How Authors Can Leverage Podcasts And What We’ve Learned

Ferol Vernon (00:36.651)

Hello, authors, and welcome to the Written Word Media pod. I am here with Ricci as always. Ricci, how are you doing today?

Ricci (00:44.723)

I am doing great. It is my favorite season here in North Carolina. It is spring and life is burgeoning.

Ferol Vernon (00:51.809)

Yeah, and I think you have a special friend that you’ve been encountering mostly in the morning. So maybe you wanna just talk about that a little bit for the audience before we get started.

Ricci (01:00.981)

could talk about this for the entire pod. I have something very magical happening in my life. I go for walks every morning and the neighborhood we live in has lots of wooded trails through the forest. And so, you know, I go walks every single morning, all seasons. And the last couple of weeks on my walk, I have been seeing an owl. And this owl is

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, for those of you listening, an owl in the wild, but there is something just really magical and almost spiritual about it. The first time I saw her, I’m calling it a her, but I really don’t know if it’s a her or him. She kind of, you know, swooped above me up in the trees. So I got to see her from afar and that was pretty amazing. But then the next day I was in a different part of the wood and I kind of turned a bend.

and she was sitting low, like just above a creek. I think she might’ve been fishing. And she just looked right into my soul for like three minutes before flying away. And then on another occasion, few, maybe a week later, I saw her again, even closer, like probably eight feet away from me. I have a picture of it. Maybe we’ll have to put it in the show notes, but I’m obsessed with this owl.

Ferol Vernon (02:17.537)

Yeah, put it in the show notes.

Ricci (02:22.098)

All I do is talk about this owl, as my family knows, and every morning now on my walk, you know, I’m looking for her. And actually the way that I have found to know if maybe she’s around is that if she is around, the birds are kind of going crazy around her. So if it’s very quiet in the morning, it’s usually a sign that she’s not around. But if I hear a lot of chittering and chattering, I slow down and look, and then sometimes I see her. So, yeah, I am all owl.

all the time right now and just leading right into it.

Ferol Vernon (02:55.091)

Amazing. if any of you have owl spotting tips or have written about owls, let us know. Write us an email. We’d love to hear about it. And today’s show is actually not about owls, although maybe we’ll do an owl show later in the year. Yeah.

Ricci (03:10.652)

be happy to do an owl show right now. But yes, I think we’re going to talk about something that’s probably more interesting to the general population than my owl obsession.

Ferol Vernon (03:19.987)

Yeah, so this is something that we actually were not experts on a year ago, but after doing this for a year, we’ve become an expert on, and we’re going to talk today about podcasts. And I think that the thing that’s really exciting for us is we’ve been doing this podcast for almost a year now. And so we’ve had a lot of time to learn and reflect. And so we’ve done some research, as we always do before these episodes, to try to help the authors listening navigate some aspect of their author business.

But this is one that we actually have a lot of first-hand knowledge with. So we’re excited to sort of talk about this and also share some of the tips and tricks that we’ve learned along the way producing the Written Word Media Pod.

Ricci (04:01.491)

Yeah. So podcasts are pretty incredible marketing tool. And this is true across every industry that’s out there, which is why there is a pod for basically everything that you can possibly imagine. And so pods are great tools for authors to reach readers, to market their books, to get their story out there. And I’m really excited to talk today about how authors can utilize pods to help to grow their business. So where should we start?

Ferol Vernon (04:30.453)

Yeah. Well, let’s start with like the why, which is usually like the right place to start when you talk about anything for your business is like, why does it work? Why is it impactful? And so I think, you know, the big thing about a podcast and the reason why it works is due to this sort of intimacy and this trust that’s built over an episode or multiple episodes. But at a minimum, when you listen to a podcast, and I’m sure a lot of you can relate to this, you’ve listened to somebody for

you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes, sometimes an hour. And so, you know, that kind of exposure and sort of relationship that you get to build with somebody is really, really impactful for the listener. And it’s just one of those things that’s just a really great way to connect with people. And the thing I like a lot for our audience is that it’s a very similar, it’s long form, you know, podcasts are not 30 seconds. It’s not a TikTok and books are long form. So I feel like there’s some

sort of natural synergies there for the two different formats.

Ricci (05:33.99)

Yeah, and

Ricci (05:38.856)

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right, Farrell. And I was actually a psychology major in college. So there actually is a psychological term or terminology for this, which is called parasocial relationships. So when you hear somebody’s voice in your ear, or if you’re sitting in the car and you’re just hearing their voice, there’s something about us as human beings that hearing other people’s voice really starts to build a bridge of trust.

Between you and the other person that you are listening to and so it is what makes podcasts way more powerful than say you know advertising or even a Substack where what you’re doing is you’re putting out stuff in a written format. You know tech talks and reels if you doing that in with you actually speaking to the audience you can get some of that effect but it’s very short.

Whereas to your point, the pods, you’re usually in somebody’s ear for at least 10, but sometimes, you know, 20, 30, 40 minutes. And so you build a pretty intense relationship with the people who are listening over that time period.

Ferol Vernon (06:49.598)

Yeah, and I think like the thing that’s important for authors and we’ll get to some of the tactics here in a minute, but is like this is a form of marketing where when you connect with somebody over a podcast, if you’re a guest on a pod or you have your own pod, you talk about it and a reader listens to you, that’s a chance to kind of get a reader for life, right? If you get somebody to respond to an ad or you send them an email, that’s a great touch point, but it’s very quick. It’s very surface.

And so the podcasting is a way to sort of have a much deeper connection with that potential reader. And I think that’s an exciting thing for authors. I think like one of the also sort of tactical stuff, and if you haven’t listened, we did a pod on AI and GEO generative optimization. And some of this stuff ties in with that. Whereas when you’re on a podcast, there’s usually show notes and that show notes is either a transcript or a webpage.

that talks about the podcast. And so if your book is being talked about, whether you’re there or not, or whether you’re on the podcast, you get this publication, this show notes page that’s kind of forever out there on the internet. And that’s sort of good SEO, it’s good GEO, and it’s just overall.

Ricci (08:07.857)

Yeah, for sure. mean, from the GEO’s perspective, if you have a transcript of you speaking on the pod, there’s nothing more valuable. One, because it’s so much long form content that has all of this context. And two, because it’s less polished than a lot of the content that’s put out there. So going back to kind of a blog or a Substack, that content is usually like highly polished. You’ve really thought through everything that you want to say. Whereas when you’re on a pod,

Your message is still getting out there but there is this humanity to it in that you’re telling little stories and you’re I’m in your eyeing and maybe you’re like saying something that actually makes it more real and in this world where we start moving to AI some of these things where you can actually identify that this was a human moment I think is going to really help with the signal of being discovered.

as well as the huge benefit of when someone listens to you speak, knowing that you’re human and connecting with you in that way.

Ferol Vernon (09:08.691)

Yeah, and we see this. you know, with producing the podcast ourselves, it’s very, very difficult to do. But once you get into it, you realize how unpolished you actually are. But then you also realize how much that resonates with folks. And like when we go to conferences or we talk to authors, you know, they reference the pod and nobody’s ever said like, hey, you say so a lot or you say, a lot or all the things that I’ve gotten feedback on before. People are just sort of happy to talk to you about.

some topic that we chopped up for them. And I think that’s a good note for authors to take if you’re going to be on a podcast or have your book be talked about or do any kind of really press. People don’t care as much that you’re stumbling over your words as you think. They’re really just excited to see you as a person and show up as a human.

Ricci (10:00.55)

Yeah, as a recovering perfectionist, this one’s really hard for me. Like I much prefer to write the blog posts that we put out on the, on the blog because I, you know, go through and I edit it and I read through it. And what I put out there really perfectly encapsulates. This is what I’m trying to say. Whereas on the pod, it doesn’t always come out the way that you want it to, but to your point is actually more powerful that way and captures people’s attention more. And so as we start talking about guesting on pods, this is one of the, think.

Ferol Vernon (10:03.048)

So…

Ricci (10:29.584)

difficulties that author sometimes have is that it feels intimidating to think about going on and speaking to a host and answering questions. And you’re like, what if I don’t know the answer? What if I sound stupid? What if I’m not articulate enough? And just giving yourself a little bit of a free pass there and saying, Hey, that actually is going to be beneficial. People are going to find you more endearing. People are going to understand that you are like them and that you’re not a perfect robot. The way that you can look when you’re

putting content out that you get to kind of polish before you hit publish.

Ferol Vernon (11:03.004)

Yeah, it’s like related to the book writing process. It’s like, you know, you’re, basically the video is like first draft stuff. You know what I mean? And so the editing comes in later, but don’t worry about that. So when you’re, when you’re sitting here talking and we’re talking and it’s kind of your first draft and it’s imperfect, but I think that’s okay. 

Ricci (11:24.028)

And just like writing a book, you do get better and better at it as you have more reps. And so, you know, the first time you, you’re a guest on a pod or the first time you decide to host your own pod, it’s going to be okay. It’s not going to be great. And with every subsequent appearance that you have, you will get better and better.

And after you know, you’ve done X number of pods, you’ll look back at your first one and you’ll be able to see, from the first one I did to the 10th one I did, I actually have improved, but that improvement comes in increments. and you just have to let that process happen the same way that you do as you write and you get better and better over time.

Ferol Vernon (12:10.992)

Yeah, the first episodes that we recorded left a little bit to be improved. And so, you know, we’ve gotten better at this over time. And the one thing I would encourage you to do is do the raps, get better over time, but don’t go listen to the first thing that you recorded after you’ve been doing it for a while. It’s not good for you. You’re making progress, I promise you.

Ricci (12:30.542)

Or go listen to it and celebrate the progress you’ve made.

Ferol Vernon (12:32.911)

There you go.

Okay, so I want to move on to sort of a different approach for podcasting. We’ve sort of touched on this a little bit, but let’s go right into it. 

Ferol Vernon (13:08.422)

So there’s kind of two formats for podcasts and there’s a million different variations, but roughly they kind of fall into the category where there’s hosts talking, which is what Ricci and I are doing right now, where we kind of both host the show and we’ve researched a topic and we’re talking about it with each other. And then there’s the guest format. And the guest format is probably one of the best ways for authors to leverage this. And we’ve done here at the RIM, we’re MediaPub, we’ve done both so we can speak to them, but.

It’s a great way for both the host and the guest to generate content and to provide value to listeners. But one of the things that you have to do before you start trying to be a guest or host guests is finding sort of the right show, right? And so if it’s your show, then you have to find the right guest. And if it’s your guests, you have to find the right show. So let’s start with that second one, Ricci like if you’re an author and you want to be a guest on a pod, how do you find the right show that’s really going to work with you as an author?

Ricci (14:06.66)

Yeah, the best way is to actually listen to the pods where you think your readers are. So you’re probably doing this already a little bit. If you say you’re a mystery author, there are probably some pods that you are listening to that you enjoy because you’re in the mystery genre. Now, when I say you’re listening, I mean, as somebody who consumes and reads mystery, not necessarily the pods that are about craft, even though there is some opportunity there to go on a part about craft

because other authors might buy, say your mystery fiction book. but if you’re really trying to reach the readers, you want to go out there and find the pods that readers are listening to within the genre that you write. And the best way to do that is to listen to those pods, make a list and identify, okay, these would be the top 10, 15, 20 pods where I think my readers are hanging out.

And then slowly start reaching out to those pod hosts to see if you can. Be a guest on their pod now if the pod that you listen to never has guests then the chances that you’re to be a guest are pretty much zero so you do want to be applying some kind of filter so that when you are listening to these pods you want to make sure that either every week or occasionally they do have guests coming on because then you know that that’s a format that they support.

Ferol Vernon (15:29.177)

Yeah, I think that’s a good point. like, one of the things that you want to do is when you do that outreach email, you want to sort of, it’s kind of a pitch, right? You’re trying to say, Hey, podcasters, I think I’d be good on your pod. So you have to figure out why, what’s your unique angle. But I think, you know, one of the things I’d encourage every author to include in that pitch is the fact that you’re an author. And I think that gives you a lot of credibility that maybe you might not think you’re like, well, I’m just a mystery author. And it’s like, well, no.

You’re a mystery author. That’s awesome. Like that’s unique. How many mystery authors are there in the world? Like not that many. And so, you know, any podcast host would love to have an actual author on the pod to talk about, you know, yes, you’re talking about your book, obviously, but it’s not just a sales pitch, right? You have to say like, how can I add value to your audience? And for an author, you know, that could be like, I can talk about how I write stories or like,

What are other cool mystery books that I’m reading myself? But there’s a bunch of different angles that you could take, but it all comes back to when you reach out to that pod, you know, what would be valuable to those listeners and crafting your pitch that way.

Ricci (16:36.109)

And I would say that very specifically in your outreach email, I would say, Hey, I thought it would be cool if I could come on the pod to talk about X, Y, Z, how I figure out the procedural elements of my, of when I’m writing a crime fiction book, how I do character development based on Agatha Christie, X, Y, Z. and once you listen to the pods, you’ll have a better sense of what might be interesting to that audience. You can also pick up threads. So if you listen to a pod and you hear something that

the host and another guest or the hosts talks about, but kind of skates over, you can say, Hey, I was listening to this part and you mentioned this in passing, but I think it would be cool to do a deep dive episode that actually covers that. And I’d love to talk about that. So when you do reach out, don’t just say, Hey, I’d love to come on and talk about my book because that’s, it’s just not enough. You have to have something that’s going to be a hook and really interesting to the audience. And as an author, you can think about after someone listens to this pod.

Ferol Vernon (17:15.342)

Right.

Ricci (17:34.23)

What are they gonna walk away with? What’s the one thing that they’re gonna go and tell their family at dinner tonight and say, I listened to this part and blah, blah, blah. And so there’s probably one interesting tidbit that people are gonna walk away with from whatever your guest appearance is. And that’s what you wanna highlight when you reach out to the host.

Ferol Vernon (17:43.971)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (17:53.518)

Yeah, and I think, you know, this is classic marketing where you’re trying to show the benefits, not just the features, right? So what’s the benefit of.

It’s, you know, I think surprise works to your favor here. It’s like, you you’re missing, like, how do you kill a character? Right? Like, I think something like that, right? Like, how do you write, you know, for romance, like characters that people love or that people hate, right? And I think emotion works in marketing. And so when you’re doing those outreaches, you know, make sure to include a little emotion, a little surprise, you’re a writer, you’re creative, like use, use, use those tools to your advantage to try to get noticed.

Ricci (18:30.572)

And if you’re nonfiction author, this is pretty easy, right? Because whatever your nonfiction subject matter expertise is, you’re looking for pods that would be interested in covering that subject matter. And generally when you’re nonfiction, you have a ton of credibility in that field already. So just having you on as a guest, talking about that topic is going to be super interesting to that audience. So, you know, stick to your lane there.

But again, you might have a little bit more of a creative angle that you come across with, or you can just go straight up with, hey, I wrote a non-fiction book about, you know, high school education and the challenges facing teens today. I’d love to come out and talk about that and then find the pods that would be interested in that. And there are probably a couple of different angles based on your research that you could use to target different types of pods that are out there.

Ferol Vernon (19:23.524)

Yeah, okay, so let’s say you’re successful. You’re an author. We send out a couple of these emails and somebody’s like, hey, awesome, let’s have you on the pod. What are some tips for authors to prepare to get ready to be on that pod to make sure that they sort of maximize the opportunity and provide value to listeners?

Ricci (19:43.285)

Yeah, so I think it’s always fair to ask the host to send you questions in advance so you can prepare. So once somebody says, hey, we’d love to have you on, if they don’t send the questions ahead of time, email them back and say, hey, would you mind sharing some of the questions you think we’re going to cover or if there are any specific areas you’d really like to talk about? So that way you can have the questions in advance and you can prep. If the pod host says, hey, we don’t provide those ahead of time,

Then you still want to prep but you want to kind of write down like i said what’s the one thing you think people are gonna walk away with what kind of the four points that i’m gonna hit and what are the three anecdotes trying to weave in as much storytelling as possible. In your answers cuz that’s what people are going to remember and then the other thing to do is to always send your kind of intro bio what you want how you want people to introduce you.

Don’t leave that up to chance. So when you’re getting closer, you can say, Hey, we’re really looking forward to being on the pod. Here’s my bio for the intro. And most hosts will just read that verbatim. So that’s where you get to say who you are. You set the tone. and also where you can mention, you know, and Ricci has recently released her new mystery novel, blah, blah, blah. And so you get to, you know, kind of sneak in a little bit of marketing within the bio right at the beginning when they introduce you.

Ferol Vernon (21:01.76)

Yeah. And the bio is a great thing. Like you really do need to send that ahead. The one thing I’d recommend is when you do this, you know, your bio is read on a podcast and most authors have their bio, you know, on the retailer page or Amazon or Apple, Google, whatever. And it’s a little blurb about who you are and what you write. And you can copy and paste that and like send that to the podcast host. That’s fine. But what I would encourage you to do is like in a room by yourself, like read that out loud. Cause your bio can sound different.

when it’s read out loud versus when you write it down. And what I’ve seen a lot is like the bios that are like long and not meant to be read, they can sound robotics. It’s like da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da as the host is like trying to grind through this long thing that you’ve written. So I would encourage you to make it a little sharper and then read it out loud yourself and make sure it sounds okay. And you might have sort of a bio that’s okay for speaking and then a bio that’s okay for written that might be a little different.

But that’s something I’ve noticed a lot where authors kind of trip themselves up.

Ricci (22:05.514)

Yeah, that’s great advice. And then I think when the day arrives, you want to be early on time is early. So usually the, the host will, if this is going to be over a zoom or a Google meet, we’ll send you the link ahead of time. So get on like 10 minutes early, make sure that your equipment is all working. a good best practice is actually is to wear AirPods or some kind of headphones so that you don’t have feedback when you’re recording. So if you have that, put those in and make sure when you’re speaking that you can hear and everything’s coming through. If you have a microphone, great. If you don’t, doing it through your laptop is totally fine. And then also make sure to ask ahead of time, is this an audio or video pod? You don’t want to show up thinking it’s an audio pod and then they throw you on camera. So if it is going to be video,

for the occasion, if it’s going to be audio, you know, that’s generally a lot easier. Just make sure that you got your sound set up.

Ferol Vernon (23:11.948)

Yeah, that’s good. It’s like sort of, you know, show up and get the easy stuff right. Be on time. Have your equipment sorted. Don’t leave it to the last minute. And I think that’s all good advice. And if you want a little bit of advice on like gear or equipment, we did a pod a few weeks ago with Dale, who’s a great YouTuber in our industry. And we talked a little bit about that. So check that out if you want some recommendations on gear. But Ricci, think the final thing is like,

almost every podcast there’s like a sign off, right? There’s like an end. And so you’re either a guest on the pod, maybe you’re being interviewed, maybe they’re talking and you’re contributing a little bit, kind of depends on the format. But at the end, there’s often a time where the host will say, hey, where can we learn more about you? Or people want to know more about what Ricci’s doing. What do they do? And I think it’s really important for authors to be prepared for that moment. And what should they say when they get that?

that question that they should expect at the end of the pod.

Ricci (24:12.095)

Yeah, I would just have the list of places where you want people to go written down in front of you so you don’t forget anything. And then I would mention them in order of what’s most important for you. So if you want people to like, you know, go get your books on Amazon, you could be like, Hey, you can find me on Amazon and you can check out my latest release. You can also find me on Instagram or Substack. You know where the places are, where you’re trying to build your socials and your presence, or where you’re trying to build your list. might say, Hey, go to my website.

And sign up for my email. Like I would call that out specifically, tell people that’s what you want them to do. so it’s going to be different for every author, but you need to know what are the top three places. And if you could be granted a wish and every listener on that pod were to do the top thing you asked, what would it be? Would it be to go Amazon or not even Amazon? Would it be go to some retailer and buy your book or your audio book? Would it be to go to your website and sign up for your list?

Ferol Vernon (24:40.843)

Yeah.

Ricci (25:09.456)

I would like to go and follow you on Instagram or TikTok.

Ferol Vernon (25:13.717)

Yeah. And I think that the last thing I would say is, you know, make sure to give a benefit statement once you do those things, right? Go to my website to sign up for my emails, to get awesome new mystery books, to get, you know, romance books are about small town romance, to get blah, blah, blah, whatever your hook is. because that really drives home, what the value is to the listener. It’s like, well, I do kind of like small town romance. So I’m going to go sign up for that. and I think if you’re prepared for that,

that little sign off, you can actually get a lot of readers and a lot of value from that just in that sort of 10 second snippet of audio that you’ll get.

Ricci (25:51.294)

Yeah, and think you can also just be sincere and tell people how much you would appreciate that and be like, you know, that would really mean the world to me. Thank you so much. Every sign up counts. Let people know that it’s something meaningful and they’d be more likely to follow through with the call to action.

Ferol Vernon (25:55.188)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (26:07.796)

Yeah. And so that’s kind of what it’s like to be a guest on a pod. And this is not necessarily for everybody, but for authors out there who are curious about launching their own pod, you know, we want to talk about that for a few minutes and like when it makes sense for you to have your own pod, when guesting is enough. And I think that’s a decision that’s unique for every creator. But like,

How would you recommend Ricci and author make this call? Like, hey, I like podcasts, I listen to podcasts, the guesting thing is going pretty well for me. Should I start my own pod? What are some of the inputs that go into that decision?

Ricci (26:46.631)

I think wanting to launch your own pod generally is a calling. Like if it’s never occurred to you to start a pod and you’re not itching to host a pod, you’re probably all set being a guest. And I think being a guest can be really a great path and just another marketing tool that you have in your toolkit. If you’re kind of kicking around, I think it might be cool to do a pod. Or if say you’re like pretty prolific.

I’m on Substack or you have a nonfiction niche and you’re like, I would love to talk to more people about this. This could be an excuse for me to get more experts on my show. Or if you’re a fiction author and you’re like, Hey, I want to connect with other authors in the industry. And this would be something cool to do. Then you’re probably in the bucket of people where it might be worth exploring. Are you willing to make the investment to actually launch and host your own podcast?

Ricci (28:25.508)

Similar to many endeavors, like writing a book, the people who begin by thinking they want to launch a pod to the people who actually launch a pod and stick with it for more than 10 episodes is actually a very small percentage. So if you’re somebody who wants to do this and you’ve already had success committing and writing books, you’re probably in good shape to do this, but you’ve got to understand that it’s a similar type of commitment.

I think when you’re listening to a pod or you’re watching a pod, it seems really easy and you’re like, Oh, that was 20 minutes. I can just record it 20 minute pod. Um, but actually there many hours that go into every 20 minutes of final production.

Ferol Vernon (29:13.694)

Yeah, and I think it’s very similar to some of the other content formats that we’ve talked about in the past. So you think about YouTube. If it works for you, then it’ll work for you, right? If you’re Instagram, if it works for you, it’ll work for you. Twitter acts like if it works for you, it’ll work for you. And I think the podcasting is the same way. I think one of the things that I like about the podcast and one of the things I think might resonate with authors is you record it and then you don’t publish it right away. So.

Let me tell you why. Whenever I go to publish a YouTube video or a LinkedIn post or something like that, you write it and then you have this moment where you’re like, then you hit go and it publishes right away and everybody sees it. With the podcast, you record it and then you upload it and it sort of goes live when it goes live. And I think something that’s nice about that is you’re disaggregating the time when you create something to when you release something. And I think that is very similar to writing a book, right? You put in most of the time ahead of time.

And yes, you have to hit the publish button at some point, but it’s less immediate. It’s more, there’s upfront work and then there’s long-term payoff. And I think that the authors that want to commit to doing a podcast, I think it’s a format that can really work for long-form storytellers. And I think that that’s a lot of, you know, who’s listening to this pod right now. And so I would encourage you, like Ricci said, it’s a calling, but if you are thinking about it, or if you’re listening to this pod and you’re like, well, maybe it would be cool.

Explore that, write about it a little bit, know, try to record something. I think it’s a really great way to connect with potential readers. And I think it’s, we mentioned this a few times, but it’s worth saying again, the authenticity that you get in this era of AI, when everything is sort of fake, goes a long way with your readers. And I think readers want to know that you’re not a bot. They want to know that you’re a real person and a podcast is a great way to speak to them about your process, about your characters, about your writing or anything.

And so I think it can be a really great tool for authors, but like you said, it is something that you have to commit to.

Ricci (31:17.989)

Yeah, it’s also a long game. So it actually takes quite a long time to grow your listenership and to quote unquote succeed when you have a pod. But if you do have an audience to begin with, that is very helpful. So our pod is almost one year old. I think we’ll have our anniversary in the next couple of months, but we started working on it three or four months before we even launched the first pod. And when we look at our stats over the past year,

You know the first few episodes did not have very many listeners even though we do have a very large audience of indie authors. It took time to get the word out there it took the consistency of releasing a pod every two weeks to get people to start sharing the pod to get people to subscribe to the pod and if you are listening to this and you enjoy it please hit subscribe. Plug so you I think if you’re going to embark on launching a pod.

Ferol Vernon (32:09.38)

You

Ricci (32:14.989)

You need to say to yourself, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it for a year before I make any judgment call on whether this is successful or not. Because if you just record three pods and then look at those stats, you most likely will quit. You have to say, Hey, I’m not going to really see traction for 12 months and potentially longer, depending on when you decide to, how often you decide to drop the pod. If you’re doing a weekly, you could probably say, I’m going to do it for six months. If you’re doing it every two weeks, you probably need a year. If you’re doing it a month, you might have to do it for two years.

Ferol Vernon (32:26.47)

Yeah.

Ricci (32:44.986)

But if you do stick stay the course you are in the stratosphere of less than five percent of pods out there that have stuck with the game and that does give you an incredible advantage over everybody else both in terms of audience building and as Ferol said in terms of being an actual human entity and brand in a world that is rushing towards more and more AI generated content.

Ferol Vernon (33:09.02)

Yeah, and I think you mentioned sort of frequency cadence. And I think when we were planning to do this podcast, we thought, we can do it every week. No problem. It’s an hour, right? And we had a producer help us with the first. We haven’t had a producer for all of our episodes, but we had a specific company that was helping us launch. And they were like, why don’t you start with every other week? And we were kind of like, we’re pretty good at things. We work pretty hard.

pretty sure we can do every week. We were wrong. That was very good advice to do it every other week. have scrambled to get episodes recorded on time. So I would say, you know, pick a frequency you think you can hit. Don’t tell yourself you’re going to do it every week. It’s actually really, really hard to come up with content every week, especially like you get sick, you go on vacation, like then you’re in a hole. So I would say, you know, from, from some experience,

start with every other week or every month. That’s enough to build consistency. And then if you love it, you can increase the frequency, but I wouldn’t, don’t overcommit at the beginning because I think you could burn yourself out pretty quick.

Ricci (34:19.023)

Yeah and the last thing I’ll say on this topic is that there is in the beginning a learning curve just as there is with publishing a book because they’re all the same kind of tools and platforms that you have to navigate it’s like where are you going to distribute to are you going to be on you know spotify and apple on youtube on on all these other places just like with a book where which retailers do you want to be on what platform are you going to use to distribute are you going to go direct to each one of them and upload every week or you’re going to use a platform like Transistor.

That’s the equivalent of a draft to digital or a published drive, which will push everything out. Are you going to do video or are you going to do audio? If you’re going to do video, are you going to do YouTube? How does YouTube differ from everything else? know, so format, platform distribution, all those things exist in podcasting, just like they do in publishing. So it’ll feel very familiar, but it is a whole nother, you know, basket of to-dos and platforms that you are going to be adding to your list.

but can really augment your author business if you decide to do it.

Ferol Vernon (35:25.241)

Amazing. So we wanted to really just wrap up the pod here with just kind of summarize what we’ve talked about, like, and really what we’ve hit on this episode is three things. One is kind of like why podcasting works and sort of the depth of relationship that you’re able to build with a listener or potential reader. We talked about the parasocial relationship that you get. This is the same thing that why we like celebrities so much, because we feel

we feel like we know them. We talked a lot about guesting, which is probably like the entry point for most of the authors listening to this pod and probably the best tactic that you could use to get started if you’re not already podcasting. And then we wrapped up with sort of the calling, the mission to launch your own pod or not. And I think, you know, some of those decisions around, you able to commit to something that could be really beneficial for your career, but it’s a non-trivial undertaking.

And so I think, you know, that’s really how we feel about the podcast and as a marketing tool. And as we’ve been doing this, like Ricci said, for almost a year now, we’ve learned a lot and it’s really been fun sharing some of these tips with you. And hopefully you all won’t make the same mistakes that we made.

Ricci (36:42.466)

Yeah, and I would say, although it’s been challenging for us, it’s been incredibly rewarding. So, you know, we’re coming up on one year and we’re just going to keep going. We love doing this. It’s been really fun to record. It’s been really fun to hear back from all of you who are listening. So hard is some is good. You know, we, say that in our family all the time. Like hard is good.

Ferol Vernon (36:50.319)

Yeah.

Ricci (37:06.757)

so don’t be scared off by it. if it feels like something you want to do, because it has been like really a wonderful thing for us. but it does take a significant amount of work. And then the last thing I’ll say is around starting small. So if you’re going to be, you want to do guesting, just start small, you know, reach out to some smaller pods, start with a list of 5 to 10. You don’t have to, you know, go be on Joe Rogan.

as your first pod in order to, to say that you’ve been successful quality actually is better than quantity when it comes to pods. So if you can’t find, find a pod that even just has, you know, a few hundred or few thousand listeners, but they are your readers or the people who are going to purchase your books. That’s actually way more valuable than going and speaking out to a huge audience. That’s not really interested in your content. it also gives you some time to do a bunch of podcasts, hone your.

craft, get better at speaking. So start small, one step at a time, one bite at a time, and then you’ll start to feel more comfortable and you can slowly level up to some of the larger pods that are out there.

Ferol Vernon (38:16.739)

Yeah, amazing. right, Ricci, is there anything else that we need to cover that we need to talk about here in this wild, the wild west world of podcasting?

Ricci (38:25.944)

I think that’s it for today. Thanks, Ferol.

Ferol Vernon (38:28.537)

Okay, all right, so we’ll close the book on today’s episode and authors, go write something. We’ll see you next time.