How to Transform Your Book into a Podcast

A conversation involving books and podcasts is typically one concerned with getting someone who’s written a book, onto a podcast to promote it. 

However, one of the best strategies for creating more buzz around a book is to use it to create a podcast. 

This isn’t a revolutionary idea, but it certainly is one of the most creative. 

Audio content is at an all-time high in terms of how much is being produced, and how much is being consumed. 

Jay Baer stated in a post about podcast statistics that more Americans are familiar with the term “podcast” than they are with the name of the current vice president. Isn’t that interesting? (and also somewhat sad?)

More than 1/4 Americans listen to podcasts every month and that number is only increasing. 

By creating a podcast around your book, you’re increasing exposure for your work and your name, you’re creating content that can be shared and repurposed, and you’ll start to build a fanbase which will ideally turn into loyal readers, listeners, and customers. 

Another pro: the opportunity for additional revenue. Once a podcast gets a decent listener base, there’s a possibility of having sponsors on the show. Initially, it may not be a lot of money, but as you grow your community, you’ll be able to charge more. 

A client once asked me why they shouldn’t just create an audiobook version of their book instead of creating a podcast.

There are a few reasons I don’t love this idea: audiobooks must be paid for while podcasts are free (and make money via advertisers), audiobooks are long while podcasts are short and more digestible, and finally with an audiobook there’s only one thing to share whereas a podcast has dozens of episode which can be edited and repurposed into additional social media content. 

So how do you really turn your book into a podcast? 

1. Get Organized

There are countless ways to breakdown your book into a list of topics for podcast episodes. Decide what works best/makes the most sense for the content of your book. For some it may be by chapter, for others, it might be general topics, etc. The content of your podcast is more important than what brand of mic you’re using or figuring out how to put together a website for it. 

2. Get Technical

You don’t need a $300 mic to podcast, just something decent. You don’t need to pay for fancy editing software or hours of a professional editor’s time. This is a good time to assess what you know how to do, what you want to learn to do, or if you want to outsource any production aspects of a podcast. 

3. Get Recording

This is the fun part: recording your podcast. I would suggest blocking out a few days to record the podcast series. This way you won’t get burnt out (it takes a lot of energy to be “on” while recording a podcast). I can never do more than 2 or 3 per day. I also like recording a bunch of episodes at once so you’ll be ahead of it and have an entire series ready to post. 

This blog post is more of a general plan for putting together a podcast. I wanted to start the conversation about podcasting as an author. If you’re interested in a detailed explanation about the technical aspects of podcasting please leave a comment or send me an email/message.