Ya know what I think would be a brilliant, and mind-numbingly-obvious, option for Podiobooks.com? The Author Feed. For example: JC Hutchins creates the 7th Son series, and I have to subscribe to three different feeds to get the series. And he announces at the end of the feed there's more stuff coming -- but I won't see it, because I'm subscribed to the feed for the last book that's already ended. So I miss the next book.
Then there's folks like me who come into a series late in the day. Suppose I do a search, having heard about "Obsidian." If I subscribe to Obsidian, I don't actually see the earlier books are there. If I subscribe to book 1, I still don't see books 2 or three, and I don't see Obsidian.
So, how about an Author feed, that works specifically like an author creating their own audio feed. First book-first chapter to last-book last-chapter. More stuff comes up, if you're still subscribed, you still get the new content.
Call me crazy -- but isn't this the obvious end to any podcast-novel production?
An interesting notion. It's similar to what Scott Sigler does. Subscribe to his main feed at ScottSigler.com, and you get everything he puts out. And I mean EVERYTHING.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think that may be the problem. While Scott and J.C. (and plenty of others) have mucho rabid fans who would enjoy getting everything that they put out, there others (perhaps more) who are less interested in all the behind-the-scenes stuff and just want the episodes of the book, minus the "stuff".
Another set of folks are looking for stuff about the episodes, like the chitter-chatter both put out on their "live" feeds. But they aren't interested in the other stuff, like JC's author interviews, and the pdfs and other stuff Scott shoves down his feed from time to time.
And don't forget the people who don't care for certain books, like maybe they couldn't get into The Rookie, but love the rest? Should they be forced to get it all?
Tis a slippery slope, but a problem I do think is worth solving. For us at Podiobooks.com, we're going to stick with book-specific feeds for the foreseeable future. That's what people have come to expect from us. Though of course, we're happy to change our model to meet the growing needs of our audience!
E.