Several people have asked me where my main feed is — and I just got another request this morning.
I don’t have one.
My thinking is that each title needs to stand on its own. As a result I rebuild every title’s followers from 0. That means that if you don’t keep track of me either here or on Podiobooks, you might miss it. It also means I don’t have the advantage of a captive audience that I get to build on for each book. People have to actually DO something in order to keep up with me.
I’m beginning to think I should.
If I think in terms of building a brand .. creating that product kind of thing where I maximize my exposure and potential market .. I absolutely need to be capitalizing on my previous work by making sure that anybody who subscribed before gets a taste of the new work and subsequently has to opt out — take some action to NOT get the new stuff. That will maximize my downloads and assure that I get numbers that make me look as good as possible.
That’s always struck me as being a trifle self-serving, and not necessarily something I want to do. My objective has always been to provide the best quality entertainment value for my work within the scope of my ability.
But it occurs to me that it also *prevents* people from staying up to date by forcing them to keep track of me. It almost forces them to subscribe thru podiobooks (altho I realize that iTunes music store by-passes subscription) and therefore maximizes my exposure on podiobooks. That prevention factor seems even more self-serving. After all, if I want to make sure you get the best possible experience, then I should make it as easy as possible for you to get the work. That means you should be able to get it all in one feed if you want. It also means you should be able to get it in multiple formats. (Watch for news on that in the first quarter of 2010.)
So, I’ve used the excellent Yahoo Pipes tool to merge all the feeds together.
Enjoy.
Awesome Nate thanks! I think it is funny that I was just yesterday building several pipes for my podcast listening… (Which is in the neighborhood of 150 individual shows) separating by type of show…I was getting ready to do the same with all the books that I listen to… awesome and thank you.
I saw on Twitter that you are writing in NaNoWriMo. Does that get put out somewhere for public consumption? Just curious.
The text, no.
But the project will be podcast in December and you’ll be able to hear it then.
*feebly attempts to squeeze more mp3s into my ear from your feed*
More!
*tries to beat your feed with a stone club*
Hungry! Give! Nathan, give! More!
Nate, um Dr. Lowell, is there any chance that it will be in the middle of December? I’m gona Laid up for three days and am going to need something new.
Depending on how long it winds up being, it should be completely uploaded by the 21st.
Nathan,
I can understand the hesitation to mechanize your interaction with your listeners. You’ve been thus far very solicitous about responding on your forum and seem very genuine about providing the best story. I’ve listened since Quarter Share since the very first few episodes were out and have since then, been excited by every installment since then. Thank you for that.
I have some experience with marketing on the web and understand that there are a lot of sharks out there and a few places that can be a little scary. If you are interested, and would like to have a conversation about what’s possible with marketing, please let me know. I may be able to answer some questions about brand and online advertising. Not looking for business here, I would just like to help, and give something back if I can.
Thanks again for the great stories!
-j-
Well, I’m pretty happy with the results of my strategy so far, but I’ll drop you an email and maybe we can chat.
Congrats on breaking 100k words. Looking forward to this next book.
I think you’re looking at this the wrong way, really.
First, you have the demand for the unified feed – that indicates that you’re not really forcing anyone into anything. Second, you’ve made no indication that you’re discontinuing the separate feeds, which again means, you’re not forcing anyone. What you are doing is making it easier for people to find what they want. Those who are only interested in individual projects will get those feeds. Those of us, like me, desperate for ever little dribblet you put out, will sign up for the unified feed. It’s all about choice.
Now, to go check Podiobooks and see if the new one is starting up yet. I personally don’t use a feed reader (I think there might be some way to set up LiveJournal or Facebook for that purpose, but I haven’t done so yet), and I kinda wish Podiobooks would actually have a list of authors that brings up all works by (or involving) that author. A listing of notable voice talent would be nice, as well – I do find that the voice and inflections of the presenter does make a difference in my enjoyment… (And now…. SHADOWMAGIC! kinda got on my nerves after a bit…)
You’re right, Jamey.
I was just a little late on the Yahoo Pipes bandwagon that let me create the unified feed out of the standard ones.
Ravenwood will be out probably the second week in December. I just finished the first draft and need to do a second (and probably third) draft before I do the recording.
My goal is to have it DONE before Christmas.
I noticed that the unified feed doesn’t (yet?) have Ravenwood in it. I’m not sure if that’s because there’s a delay in Yahoo Pipes picking things up or if it’s because you didn’t add (deliberately or by mistake?) it to the unified feed.
The unified feed has the name “Golden Age of the Solar Clipper”, which is great for a unified “all the works of Nathan Lowell that are in the universe of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper” feed, but I would *guess* that most of us who want a unified feed would rather “all the works of Nathan Lowell, period”. :)
How about a feed named “Nathan Lowell’s Podcast Fiction” or something that really includes everything? :) I don’t know if that is the existing unified feed tweaked to add Ravenwood and change the name or if I am suggesting yet another feed.
Oversight on my part. I spent the weekend putting the 5 episodes together and forgot all about the pipes.
You’re right about the title, too. When I built that I didn’t really think about changing to a new universe.
Let me try to fix that.
[UPDATE: I’ve changed the name of the feed and added Ravenwood to the mix. 01/04/10]
Hey Nate, Love the unified feed, but I get the Ravenwood episodes in a funny order when I put the link in iTunes. It sorts the episodes automatically by release date, and those dates seem to be wrong in the feed. e.g.: It says Episode 1 was released on January 4th, and then Episode 2 on the 3rd, Episode 3 on the 2nd, Episode 4 on the 1st, Episode 5 on the 31st of Dec, and Episode 6 on the 5th of January. They jump all over the place! I just put them in a play list and organize them in the correct order, but it would be nice if they were organized correctly in the feed. Thanks!
That’s odd. They fall out of the pipe in the correct order. Let me see if I can recreate the problem.
I wonder if it’s the incremental dating and the fact that I release multiple episodes at once.
[ update: no. I put my unified feed into iTunes as a podcast subscription and it shows up just right and in the correct sequence. Of course, I didn’t down load any as the book was going up so I got them all at once with Episode 1 dated 1/19/2010 and Episode 16 Dated 1/4/2010.
This is *correct* btw. Podiobooks reissues the feed with each new release to make sure that the episodes appear in the feed in reverse chronological order so when you listen to episode 1, it then goes “back in time” to episode 2, and back again to episode 3, etc. ]
“This is *correct* btw. Podiobooks reissues the feed with each new release to make sure that the episodes appear in the feed in reverse chronological order so when you listen to episode 1, it then goes “back in time” to episode 2, and back again to episode 3, etc.”
I think that’s the problem. iTunes lists the episodes in reverse chronological order (newer episodes at the top) so it looks fine in iTunes with the reverse dates, but when they are loaded onto an iPod/iPhone, the software tries to be smart and lists them in regular chronological order so that the older episodes are first, and will play through in the correct order in which they were “published”.
I think the other problem is that once I download an episode, and then the feed updates with new episodes, iTunes keeps the original release date for any episodes that were previously downloaded, so that’s why my episodes are in a funny order and backwards. e.g. Today I downloaded episodes 12 – 16, and they are in reverse chronological order:
Episode 16 on the 4th
15 on the 5th
14 on the 6th
13 on the 7th
12 on the 8th
The batch before that was episode 10 and 11, which, when I downloaded them, are marked as Jan 6th and 5th respectively, so my episode order starts getting all messed up in iTunes as I now have multiple episodes that were released on the 5th and 6th.
The files are tagged with the feed date, but I think you’re right about the problem with iTunes keeping the original dates on downloaded files without refreshing those tags so you get multiple files on a given date.
I have a setting on my mp3 player that plays in alphabetic order by work, not chronological. So all my podcasts play by TITLE and not by date. Ironically, it’s call the “audiobook setting” – but I don’t use an iPod and I don’t use iTunes as my downloader.
Yeah it’s not a big deal. It takes me 2 seconds to add the files to a play list and sort by title. Thanks!