Podiobooker
News from the Staff of Podiobooks.com

While the title of this post may be largely in jest, we’re currently 2 for 2 in this arena.

Back in September, Matthew and I got involved in a strangely heated debate with an author who we’ll call Don (because that is his name) who wanted to release his SureFire Way to Stop Smoking™ book on Podiobooks.com. (OK, so that’s not the real title name, but it might as well have been.) I say “strangely heated” because this guy Don was, for lack of a better term, off his friggin’ rocker. He had the oddest questions — not about formatting, recording or even technical specs mind you, but about how much money I personally make as a writer. I tried to gently explain that I’m the guy that facilitates other folks to make podiobooks, but I’m not a podiobook author myself. This all took place on a discussion forum and he managed to offend just about every one of the regular posters. I started giving the kook single sentence (or words, if I could manage) answers to his queries and he eventually went away.

Then today, Tee pinged us about some new wacko, also with a Smoking Cessation AudioBook (his caps). Why the moniker “wacko”? He asked if (and I’m paraphrasing here) there was any way he could give us his book “whole” and not break it up into chapters. Seems that his Special Sauce™ requires that the book be listened to straight through in order to work its Magic™. (Yep. All those ™ symbols are examples of me being snarky.)

But Tee didn’t give the wacko a snarky answer at all. In fact, he said this:

… yes, it needs to be episodic as that is what makes a podcast a podcast. If you cannot do your podiobook as an episodic program, it would be hard to carry on PB.com.

Very nice. Very un-snarky. Nothing at all in this that you could take as a dig or suggestion that his work was “unworthy” of inclusion.

And here’s where I wonder if overexposure to nicotine causes significant brain damage or just paranoid delusions, at least from those who kicked the habit and feel that their Foolproof System™ is the only way to go¹. This wacko takes supreme offense to Tee’s explanation, going so far as to posit that we are in some way censoring (yes, he use the exact word) his work.

But maybe there was misunderstanding. So Tee, again taking an incredibly high road in my opinion, gently explains:

A podcast can be whatever you want, but through Podiobooks, we are trying to make it episodic and give it a running time. If your podcast is one episode one-and-a-half hours long, then your podcast may perform better on your own feed on your own server. At PB.com, we’re looking for something with a “running time” or several episodes be they 10 episodes or 50. Does that make sense?

But alas, I’m afraid it didn’t make sense, as the final reply from said wacko was a snippy “enjoy your empire”. Like I said: wacky.

So while I’m certain that there are sane and rational authors out there with genuine advice on quitting smoking who might enjoy the distribution opportunities of podcasting and perhaps even Podiobooks.com… neither of these guys qualify, obviously. Next!

E.

¹ - I smoked for about a year and a half when I was 19. Not because I thought it was cool, but because I found out what an excellent delivery device cigarettes were at delivering the drug nicotine to my stressed out college-boy system. But I don’t have an addictive personality, so quitting was no issue for me. I sympathize with those who struggle with it, I really do.

This entry was posted by Evo on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.