Another Reason Magazines Are Dying: They Just Discovered Podcasts
Jan 31st, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Making Money with Podcasts 
Time magazine has published an article today about podcasting novelists. In the article, they note that podcasting could be publishing’s next wave:
Scott Sigler of San Francisco missed out on getting his first novel published, with a deal collapsing in late 2001.
But he built a big Internet fan base on novel podcasting, which led to a 2007 deal with The Crown Publishing Company (a division of Random House), one believed to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sigler reached a milestone this month by cracking the New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list withContagious, a first for an author emerging from the podcast genre. The print run for Contagious is 80,000 copies and it has made the bestseller list despite Sigler’s getting his reluctant publisher to allow him to put out PDF files and podcasts of chapters of the book for free on his website.
The article is interesting – but it would have been a lot more interesting if it had been published in 2006, when podcasting novels was news.Â
Any mainstream coverage of podcasting is good for podcasters.
But you have to wonder if magazines covering trends like this – Â three years after they were covered online – is just another reason why magazines are dying.
Agreed. I’m a freelance writer who loves podcasts, and I have tried any number of times to pitch podcast-themed ideas to my editors, which have almost always been met with resistance. I hope that will change.
Agree, and it is a shame, because the format and the concept of podcasts and magazines are very much alike. The subscription of podcasts is often compared to magazine subscriptions, and really a lot of the content of magazines could be enhanced in podcasts – so come on magazines – I know podcast-files don´t look great on coffee tables, but they sound good in peoples ears 🙂
It’s just a shame that podcasting doesn’t equal success. Look at the guys 1up.com/egm; brilliant podcasts but they didn’t help them sell enough magazines to stay afloat.
We’re all converts here, and firm believers in podcasting as the ideal delivery mechanism for text(.PDF) audio (.MP3, .m4a) and video (.MPG etcetera.)
The traditional media have all confused the content with the container and lament “the wrong thing!”
The problem is that the existing business models are all geared to control of a scarce resource, like the airwaves or paper, or plastic discs.
They have yet to come to grips with the fact that paper, plastic discs or the air waves are not required in the new economy.
And we are stuck with failing financial institutions that keep trying to tack on a “cost per packet, regardless of packet size, regardless of packet content, or packet origin and destination.”
Until micro payments become accepted, we’re going nowhere…