The Writing Show (WS): Welcome to The Writing Show, where writing is always the story. I’m your host, Paula B., here today with my guest, Steve Eley. Steve Eley is the editor and producer of Escape Pod, a science fiction podcast magazine. Each week, Escape Pod narrates fun, contemporary short science fiction and fantasy with commentary and reviews. Eley lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, infant son, and Welsh corgi, all of whom have too much sense to podcast.
Welcome, Steve. It’s a pleasure to have a fellow podcaster and science fiction fan on the show.
Steve Eley (SE): It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
WS: Tell us about Escape Pod. What is it, and how did it come about?
SE: We bill ourselves as the science fiction podcast magazine. By that I mean that we narrate, on a weekly basis, short science fiction and fantasy stories. We also have occasional reviews, and there’s always a commentary before each one. Every so often we’ll throw in a bonus flash fiction story that’s just a few minutes long. But the real centerpiece is the weekly podcast that’s about a half-hour length short story.
WS: What is your background in science fiction and writing?
SE: I’ve been a writer for probably more years than I ought to admit to. I’ve got a few short stories in print right now. I have a novel that’s under consideration at one of the big New York publishers. But mostly I’ve had for a long time a great love of short fiction, and also some strong opinions about some of the direction that short fiction tends to go. It’s obviously somewhat faded in popularity over the decades, but right now I’m really noticing it and paying attention to it. I think a lot of that is just the nature of what is getting published. So I have an urge to present some of what I consider to be more fun short stories. I think that it’s more likely to draw readers if people are seeing that there’s a lot of dynamic fiction out there—a lot of fiction with strong plot lines, with strong characters—what I consider fun. Also a lot of times people find it easier to get the stuff in audio form so they can listen to it on the road while they’re driving. If they start getting a passion for short fiction that way, they may start going out and picking up some of the magazines and the anthologies as well.
WS: I heard a grain of your strong opinions there, but I would sure like to hear more about them. Do you want to tell us—you teased us with that, and I can’t let that go.
SE: If you go back and listen to some of my intros to Escape Pod, I go into this in some length over the course of weeks. Basically my feeling is that, and again this is speaking strictly about speculative fiction, if you look back to the short fiction of, say, the 1940s and the 1950s, when science fiction was really at a zenith in the magazine markets, a lot of the stories then were bad. That has to be admitted. But they were bad in what I consider more entertaining ways than what you have right now. They had clichés galore, but there were also things going on in the stories, more aliens, more action, more plot. They were just plain more fun, I think, than a lot of what you read now. And again, that’s not saying categorically that all fiction published today is languid and boring. I wouldn’t have anything to podcast if I felt that. But I do think that oftentimes there is a tendency for short fiction in science fiction and fantasy to be somewhat introspective or self-reflective. A lot of it is actually about writers, or a lot of it is striving toward literary elegance and beautiful language at the expense of anything actually happening in the stories. Especially in an audio market, that really doesn’t work very well because the reader can’t just skim past the boring parts. So what I look for is stories where there’s a lot going on, where there are characters that are clearly and obviously engaging, where the dialog is fun. At the same time if the stories happen to be beautiful, then that’s a good bonus as well. But it’s not primarily what we look for.
WS: Do you have any theories on why science fiction and speculative fiction have taken this turn?
SE: Well, again I’m largely speaking about short fiction here. Readership has dropped off so much that the circulation for the magazines–for all except the very strongest ones, Analog and Asimov and F and SF [Fantasy and Science Fiction]—has made short fiction practically a boutique market. As a result, there is a core reliable niche of readers that this market is trying to serve. Those readers are fairly comfortable in what they’re looking for. What I’d like to see is more readers, or in the case of a podcast, more listeners, so what I’m trying to do is present some more dynamic stories and deliver those to them.
WS: Can you go into any more detail about the kind of stories that you’re looking for and the kind of stories that you reject?
SE: Well, I’ve already said fun probably about umpteen times, and really we encourage humor. We like optimistic, upbeat sorts of stories. We have run stories with downer endings, but usually there’s at least some kind of wit or some kind of irony to the story. My take on all this is that it’s very likely that people are going to be driving into work at 8 in the morning listening to our stories. We don’t want them to get to work in a bad mood. We’re trying to present stories that are more fun. We do have horror stories from time to time. We tend to try and have a light touch on them. Again, if it’s a witty darkness, then that’s better than just a dark darkness, if you know what I mean. In terms of stories we reject, unfortunately, this is one of the harder parts of my job. There are a lot of stories we’ve gotten in that I have loved, but I didn’t feel they would work very well in audio format. Again, given the nature of narration vs. reading a story, pacing is much, much more important for a narrated audio story than it is if you’re just going to be reading. And extraordinary language doesn’t tend to get picked up upon by listeners as much as it does by readers. So even though that’s okay, we don’t really emphasize it. We have to emphasize strong plot, strong pacing first and foremost. And not every good story has that, but the stories that we accept pretty much have to have that.
WS: Have you had cases where you rejected a story and then the author rewrote it to be more suitable for audio?
SE: There have been times I’ve requested revisions from people. In two of our stories I said, “These are really fantastic stories. I’d like it if you would cut down these scenes over here or maybe tighten this up a little bit over here. Knock just a couple of hundred words off here and there.” And generally the authors have been happy to do that. You probably know, most authors, even after they send their stories out to market, are never 100% satisfied with whatever they’ve written. But we say, “Sure, just cut it back a little bit,” and if they know they’ve got a sale for it, they’re generally happy to do that if they feel it strengthens the story too. And it gives them an excuse to tinker a little bit more.
WS: That’s an interesting take on authors.
SE: I’m one myself. I can relate entirely.
WS: You just mentioned sale, and I find this really interesting. You actually pay for the stories that you accept, which is more than can be said for a lot of venues. Can you talk about how you decided to pay, and how you decided on the amount you were going to pay, and what the reaction has been from writers?
SE: Certainly. As far as I know, we are still the only paying content market in podcasting, and that’s something we’re very proud of. When I first came up with the idea that I wanted to do a podcast, I’d been listening to them for a while and it sounded like fun. I cast around for ideas. Presenting short fiction was a natural one that occurred to me. Nobody was doing it. And as a writer myself, the decision to make it a paying market was virtually automatic because I know myself, and I know the sorts of markets that I would submit to. I subscribe to the notion that writers should get paid for their work. I would want to get paid for my own work. And just from a purely strategic perspective, we want to get good stories by good authors, and good authors don’t generally give their work away. They may self-publish, but they’re not going to just give it to somebody else to publish. So in order to attract professional-quality writing, we definitely needed to offer them something just to show that we are a credible professional venue that takes itself seriously. Our payment is fairly token. We hope to improve it, but right now we’re paying twenty dollars for a short story, which obviously nobody’s going to be living off of. But at the very least, it does show that their work is taken seriously, and it does show that we’re making a gesture to them that their work is worth money. We have had a few authors that have actually said, “I don’t need that money myself. Donate it to charity,” and have specified that. We’re happy to do that. But we do take it as a point of pride that we have paid for every story, which we then subsequently give away, of course. That’s why we take donations from our readers in order to be able to balance the books.
WS: Oh, I see what you’re saying. The economics of podcasting.
SE: Right. Because there’s really no way you can do a subscription model for podcasts at this point. Even if there were, I’m not sure that’s a model I’d be very comfortable with because it’s better for my goals if the work is as widely listened to as possible. So we basically work off of the NPR model: get good content, give it away, encourage people to distribute it widely, and then make it clear that we are paying for this content. And what we’ve found is that people have been very generous in giving donations to us. We’re actually at this point doing slightly better than breaking even.
WS: That’s great.
SE: Yes. We’re very happy with it.
WS: You request specifically that you want works with a prior publication credit. Why do you do that?
SE: We’ve toned that down a little bit. Now we just say we prefer stories with a prior publication credit, although we do look at unpublished stories equally fairly. There are several reasons for that. Probably the first and foremost is that I’m lazy by nature, and if someone sends me a story that has already been published, and they say, “This has been in Analog” or “This has been in Strange Horizons” or a market that I’ve heard of, I know that there are other editors who have already vetted this work, who have found it to be well-written, articulate, and with a good story line. So it helps me just to know that the story is going to be a competent piece of work. That’s not, of course, to say that an unpublished story is not also going to be competent. But at the very least, it’s one filter out of the way early on. It’s also helped us from a marketing perspective because I can say, “This story has been published in this venue.” Not only does that send our listeners to that venue to find out more, but it also makes a good bragging point and the writers can then say, “Yes, I’ve now sold a story to this place and to this place.” They give me shout-outs on their blogs, and it’s been good for prestige for us. We’ve actually bought some award-winning stories. We are going to fairly soon be presenting a story that won the World Fantasy Award last year. And of course if we were looking for unpublished work first and foremost, we couldn’t do that. It hasn’t been a problem for anybody because we don’t compete with the print market. We buy nonexclusive audio rights, and generally there’s no magazine out there that buys audio rights for their stories. They pretty much just want first serial rights. So we don’t compete with them. It’s good for the author to get their story put out again. There are relatively few reprint markets, and there are almost no short fiction audio markets out there. So it’s good for the authors as well. They’re very excited to have their works read.
WS: How many submissions do you get? And how many would you say out of that you accept or reject? What proportion?
SE: Well, let’s see. We get an average of about 50 a month. That includes both full-length short stories and the occasional flash fiction pieces, which I would say we do every week or two. Those are stories of 1000 words or less. We are a weekly podcast, so we actually release four or five stories a month, and again, the occasional flash piece, which is sort of an exception to that. So probably our acceptance rate is a little bit under 10% of the stories that we take in. Which is still a pretty good rate compared to a lot of markets out there. But again, I haven’t been able to buy every story that I’ve liked. It’s just a matter of looking at whether I think that this story would work well for an audio adaptation.
WS: And how do you evaluate the submissions? Are you the one who makes the decisions, or do you have a panel?
SE: It’s “Yes” to both, actually. I have managed to draft a few of my friends, and remarkably they stay my friends afterwards. But yeah, I have a number of other readers that help with kind of a first round vetting process. They look over the stories, and basically I just say, “If this is obviously unsuitable for us for whatever reason—it may have flaws in the writing or it may just not, the plot might not be the kind of thing we’re looking for,” then they send me the first round of rejections. Anything that’s a maybe, they pass back up to me. I make the final decisions on what to buy. I think that’s probably true for most markets. It is important that there be one decision-maker, just to have the consistency in the voice. And also so you have just one person whose fault it is.
WS: You have some very interesting-sounding people who read your stories aloud. How do you find those people?
SE: Well, it started with Deb Green, who’s done a few of our stories and has been a good friend of mine for some time. And there have been a few folks that I knew. Jonathan Sullivan has read some of ours—he’s also a very good friend of mine. And lately I’ve also started asking other podcasters to read for us, which has been a good opportunity because podcasters already have the equipment. I can send them a story and I already know that they have a microphone and some way to record things. They also tend to have good skills already and articulate presentation. And by the way, if you’d like to read some stories for us….
WS: I’d love to. I presume this is a volunteer position.
SE: It is. I wish we could pay our narrators like we pay our authors, and that’s another “maybe someday” position, but generally, yeah, people do it for fun. And I think most of the people that we’ve had narrate for us have considered it a fun thing to do. Generally when I buy each story, I’m already trying to put in mind, “Okay of the people who have volunteered to read for me, who might have the right voice for this particular story?” Sometimes it’s a while before I find the right story to send to somebody. Again that’s also good marketing for us, because people say on their podcasts, “I read a story on Escape Pod.” So that gets us listeners as well.
WS: Do you ever use any sound effects in your stories?
SE: Not to speak of. There was one story where the guy’s father became God in the course of the story, and he was described in the story as having a deep booming James Earl Jones sort of voice. So I added a bit of reverb here and there. Occasionally I’ll play little voice vocal tricks like that, but in terms of background music or in terms of sound cues, things like that, not really. The format we’re striving for is really an audio book standard of presentation, and those sorts of things, you never really tend to hear in audio books. In fact, many readers complain that if you have too many sound cues when you’re listening to prose, or if you have too much music in the background, that it actually takes away from the immersion somewhat. So really it hasn’t been a priority for us. It’s also a lot of work.
WS: It is a lot of work. And then there are licensing issues sometimes with the sound effects too.
SE: There can be. Yeah. But generally, I’ve just got a bit of background music in my intros and outtros. The story itself is generally just a straight reading.
WS: Speaking of licensing, who retains copyright of the stories and the audio files?
SE: For the stories, of course, the authors. That’s always the case when you’re selling a story unless you’re doing a work for hire. We buy nonexclusive audio rights, and that’s pretty much all we buy. So they have all rights including audio rights. We’re not exclusive on that. The audio files that we record we release under a Creative Commons license. That’s basically just a standard set of legal jargon that gives anybody, in perpetuity, full rights to distribute the file as much as they want to as long as they a) don’t try and make any money off of it themselves directly without our involvement, and b) as long as they don’t try and transform the work in any way. Again because the authors have the copyright in the stories, it really wouldn’t be proper if people were able to do remixes or mashups of the story, that sort of thing. So we have to prohibit that strictly to protect our authors. But other than that, what we want is for people to cast these files far and wide, and I love it when people make CDs and share them with their friends and that sort of thing. So we’re happy to give them away for free.
WS: That sounds great. I’d like to talk about podcasting itself a little bit because it is something new and different. I’d like to get your take on whether you think podcasting is, or has the potential to, change the world of writing and publishing in any way. For example, it seems to me that now writers can forge a more direct path to their audiences than they might have been able to before, particularly using audio, which is sort of a new way of reaching audiences. Do you agree? Do you think this is important? Is this a flash in the pan?
SE: I certainly agree. I think that you’re starting to see more and more people approaching electronic distribution and podcasting in particular as marketing tools to increase the sales of their books. I just saw an announcement today, Holtzbrinck, which is one of the major publishers that owns St. Martin’s and Tor and Forge and a number of other imprints, has launched their own series of podcasts, which are primarily, I think, going to consist of sample chapters, newly released novels, that sort of thing. So the major publishers are already starting to discover podcasting and what it can do for them. In addition, authors, particularly authors on the small press side, are beginning to really take podcasting into their own hands. There’s an excellent site that I know the folks involved with. It’s called podiobooks.com. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. Basically authors serializing their own novels in podcast form, releasing a chapter a week, or whatever schedule they deem appropriate. Then people can subscribe to it and through a little bit of background technical magic, they can actually receive the books at their own pace from chapter 1 moving forward. Some authors are giving the books away entirely that way. Some other authors are releasing abridged versions of their books. And in every case, what they’re finding is that it’s led to increased demand for the print versions of their books. So especially authors that are looking for publicity and have the rights to do this are finding that by releasing their books in podcast form, they are really doing themselves a favor in their print careers as well. I think that’s a very exciting opportunity. It’ll be interesting to see how that matures.
WS: Isn’t that great? And hardly anybody knows about podcasting yet too.
SE: Yes. Well, it’s definitely, it’s gotten a lot of press, and it’s suddenly catching on. You’re finding more and more people who have heard of podcasting. They aren’t necessarily sure what it is or haven’t actually taken a look at it themselves. Obviously one of the big barriers right now is just educating people about what the idea is. I think it’s going to be less than a year before we get to the point where…right now, most people who are fairly Internet savvy know what a blog is. It’s not going to be too long before everybody knows what a podcast is as well.
WS: It’s interesting because podcasting has some similarities to radio and yet it’s very different. And it’s not just the fact that one is using radio waves and one is a file that you can download.
SE: Yes. A lot of it is the marketing considerations. Radio, not, I think, by anybody’s intent, but just by the nature of the economics, has a huge barrier to entry. It’s very expensive to set up and run a radio station, especially one that is going to be widely broadcast. So in order to do that, you have to make sure that your radio station’s going to make money. So you have to basically present content that is going to be popular, that’s going to have enough of a draw and hit the mainstream enough that it brings in advertising dollars. Podcasting essentially has none of those problems. You can get started podcasting for the cost of about a $15 microphone. So it’s very easy for people to present content in the form of podcasts that reaches a much more niche audience. I met up with Eric Rice, who owns audioblogs.com, a few weeks ago. His favorite example is the Knitting Podcast. This is obviously something that’s never going to have a radio show dedicated to it. It’s hard to reach the knitting market and still retain advertising dollars. But if you are a knitter, the Knitting Podcast might be the greatest thing in the world for you. It’s certainly going to be the best podcast if it’s giving you exactly the information that you want. And it’s very cheap, and it’s very easy to do that. There are podcasts dedicated to particular science fiction shows right now. There are podcasts about words and word history. Basically any niche interest or any niche market—there’s either already a podcast or there’s a prime opportunity for a podcast. Because even if you’re only getting 100 or 200 listeners with whatever content you’re presenting, still, to those 100 or 200 listeners, you’re the best thing out there. And you can reach exactly the right audience for whatever your interests and whatever your expertise and whoever you want to present to.
WS: I find the idea of a knitting podcast interesting. I actually happen to be a knitter, and it’s a very visual thing. So I’m not really sure what an audio program on knitting would be able to do, but I think maybe I’ll check it out and see.
SE: I know that it’s out there. I know that it’s reasonably popular. You can do a search for it in iTunes and find out more about it. But yeah, there are interesting experiments being done with different formats. There’s a TV show right now, “Battlestar Galactica.” The directors and producers are actually doing a commentary podcast that you can listen to synchronous with the show. You put the show on and turn the sound on and you can listen to the podcast at the same time. You’re basically getting the director’s commentary you’d find on a DVD, but you’re getting it the day the show is broadcast.
WS: Now that is fantastic.
SE: Yeah, it’s a cool idea.
WS: And of course, you’ve given some examples of not only different types of content, but obviously the presentation is so different from radio as well.
SE: It is. It’s a much more personal level of presentation. I think that with podcasts, the successful ones are the ones that don’t just throw out information, but the ones where the presenter’s personality really comes through. For Escape Pod, our centerpiece of course is short fiction, other people’s stories that we buy and present. I also do about a three- to five-minute intro before each one and have had a few people who’ve told me, “I always listen to your intros first and then the stories later if there’s time.” Which isn’t really what I intended. It’s not even what I prefer necessarily. But people have told me that they like the fact that it’s clearly a personal voice that is delivering these stories, that there’s a personality to it. There’s often a sense of heart and soul in podcasting, whereas generally in radio, people are paid not to present their own real personalities. They are paid to have “radio” personalities, which almost never have any real resemblance to human beings.
WS: You mentioned something a couple of minutes ago about a $15 microphone. Let’s say I want to do a podcast. Obviously I am doing a podcast, but let’s say I don’t know how. What do I need, just quickly, to set myself up to do one?
SE: The hardware requirements at the bottom end are very easy. You basically need a microphone, a computer with a sound card, and just a little bit of technical knowledge. There’s free software that you can record with, and there are ways, either free or very cheap, to the tune of about $5 a month, to find Web space online that you can upload these things to. So generally the startup costs are low. It’s the nature of the beast, as with most hobbies, that if you start doing it, you’re going to want to get better equipment, and you always want to spend more and more money on it. But I always encourage people who ask me about it, “Do not try and start on the high end. Don’t drop $500 on a very high-end mixer and buy $200 microphones. If you haven’t done your first podcast yet, you’re not even sure you’re going to like what you’re doing. You can start with whatever it is you have at home and whatever you can buy at Radio Shack for just a few dollars. And as your content and presentation skills improve, then you can start looking for better equipment as well. Your audience is never going to be listening first and foremost to be impressed by your sound quality. They’re going to be listening because you have something to say.” And so that’s really what people should spend most of their time and attention on—just trying to come up with a good message to get out there.
WS: You said you need a little bit of technical knowledge. What kind of technical knowledge? That can be intimidating for some people, I know.
SE: It can be. You don’t have to know how to code or program or anything. There are a few cryptic Web standards that it helps if you know how to decode. There’s a file format called RSS, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, and people will have to learn more about it. There are, fortunately, a number of good Web sites and a couple of good books coming out right now that are helping with that. One of my favorite Web sites for resources for this is the podcast411.com Web site. The guy Rob Walsh there, great guy. He’s always always happy to help podcasters get started. I’ve also been lucky enough, I’m actually reviewing a few podcasting books for slashdot.org right now. I’ve got another couple of reviews coming out fairly soon. A good book that I recommend right now is called Podcast Solutions, and I believe it’s just hit the store shelves in the past week or so. Two very well-known podcasters, Dan Klass and Michael Geoghegan, have written that book. It’s very good, down-to-earth advice. It definitely doesn’t talk down to its readers or anything like that, but it does give you enough background that you can get started and find out more information on your own.
WS: Great. I’m wondering, there’s been a discussion among some podcasters about the issue of content ratings, and I’m just wondering if you have some strong opinions on that issue as well.
SE: I actually don’t. My own belief on it is that any rating system that is externally imposed on podcasting is probably not going to succeed very well just because podcast content is so diverse that it’s very hard to fit it all in one niche. One of the real merits of podcasting is that anyone right now is free to present any message they want to. I do believe that there is value to the podcasters themselves in self-rating. I always put out for each one of Escape Pod’s weekly episodes like a movie-style rated G or rated PG. Oftentimes I put something really funny as a description for it: “Contains violence upon food” or something like that with my description, just to be whimsical about it. But I do want people to know if this particular episode is good to listen to with children, if I think it might be offensive to some people, if there are explicit sexual situations or explicit language in it. We don’t censor on that. I only buy based on whether I think it’s a good short story or not. But I do want people to have enough information to decide for themselves if this particular story is one they want to listen to. And really I think if people who are presenting diverse content are going to take the responsibility on themselves to warn people, then there’s really no need for any other agencies to get involved with it.
WS: Steve, is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to add?
SE: Yes, the Web site is escapepod.info, our current latest and greatest Web site. Our URL changes way too often these days.
WS: Your URL changes?
SE: Yes, I started with a somewhat more befuddled URL, escape.extraneous.org. I was actually holding out for the escapepod.org Web site. I was waiting for that particular domain to expire, but I couldn’t get in touch with the guy who owned it. It has expired now, but the process to actually get an expired domain is a lot more byzantine than I thought it was going to be. In the meantime I got tired of waiting, so I picked up escapepod.info. We’re probably one of two or three actual Web sites in the info domain right now. But it is easy at least for people to remember, so I like to send people there. Generally I would just tell people listen to the podcasts you like to listen to and if you like what you’re hearing, then tell a friend.
WS: I highly recommend sampling the stories. The voices are really wonderful. Deb Green has a fantastic voice. And the stories are great, and it’s a lot of fun. And it’s new and different. And Steve does great intros, by the way.
SE: We’re having a lot of fun doing it, too. To me that’s the most important thing.
WS: Steve, I wish you the best of luck with your venture. Thank you so much for stopping by and visiting with us today.
SE: Thank you very much. This has been a lot of fun too.
WS: And be sure to visit our Web site at www.writingshow.com, where you’ll find more information and inspiration for writers. And we’ve just introduced a new feature: transcripts of our interviews. So if you don’t have time to listen, you can still enjoy our great interviews with fascinating guests like Steve Eley. We also invite you to comment on our interviews and our articles, and let us know what you’d like to see and hear.
And be sure to join us in October for a very special Halloween show featuring members of the Australian Horror Writers Association. Thanks for listening to The Writing Show today. I’m your host, Paula B.