is now focusing on distributing professionally produced shows.

“We have never believed in user-generated content as a business, or even as a sustainable entertainment offering,” said Ron Bloom, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, MEVIO.

“Our combination of premier, high quality content with a growing and return audience gives brand advertisers the kind of online viewer engagement that they are hard-pressed to find anywhere else on the Web,” said Adam Curry, co-founder and President of MEVIO.

Site Updates

With the name change, the company has announced changes to its site, including:

MEVIO “Smart Channels”:

• Users can create their own “channels of Mevio content. MEVIO Channels can feature shows, episodes, clips, audio or video.
• Users can select from MEVIO-created channels, create their own Smart-Channels, or play and subscribe to channels created by other users.
• Public/Private: MEVIO Channels can be private for personal use, or public to be subscribed to by others.

MEVIO PPG (Personalized Program Guides):

• MEVIO Personalized Program Guides are designed to help you discover programming in broad or targeted categories.
• MEVIO’s advance administration tools let Personalized Program Guides be created and managed by MEVIO editors or by any user.

MEVIO MashBoard:

• Channel Player/ Widget: MEVIO’S MashBoard plays channels, clips, audio and video in multiple formats. Users can program their player to play personalized channels, or MEVIO’s picks and specials.

MEVIO Share:

• MEVIO Share lets users create channels and share them with their friends or select a particular show or clip as it is playing and share it on the spot. Users can import their address books and invite all of their friends to “tune in”.

MEVIO For Advertisers:

• Brand-safe channels and networks deliver large scale audiences against desirable demographics.
• Vertical Networks targeting specific demographics.
• Full range of advertiser integration, including traditional ad inserts, companion programming, page takeovers, network promotions, product placement, host endorsements and custom production.

PodShow, the heavily-hyped podcasting startup from podfather Adam Curry, is dead; it’s changing its name to Mevio.

NewTeeVee attributes the name change to a so-called “curse of the ‘Pod”" – the idea that any company with “pod” in the name is cursed. They note that PodZinger has changed its name to EveryZing & PodBridge has changed its name to VoloMedia.

When podcasting is growing 40% year to year, though, with some surveys pegging podcasting’s growth as high as 87% year to year, it’s a mistake to pin the troubles of PodTech and PodShow on their “pod” names.

PodShow has raised and spent close to $24 million over the last couple of years, but its business case appears to be stalled with its stars pimping GoDaddy codes. That’s a problem they aren’t going to fix with a name change.

Mevio expects to be profitable by the end of the year – but I’ll be surprised if we don’t see some very high-profile defections from the “Mevio” camp before then.

Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff, according to a report Valleywag:

PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.

“There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver information about the firings; we’re told he left that to middle managers.

This looks like the end of the podcasting hype.

None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups have delivered on their promise, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.

Expect more podcast hype backlash in the next year, while forward-thinking organizations and early-adopters push podcasting technology to mainstream adoption.

More: Our take on the podcasting hype cycle.

Content delivery network Limelight’s legal problems won’t affect PodShow, says PodShow founder and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry:

We have spoken with LimeLight management and they have assured us they will not go ‘dark’. They have been a good partner to us, we trust them and stand by their word and their excellent service.

As with any well planned media infrastructure, PodShow’s platform is completely CDN agnostic. We can use any CDN without any interruption to our service and I would presume most companies that use a CDN for delivery would never allow themselves to be locked in to any one provider for any type of service.

In my personal opinion this story is being overhyped in the ‘twitter-verse’. These things usually end up in some form of settlement long before there’s any danger of ‘darkness’

According to the analysts at Compete, the Podshow podcasting network is one of the top five movers and shakers of 2007.

Here’s what PodShow’s Adam Curry has to say about the news:

This is a report I’m extremely proud to post about. According to Compete.com PodShow grew 29144% in 2007, making us the third fastest growing site, sans pr0n content even

Congratulations to the independent producers who are our partners in this success.

There are a lot of reasons why PodShow is growing – but the biggest is that they’ve done a good job of getting talented, attractive video podcasters that create content that’s of interest to a broad audience.

Compete also notes that there’s a larger trend at work here:

Among the fastest growing sites, eighteen of the twenty offer a prominent peer-to-peer communication platform. Even in the adult video category, sites that function almost identically to YouTube (redtube.com and youporn.com) represent the fastest growing.

The numbers attest to the efforts of PodShow and all the talented podcasters that are making this type of growth possible!

In a post on his blog entitled “TeXtra – Now Hiring,” Podshow cofounder Adam Curry talks about the departure of comely commentator Natali Del Conte from the technology podcast:

All of us at PodShow couldn’t be more proud to see her meteoric rise. She leaves us with a very strong program and international format in TeXtra and I personally wish her much continued success.

And Del Conte explains her departure from TeXtra for the greener pastures of a job at CNET, where she will also file occasional reports at Fox News:

“I want to make it clear that my departure from Podshow is not an indication of the state of things at Podshow. This is just the next logical step for me and I owe a lot of it to Podshow. I was not a proven success story when Adam “discovered” me on an episode of Cranky Geeks. He took a huge chance and made a huge investment in me and I will never forget that. Adam took me to Spruce in Lauren Heights last week and he offered to continue to be a mentor to me and I am surely going to take him up on that offer. Podshow will continue to do big things, with or without TeXtra.”