Showing posts with label Podcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Podcast. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

A Media Blitz

Since returning from Morocco, I've made a conscious effort to promote the book and the podcast outside of my normal blog and social media channels. Holiday backups and the general nature of print publishing being what they are, my work is just now starting to pay off.

I did a Skype interview with a reporter for my hometown newspaper in Dubuque, Iowa. I hoped that the cache of a local boy going off and doing good things in a far-off, exotic land like Dublin would be appealing enough for a story. Combine that with the strong Irish connection to Dubuque and you have a really tantalizing scoop.

They printed my interview and a review of the book, but the full text of the article is subscription-only. Non-subscribers can read the snippet in the link below and take my word that it was a good review.

I also made contact with the editors of Dublin People, the free newspaper that had published a few of my own articles last year. Mine is the book of the week in the current edition, so you can check out a free copy of Northside People East, Northside People West, or Southside People at your local supermarket or newsagent OR check out page 21 of the PDF edition.

Another free community newspaper that has published my work before is the Southside-specific NewsFour. I spoke with one of the team about my book and a review is published in the Feb/Mar edition, also available in (Southside) libraries, cafes, and newsagents. As of this writing, the online edition is not yet available. Look for an update (you can follow me on Twitter and never miss an update, smile and wink!) if and when it is made available.

NewsFour also does an audio podcast to update the community about the contents of the current edition. The book got a mention and a plug from the editors and the host of the show on RICC radio. The podcast -- cued up to the book's plug -- is available on Soundcloud at this link.

Did someone say audio podcasts? Well, it just so happens that I published a new Frugal Guide: Dublin podcast today; this one an interview rather than a guided tour. In it, I visited with the director of the Contemporary Music Centre about the good work they do to support new music in Ireland and to provide free access and entertainment to the lucky citizens. The accompanying article and an embedded podcast player can be found over at Five Suitcases.

In addition to my personal Morocco story, I wrote and sold a more general-audience travel article about visiting Marrakesh specifically. I sold the article without my byline, but you can visit the published article here and decide if it sounds like my voice.

In addition to all this press, I've been keeping busy researching new attractions for the Frugal Guide eBook and working on my weekly writing quota for my next book. Look for more updates whenever I have time to surface for air.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Frugal Guide Podcast is a Go!

As if I didn't need anything else to work on...


I've been busy working on the first (hopefully of many... or at least several!) audio supplement pieces for The Frugal Guide: Dublin. Why all the extra work? Well, I want to do this thing for real, with all the usual twenty-first-century additions.


Hopefully, these additional audio tours and podcasts will help boost the popularity of the book and help more people have more fun in this great city. If not, it'll just be another huge time sink that I can look at with pride even though it was enjoyed by few.

I am working to get this podcast feed available on iTunes, but for now it's only available for direct download from PodOmatic -- the service I chose to host the podcast -- as they have the best free account package.

Below is the full text from my Five Suitcases article with an embedded podcast player at the bottom if you care to listen. Please help boost the signal by continuing to like and share the book and podcast on the usual social channels!

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I've been warming up my voice and flexing my very limited audio editing muscle recently. After many hours of recording, deleting, recording again, and testing, I've finally finished and published my first piece of supplementary audio content!

One of my original goals with this project was to produce some guided audio tours in podcast form. Unable or unwilling to hire professional help, I would have to be writer, producer, narrator, editor, and publisher of everything, of course. For the first audio tour, I chose Dublin's Urban Park Scramble, because it was my first and my favorite.

Much of the time needed to produce this first piece of audio content was spent learning the ins and outs of podcast publishing in general. Sadly, free podcast hosting is difficult to find, and with limited choices when you find it. For now, I'm using PodOmatic as they offer the most free storage space and the most monthly bandwidth with their free account. Other services' free accounts are much more limited, and the always-free-unlimited-storage-and-bandwidth use of archive.org seemed a bit too clunky, even for me.

Now that I'm an experienced podcast publisher, producing more short audio pieces should be much easier. Look for more audio tours, interviews with inexpensive attraction curators, and other soundy content coming soon.

If and when you download this walking tour, notice that the attached image is the map of the walk. It is a bit ugly when seen at super-zoomed thumbnail size, but becomes a handy map of the whole walk when displayed on an iPod screen while playing. Practical over pretty every single day!

This series of walks and podcasts will hopefully be available on iTunes soon, but for now, they will all be available for direct download from PodOmatic at the following address: frugalguidedublin.podomatic.com

Don't feel like downloading? Take a listen right from your computer with this handy embedded audio player!

 

Please continue to help me promote the book and the podcast with reviews, likes, and shares on all of the usual channels. Oh, and here are those usual channels again!