Jeremiah Tolbert

Writer | Photographer | Web Designer

15 Responses »

1. 

   Brenda Cooper

   May 3, 2009 • 9:04 am

   I do lis­ten to pod­casts. I have enjoyed adven­tures in scifi pub­lish­ing (Shaun Farrel, although it is on hia­tus) which is news about the indus­try, and I loved hear­ing the neb­ula noms done by Starship Sofa. I just fin­ished METAtropolis. I also lis­ten to sci­ence pod­casts and NPR pod­casts.
   What’s impor­tant for me:
   I want to get them eas­ily and via itunes
   I want them read well and to be well-produced (and you’re right, some sto­ries are bet­ter that way than oth­ers. I really dense story is harder to fol­low, and some authors styles are harder to fol­low.
   No more than an hour — I can get audio­books when I need a long story. That’s obvi­ously not hard and fast, but still.
   A lit­tle intro and a nar­ra­tor is fine, espe­cially when the nar­ra­tor is some­one I know and like.
   Break long ones up by chap­ters or seg­ments if you can since then I can find where I was if I have to stop and take a music break, or at least roughly where I was. It doesn’t inter­rupt lis­ten­ing, but it helps with start­ing over in the middle.

   I think the web­sites are impor­tant. They often tell me enough about the story that I decide to get it. I don’t usu­ally sub­scribe via itunes (I did for Shaun’s which was on a reg­u­lar sched­ule), but I usu­ally go look­ing for a pod­cast and I do read the web­sites briefly. I usu­ally get the pod­cast by fol­low­ing the itunes link for that par­tic­u­lar story.

   I lis­ten to then when I’m clean­ing the house, gar­den­ing, or walk­ing the dog. That’s a few hours a week at least, some­times more. I some­times lis­ten to then in the car, but most of my dri­ves are short, and I like to know I’m going to have an hour for it.

   Products? I don’t think I want to be mar­keted to much in a pod­cast (I’d pay for it like a song on itunes first, I think). But if I must be assaulted by an ad I guess ads for webzines, pod­casts, books, and cool gad­gets would do it — geeky stuff. Trailers for new sf movies that aren’t hor­ror sf. At least those wouldn’t make me mad.

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2. 

   Jeremiah Tolbert

   May 3, 2009 • 9:11 am

   Thanks Brenda, that’s really use­ful information.

   Unfortunately, Escape Pod has sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion costs (pay­ing the authors, sound design, etc), so we have to pay for it some­how. Sponsorships and dona­tions are our two means. We aim to keep spon­sor­ship spots unob­tru­sive and very tar­geted to our audi­ence. I don’t think you’ll hear a car com­mer­cial on Escape Pod any time soon. I could be wrong, but the only spon­sor­ship we’ve had so far has been Audible.com, and I think those spots are pretty organic to the show. The host gen­er­ally just talks a bit about a book in the Audible cat­a­log that might relate to this week’s story.

   On the sub­ject of adver­tis­ing in gen­eral, I think we hate adver­tis­ing because they’re adver­tised to for so many prod­ucts we would never by. But when it’s some­thing they’re actu­ally inter­ested in (movie trail­ers, books for ads by authors we like) then they do serve a decent pur­pose. Hence me col­lect­ing a lit­tle bit of pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion via this post.

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3. 

   Roy Huggins

   May 3, 2009 • 9:56 am

   Electra and I have been lis­ten­ing to Escape Pod, Podcastle and Starship Sofa recently. We lis­ten on Electra’s com­puter (with big speak­ers, of course) and gen­er­ally need to sit and lis­ten — if I try to do any­thing else simul­ta­ne­ously I get dis­tracted or can’t hear the story. Thus we lis­ten more often when we have long beaks (Which hap­pen occa­sion­ally in Japan.) Currently on my ipod I only lis­ten to music and Japanese lessons (also pod­casted.) But when I return to the States I could con­ceive of replac­ing the lessons with story podcasts.

   I have found that the qual­ity of nar­ra­tion makes a huge dif­fer­ence. For exam­ple, the nar­ra­tion on “Small Room in Kobold Town” was awe­some. (And to risk over­do­ing com­pli­ments, Sarah Tolbert’s read­ing made the story that she did a lot more inter­est­ing, too. I for­got the title, how­ever. Sorry.) I think the main dif­fer­en­tia­tor is the abil­ity of the nar­ra­tor to cre­ate dis­tinct voices for char­ac­ters with­out sound­ing silly — some­thing I’m sure is extremely challenging.

   I don’t really lis­ten to ads, but I don’t mind them — I know every pub­li­ca­tion has to make income some­how. Whatever ads appear are extremely unlikely to catch my atten­tion, how­ever. I guess a lot of peo­ple think that and turn out to be wrong but I hon­estly can’t think of any par­tic­u­lar ads that will catch my atten­tion, mostly because I’m a very casual lis­tener. I.e. ads for Audible.com don’t snag me because I’m unlikely to down­load an audio book, even though I lis­ten to pod­casts, espe­cially when my wife puts them on the speak­ers. Podcasts are less of a time/resource commitment.

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4. 

   Jeremiah Tolbert

   May 3, 2009 • 9:59 am

   Thanks for the response, Roy. Good stuff there. I told Sarah what you said just now and she said “Aww, tell him I said ‘thanks.’”

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5. 

   Chris Kakris

   May 3, 2009 • 10:04 am

   To answer your ques­tions:
   1) I lis­ten to Clarkesworld, Escape Pod, PRI Selected Shorts, Starship Sofa, Terra Incognita, along with a num­ber of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy ones
   2) Exclusively on an iPod and usu­ally when I am cook­ing, shop­ping, clean­ing, walk­ing and on rare occa­sions just sit­ting down to relax.
   3) I research the web­site before sub­scrib­ing via iTunes. Sometimes if there is an inter­est­ing com­ment made by the nar­ra­tor I will go back to the web­site but nor­mally not.
   4) I don’t mind adver­tise­ments if they make sense. The audi­ble ones are fine. And if the nar­ra­tor sug­gests audio books they like or with a sim­i­lar theme to the short story I have lis­tened to then that’s more valu­able to me. Make it rel­e­vant.
   5) A qual­ity record­ing with no back­ground noise, a good micro­phone and a nar­ra­tor with a great voice; one that can clearly and con­sis­tently dis­tin­guish between the dif­fer­ent characters.

   By the way, I love the pod­cast. Keep up the good work. And I don’t think it’s rude to ask lis­ten­ers to con­tribute a few dol­lars now and then.

   A sug­ges­tion: per­haps a dona­tor could also iden­tify mem­o­rable sto­ries and nar­ra­tors. That would give you an idea of what peo­ple like, and per­haps reward the writ­ers and nar­ra­tors with a bonus? Just a thought.

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   • 

     Jeremiah Tolbert

     May 3, 2009 • 10:31 am

     Chris, your sug­ges­tion is a good one. I will see if I can encour­age that.

     Reply
6. 

   Jeff

   May 3, 2009 • 10:13 am

   Yes, I do lis­ten, occa­sion­ally. I tend to do so when trav­el­ing or when get­ting exercise.

   Quite hon­estly, I don’t gen­er­ally look at the web sites because I con­sume pod­casts at a non-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer time. I sub­scribe via iTunes, and then scroll through and see what I want to lis­ten to when the moment comes. It’s a very rare occa­sion that I later visit a site men­tioned in or asso­ci­ated with the audio portion.

   Personally, I lis­ten in roughly half-hour chunks. Whether that’s all that my caffeine-addled brain can han­dle as far as atten­tion span, or whether that is the time after which my ears get tired of the work, I can’t say. Longer pod­casts are lis­tened to over time, though only if they’re com­pelling enough for me to come back to them.

   Generally speak­ing, my brain turns off when the ads come on. The kind of adver­tis­ing that would be inter­est­ing for me on Escape Pod would be genre-related — con­ven­tions, book sign­ings in my area (hah), new releases, ToC’s of the major pub­li­ca­tions, etc. etc. Frankly, if it’s just plug­ging the lat­est Hollywood block­buster or reit­er­at­ing an ad I’ve already seen as a ban­ner some­where else I’ll almost cer­tainly ignore it.

   A good pod­cast is no dif­fer­ent for me than any other media; it’s just another way of deliv­er­ing con­tent. So that means clear sound, good reading/voice act­ing, and words worth lis­ten­ing to. Though it might be fun once in a while to do a real old 50’s radio show, com­plete with spe­cial effects à la Gerald McBoing-Boing.

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7. 

   Tempest

   May 3, 2009 • 10:15 am

   As an edi­tor, I don’t have any agenda other than to find sto­ries that I think are good that will also make good audio productions.

   and as we all know, this kind of think­ing inevitably leads to great things!

   (but seri­ously, you may want to watch out for such notions.)

   I have noth­ing use­ful to say about pod­casts — when I remem­ber to down­load them I enjoy, but I am not int he habit of rou­tinely hook­ing my MP3 player to my computer.

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8. 

   Josh English

   May 3, 2009 • 3:24 pm

   I lis­ten to a few, so I’m always sev­eral weeks behind:

   Slice of Sci Fi, SciFi Dimensions, Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing (going away),Writing Excuses, Escape Pod, Podcastle, ClonePod, Pseudopod, The Acapodcast, ACapella Originals, and Grammar Girl. There’s more, like Mr. Diety, but I’m not sure they fall in the scope of your question.

   I lis­ten to most of them on my iPod while com­mut­ing to work, but the musi­cal ones I lis­ten to at home. I sub­scribe through iTunes and get the appro­pri­ate news feeds with Google Reader

   What kinds of prod­ucts adver­tised in a pod­cast via spon­sor­ships would you actu­ally find interesting?

   Sponsorship… impor­tant, but I usu­ally just ignore ads. Let me explain: Go to My PC is adver­tis­ing a lot, but I don’t have the kind of job that would require me to use my work machine remotely. If I need email I log in through a web site. I usu­ally don’t need access to my work email.

   I also hear a lot of ads for books that are essen­tially self pub­lished through pod­casts, Scott Seigler, JC Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, etc. I didn’t like the sam­ples I heard of their nov­els, and felt that the busi­ness model they are fol­low­ing isn’t the one I want to fol­low, so I stopped lis­ten­ing to them.

   For news related shows, I want to hear facts and the hosts have to be enjoy­ing themselves.

   For sto­ries I want to have good nar­ra­tors. I really hate to say this, but I don’t like Steve’s voice on Escape Pod, but the sto­ries are usu­ally pretty good. Of all the nar­ra­tors I’ve heard, Christiana Ellis and Tina Connolly are some of the best I’ve heard. Ellis’s nar­ra­tion of MK Hobson’s God Juice was so good I could almost con­vinced I was lis­ten­ing to Hobson read the story herself.

   I am a writer, and I do send EP sto­ries, but I don’t worry about the response time because I sent it when Steve said “I’m months behind” and before you came on to the team, so I’m being patient.

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9. 

   Dan Beeston

   May 3, 2009 • 6:27 pm

   Yes. I lis­ten to geeky blather. Geekson, Kate and Hughsey on Nova (basic local radio crap) and Smodcast. Also, Tech blather. TWIT and Macbreak. Then some sci­ence with Radio lab.

   I lis­ten to them while I do the wash­ing up or some other mun­dane task and also on pub­lic transport.

   I occa­sion­ally go the the web­site after­wards if there’s talk of extra video or images of some­thing that I found inter­est­ing. THe geek­son Forum is the only forum I rou­tinely hang around anymore.

   It doesn’t mat­ter what prod­ucts I find inter­est­ing. If the host doesn’t con­vey an excit­ment about what they’re pimp­ing I’m going to skip over it or zone out. On TWiT they dis­cuss Audible pick­sof the week and they sound like they love it. On Smodcast they were pimp­ing ‘ThinkGeek’ and they sounded com­pletely dis­in­ter­ested like they’d never been to the site.

   When I record my pod­cast about Improv the­atre I make sure there’s a lot of laugh­ing. It’s an aural medium and you can’t get by with just smil­ing with delight. You’ve got to make some sound. This may not be so help­ful in a short story pod­cast, but I guess you want peo­ple who sound like they’re hav­ing a great time.

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10. 

    Jeremiah Tolbert

    May 3, 2009 • 9:18 pm

    Fantastic infor­ma­tion. Thank you, everyone.

    Reply
11. 

    Grant Stone

    May 5, 2009 • 4:53 am

    Oh, I lis­ten to pod­casts. A lot. Just look­ing at iTunes now I see: Adventures in sci fi pub­lish­ing, The Bat Segundo Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (which has been excel­lent of late), Clarkesworld, BBC world ser­vice doc­u­men­taries, Escape pod, Hanselminutes, BBC Friday night com­edy, In our time with Melvyn Bragg, I should be writ­ing, .Net rocks!, NPR story of the day, Odyssey writ­ing work­shop, pod­cas­tle, Pseudopod, The sofa­nauts, StarShip Sofa, TEDTalks, Thinking Allowed, This American Life, Underwood and Flinch, Weather Child.

    I lis­ten on my busted up 1st-gen 5GB iPod, mostly while I’m dri­ving to work, doing the dishes, mow­ing the lawn or walk­ing. I don’t tend to lis­ten at the computer.

    I sub­scribe in iTunes. I’ve used other pod­catch­ers in the past and though iTunes has its prob­lems, it’s mostly pretty good.

    I do visit pod­cast web­sites, espe­cially for fic­tion pod­casts — if I really like (or hate) a story, I like to see what oth­ers think. I often visit the sites of the tech pod­casts too, for fur­ther information.

    I’m not sure what prod­uct adver­tis­ing would work for me, although I guess the best thing would be prod­ucts that closely map to the sub­ject of the pod­cast. For exam­ple, .NET rocks and Hanselminutes adver­tise .NET con­trols. Perhaps the mag­a­zines could place ads in fic­tion podcasts?

    The qual­ity of the audio and nar­ra­tion are crit­i­cal. I will stop lis­ten­ing if it’s hard to hear or the read­ing is flat. Other than that, as long as the sub­ject is inter­est­ing I’ll lis­ten, even if I know noth­ing about it (for exam­ple half the stuff on In Our Time).

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12. 

    Jeremiah Tolbert

    May 5, 2009 • 7:36 am

    Thanks, Grant. You are a podcast-consuming machine!

    Reply
13. 

    Kevin Anderson

    May 15, 2009 • 6:12 pm

    I lis­ten to many pod­casts — Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Drabblecast, Dunesteef, This American Life, The Moth, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Radio Drama Revival, Well Told Tales, Planet Cruz, I Should be Writing, Pod of Horror, and a few more. I mostly lis­ten while dri­ving, and don’t use a pod­catcher. I down­load from the web sites, and enjoy the art­work some pod­casts pro­duce for their episodes. Drabblecast and Dunesteef do this kind of thing. It just adds a lit­tle to the expe­ri­ence. My biggests gripe when lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast, mostly becouse I lis­ten in the car, is when the audio dips, then sud­denly rises back up. By the time it comes back up, I’ve raised the vol­ume and now my speak­ers as shaking.

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14. 

    Kevin Anderson

    May 15, 2009 • 6:14 pm

    …are shak­ing.

    Reply