This past week I attended the London Book Fair which ran over three intense days of seminars, conferences and lots of networking.
From that, I gained huge insights into the trends in all kinds of sectors and niches, digital and physical, and I will be sharing those insights with you here and over the coming weeks so you too can benefit from them.
First up, the biggest trend may surprise you…or some of its finer details might…because it’s audio.
Yup, audio books are up 41% in sales and the demographic is getting younger and younger with 18 – 44 year olds most likely to listen to fiction and non-fiction.
Of those people, slightly more are men and – here’s the really interesting bit – they simply sit at home and listen intently rather than plugging in their earphones when driving or at the gym as we all imagine.
What does this tell you? That audio products and podcasts are following this trend…and the reason is simple. With audio, you don’t need to stare at yet another screen or focus on a PDF. You can simply sit back and listen in your own time.
So with all that in mind, let’s take a look at some resources you can use to create your own audio products and podcasts….
And we’ll start with this which gives you some really good technical tips although some of the actual equipment recommendations have been superseded by more up to date models:
https://robdircks.com/yes-you-can-record-your-own-audiobook-heres-how/
Then there is this which also contains great technical advice which is as applicable to product creators as authors:
https://becomeawritertoday.com/how-to-make-an-audiobook/
OK, so this is video and it’s about all kinds of products but here’s Neil Patel on how to create a product that pulls in 100k a month and that includes audio products:
As for podcasts, they were everywhere at the fair and are mushrooming so it’s time you gave serious consideration to creating your own…
Here’s how:
https://www.thepodcasthost.com/planning/how-to-start-a-podcast/
With more excellent insights from perhaps the ultimate podcaster here:
https://www.eofire.com/how-to-podcast/
As for audio tools, I use Audacity which you can get here for nada:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/
There is also an excellent selection of open source tools here, not just for audio but for everything from graphics to video creation and beyond:
https://opensource.com/article/18/2/open-source-audio-visual-production-tools
Your TED talk this week is wonderfully liberating – how to let go of being a good person so you can become a better person and, I would argue, better creator/marketer:
