Podcasting divides into two areas
As with self-publishing (actually any kind of publishing) you can initially divide podcasting into two main areas:
- Creating the thing
- Distributing the thing
Or in this case:
- Creating the podcast
- Distributing the podcast
Again, as with self-publishing, some services allow you to do both, but it’s still useful to think under these two subheadings. But there are some things to think about even before you consider creating and distributing your work.
Learning by doing
Many guides to creating an author podcast recommend buying various types of equipment and tell you not to create a podcast using your phone. This might be good advice once you get going and start to distribute a professional podcast to the major distribution channels, but it’s not a good idea to spend before you start – for two reasons: the idea of having to fork out can cause procrastination and 2) often times it’s better to learn by doing when we’re blending our creative processes with techy stuff. While I’ve shared some articles on how to podcast on the module reading list and on the blog, take their advice with a pinch of salt, especially if they talk about buying stuff!
Do authors need to podcast?
For the purposes of the Process of Publishing module, if you choose to do a podcast, you don’t have to distribute your podcast to the major platforms, although the module might give you the impetus you need to create a writing podcast of your own. The idea of the module, as I’ve often said, is to take what you want to do, your creative process, and apply the content of the module to that – you can only make sense of the various facets of the world of publishing by coming at it with yourself and your creative life as a starting point.
Of course, it isn’t necessary to know how to build a podcast to be a published author, in fact you’re much more likely to be interviewed on someone else’s podcast as a writer. However, there are a couple of caveats: podcasting is itself a kind of publishing, and it’s one of the tools a published writer (especially but not exclusively a self-published writer) would want to have in their marketing toolkit.
Listening to podcasts
Again, as with other kinds of publishing, you need to experience the mode of publishing yourself – in this case podcasting – in order to get it right. If you want to publish a poetry pamphlet, do you go to local small press events and support other poets by buying their pamphlets? If you want to self-publish, do you know other self-published authors, have you identified a niche, and do you know who else self-publishes in that niche? Therefore, start your podcasting journey by listening to podcasts and identifying those you like best. By the way, listening to and reflecting on the content of other podcasts is a good way to show awareness of the wider world of publishing in your reflective piece whatever format you chose.
Do the short version first: build hands-on knowledge
In common with other kinds of publishing, it may be better to do a shorter version of the publication journey first. So: publish freelance feature articles as a small step towards writing a non-fiction book, publish poems in journals before putting a pamphlet together, and appear on podcasts before you take the plunge yourself. Not compulsory, but it helps with that all important tacit knowledge. You can also ask them how they started out and what equipment and software they used and / or even ask to help out on the production side. If you’re serious about having a podcast yourself, I suggest that you look around for podcasts to get involved in so you can gain this kind of hands-on knowledge.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, I can talk about the two main areas of podcasting, creatin the podcast and distributing it.
How to create podcast
You need a topic. Remember that the assessment states that there needs to be an element of reflective practice incorporated, and you need to show awareness of the module and of the world of publishing. I strongly suggest that you don’t try to create an overview of the whole module – you won’t have enough space. We’ll need a transcript of the podcast. Therefore, you could write it first (a good way to check if it’s around the 1,000-word mark for assessment purposes) – writing it first will also help you to incorporate the appropriate elements of the assessment, as outlined in the module handbook. You could also use a service such as https://otter.ai/ to transcribe it but you must edit the transcript afterwards which takes time.
To create the podcast, for the purposes of this module, you need any software or app that will create an audio file, and you need to know the basics of how to use WordPress. And you need to know how to upload a media file to the blog. You could use Anchor, Audacity, Garage Band or any software that allows you to create an accessible audio file. Guides to podcasting may well tell you not to use your phone for quality reasons, but don’t let that stop you getting started. Again, as with other kinds of publishing projects or creative projects generally, you don’t need the perfect equipment or environment to try out your ideas.
Making podcasting a habit
However, if you do want to take podcasting seriously, and want to make the sound quality a bit better than simply using your phone, a good-quality microphone is probably the first piece of equipment to invest in. I refer you to my earlier points about appearing on or helping out with other podcasts first, to get a sense of what’s out there, and to what I said about not waiting for the perfect conditions before starting. When I make videos, I use Blue Snowball, which isn’t too expensive but gives a better quality of sound than a webcam, and I think it’s a good place to start – but at least one of the guides says that Snowball and Yeti microphones aren’t the best microphones for podcasting.
It helps to be able to edit the audio file. You can learn how to do that in Audacity and Garage Band. I use Screenflow because I had it already – that’s much more than you need but does the job.
Hosting and distribution
As with websites, if you’re going to do podcasting ‘for real’, you need a host (somewhere for the podcast episodes to sit – like this one: https://planetpoetrypodcast.com/) and a distribution channel (a way of getting the podcast into listeners ears – see below).
When choosing a host for your podcast, you could use PodBeam, for example, like The Writing Life podcast, or Blubrry with a plug-in and host on a WordPress site or you could use BuzzSprout, which comes with tutorials – there’s a link to one of their guides below – or Anchor, which is now part of Spotify, or SoundCloud. Creative Penn uses BuzzSprout. I have friends who use Anchor, but I haven’t used any of these podcast hosts properly myself so can’t recommend them.
However, many amateur / smaller podcasters will simply add an audio file to a page on their website. To make it easier, we are going to host the module podcasts in exactly this way. Authors who podcast this way would email their mailing list to say the podcast is available – or put the word out on social. I’ll put this podcast episode onto the class blog to show you how to do it.
You could also upload videos to YouTube and point your audience to your YouTube channel – sort of a ‘cheat’ version of hosting and distribution but also a way to create a video and a sound file in the same session, so there’s the possibility of distributing to different channels. If you transcribe the video, it could also become a blog post – 3 different pieces of content marketing with the same content!
A few of the major distribution channels are:
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- Google Podcasts
- Audible
- Stitcher
You’ve probably used them yourself so you’ll know how the end user accesses podcasts – that’s what the distribution channel is for: reaching the end user. For example, you can see that the Writing Life podcast is hosted by PodBeam and you can listen on Google podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Apple. So the listener has a choice. You can also listen on the Podbeam website and on the Writing Life section of the National Centre for Writing website.
Guides to podcasting
General guides:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/blog/how-to-start-a-podcast
For authors:
https://www.authormedia.com/how-to-start-author-podcast/
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/how-to-podcast/
Podcasts featured:
Creative Penn: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/
National Centre for Writing: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/ncw-podcast/
Planet Poetry: https://planetpoetrypodcast.com/
Notes
This is a transcription of a 10 min blog post episode I created called ‘How to Create a Podcast’.
As a rough guide, this transcript is about 1430 words long, give or take a couple of amendments.
Here’s a video of how to upload a podcast or an audio file to your blog I made in 2023. Opens in Youtube.
There’s a ‘how to video’ version of this content here from the 2023 run of the Process of Publishing, which enables you to see the websites I’m talking about as you listen. Opens in YouTube.
Bloomsbury have recently published a book on podcasting and Creative Writing.