With the horrible tragedy in Haiti, I wanted to be able to give more than I personally could give. So I decided to auction off ad space in my e-commerce/self-publishing podcast with 100% proceeds going to three different organizations that were trying to help out with the Haiti earthquake efforts.

Here is the guide to which listing is for which organization:

• The American Red Cross -http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=102333&item=400097677251
• Doctors Without Borders – http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=102333&item=400097677254
• Habitat for Humanity International – http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=102333&item=400097677262

If you have a some kind of service that you offer or if you have a book to promote, please consider placing a bid. Even if you don’t have an audio ad ready, I can record one for you. Right now, two of the listings aren’t even bid on so even if you don’t want to support these charities, this can just be a way to get a very inexpensive ad for whatever you have to promote.

Or you can just give the ad time to raising awareness of any other charity or cause you may be passionate about.

Either way, I would sure like to raise more than $1 total so if you would consider making a donation bid, it would be most appreciated. The auction end in less than 24 hours.

Here is the original post.

I really wanted to release the audiobook of The Author on Podiobooks because I have heard such great things about them but, unfortunately, they can only do an all or nothing scenario with this book. In other words, unless I give them all four parts at once, they cannot put the book on the site. This is a huge pain in the buttocks.

When I started doing this project, I very much wanted to do the “serialized” part of serialized audiobooks so having to wait until the whole book is done wasn’t exactly part of my plan. So I have decided to make the best of the situation. While I will still release the book through Podiobooks when it is completely done, you, my loyal blog readers, get a chance to listen to it ahead of time on TalkShoe. Episodes will be posted as they are released (which will be the second they are done) so you’ll get them before anyone else.

I will definitely still release the book on Podiobooks once the entire thing is done so if you prefer to wait, be my guest. If you want to listen to the first section now, you can listen above or download it from this link.

When you are finished listening, please let me know what you think. If you are on Twitter, please add the hashtag #theauthor to your comments so that I can easily find them or just share your thoughts below. If you enjoy it, please tell a friend. I am giving this book away to get my name and work out there so the more people read it, the better.

I would like to have a question and answer show on TalkShoe after each episode so if you would be interested, please make sure that you are subscribed to the blog so you don’t miss that announcement. Also, you can subscribe to this podcast on TalkShoe via iTunes or RSS so you will be sure to know the second new episodes are available.

I worked crazy hard on this audiobook version so I really hope you like it.

If you are already on Facebook, please take a moment to become a fan of the page I set up for The Author there.

We are coming down to the wire so I am trying to get all these little marketing details set up ahead of time!

The Author by Hillary DePiano’s Facebook Page

So I recorded a few sections of my podiodbook last night.

First the good news:

• My microphone is better quality than I thought and sounds just fine so I don’t need a new one
• It was a lot of fun to read my book out loud (yes, I am a dork)
• I should be able to get this done in less time than I originally thought

Now for the bad news:

• I breathe waaaaay too loud. My brother taught me how to fix this though so we should be OK on the next take.
• I have found a lot of typos/awkward sentences/etc that I need to fix. I am going to have to do some heavy text editing before I can actually do a final recording of anything. On the plus side, I needed to do an edit of the book anyway to add in the new TA info that eBay changed so it is for the better in the long run but annoying when you wanted to be done yesterday
• After I unplugged my headphone/microphone combo, all sound on my computer stopped working. I have monkeyed with all the settings that I can think of and no luck. I am hoping it will just fix itself out of pity in a few hours. In the meantime, all sound is broken on my computer a fact I re-discover every few seconds when I try to listen to something

I am doing the book of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant first as it is pretty straight forward. The Author I suspect will be much harder so I am waiting until I get some solid practice in to do that.

I will keep you all posted on how this disaster goes.

I have been doing a lot of listening to podiobooks lately, in specific Max Quick 2: The Two Travelers and Brave Men Run (which I started listening to for killing time between Mahalo delayed MQ2 episodes). For the record, I actually listen to these while working because a small part of my job is very mindless so I can listen to a story while doing work. I do have to pause the story, though, when writing emails or other text or I write down the words that I am hearing. That can be very bad.

My observations are that podcasts can be very are entertaining, that podcasting is pretty easy for anyone to pick up with a little research and that podcasters themselves are largely very clique-y. It’s a little like cyber high school. This is both good and bad. Bad because you have to crack their group so you can sit at their lunch table but good because they all stand up for each other and promote the heck out of each other’s works which is great. I do not put this in the plus or minus column, it is just an observation from an outsiders.

That said, forever ago (maybe like a year +) I had bought myself a microphone to try some podcasting with and (surprise, surprise) never had time to try it. The idea of doing a daily/weekly podcast appealed to me at the time but now I realize that I would rather blog than podcast on a regular schedule so I shelved the idea.
However, upon listening to all these books online, I thought it might be fun to try a podiobook, the finite nature of such an endeavor appealing to me more than something open ended. So my hope is to, in the near future, be able to present podiobooks of both The Trading Assistant’s Assistant and The Author. If you don’t remember The Author, that is because it’s been out of print for a few years because I had no idea how to market it then but its going to be getting a new life with a new paperback, eBook and audiobook edition.
Right now I am still prepping the text of both for recording but I will definately pass on more information as

I have once I have it so please stay tuned for free audio versions of these books. If any experienced poscasters want to add their tips in the comments, I would appreciate it.

If anyone is up insanely early and is interested in hearing me talk about My Little Pony, you will have another chance. After chatting about the pastel ponies on the radio in Ireland, I will be on 97.5 – Lansing’s Hit Music Station (Michigan) Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 7:30 AM EST. I will be on their morning show, Mornings with Dave & Lisa D.

Their station is streaming online so you can listen to it on your computer if you want.