Leesa Barnes on Podonomics has a plea for the world: if you're considering corporate podcasting, then please hire a consultant. Heck, hire her!
There's an anonymous (damn!) list of companies who have failed in their podcasting efforts for a variety of reasons in Leesa's post. I wish I knew who they were because I'm a nosy guy, but I guess I'll have to live without it.
I can see where Leesa is coming from. I've no interest in being a consultant, but I am constantly striving to get a book deal. I have an agent who helps me tailor my proposals and sends it to all the right people. He takes a percentage off the top of any book deal that I may get, but I'm pretty convinced that he'll get me at least that much more. In effect, he's going to pay for himself.
It's much the same idea with corporate podcasting. Hiring someone who knows what's going on in a given field is almost always going to save money in the long (and short) run. The podcast, in this case, is likely to be better received, of higher quality, and generally enhance the brand rather than destroy it.
Good luck with your book proposal. I'm currently shopping one around myself and I understand how tough it can be. But with the podcasting space just growing, publishers are trying to outdo each other, so I know you'll ink a deal soon.
Pod pea - I love it! Where were you during my now-defunct-because-of-lack-of-interest podcasting word contest?
One thing I have discovered is that editors have already moved on podcasting. The books that have come out and are still trickling out are the results of deals inked 6 months to a year ago. There's no more interest in podcasting books. My agent sent me a list of the top selling 20 books in a bunch of different fields and there was only a single podcasting-related book in the applicable field and it was on the iPod.
For some reason podcasting books are in the 'computing' field and perhaps that's what killing it. The top selling computing book in May sold something lik 27,000 copies. One of the middle of the road fiction novels sold 300,000. The tech book market has really shrunk.
From an editor's standpoint, podcasting is done as a sellable book topic so unless something drastic occurs in the field that's worth writing about, I think we've seen the major rush of podcating books that we're going to see.
One nice thing about having an agent is that you get your proposal onto the desk of 20 or so editors directly rather than having your query letter lounging in someone's inbox. Because my stuff gets right to the editors, I get feedback right from the editors. They've pretty much done all they're going to do in the podcasting space for now.
Hence why I am no longer proposing books on the topic :)
Good luck with your book proposal. I'm currently shopping one around myself and I understand how tough it can be. But with the podcasting space just growing, publishers are trying to outdo each other, so I know you'll ink a deal soon.
BTW, got 2 emails as a result of my podplea.
Posted by: Leesa | July 1, 2006 4:15 AM | Permalink to Comment