Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Introduction

To put it bluntly, all of us — from authors to editors — are a bit uncomfortable with the “Expert” part of this title. Not because of any lack of experience on the part of your authors, but because of the do‐it‐yourself — and (perhaps more importantly) do‐it‐your‐way — nature of podcasting. To quote Daniel Quinn, “there is no one right way” to make a podcast. In fact, many of the most popular podcasts (and you can measure popularity in a variety of ways) ignore or break the rules of just about every practice we discuss in this book. But while there may be no one right way to make a podcast, we've tried to fill this book with a series of best practices — which are certainly among the right ways to do specific podcasting‐related tasks.

At the time of this publication, Podcasting For Dummies has been on the shelves for just over two years. While that book helped many people get started in podcasting, a need has arisen to go beyond what that book covers. For many, starting a podcast is the easy part. It's the Now what? question that plagues many who seek to take their existing podcasts to the next level.

We hope this book can answer that question, providing a few paths — some well‐trodden and some relatively uncharted — toward success. Having said that, your authors are staunch supporters of the Law of Multiple Success Variables, which we just made up. It states, both basically and in its entirety, that every podcaster will have his or her own metrics of success, and that ...