{"id":42673,"date":"2022-03-03T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=42673"},"modified":"2022-03-03T08:35:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T13:35:00","slug":"brian-mcclellan-five-things-i-learned-starting-the-page-break-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2022\/03\/03\/brian-mcclellan-five-things-i-learned-starting-the-page-break-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian McClellan: Five Things I Learned Starting The Page Break Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Back at the end of June, 2021, I finally fulfilled a years-long ambition to start a podcast with the first episode of Page Break<\/a>. I\u2019m not sure why. I write epic fantasy novels for a living (you might know my Powder Mage<\/a> epic fantasy novels), and I\u2019m good at that and when you have such a coveted gig it can be ill-advised to direct your attention elsewhere. But I did it anyways because so many of us creative professionals love to work on multiple disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Page Break was born: a series of casual conversations between two creative professionals that rambled through the often-ignored aspects of their lives and careers. I didn\u2019t really know whether people would listen, or if I would have the time and energy to produce more than a few episodes. To be frank, it was something I knew I\u2019d be mad at myself if I didn\u2019t try, but I didn\u2019t think it would succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my recording with our gracious host Chuck Wendig came out a couple days ago and is episode #32<\/a>. I\u2019ve had conversations with actors, youtubers, authors, and comedians. People like Joe Abercrombie, Fonda Lee, Mark Hulmes, Robin Hobb, and Daniel Greene have taken the time to sit down with little old me for casual chats about life, creativity, business, hobbies, career, and more. It\u2019s been pretty dang cool and I don\u2019t seem to be stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ed — I loved doing this podcast and I hope you’ll give a listen<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So sit back, relax, and let me tell you about five things I learned while recording Page Break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything is easier with a little help from your friends<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page Break exists because of my friends. It started simply enough with me bemoaning that I wanted to start a podcast but was intimidated by trying to record both sides of a zoom call. A buddy simply mentioned that Zencastr was a really good option for this and BOOM: I\u2019ve got a program to use. The same thing happened when I asked the musically talented James L Sutter<\/a> how I would go about commissioning an intro riff and, without being asked, he delivered a series of possible compositions the very next day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked through my worries one at a time. I asked twitter about audio engineer costs and Tom Bishop messaged me privately offering his services for an affordable price. Several of my friends offered to help me with test-interviews so I could get used to talking to someone for an audience. Charlie N. Holmberg\u2019s ended up being episode 5<\/a>. Many of my author friends were just a text message away for subsequent guest spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I caveat this point with the full understanding that I\u2019m in a privileged position: with a decade-long career as an epic fantasy author, I\u2019ve made lots of friends with diverse and useful talents and I know a handful of famous writers. It definitely gave me a head start. But it\u2019s important to remember that your friends are there for you and they may have some good ideas or be willing to help you record a test episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listeners are more forgiving than you\u2019d think<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to make a podcast for three years before I finally got around to recording for Page Break, and during that time the biggest block for me was worrying about quality. I thought I needed the very best physical hardware to record in-person conversations with mics, portable mixers, headphones \u2013 the whole shebang. I couldn\u2019t record via zoom or phone because I wouldn\u2019t be able to control anything on their end. Overall, I was convinced that no one would listen unless I had crisp, studio-quality sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out that\u2019s not exactly true. People like<\/strong> crisp, studio-quality sound but what they want<\/strong> is to listen to interesting conversations, cool stories, or fascinating facts. You still need a baseline sound quality of course\u2014no one wants to hear bursts of static or sit through long pauses or one person talking louder than the other. But if it\u2019s a good show, listeners are willing to forgive a guest having a low-quality microphone, or a bit of street noise on one end of the line. The content is what matters most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Success is relative, especially when it comes to making a profit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last eight months or so I\u2019ve learned that podcasting has a very weird measure of success. If you have over a hundred regular listeners, you\u2019ve done quite a good job. After all, that\u2019s a hundred<\/strong> people who tune in to listen to you<\/strong> every episode! That\u2019s pretty awesome if you envision them all sitting in a room together. Unfortunately if you want to break even on your time and costs, those hundred people are worth just a few pennies in ad revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll break down where I currently sit with Page Break. My costs for a month (four weeks) of episodes include about $500 for hosting, editing, graphics, and other misc expenses for things I have no skills or interest in doing myself. Roughly twelve hours of my attention goes into prep and recording. I do consider this part of my free time, so I try not to think too hard about how much writing I could get done with those hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what do I get out of it in a very straight-forward business sense? The podcast currently receives roughly 1000-1600 listens a week depending on the guest. Not too shabby, right? Want to know my revenue? $71 from Patreon<\/a> and $72 from Acast ads. That\u2019s less than a third of my cash costs, and after 32 episodes of building an audience. Ouch. Good thing I\u2019m doing this for fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all about the slow burn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that I\u2019ve laid out the start costs of limited success, I should say that I\u2019m doing this for what I hope will be a long term listenership. My first five episodes each received less than 300 listens their opening weeks. As mentioned above, I\u2019ve managed to raise that by a significant margin!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rule of thumb I\u2019ve heard is that a podcast needs a good two years of regular production to really find and keep their audience. At the moment I\u2019m in the lucky position where I can eat the financial costs and I\u2019m enjoying it enough to eat the time costs. I mentioned \u201chope\u201d above, and that\u2019s because hanging on to this kind of thing requires quite a lot of it. I hope<\/strong> that listeners will subscribe to my Patreon<\/a>. I hope<\/strong> that Acast sends my feed more ad revenue. I hope<\/strong> that new listeners will be interested in my books. Which leads me neatly to my next point\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a creative professional, diversifying can have hard-to-quantify benefits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the greatest challenges for any creative professional is keeping themselves in the public consciousness when there is so much noise competing for the attention of readers, watchers, and listeners. When my next novel comes out, IN THE SHADOW OF LIGHTNING<\/a>, it\u2019ll have been two and a half years since I put out an epic fantasy. Will readers remember who I am? Will they have long since muted my twitter or unsubscribed from my newsletter because those aren\u2019t the things they really care about (my books).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you know how much that freaks me out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page Break is a small but interesting solution to that. It\u2019s a place for listeners to hear from me and my industry friends every week. I can bring in people like creative director Lauren Panepinto to yak about the Powder Mage covers, or director Joseph Mallozzi to discuss the technical aspects of a Powder Mage TV show. Or I can skip my own work entirely and talk to a revered author like RA Salvatore about his most famous characters and infamous books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, Page Break reminds the listeners that I exist\u2014that my books exist\u2014and that I\u2019m still writing. Hopefully it brings in new readers for my books and introduces my existing readers to the works of people I find interesting. There\u2019s that tricky word again: hope<\/strong>. How many careers exist solely on that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back at the end of June, 2021, I finally fulfilled a years-long ambition to start a podcast with the first episode of Page Break. I\u2019m not sure why. I write epic fantasy novels for a living (you might know my Powder Mage epic fantasy novels), and I\u2019m good at that and when you have such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-b6h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42673"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42696,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42673\/revisions\/42696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}