Putting Together a Podcast of My Serial - What An Experience It's Been So Far

This is by far my longest blog post, but my podcasting project experience has been so exciting I really didn't want to leave anything out. In an attempt to avoid sounding like one long ramble, I've broken this post up into parts:

• PART 1 - How I Decided To Start A podcast 
• PART 2 -Okay, I'm Going To Do It. What Now? 
• PART 3 - Who's Going To Pay For All This? 
• PART 4 - Trying To Be Fair 
• PART 5 - My Pitch
• PART 6 - Finding Voice Actors?
• PART 7 - Wow, These Are Some Cool People.

PART 1 - How I Decided To Start A Podcast

I've thought a lot about why this idea has resonated so much with me from the beginning, and I've traced it back to my experience with a local writer's group called The Oak Park Writer's Group. 

In my opinion, the real innovation of this group is how everyone's submissions are read aloud by someone other than the author. The experience of hearing my work read aloud was so helpful in catching mistakes in wording and typos, and in getting a real sense of whether readers will pick up on the pacing and timing I intended, it made me confident I had something worth reading, and, therefore, confident in self-publishing. 

I stumbled upon the SERIAL podcast through one of the alerts Google emailed to me regarding the phrase "serial stroytelling". I'm a semi-regular listener of This American Life. I absolutely loved the work they did reporting on Wall Street and the financial crisis.

So it didn't come as a surprise to me that a This American Life spin-off was successful. Once I started listening to the program, SERIAL, I realized it's success was partly due to the format - serial story-telling as a podcast.

I already have episodes of a serial that I've been writing for eight months. And I've also heard them read aloud, and witnessed the reaction of an audience. I've watched people laugh, cringe, squirm, and just plain exclaim in response to what I've written. I would love to provide that experience to a broader audience. But I would like to break the roles into parts: a main narrator, and individual parts for each character. I would also like to work with professional voice actors and produce a quality podcast. Now that all that's settled, all I have to do is make it happen.

PART 2 - Okay, I'm Going To Do It. What Now?

    

I've never worked on any kind of theatrical production. I've never been part of a play. Tried to make my own movie. And you'll see when I talk about the experience, I've never been in a situation in which I had a chance to get to know any actors. So needless to say, I don't really have experience doing this sort of thing. 

But I have worked independently on research projects that involve the exchange of money. I worked as a manager in both retail and restaurants. I understand the responsibility of delivering a product or service, and the responsibility of managing people and making sure they are compensated fairly for their work. 

The first thing I did was google the term "podcasting". I found a lot of very helpful information, including this YouTube video on the difference between microphones used by experienced poscasters:



Then I tried to find voice actors through my personal network. After a week or so of trying, I realized that wasn't working out so well. So I googled the term "voice actors", and found two sites: Behind The Voice Actors, and GigSalad.  

+Gig Salad was by far the easier site to navigate. My favorite feature of this site was the ability to filter actor profiles by location. 

In PART 5 I go into more detail regarding my experience finding voice actors, but since they can't work without getting paid, it makes more sense to me to first address the issue of sponsorship. 

PART 3 - Who's Going To Pay For All This?

One thing that stuck out for me while listening to that first episode of the SERIAL podcast was the +MailChimp ad in the beginning of the recording. You don't have to be a genius to realize that my primary value in doing all this is promoting my episodes - the eBooks I have available for purchase on the +Amazon Kindle Store. 

As an independent author, I don't have the funds to cover the cost of paying actors, and the equipment necessary for quality audio isn't cheap, either. But let's face it, everyone involved has an interest in the success of a podcast. I'm providing the stories, but I'm willing to offer the podcast for free as a way of getting the word out about my books. I would like to pay the actors, but if the podcast succeeds, the popularity of their names and images rise along with the number of downloads. Any company willing to sponsor this venture invests its money for a chance of achieving the reach achieved by +MailChimp through its SERIAL ad. 

I've run across several articles about the genius of +MailChimp's decision to sponsor SERIAL before it was successful. 

Now That the 'Serial' Podcast Is a Runaway Hit, Is MailChimp Reaping the Rewards?

adweek.com

How MailChimp’s irresistible “Serial” ad became the year’s biggest marketing win

Quartz

MailChimp's sponsorship of "Serial" became its own meme.

PART 4 - TRYING TO BE FAIR

As I said, my interest in all this should be pretty obvious. As an author, I want to expose the world to my stories. I also want to make a living from my writing. In my mind, producing this podcast is related, but independent, of the task of selling my books. The other key feature of SERIAL is that it's 'free' - meaning members of the audience don't pay for it.

I expect to be, and for my stories to be, influenced by this collaborative project.
I'm looking forward to seeing how +Allison Epstein narrates the story and how +EJ SHUMAK imbues the conservative political pundit, John Mason, with authenticity. Even though we all have an interest in the project's success, I know we all also have immediate needs. Allison, Ej, and the professional voice actors all deserve something for their time and willingness to participate in this project, and all three of the actors I mentioned have agreed to travel here. That's another consideration.     

PART 5 - My Pitch

I'm a pretty straightforward, no nonsense person (some even say blunt), and in a past life I promoted Latin music and dance events. I'm confident I have a good idea, and I'm also confident in my ability to deliver on my commitment to a sponsor. If you've read this far into this post, you probably agree with me. 

I do not believe pretty stationary, and a flowery proposal letter will really determine whether a Marketing Director is interested in sponsoring this podcast. The two most important factors are: 1) the company has a need for effective internet marketing, and 2) the company's representative trusts me to satisfy that need. 

Here is the email I sent to +Dan LaBelle and +Joy Xuan, directors of marketing for +HelloSign and Dropbox  respectively.

SUBJECT 
This email is about SERIAL and marketing like MailChimp

BODY TEXT

My name is Henry Sullivan. I am an author, planning to launch a podcast of a series of episodes I've written, which I will make available in a similar fashion to the way the This American Life Podcast of SERIAL was available. I would like to speak with you about YOURCOMPANY being the sponsor of the podcast. If you are not interested, I completely understand, and I thank you for your time. If you are interested, please let me know the best time and number to reach you. Thanks, and have a great day.

(sigh) In all honesty, right before 

"Thanks, and have a great day" 

the original emails included the sentence 

"I don't believe in wasting time. I think a ten minute conversation is sufficient for deciding." 

Ugh! I can be so callous sometimes (sorry Joy and Dan).   

Anyway . . . 

I've worked out a budget, which includes the actor's hourly rate as a baseline for everyone (in the interest of fairness), and a travel stipend. For myself, I would just like to cover as much of the equipment costs as I can. The narrator does the majority of the reading, then come the main characters - Sheila and Jasira (episodes 1 & 2). Everyone else is paid a minimum of one hour. That seems fair to me.

PART 6 - Finding Voice Actors 

This may sound naive, or perhaps a little cynical, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed meeting and talking to the actors that responded to my ad on +Gig Salad. The ad was easy to set up. After filtering for my event location, there was a short form to fill out, with a text box for the event description. Here's mine:

I am casting for a podcast of episodes I've written as part of a serial. The podcast will be available on iTunes and through my website. I look forward to your quote. Thanks, Henry.

PART 7 - Wow, These Are Some Cool People. 

CHRISTINE SAADE

  

 After my event was posted on GigSalad, the first actor to respond turned out to be better than anything I could have possibly hoped for. I didn't realize how perfect Christine Saade was for the part of Jasira until I'd returned to Chicago after traveling for the Holiday.

Equipped once again with my laptop (as opposed to my tablet), I was able to find the movie Christine recently completed, Chambers Gate, as well as several clips of her interview in Beirut on the television show 3OYOUN .


I didn't realize until then that Christine is Lebanese (or at least part Lebanese), which was great, considering the character, Jasira, is Lebanese. 

But seeing that clip brought something I said in our brief phone conversation to mind: "it doesn't really matter if the accent is authentic, most Americans don't know a real Lebanese accent anyway". This has been bugging me ever since I said it, mainly because Christine doesn't know the context behind that statement. I grew up in New Orleans, but have been told several times since I've left that I 'don't sound like someone from New Orleans'. It's hard to express how irritating that statement is, but I've come to realize that for many of us, the fictional world is more real than the real world. On the basis of TV shows, movies, and news segments we've seen, we think we know what real cops are like, how real medical examiners work, and how the criminal justice system really functions. So it only figures when people's idea of the way people in New Orleans speak is full of y'alls and Nu Awlins, etc, etc. It's taken me years to get over the fact that this is a load of nonsense. So, what I meant by my statement to Christine is that I wanted to focus more on the character's personality than her ethnicity, but the New Orlenian in me regrets not giving her an opportunity to bring authenticity to the table. 

+Dani Cook  

Dani was the second actor I talked to, and right away her voice was obviously perfect for conveying the character Tara. Our conversation was also beneficial in that I learned a few things from Dani about corporate marketing, and she also confirmed the value of what I'm doing in this post right now, which is bearing my real experience to the world. My ability to engage an audience has grown tremendously since I began doing this in January of 2014.

Like Christine, and Kristin (who's coming up next) Dani also brings a considerable following to the table. Together, I'm confident the four of us can reach a very broad audience.

 Kristin Anderson 

My conversation with Kristin wasn't as long as the phone calls I had with Christine and Dani, but I was pretty sure she would make a great Sheila (the point of view character for episodes 1, 2, and 7). I'm looking forward to being exposed to the perspective of a comedian.