10 podcasts for writers

As is often the case with new media and social networking, a link from one of my contacts on Twitter talking about podcasts for writers led me to a site which led me to another site… you know how it goes. The result was the discovery of a blog providing a list of 10 podcasts for writers that I thought worth sharing — particularly as I was happy to discover that I already listen to a number of them already.

Here is Dustin Wax’s 10 Podcasts for Writers Worth Listening To and his own descriptions of them:

1. I Should be Writing: Mur Lafferty is a self-described “would-be writer” who actually has quite a few credits to her name, now. ISBW covers the ins-and-outs of writing, from coming up with ideas to self-publishing to writing queries. (RSS | iTunes)
2. Lifehack Live: Pardon me for plugging my own show, but I have lots of great writers on — as well as productivity experts, life coaches, and entrepreneurs, all of which have something to say to writers, I think. Lifehack Live is on hiatus at the moment, but there’s plenty of good stuff in the archives. (RSS | iTunes)
3. Freelance Radio: FreelanceSwich‘s podcast features John Brougher, Cyan Ta’eed (co-author of the awesome book How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer), Kristen Fischer, and Dickie Adams discussing the ins and outs of freelancing, with a focus on practical business-related questions like “how do freelancers get insurance” and “how do you say ‘no’ to a client?” (RSS | iTunes)
4. The Writing Show: Author Paula Berinstein tackles everything from where writers find inspiration to where writers can get published, with probing interviews of writers, publishers, editors, agents, and others. There are several “threads”, including ongoing “reality show” series tracking beginning writers through the process of submitting and revising their work for publication, and more traditional “one-off” shows featuring guests talking about whatever topic they’re particularly knowledgable about.  (RSS | iTunes)
5. PerfCast: The official podcast of Performancing, covering all aspects of blogging including the business aspects, generating revenue, and promotion. Some of this might be off-topic for most writer’s blogs, but there’s a lot of good advice for turning your own writer’s blog into a blog powerhouse — and if your preferred form of writing happens to be blogging, this is required listening. (RSS)
6. Litopia: Litopia consists of two podcasts. The first, Litopia Daily, is a short daily round-up of news of interest to writers. The second, Litopia After Dark, is a longer weekly round-table dscussion of issues in the writing and publishing worlds. (RSS | iTunes)
7. The Creative Writing Podcast: Tom Occhipinti offers tons of advice for fiction writers, from tips on characterization or setting to overviews of genres. (RSS | iTunes)
8. Grammar Girl: Mignon Fogarty offers “quick and dirty tips for better writing” in this twice-weekly show on the ins and outs of English grammar. More fun than your Third Grade English teacher, by a long shot! (RSS)
9. Writing Excuses: A recent discovery for me, this podcast features three writers (Brandon Sanderson , Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells) talking about various writing challenges, either amongst themselves or with guest interviewees. Short — because, they say, “you’re in a hurry and we’re not that smart”) — fun, and surprisingly helpful considering their self-professed lack of brain power… (RSS | iTunes)
10. HotForWords: I debated whether or not to add this one — it’s video instead of audio, it’s risqué, and it’s quite simply weird. A young, attractive, and often sexily-clad woman with a rich accent discusses the origin of odd words and phrases in the English language. It would be deeply offensive (and maybe it still is) if it weren’t so fascinating! (RSS | iTunes)

A couple of points to add to the above list:

• Freelance Radio: Cyan is not on the show much anymore, but her slot seems to have been filled by illustrative designer Von Glitschka. Together they cover a good cross-section of the freelancing market.
• Grammar Girl: This is written with American English in mind and, aside from the obvious Websterian differences, uses style guides common to North America (Strunk & White, etc). However, whenever an issue of style arises, Mignon states which style guide she’s using.
• Writing Excuses: Despite their humble tagline and approach, the speakers of this podcast are at or near the top of their field. To give you an idea: Brandon was selected to complete the late Robert Jordan’s epic The Wheel of Time series, Howard writes the excellent Shlock Mercenary web comic strip, and Dan is an accomplished horror writer.

I’ve been a fan of ISBW, Freelance Radio, The Writing Show, and Grammar Girl for some time, and I just love Writing Excuses, so you can see why I was happy to share this list. I’ll be adding Lifehack Live, Litopia and The Creative Writing Podcast to my iTunes list.

For what it’s worth, I did check out HotForWords some time ago, but I can’t really get into video podcasting — something about having to sit at my PC or squint into my iPhone to watch regularly-released video content just doesn’t appeal to me. Your mileage may, of course, vary…

So check them out and let me know what you think of them. Be sure to let Dustin know, too!

Henley Literary Festival – 1-5 October

Writers, aspiring writers and fans of literature who are within striking distance of Henley-on-Thames — home to the famous Henley Royal Regatta (and the late ex-Beatle George Harrison) — may be pleased to learn that the Henley Literary Festival takes place next week. It’s quite sad that I only know about it because of a streetside sign I saw on the way to work this morning, as my daily commute takes me through part of Henley.

The Festival’s programme contains numerous well known authors discussing their works and providing Q&A sessions, river cruises with readings and discussions, writing and poetry workshops, events for children, and an event to end each day. Events need to be booked and many have a nominal charge, but some are free. A number of events have already sold out, so if you are interested in a bookable event, I’d suggest you do so sooner rather than later.

Of the events that haven’t sold out already, a couple of highlights for me will be:

• Irvine Welsh’s talk on his upcoming Trainspotting prequel, Skagboys
• Saturday morning’s writing workshops
• Rick Wakeman‘s talk on his upcoming book, Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star.

I may make it to a couple of other events, but we’ll have to see how time and event booking turns out.

Hope to see you there, or hear about how the Festival went for you.

Edit 28-Sep: There’s been a slight change of plans for me. I was notified a couple of days ago that I’ve managed to obtain a ticket to a conference in London that takes place the same weekend as the Festival. The tickets for the conference (nothing to do with writing or literature) sold out in under 90 minutes last May, so I’m very pleased and fortunate to be going to that instead. See you at the Festival next year?

A new take on audiobooks

Now that the 21st century is almost a decade old, I expect most people reading this will have listened to at least one podcast, or at least audiobooks as “books on tape” or on CD. For those with long commutes — particularly if you’re stuck in a car rather than a train carriage — there’s no doubt that podcasts and audiobooks are a fantastic way to pass the time.

The availability of audiobooks has grown from your local library’s well-worn books on tape to online shops such as Amazon (US | UK) and now there are sites such as Audible (US | UK) that exist solely to provide you with all your audiobook desires. Prices vary from free at your local library (free in the sense that your property tax pays for it) up to the cost of a normal book, and anywhere in between, and some sites use a subscription model to maintain income and encourage your ongoing use of the service. The major downside is that some — not all — of these systems use DRM, which limits you in a number of ways.

There is another type of audiobook that has been gaining popularity in recent years and the authors of them are blazing new trails at the forefront of yet another emerging Internet technology: podcast books. Using the distribution system of traditional podcasts (audio files wrapped in an RSS feed), it delivers chapters of audiobooks to the listener. It’s not really a new idea, as it’s a re-working of the old radio serial format, but it’s a clever application of it to the reasonably untapped medium of the Internet.

Most of the authors using this technique are unpublished amateurs seeking to get their stories out there, gain recognition, break ground on a new technology and, if they have any vision, build a loyal fanbase that will be there to support them when they are finally recognised by a traditional publisher. They are typically read out by the author, rather than professional voice actors, which adds something as you get inflections and emphasis exactly where the author intended it. What’s more — the vast majority of these books are free — both in cost and DRM. Nada. Zip. Nix.

The term “podcast audiobook” is sometimes shortened to “podiobook”, which leads to one of the pioneers of the medium, podiobooks.com, who provide an Audible-style network, hosting and portal for the distribution of free podcast audiobooks.

My first encounter with podcast audiobooks was with 7th Son by J.C. Hutchins and Earthcore by Scott Sigler. I found them by stumbling across the podiobooks.com website and searching the Science Fiction section. Theirs were the two that jumped out at me first, and I’ve not regretted it for a minute. Those books, and their sequels and subsequent novels, have been excellent. And both authors have grasped the importance of using the Internet as not only a vehicle to move their books, but also in marketing, video trailers and teasers, and working on gaining and maining a loyal fan following. Hutchins and Sigler have even worked together, providing crossover cameos and references to raise awareness of each others’ books and to keep the fans coming back for more. It works well.

Of interests to the traditional writers reading this will be the fact that both authors now have agents, books in print and film deals under discussion. There is no doubt whatsoever that making use of this emerging medium and using ingenuity, imagination and entrepreneurial spirit have allowed them to go from guys sitting in a closet or basement talking into a microphone to having agents and publishers managing their brands and printing their books.

Also of interesting is that even though Sigler has written books across genres, his agent is only accepting very specific books and is refusing others. Not because they’re rubbish, but because they don’t match with how the agent is trying to brand him. I suppose this is similar to if Stephen King were to write a romance novel or if Anne McCaffrey were to write a modern military novel, in which situation the nom de plume has traditionally reigned supreme. Sigler speaks about this in depth in this interview on Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast.

So if you like listening to audiobooks, I suggest you look at sites like podiobooks.com and explore the marvellous and diverse range of works that both aspiring and successful authors have worked hard on and then made available for free. If you like writing novels and are willing to explore a new medium, particularly if you are having problems finding a publishing home for it, then you could do worse than turning it into a free audiobook.

Always remember that the print and electronic rights are different animals. You should find that even if you offer a free audio version of your work, you should still be able to sell the print rights. Sigler and Hitchens have done just that.

Getting on(line) in business

One of the more obvious parts of my setting up a new business checklist has been to setup an online presence. By that I don’t mean getting a Hotmail account and a free webspace, putting them on my stationery and handing them out to everyone. Instead, I’m referring to what I have seen some online writers refer to as “the package”, including:

• Domain name
• Web hosting
• Website software
• Email storage
• VOIP telephone numbers
• Traffic monitoring
• Associates links
• FeedBurner (RSS)

It might seem like a strange task list, but this was done partly to avoid the mish-mash of confusing contact details we’ve all seen on brochures and trades vans, where you have something like:

Bill’s Plumbing Services
http://userpages.freewebhosting.com/~billsplumbing/index.htm
[nohide]billsplumbing@hotmail.com[/nohide]

While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with free or low-cost email and web providers — in fact, when effectively used, they can provide excellent service for next to no capital outlay — but using them as shown above is comparable to having a local carpenter and joiner create custom fitted shelving for you, then not painting or decorating it once completed.

Regardless of whether the fictitious company above spent a fortune on professional web design, anyone who has corporate awareness or more than a passing familiarity with the Internet will know that both of these addresses could have been given a sleek, unified appearance for under £10 a year:

Bill’s Plumbing Services
www.billsplumbingservices.com
[nohide]info@billsplumbingservices.com[/nohide]

Whether the company uses a free web hosting facility and free email storage is immaterial, providing that it’s possible to conceal that fact from customers. Next to the online presence faux pas described above, is showing the real website location once the customer has browsed to it, or replying “From” the free email address. Nearly all domain name providers and free email providers allow you to conceal these facts. It’s not about tricking the customer, but rather about presenting a streamlined professional experience for the customer.

This is part one of a series of articles discussing setting up an online presence. Part 2 will discuss web hosting…

What’s In A Name? And Does It Matter?

While catching up on the archive of one of my favourite podcasts, FreelanceRadio from FreelanceSwitch, during my daily commute recently, the panel of speakers talked about how they refer to themselves when speaking with current and potential customers. It was in the context of whether there a single preferred label for the concept of a freelancer, or whether it depends upon with whom you’re speaking. It got me thinking about how it might differ between industries, business sectors, cultures and even continents.

In Australia, where I grew up and lived until my late 20s, there are different terms for different modes of non-full-time employment. That is, for those other than the majority who commute to the same place — or on behalf of the same organisation — every working day. As I understand it, this breakdown in Australia is typically as follows:

• Temp: A person who fills in for an absent employee (e.g. illness, maternity, jury duty) and, while their role may be skilled, their tasks do not normally require in-depth knowledge of the company. Duration of employment is typically measured in days or weeks.
• Consultant: A person who is onsite for hours to weeks, who has a specific task, and whose deliverables often take the form of written reports or advice.
• Contractor: A person who is onsite for weeks to months (occasionally years), and who serves as an additional employee — often providing a unique skillset — and whose deliverables are typically more tangible or practical than that of a consultant. They may include roles such as web designer, database administrator or book-keeper.

The term freelancer was not something I encountered often in the Australian workplace. From a corporate perspective, it seemed to contain connotations of “fly by night” behaviour and lack of commitment — someone who followed the money and flew the coop as soon as the winds began to blow. Of course that perception might have been limited to the environment in which I worked, or it could have been a product of the time. The popularity of freelancing seems to wax and wane, after all.

Now that I live in the UK and have first worked for a consultancy — where my services were charged out at ~£2,000 per day (if only I’d seen even a quarter of that daily rate) — and now working for an IT software vendor, it is clear that the same definitions do not necessarily apply to those labels. Consultant, contractor and freelancer appear to be reasonably interchangeable, though the latter does seem more informal and implies a more  “up to the elbows” kind of person, and the others conjure images of people in suits.

My role sees me dealing with a number of UK, American and European colleagues and customers, and it’s fair to say that some of those definitions apply and others do not. In some cases, it’s apparent that consultants and contractors refer to themselves as freelancers when among peers but never with clients, and in some cases they will use the term freely with anyone.

How do these terms apply where you live or work? Do they differ between industries or even cultures? Does this selective terminology help or hinder customer perception of you, or does it affect the likelihood of you being hired for a job for a specific industry or sector?

Story of a Sign: The Power of Good Copywriting

Every now and then we come across something that puts us at a loss for words — either because it’s appalling short-sighted or because it’s so incredibly insightful. The following short film by Mexican film-maker Alonso Alvarez Barreda, Historia de un Letrero (Story of a Sign), falls into this latter category.

The film’s YouTube page says that it won the Cannes Film Festival 2008 Short Film category, but I could not find reference to it on the Festival’s 2008 Short Films or Awards pages. However, I did find it as the winner of the Canadian National Film Board’s 2008 Annual Cannes Online Competition, along with articles about the prize by sites such as NowPublic and even Digg.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a powerful piece.

I think the film illustrates a good point — both in writing copy and with human nature — that people are more likely to react to something if it engages them directly, rather than merely observed about a third-party.

(Thanks to Kristen from inkthinkerblog for sharing it).

Starting at the beginning

A beginning is an exciting thing, don’t you think?

Welcome to the website of Matt Bruce, an experienced technical writer and copywriter. This website will consist of articles related to the writing industry, specifically copywriting and technical writing, and will serve to showcase Matt’s work, contain observations of the writing community, and provide information in general. It may expand in scope over time, but let’s start modestly and see where we go from there.

It is hoped that you find this website valuable, and I would request that you let me know if any post here is helpful — or indeed unhelpful — to you. Please also let me know if there are articles or information that you would particularly like to see here, and we’ll see what we can do.

Please see the About page for more information about me.