Blog Relations

Our new story podcast is rather different from Storynory. It’s a political thriller by Juval Aviv, formally of the Mossad. The site and podcast is named after the hero of the novel (whose professional history has a lot in common with Juval). It’s called Sam Woolfman.

The first book in the series (called “Max”) is loosely based on the death of Robert Maxwell and was published last year by Century, a division of Random House. There will be more Sam Woolfman titles, and the plan is that the podcast will seed interest for future books.

Unlike most podcasts by major publishers, this does not involve JUST  background or chats with the author. We will have an interview with Juval at some stage, but the focus of the podcast is a reading of the text by a professional actor. In other words, it’s a quality production that people might spend time with, listen to in the car, on the train, and get to know and like. And it’s free.

What it does have in common with Storynory is a brand-building strategy.  The idea is that a really strong online presence – one that has valuable content and can travel with you on your iPod – will create an appetite for more books and spin-offs.

When I met Juval earlier this year, I found he was a fascinating character, and a gold-mine of conspiracy theories. Steven Spielberg based the central character of his movie, Munich, on him. One thing I can assure about Juval’s future as a thriller writer – he’s never going to run out of plots.

If you aren’t sure what MP3 player to buy you could try listening to some podcasts.

The question we get asked most about our Storynory podcast is “What’s your business model?” At the Bologna Children’s Book fair last week, we explained it to a journalist from The Bookseller magazine. This is what she wrote in this week’s edition:

Free digitalbooks from Storynory.

Ghost writer Matthew Lynn and Hugh Fraser are offering free digital audiobooks in line with a mission to become “the Arctic Monkeys of children’s publishing”. Their website, Storynory.com, offers free-to-download retellings of classic fairytales and Greek legends, presented by a series of characters including Prince Bertie the Frog and Tick Tock Turkey. They are hoping to launch books and other media formats featuring the characters. Some 120,000 downloads are made from Storynory.com each month.

That’s it in a nutshell.

It’s been a reasonably good time for publicity. I was quoted in Newsweek , no less, recently about our Save Christopher Robin Campaign. Unfortunately it didn’t mention Storynory directly (”Hugh Fraser on his blog”) The lesson from Newsweek is always to give a journalist a snappy description of who you are and who you represent. I should have known that, having been one myself. Silly me!

We also looking out for a mention in the June edition of Nick Jnr Magazine which has a huge circulation in the US.

You don’t need a background in business administration to be successful but the extra knowledge can’t hurt.

This is very much our way of thinking: podcasts are a great way for authors to reach an audience independently of publishers. The New York Times photographs Scott Sigler podcasting from his cupboard. (The cupboard has good acoustics, but I don’t know how the photographer squeezed in their too). Scott is the author of Earth Core and other science fiction horror stories. Since he started podcasting, he’s been signed up by a small Canadian Publisher and now has a New York literary agent.

Books and stories are great territory for podcasting.

I’ve just come across the Hott 100 from podcast host, Libsyn. It’s a chart showing the most downloaded podcasts on Libsyn over the past 24 hours. Libsyn probably has most of the top indie pods, so it’s a good one to follow. It’s different from rankings by number of subscribers, such as the Podfeed / FeedBurner top 100. I don’t see many British pods there, but Storynory is at 85 today, and seems to rise to around 51 on our strong days (Monday usually being a good one after we publish on Sunday evening). Learn language pods do well, as does Grammar Girl, for all those Americans who are up tight about not knowing how to write English properly. Askaninja, which passes for humour in Geek land, is number one.

But Grammar Girl really is on to something. It’s short and simple, and presumably easy to make. Take heed Brit-podders, Grammar Girl doesn’t RAMBLE! I think self-improvement is a huge theme in Podcasting, and much over looked. People want to use that half hour on the train to limber up their brain-cells.