In order to help Tee and his daughter through this diffcult period, Pip Ballantine has set up a fund where anyone who wishes to can chip in. Please consider doing so, if you have the means.

To Tee: We’re here for you, pal. You need anything at all, you let us know.

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1. In the words of Evo Terra: “Tee was the first author to make his book into a serialized audiobook delivered by a podcast. And though others soon followed independent of Tee’s actions, his ‘Hey Evo, I have an idea…’ phone call in late 2004 was the genesis of what would become Podiobooks.com.”

First…I’m taking a hiatus from development on Podiobooks.com.

The reason is simple: I lack the time to do the PB 2.0 project justice. It kills me to admit that. When we started PB five years ago, I had two small kids, a simple 40 hour a week job, and my wife was not working. Now, I have a 12, 9, and 4 year old with all the commitments that follow from that, plus my wife is working full time, playing in two bands, teaching violin and fiddle, and I am working full time and filling in as Mr. Mom. It has become impossible to find the time to truly lead the project. Those things, combined with some recent health developments, have put the whammy on many of my personal projects. The PB2 project will go on (we are looking for new leads right now), and Evo and the PB2 team will continue driving it. It will grow and flourish, and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.

Second…Michelle and I will be recording the final Shadowdance podcast tonight. The reasons there are similar: my personal schedule and Michelle’s schedule no longer match up quite as well. She’s writing books, appearing on television and traveling, and I have my family and my career to look after. Also, my opinions on the subject matter of the show have changed, and I feel disingenuous continuing to give advice on a subject that I do not fully embrace. More on this in a future post.

For the record, The Secret Lair is still going strong: Kris and I will continue with our fun until the men in white coats come after us to take us away.¹ In fact, we just released Episode 29, chock full of goodness from the likes of Dr. John Cmar, Natalie Metzger, Jay Lynn, and our special guest, Mick Bradley.

So, that’s the news. How’s your day?

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1. If they can get past the giant squid and the rabid zombie poodles.

We just hit 7000 episodes on Podiobooks.com.  If we assume the average episode length is 30 minutes, that would mean that we now have 3500 hours of audiobook goodness for the world to experience.

What are you waiting for? Go listen to something!

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So far, everyone is moving things along pretty well.

• Thomas is making mad progress on the database migration.
• Tim is working on the new RSS engine, and has a version posted to the repository
• Jason is delving into developing tools to help authors tag their episodes and upload through the PB site, instead of the current song and dance, which is more complex than we’d like it to be.
• Evo is coming up with more ideas. Because that’s what Evo does.
• I’m working on the wireframes and working on getting sample data in for the developers. I’ve commented up the new schema and documented the old schema in the dev wiki.

The next meeting will be Monday night, 9pm EST.  As usual, notes will be published on the wiki.

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• We now have a bit more organization thanks to the creation of a new development wiki.
• Thomas “cmdln” Gideon has stepped in and offered to take on the take of migrating the database. Read more on his thoughts here.
• Chris Snelgrove has offered to take on the project management, and bitchslap me when needed to keep the project rolling.

Our next meeting will be Monday, 8/3 at 9pm EST. To keep up with the latest, check out the meetings archive.

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1. I am also jealous of his Wikipedia page.  Don’t you judge me.

About Bibliotech: The Evolution of Digital Publishing: Authors are podcasting MP3 novels. Publishers are inserting real-time ads into ebooks. And readers are discovering and communicating directly with authors on Twitter, Goodreads and other sites. Host Mark Jeffrey (@markjeffrey) interviews authors, technologists and publishing professionals about how digital media is changing their world.

Check out the first episode below, and visit bibliotechshow.com for future episodes.

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It seems a ripe time for novel podcasting to grow. Traditional book publishers are struggling. Book sales are down; MacMillan has laid off employees, as have Random House and Simon & Schuster; and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has suspended the purchase of most new manuscripts. With advance money drying up as well as contracts, Terra says that aspiring writers now feel that “maybe I should try something on my own” and build an audience online.

Read the full article at Time.com

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Why go Open Source?

As the years have rolled by we’ve seen that opening things to a community is a better way to build quality. We’re amazed and humbled by the contributions of both our authors and our members.  We would not be as strong as we are now without them.

If community passion and commitment has carried us this far, why not  be more transparent and get everyone involved on the next iteration of the web site?  There are talented people out there, from copy editors to codemonkeys to folks who excel at finding our bugs. Keeping the codebase a closed system is a dead end. Opening it up is the only way to go.

On a personal note, I have always been supportive of open source software, even though I’ve not been able to contribute to a serious project. This is also my way of giving something back to the community of developers, from whom I have learned so much of the years. I’m hoping that, in years to come, people will learn from our code the same way I have learned from the people who came before me.

How do I learn more, or contribute?

You can follow the progress of the project in two ways:

• A project log is available on our Ohloh project page: https://www.ohloh.net/p/podiobooks
• The source itself is hosted at Github: http://github.com/ctmiller/podiobooks/tree/master

If you have an interest in contributing to the project, please contact chris at podiobooks dot com.

Current Project Details:

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photo credit: ishkamina

First, I want to thank everyone who posted comments on my article about the Amazon Rush. When I write articles like these, I’m looking to start some discussion, and the discussion is now happening. I believe that’s a good thing, whether I’m right or wrong in my assessment.

Second, there’s a misunderstanding. I’m not criticizing how past authors have acted. I received one very angry email, asking how I could turn on my own authors this way. If that’s what you thought, let me assure you that’s not the point. The point is this: I believe that this summer saw the last major lift that people will get from this marketing tactic. What has worked in the past will not work as well in the future.

Finally, when I talk to new authors coming through Podiobooks.com, I hear a lot of “I want to do what Sigler, Lafferty, Hutchins, and Selznick have done.” Well…so does everyone. After watching how much work past authors have put into their own marketing campaigns (of which the Rush was only a piece), I need tell them that this is not a magic pony you can ride into Never Never Land. Please, listen to I Should Be Writing #99, and hear about how the “magical success” of today’s biggest podcast novelists was the result of years of work, not a single marketing tactic.

The Amazon Rush is an arrow in the quiver. As Matt Wallace pointed out, NOT to do so just because I say so is a foolish move. As Mur pointed out, I’ve never done it myself. These criticisms have merit. To you new podcast novelists out there: all I ask is that you think of a full marketing strategy for your podcast, then for your published novel when it happens. Don’t try to fly away on a magic pony.

Update: Other blogs have picked up the topic. Check these out:

• Is the Amazon Rush Dead? at Indiana Jim’s Blog
• End of the Amazon Rush? at Jason Penney’s All the Billion Other Moments
• Amazon Rush Days Aren’t Dead (They’re Just Pining for the Fjords) at SocialMediaJunkie.com
• The Amazon Rush: Comes the Apocalypse by Kris Johnson
• What We’ve Learned – Why the World Needs the Amazon Rush

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photo credit: mpsfender182

I have yet to see any evidence that these Amazon rushes are accomplishing anything apart from making the author realize how ardent their fans are. “We’re going to make the suits at Amazon stand up and take notice!” seems to be the battle cry, but can you show me something that indicates Event Days for these books are anything more than a blip on Amazon’s radar (if that)? – Kris Johnson, in a comment on Matthew Wayne Selnick’s blog

The Amazon rush is dead. I don’t think we’ll see authors getting the same kind of lift from it going forward.

When everyone is doing the same thing, audiences will start to ignore it. You start getting into “Yet Another” turf…Yet Another Podcast Novelist Twittering Their Release Date. There is a place for marketing and publicity, and yes, you need to hit it hard…there’s no doubt about it. When you’re planning for your launch date, observe what is going on around you. If other folks are flooding the community with their Amazon rush, perhaps it’s time for you to look at some other tactic to get attention. Think about it…if you were getting phone calls constantly about buying something, what would you do?

So, a word to all the podcast authors out there: find another “First.” Be creative, be innovative, take a chance. Do not rely on Yet Another Amazon Rush. People are tuning these out more and more now — it’s old news.

Update: Read the follow-up post, Beware the Magic Pony

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We didn’t publicize it because we thought that the majority of the folks who used the site would want a customized feed on a schedule. Initially, that was the case, but as we’ve grown, we’ve had more and more people stymied by the system, looking to subscribe via a regular RSS feed.

Now they can.

On every book page, we’ve enabled the “auto-discovery” of the default feed of every book. Hit a book detail page and look up in the bar where you’d type a new URL. See that small icon on the right hand side (I assume it’s there for IE users)? If you click it, it will give you the RSS feed for the book as-is. You can’t change the delivery time or any of the cool features of our custom feed (and that’s still there, same place on the page), but you can quickly subscribe to a book and follow along.

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photo credit: S.C. Axman

Chris Moody has just posted my interview for his PodioMedia Chat podcast. If you’ve ever wanted to know what goes on under the hood of Podiobooks.com, this is the show for you.

I’ve also put it in my own podcast feed. Listen below, or visit the PodioMedia Chat website for more information.

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A week ago, I asked for people to submit some topics that they’d like to hear me write about. Some of my comrades in the Cleveland Programming Wasteland chimed in, wanting to know how I wound up working for Mahalo.

In a word, podcasting.

No, really.

Desperation, Quiet to Unquiet

When the podcasting community started to form in late 2004/early 2005, I was working for a small development firm in Medina. While I enjoyed the work, I wanted to do something more creative in my off time, and because of that, I got into podcasting. My first contact was with Evo Terra, who at that time was the co-host of The Dragonpage. He mentioned his idea for serialized audiobooks delivered via RSS, and dubbed them Podiobooks. At the time, Podiobooks.com was a simple site with five books on the front page. I contacted him with an idea on how to automate the process, feeding out chapters one chapter at a time, always starting from the beginning. We started working on the software in Feb. 2005.

That summer, I took the plunge and started Unquiet Desperation, focused on what people were doing above and beyond their day jobs. It was about people following their passion. The reason for that topic was that I was feeling trapped in the development scene in Cleveland. I was fried, could not stand to think anymore about clients or their needs. I felt as though all I did was write code, when a decade earlier I had been writing short fiction, participating in a local medieval group’s activities, and generally being anything but a deskjockey. I wanted to take my quiet desperation and use podcasting to find a way out of it, hence the title.

Unquiet Desperation and Podiobooks.com brought me into contact with some of the most amazing and dedicated people, many of whom I count as close friends today. There was a good amount of overlap between my working UD and the authors who were starting to contribute to Podiobooks. When we launched the beta in Sept. of 2005, it was a major milestone.

It’s All About The Community

Mark Jeffrey was one of our first authors with his Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant. He and I had spoken on and off, and when my daughter fell in love with his book, he agreed to autograph a copy. Later, when he had an idea for a podcasting advertising platform, he contacted me to see if I was interested. I couldn’t take it on at the time.

At the same time, I had been trading emails for months with Ray Slakinski and Sean Jackson for the Windows beta release of iPodderX, and later, for some of the features in the sadly doomed Transistr. I did some small amount of beta testing with them, but when we launched Podiobooks, Sean was responsible for the redesign and Ray was a big help with testing and code.

I’m not sure how Ray and Sean got together with Mark, but eventually they teamed up to create a site called Popcurrent, which was like a Digg for media files. It was innovative, was built in Ruby On Rails, and showed great potential.

In December of 2006, Ray passed along to me that Kevin Rose was looking for .NET developers for a new project¹, but I passed on it. A month later, I got a second call, this time from Mark and Ray, asking if I had any interest in working for a new startup, run by Jason Calacanis and who’s primary investor was Sequoia Capital .

photo credit:
insidetwit

That got my attention. I was dubious…I’d been through the startup world before, and it never worked out well. Still, how often does a guy from Cleveland get a call like that? So yeah, I was interested. Over the next few days, they laid out the plan for the company, and I was truly excited. I sent along my resumé, and thankfully, I was hired.

It’s been the most challenging and exciting job I’ve had to date. I’ve learned more in the last year than in the previous five years combined. I work from home now, traveling out to Los Angeles around five times a year. A standard work day means logging in to our IRC channel around 8:30am, working with the guys, occasionally having a Skype conference to troubleshoot code or go over specifications, and churning out code in PHP and Python. The entire team is distributed: two in Toronto, one in Kansas City, one in Minneapolis, three in Santa Monica, and myself in Cleveland. It can mean a wacky schedule, but that’s startup life and I knew that getting into it. I absolutely love it.

Beyond the Day Job

I cannot promise the same sort of results, but here is my advice to others in the Brotherhood of Trapped and Frustrated Developers who are looking for a way to extend themselves beyond their current day job:

• Reach Out: Communicate with the bloggers you read, or with the folks who read your blog. Seek out similar interests. Find out who is doing something that you’re interested in, and talk with them about it. Share ideas. The internet is global…take advantage of it.
• Join or Start a Project: We started Podiobooks.com because there was a need for a better way to consume podcasted fiction. You can do the same within your own areas of interest. If you’re not up for starting something from scratch, get involved with one of the fine Open Source projects out there. You’ll meet people and learn things that you’ll never explore in the office.
• Hone and Expand Your Skills: I didn’t get to Mahalo because of starting Podiobooks.com. It was because I earned the respect of my peers. Don’t settle for what you do during your workday. While I was coding in VB.NET/C# during the day, I would come home and work with PHP and MySQL at night. Podiobooks.com was the first PHP application I’d ever written². Work with a different language in your off hours to sharpen your skills. (This is a post unto itself, and I’ll expand on it in the future.)
• Follow the Law of the Sandbox: Play nice with the other kids, or no one will want to play with you. This is simple stuff, yet I’m constantly amazed and dismayed when I meet developers who might be very skilled, but are completely socially incompetent. Be friendly and professional in your dealings with others. Be trustworthy.

Most of this is common sense, but sometimes, the common sense is the hardest to follow. It won’t necessarily get you a job at a startup, but it will allow you to broaden your chances of doing something more interesting that your nine-to-five.

Allow yourself to take on some new things, and you’ll be amazed where it can lead you.

Follow Up Questions and Updates

Q: Christopher tweeted: “Great post, but why wouldn’t you want to move from Cleveland to CA? I can’t take the climate here.”

A: Housing costs, schools, and my extended family. A house the size of the one I have now would cost my $800K, even if I could find one. We like the school system (Willoughby-Eastlake) here, and schools vary wildly in L.A. Also, we are very close with our extended family, and would hate to leave them. In all fairness, if I were twenty-something and single, I’d probably move. But I have roots here, and that makes it tough to leave.

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1. a project which later turned out to be Pownce
2. and in some places in the source, it shows. Ugh. Refactor, refactor…

On the twenty third anniversary of Declaration Day, April 18, 2008, I applied my signature to an agreement with Swarm Press to re-issue the paperback edition of “Brave Men Run – A Novel of the Sovereign Era.”

Swarm is a new imprint of Permuted Press, a small independent publisher in Mena, Arkansas run by Jacob Kier. While Permuted is well established in the zombie / apocalyptic genres, Swarm will feature speculative fiction, action/adventure, and that baby sub-genre of science fiction I know so well, super-hero fiction. We’re shooting for a Summer, 2008 release.

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photo credit: paulgorman

There may be no place quieter than a con on a Saturday morning.

Still, I’m up. And this is the Penguicon Update: Day 1.

The con itself is good size…it’s pretty much taken over the Troy Hilton, which is not a small hotel. Like all Sci-Fi/Tech conventions, the glasses to non-glasses ratio is pretty high, and most of the other usual stereotypes about the population of geekdom also apply. I’ve seen all ages here, it does not skew young or old, and so far, there are no furries.

Cmdln and I arrived around 2:30pm on Friday to find Rick Stringer of the Variant Frequencies podcast waiting for us. We checked in, and after seeing the line of folks waiting for registration to open, decided to hit Charlie’s Crab for lunch. Although we all met at Dragon*Con last year, we were able to get to know one another a bit better over lunch. It was good to take the voices that you hear in your headphones and learn about their family, day job, why they do what they do…you know…the important stuff. It’s not a surprise, but we got along famously.

After about an hour, we headed back to find that registration was still closed. Our clever plan of waiting out the line hadn’t worked out, so we queued up and studied the massive schedule that had been taped to the wall.

The schedule wall is worth a little detail. Rather than print a single large sheet with the various track and times listings, they created a grid of 8 x 11 sheets of paper, printed landscape, and laid it out like a massive spreadsheet. This allows them to change the locations, times, etc of the sessions quickly without having to rely on crossing things out in heavy black marker. This was actually fairly novel, though, as several of folks in line with us observed, very hackable. So far, no one has altered the schedule on their own.

After getting our badges¹, we hung out in the room for a bit, then headed out to dinner.

Dinner was P.F. Chang’s with Chris Lester of Metamor City fame, and Michael Ireland of the Scotchcast and . Drinks were had, conversation was excellent, and a good time was had by all.

Our second panel was Computer Geeks and Science Fiction, a freeform discussion about the use of computers as a device in science fiction. The panel was myself, Rick, Cmdln, and Eric S. Raymond, who buried us with his encyclopedic knowledge of SF. It was a great discussion, and I learned a lot more than I taught, which is never a bad thing.

Afterwards, we took in a showing A Shoggoth On The Roof, a puppet show² which used H.P. Lovecraft to parody Fidder on the Roof. Or is that the other way around? It was pretty funny, and the puppeteers were definitely skilled.

That was the wrap up on the night.

Today, more panels, and perhaps some time to write and check out the dealer room. Looking forward to meeting some of the organizers as well. Might check in to attending the Barfleet or Linux User Group party tonight. We shall see.

And now, I am off to the Coffee Ritual. Have a good day, everyone. Catch you tomorrow.

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1. The badges were a little disappointing: Small pieces of paper, not preprinted clearly, stuck in cellophane name-badges holders. Was hoping for something laminated goodness to put on my wall o’ badges. Aw, well. First world problem.
2. Based on the filk version put on on CD years ago

Mark Jeffrey: Amazon.com: Print Through Us…Or Else – Media on The Huffington Post

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When: Today. Palm Sunday. March 16th, 2008.

But when specifically: Depends on your time zone. 1PM EST, 10AM PST, 6pm GMT.

What: Buy Jack Wakes Up in print from Amazon.com.

How much:$14.99 for 268 pages. You can’t afford not? to buy it.

Why: Because every author that makes a successful move to print is another notch in our collective lipstick case. Or feather in our cap. Or jewel in our crown. Or some other metaphor I’ve not added. And by “collective” I mean us as supporters of new adventures in the new world of publishing we’re trying to help create and influence. You are part of that us.

No, really why: Look, I’m not getting rich off the affiliate link to Amazon on this or any other book. It may sound like kumbaya bullshit, but this is about collective support. I could go with more metaphors, like a tide rises all boats, but I’m over my quota.

And if you aren’t yet convinced, listen to a few episodes of Jack Wakes Up for free. Then go buy the book. I’d tell you to listen to the whole thing, but there isn’t time if you want to help Seth rush the charts. So buy it now, and listen later. Money well spent. casino bonus offertbonus pour casino 770code bonus casino 770le supermarché casino en lignecasino en ligne francaiscasino gratuites en francaisjeu gratuitesno deposit required casino bonuscasino et jeuxblack jack gratisblog casino en lignecasinos en lignecode bonus casino770casino en ligne bonusjeux casino pour enfantsjeu craps gratuiteslogiciel video pokerjouez au casinogambling crapscasino netjeu du casino gratuitesplay slots onlinecraps onlinebonus gratuits casinowww jeu de casinojeu slots en ligne gratisslot machine 98telecharger jeu casino gratuitesrègles jeux casinojeu black jackblack jack downloadbonus casino playtechcasino poker gamesle casinowww casino cafeteria frcpayscom2 online casinojeu keno en ligne gratuitesjeux du casinojeu video casinole casino gratuites sans téléchargementjeux casino poker gratuitesslots royale casino,casino slots,all slots casinojeux de casino francaisjeux casino bonusjeux de casino sur internetplay free baccarat onlineinternet casinole casino français gratuitescasino blackjackcasino et bonus

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