Inspired by the chat session we recorded about the Hugos, Tony C. Smith invited Jonathan Strahan and I back today to talk about the results of the Nebulas. Inevitably the discussion strayed onto other topics as well. You can listen to the podcast here.
One of the interesting questions that popped up is whether being podcast helps a story when it comes to awards. This is a difficult one for me to answer. I love listening to chatty podcasts such as the ones Jonathan has done with Gary Wolfe, and this new one with Graham Sleight, but I can’t listen to audio fiction – I find myself keeping wanting to stop, go back and see what an author did with a particular sentence. So being podcast would never increase the likelihood of my reading a story.
What do you folks think? Being online is an obvious plus, but does being podcast as opposed to being online in text help a story get noticed?
I’ve lately taken to listening to stories I wouldn’t have taken the time to read, because you can listen to the story while playing mindless games, or otherwise multitask. As far as I know, all have also been available in some text format, so if I care enough I can go back and read it (which I have on several occasions).
So yes, I’d say it helps at least some.
Two pronged answer, due to the two-pronged nature of most podcasts that feature fiction.
I’ll be honest; there are stories I get to “read” because they’re podcast, and there are podcasts I don’t get to hear which I’d love to read if there were even automated transcripts, because with nonfiction/commentary I’m addicted to skimming. Both-sided thing. Not sure why I tend to skim nonfiction but not fiction (most of the time), but I suspect I’m not alone in this. There’s a lot of content on the web I end up skipping because it is video or audio and I don’t have time to sit through the entire thing.
So I think that yes, it does help with stories, but it is worth examining with other content. That said, now that I have learned about the track point info given for Starship Sofa so you can skip ahead to the story if you want to, it makes me more likely to listen to it, and I hope other fiction podcasts introduce it as well.