http://www.writers-online.co.uk NOVEMBER 2019^41MARKETING
actors and high production values.
These may have started life as public
service broadcasting output. This will
certainly be true if they are featured
on the BBC Sounds App. Other
dramatic podcasts will have much
more limited production values. The
Within the Wires podcast is presented as
a monologue, where the listener hears
the play through the dictation by an
executive of a global public civil service
about the world she lives in.
As one might expect there is an
array of political, self-help, mindfulness
and other forms of interest-specific
podcasts. Podcasts of interest to
writers are less common. The Creative
Writer’s Toolbelt, hosted by Andrew
J Chamberlain, is a straightforward
discussion podcast of the sort that
dominates podcasting in general.
There’s No Such Thing as a Fish is
hosted by four people who make up
the research team of the UK celebrity
quiz programme QI. Each member of
the team brings a fact they have found
in the week leading up to the podcast
recording. The regular episodes are
done in a simple studio, but the team
does do outside broadcasts where an
audience is present; even here the
technique is kept simple.
Outside broadcasts are a very big
leap which brings with it an extra
range of challenges. I decided that an
interview in a book shop would be
a good idea. I wanted the ambience
of the place: the chinking of coffee
cups, the background burble of the
bookish. Unfortunately, ambience
easily becomes annoying background
noise, which even the best software
processing can’t eliminate. If you listen
to Viaduct edition No. 3, you’ll hear
exactly the problem I had.
You don’t have to do interviews in
public spaces or even the same place.
Software such as Zencaster allows
interviews to be recorded remotely
across the web.
And so to Viaduct
My own podcast is called Viaduct. It
is available through my website http://www.
paulcwbeattyauthorbooks.co.uk or
viaduct.buzzsprout.com or at Apple
Podcasts. It is targeted at the sort
of people who read my newsletter
but extends to commuters as well as
specialist listeners.
It includes book reviews, such as
one for The Shipping News by Annie
Proulx as well as pieces on important
historical books such as George
Orwell’s breakthrough book Down and
Out in Paris and London.
There are also more chatty articles
such as my version of a Devil’s
Dictionary of literary terms.
I’m still working on my outside
broadcast skills, and an interview
across the web is being planned.
My podcast host, Buzzsprout, is a
fairly typical host. It acts as a place to
put my finished podcast in a similar
way to a personal website host, but
there are restrictions on how much of
your recorded back catalogue will be
archived. To ensure my back catalogue
is available for new listeners to catch
up with, I pay Buzzsprout to keep it
going as well as raising the upper limit
of casts I can make per month.
The big difference between a web
host and a podcast host is that thehost does not make your creation
available to the great outside world.
For that you need to make your
podcast available on a site such as
Apple Podcasts or Google Play. That
sort of site will ask if you want to put
up a logo. I made my own logo using
Photoshop Elements though I could
have had used a royalty free logo from
a website such as DesignEvo.
Similarly, I could have got a royalty
free signature tune for Viaduct from
Pond 5, but chose to construct my
own tune, using Garageband.As writers we are used to having
to publicise our writing. Podcasting,
as was my newsletter, is an efficient
and eye-catching way of doing that.
I would expect podcasting to reach
similar coverage to other forms of
media. Viaduct has now replaced my
newsletter. Only time will tell how
satisfactory a substitute it will prove.Podcasting: The mathsHere is a table for costs of setting up the recording system.
These are guide figures for a basic system including on costs and
the extra capital costs for the OB equipmentProduct Used Cost
Basic System
Podcast host Buzzsprout £10 per month
Sound editing software Audacity No Charge
Microphone Yeti USB made by Blue £85
Headphones Audio-Technica ATH-M2 £38
Logo DesignEvo £1
Signature tune Pond 5 £13Set up cost £137
On costs £10 per monthExtra for Outside Broadcasting
Matched pair Lavalier mikes Comica CVM-DO3 £71
Digital stereo recorder Tascam DRS-05 £75
Zencaster Hobbyist Two guests, 8 hrs per m FreeSetup OB option £146