From our audio book service CastLibrary.com, here are this week’s best selling and most downloaded audio books. I hope you enjoy the service.

If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed of sample audios here’s the link.

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

1. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged)
Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys. Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…
Click to hear an audio sample…

2. An Echo in the Bone: A Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Diana Gabaldon’s immensely popular Outlander saga soars to new heights with this seventh novel, which takes listeners on a breathtaking journey to 1777 America. Jamie Fraser knows from his time-traveling wife Claire that, no matter how unlikely it seems, America will win the Revolutionary War. But that truth offers little solace, since Jamie realizes he might find himself pointing a weapon directly at his own son – a young officer in the British army. And Jamie isn’t the only one with a torme…
Click to hear an audio sample…

3. Evidence: An Alex Delaware Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Number-one New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman writes unforgettable tales of crime and detection that expose the shadowy side of glittering Los Angeles. And in Evidence , listeners are once again in the dexterous grip of a master storyteller and stylist equally skilled at teasing your brain and taking your breath away. In the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.’s toniest neighborhoods, a watchman stumbles on the bodies of a young couple – mu…
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4. A Touch of Dead: Sookie Stackhouse: The Complete Stories (Unabridged)
Summary: New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris has re-imagined the supernatural world with her “spunky” ( Tampa Tribune ) Southern Vampire novels, starring telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse. Now, for the first time, here is every Sookie Stackhouse short story ever written – together in one volume. The stories include “Fairy Dust”, “One Word Answer”, “Dracula Night”, “Lucky” and “Giftwrap”.
Click to hear an audio sample…

5. The Charm School (Unabridged)
Summary: Something very strange — and sinister — is going on in the Russian woods at Borodino. In a place called Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School, young KGB agents are being taught by American POW’s how to be model citizens of the USA. The Soviet goal — to infiltrate the United States undetected. When an unsuspecting American tourist stumbles upon this secret, he sets in motion a CIA investigation that will reveal horrifying police state savagery and superpower treachery.
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6. Nine Dragons: Harry Bosch, Book 15 (Unabridged)
Summary: LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life. Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store’s owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li’s family that he’ll find the killer. The world Bosch steps into next is unknown territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with translation–not just of languages but also of the cul…
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7. Unseen Academicals: Discworld #37 (Unabridged)
Summary: Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork – not the old-fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go glowing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they’re in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beaut…
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8. Pursuit of Honor: Mitch Rapp Series (Unabridged)
Summary: The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friend…
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9. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Unabridged)
Summary: In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42 percent believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time. In 1859 Charles Darwin’s masterpiece, On the Origin of Species , shook society to its core. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke. But he surely would have raised an incredulous…
Click to hear an audio sample…

10. Rough Country: A Virgil Flowers Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Virgil’s always been known for having a somewhat active, er, social life, but he’s probably not going to be getting too many opportunities for that during his new case. While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, he gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, commune with nature, and while it did…
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11. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged)
Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (”An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller” The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…
Click to hear an audio sample…

12. The Help (Unabridged)
Summary: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman rai…
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13. Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government
Summary: It happens to all of us: You’re minding your own business, when some idiot informs you that guns are evil, the Prius will save the planet, or the rich have to finally start paying their fair share of taxes. Just go away! you think to yourself — but they only become more obnoxious. Your heart rate quickens. You start to sweat. You can’t get away. Your only hope is this book. Glenn Beck, author of the number-one New York Times best sellers An Inconvenient Book and Glenn Beck’s Common Se…
Click to hear an audio sample…

14. Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt; they only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers – with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another. The girls move to Elspe…
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15. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle was “nothing short of spectacular” ( Entertainment Weekly ). Now, in Half Broke Horses , she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant. “Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls’s no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At 1…
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16. The Poet (Unabridged)
Summary: With his four Harry Bosch novels, Michael Connelly joined “the top rank of a new generation of crime writers” ( Los Angeles Times ). Now Connelly returns with his most searing thriller yet – a major new departure that recalls the best work of Thomas Harris ( Red Dragon , Silence of the Lambs ) and James Patterson ( Along Came a Spider ) Our hero is Jack McEvoy, a Rocky Mountain News crime-beat reporter. As the story opens, Jack’s twin brother, a Denver homicide detective, has just killed him…
Click to hear an audio sample…

17. The Professional: A Spenser Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: A knock on Spenser’s office door can only mean one thing: a new case. This time the visitor is a local lawyer with an interesting story. Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years she’s developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they’ve all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower- and now he’s blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower …
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18. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Unabridged)
Summary: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue…. It’s about the disappearance 40 years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden…and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance…and about Lisbeth Salander, a…
Click to hear an audio sample…

19. The Windup Girl (Unabridged)
Summary: Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko…Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but…
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20. Outlander (Unabridged)
Summary: This stunning blend of historical romance and time traveling adventure has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world and catapulted author Diana Gabaldon to the top of the New York Times best seller list. Outlander introduces an exhilarating world of heroism and breathtaking thrills as one woman is torn between past and present, passion and love. In 1945, former combat nurse Claire Randall returns from World War II and joins her husband for a second honeymoon. Their blis…
Click to hear an audio sample…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times
Business Week
Publisher’s Weekly
Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

Tim Westergren, chief strategy officer and founder of Pandora, was the keynote speaker at the Digital Music Forum West this morning. We interviewed Tim about a year and a half ago and at that time Pandora faced some real challnges.

In his keynote, Tim updated the audience on the current state of Pandora and his thoughts on the future of online radio.

Tim started his speech by observing the how the when you book a flight on Expedia you get a slew of other offers for hotels, cars, shows and even pedicures. He stated that their might be a lot of lessons for the music industry that can be learned from the travel industry.

The focus of his talk was “From Competition to Interdependence”. He observed that in the arduous discussions of royalties and the subsequent compromise everyone had to give to make it work for everyone.

Broadcast radio is a big guerilla in music. Of the 20 hours people spend listening to music each week, 17 are listened to on radio. Music will go as radio goes.

Artists and labels have organized themselves around the radio industry. All the effort goes into getting on the air.

Broadcast radio is gradually being replaced by online radio, driven heavily by the mobile revolution. This is changing the relationship between radio and artists.

In online radio, it’s much more democratic and inclusive thousands and thousands of artists can now be included.

And the money flows are changing too. The money broadcast radio collected from advertisers mostly stayed with the radio station. In contrast with online radio a large percent of the money flows through to the artist. Of the $40 million in revenues that Pandora collects a 75% will flow through to artists via royalties.

The industry structure is also changing as artist services are growing fast.

The missing piece has been scale. How do you get this new interdependence to work at scale?

Pandora is now starting to reach scale. Pandora now has 36 million registered users,
12 million mobile users, 65,000 new registrations a day and providing 2 billion hours of radio in 2009. This is an example of online radio starting to reach the scale tipping point where they attract national advertisers who want to reach large markets. This means that more and more money can flow through online radio to the artists.

He also sees a day when services like Pandora can become a really rich source of information to bands about who is listen to their music, what they listen too, where they are etc all provided via a dashboard.

Tim’s ultimate vision is to have 1 billion users listening to music on Pandora creating a global scale that provides lots and lots of money to artists.

At the Digital Music Forum West event, a panel focused on the future of internet radio.

Panelists

• Dave Conway, Founder, Little Radio
• Johnie Floater, General Manager, Media, Live365
• Kurt Hanson, Publisher, RAIN / CEO, AccuRadio
• Jim Rondinelli, SVP of Strategic Development, Slacker
• Moderator: David Oxenford, Partner, Davis, Wright, Tremaine LLP

Why is Internet Radio relevant?

Kurt Hanson, of RAIN, points out that radio is how the average music fan finds music.

Johnie Floater, from Live365, the most important aspect of internet radio is bandwidth to support huge diversity of content.  Even the classical music of the Canary Islands can have its own channel on the internet, something which is not possible on terrestrial or satellite radio.

Jim Rondeinelli, of Slacker, points out that most people don’t want to program their own music flow and radio provides that programming.

How do you make money on a radio focused on a micro segment?

According to Floater, subscriptions are about 50% of the revenue coming into Live365 radio stations.  Rondinelli seconds the subscription model as being an important part of Slacker’s revenue.

Is advertising on internet radio working?

From the discussion on the panel, it seems to be hard to find advertising for internet radio due to the small size of each channel’s audience.  Sponsorship seems to be a model that the panel sees as having more success.  Slacker seems to be having more success with advertising selling out their inventory in the first quarter.  Floater says that they get their advertising on traditional channels focused on popular music.

Rondinelli points out that local advertising pays a lot better than broadcast advertising.

What about internet royalties?

The panel dove into the discussion without hesitation.  Rondinelli describes the major differences between the royalties paid by satellite radio, terrestrial radio and internet radio, with internet radio paying much higher rates.  He goes on to say that paying different royalties based on method of delivery is ludicrous.

Hanson points out that if the music industry got the royalties they want then the entire internet radio would shut down.

Is Internet radio competing with terrestrial radio?

Hanson says that it is both a competitor and a supplement to terrestrial radio.  When Live365 etc are built into the car, then it acts like a competitor. Floater says that if you look at the entertainment pie, music is just one slice.  Over time the internet is gaining an increasing share of the music slice.

Rondinelli says it really is location dependent.  If your in your car, you’re most likely listen to terrestrial radio.  Hanson points out that with an iPhone you can get internet radio right in your car.  Rondinelli says its not so great with the AT&T network in many places.

As part of a new project called CastLibrary.com, I am now able to share this week’s best selling and most downloaded audio books. I hope you enjoy the new service and plan to make it a Friday regular.

If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed of sample audios here’s the link.

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

1. The Lost Symbol (Unabridged)
Summary: The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s writing shows us why he is the one of the world’s most popular author of thrillers. Just like the Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is thrilling race to find the secret. Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is once again needed to meet the challenge. He must search the hidden codes, unravel the secrets while avoiding the bad guys.

Set within the underground of Washington, D.C., The Lost Symbol races through a t…
Click to hear an audio sample…

2. The Poet (Unabridged)
Summary: With his four Harry Bosch novels, Michael Connelly joined "the top rank of a new generation of crime writers" ( Los Angeles Times ). Now Connelly returns with his most searing thriller yet – a major new departure that recalls the best work of Thomas Harris ( Red Dragon , Silence of the Lambs ) and James Patterson ( Along Came a Spider ) Our hero is Jack McEvoy, a Rocky Mountain News crime-beat reporter. As the story opens, Jack’s twin brother, a Denver homicide detective, has just killed him…
Click to hear an audio sample…

3. Breath of Scandal (Unabridged)
Summary: On a rainy Southern night, Jade Sperry endured a young woman’s worst nightmare at the hands of three local hell-raisers. Robbed of her youthful ideals and at the center of scandal and tragedy, Jade ran as far and as fast as she could. But she never forgot the sleepy "company town" where every man, woman, and child was dependent on one wealthy family. And she never forgot their spoiled son, who with his two friends changed her life forever. Someday, somehow, she’d return…exacting a just reve…
Click to hear an audio sample…

4. Dead Sleep (Unabridged)
Summary: Jordan Glass, a photojournalist on a well-earned vacation, wanders into a Hong Kong art museum and is puzzled to find fellow patrons eying her with curiosity. Minutes later, she stumbles upon a gallery containing a one-artist exhibition called "The Sleeping Women", a mysterious series of paintings that has caused a sensation in the world of modern art. Collectors have come to believe that the canvases depict female nudes not in sleep but in death, and they command millions at auction. When Jo…
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5. Hunting Season (Unabridged)
Summary: When Park Ranger Anna Pigeon answers a call to historic Mt. Locust, once a producing plantation and inn on Mississippi’s Natchez Trace Parkway, the last thing she expects to encounter is a naked and very dead man. His body bears what looks like the brutal scars of an S&M ritual gone terribly wrong. When the deceased turned out to be the brother of a candidate for the office of local sheriff, a host of cover-ups, hidden agendas, old allegiances, and buried secrets begins to emerge. Follow Anna…
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6. All Night Long (Unabridged)
Summary: Shy, studious Irene Stenson and wild, privileged Pamela Webb had been the best of friends for one short high-school summer. Their friendship ended the night Pamela dropped Irene off at home – and Irene walked in to discover her parents’ bodies on the kitchen floor. It was ruled a murder-suicide, and Irene fled Dunsley, determined to wipe out every memory attached to her northern California hometown. But now she has been summoned back. Pamela’s e-mail had been short and cryptic. More alarming,…
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7. Eye of the Needle (Unabridged)
Summary: One enemy spy knows the secret of the Allies’ greatest deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin – code name: "The Needle" – who holds the key to the ultimate Nazi victory. Only one person stands in his way: a lonely Englishwoman on an isolated island, who is coming to love the killer who has mysteriously entered her life. This is Ken Follett’s unsurpassed and unforgettable masterwork of suspense, intrigue, and dangerous machinations of the human heart.
Click to hear an audio sample…

8. The Villa (Unabridged)
Summary: Sophia Giambelli has never worried about competition. For three generations, the Giambelli wines have been renowned for their quality – from Napa Valley to Italy, and throughout the world. The pride of the Giambelli family and a top PR executive, Sophia loves her job – and excels at it. But things are about to change at Villa Giambelli. Tereza, the matriarch, has announced a merger with the MacMillan family’s winery – and Sophia will be assuming a new role. As a savvy businesswoman, she knows…
Click to hear an audio sample…

9. Cold Paradise: A Stone Barrington Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington, he of street smarts, dry wit, and debonair charm, becomes reacquainted with a case he thought was buried years ago, and must settle romantic entanglements that haunt him still. Allison Manning, the beautiful and enigmatic woman Stone defended against a murder charge in Dead in the Water , mysteriously reappears to request his help with a set of problems she has never resolved, which involve millions of dollars. She fears, too, that somebody might be stalki…
Click to hear an audio sample…

10. Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government
Summary: It happens to all of us: You’re minding your own business, when some idiot informs you that guns are evil, the Prius will save the planet, or the rich have to finally start paying their fair share of taxes. Just go away! you think to yourself — but they only become more obnoxious. Your heart rate quickens. You start to sweat. You can’t get away. Your only hope is this book. Glenn Beck, author of the number-one New York Times best sellers An Inconvenient Book and Glenn Beck’s Common Se…
Click to hear an audio sample…

11. Blueberry Muffin Murder: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (Unabridged)
Summary: Hannah’s popular Minnesota bakery, The Cookie Jar, is best known for its tempting confections – until best-selling cookbook author and television personality Connie McIntyre is murdered in its pantry. Despite police warnings to steer clear of the case, Hannah is soon chasing down a bevy of suspicious characters.
Click to hear an audio sample…

12. Jewels of the Sun: Irish Jewels Trilogy, Book 1 (Unabridged)
Summary: Determined to reevaluate her life, Jude Murray flees America to take refuge in Faerie Hill Cottage, where she immerses herself in the study of Irish Folklore and discovers hope for the future in the magic of the past. Finally back home in Ireland after years of traveling, Aidan Gallagher possesses an uncommon understanding of his country’s haunting myths. Although he’s devoted to managing the family pub, a hint of wildness still glints in his stormy eyes. In Jude, he sees a woman who can both…
Click to hear an audio sample…

13. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Unabridged)
Summary: In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42 percent believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time. In 1859 Charles Darwin’s masterpiece, On the Origin of Species , shook society to its core. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke. But he surely would have raised an incredulous…
Click to hear an audio sample…

14. A Morning for Flamingoes: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: Dave Robicheaux felt the bone-grinding pain rip through his body as the .45 did its damage. Through the agonizing haze that enveloped him, he heard an almost inhuman laugh: the hideous, victorious cackling of Jimmie Lee Boggs – a sound he would never forget. It had started out as an ordinary prisoner transfer, then turned into a blood bath when the convicted murderer got hold of a gun. Robicheaux could still hear that contemptible laughter, replacing the horrors from ‘Nam he relived every nig…
Click to hear an audio sample…

15. Ringworld (Unabridged)
Summary: Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. Ninety-three million miles in radius – the equivalent of one Earth orbit or 600 miles long – 1,000 meters thick, and much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. What other advantages are there to this world? The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven’s novel …
Click to hear an audio sample…

16. Genghis: Birth of an Empire (Unabridged)
Summary: He was born Temujin, son of a khan, raised in a clan of hunters migrating across the steppe. Temujin’s young life was shaped by a series of brutal acts: the betrayal of his father by a neighboring tribe, his family left to die on the harsh plain. But Temujin endured, and from then on, he was driven by a fury to survive in the face of death, to kill before being killed, and to conquer enemies from beyond the horizon. Along with his ferocious courage, it was the young warrior’s ability to learn…
Click to hear an audio sample…

17. Final Seconds (Unabridged)
Summary: After Will Harper, a bomb-squad officer for the NYPD, is injured in the field, he retires early. But when his former partner is blown up, along with a paranoid best-selling author and his Florida estate, Harper’s idle days are over. Suddenly Harper is tracking a serial killer who is as expert in explosives as any terrorist, and not too shy about selecting targets at the center of the celebrity spotlight. With a former partner and a resurrected dead case file, Harper seeks out help from the FB…
Click to hear an audio sample…

18. Anyone But You (Unabridged)
Summary: For Nina Askew, turning 40 means freedom – from the ex-husband whose career always came first, from their stuffy suburban home. Freedom to have her own apartment in the city, freedom to focus on what she wants for a change…. And what she wants is something her ex always vetoed: a puppy. A bouncy puppy to cheer her up. Instead she gets…Fred. Overweight, smelly, and obviously suffering from some kind of doggy depression, Fred is light-years from perky. But for all his faults, he does manage…
Click to hear an audio sample…

19. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Unabridged)
Summary: The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller" The Washington Post ), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium , has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern…
Click to hear an audio sample…

20. Rules of Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel (Unabridged)
Summary: The "maddog" murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, a dedicated cop and a serial killer’s worst nightmare, is brought in to take up the investigation, the maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius.
Click to hear an audio sample…

Find more best selling audio books at Castlibrary.com

NY Times
Business Week
Publisher’s Weekly
Oprah’s Book Club

Subscribe to the podcast – http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestSellingAudioBooks

Susan Bratton, author of Talk Show Tips, host of the Dishymix podcast and CEO of a publishing company called Personal Life Media that produces 40 different podcasts, is sharing some of her expertise in podcasting with the Digital Podcast fans.

In the Susan’s first guest post, we talked about various show formats that are possible with a podcast. In this installment, we’ll dive more deeply into Show Format, giving you an actual structure you can customize for your needs. This include some good language for intros and outros and commercial breaks.

Your Show Format
Once you know how long you think your show should be for your audience and your style, you need to plan for the intro, breaks (if any) and the outro. I recommend starting your show off exactly the same way every time, and ending the same too.

Every episode of DishyMix starts this way:

Welcome to DishyMix, This is your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you are going to meet Clark Kokich, global president and CEO of Razorfish…

Sometimes I do a little “tag cloud” of subjects we’re going to cover. Sometimes I top line a person’s bio (if I think my audience would benefit) and sometimes I just jump right in to bringing them on the show if they are well known. “Welcome to the show, Clark!”

What I think is most important for my audience is for me to GET TO IT! I don’t dilly dally talking about the weather, we get right to our dialog. I respect them as busy people.

Dialogue versus Question and Answer Format
Speaking of dialog, one of the mp3 files you get with “72 Secret Master Talk Show Host Techniques,” is an audio lesson with Duncan Campbell, host of Living Dialogues, called “The Art of Dialogue.” Duncan has a very unique interview style he calls a “dialogue.” Where most talk show hosts ask questions, driving the discussion and expecting the guest to answer and be the expert, dialogues are a more integrated discussion between two parties.

You can hear this difference if you listen to an episode of DishyMix and then listen to an episode of Living Dialogues.

Living Dialogues Stream/RSS/Download
Living Dialogues in iTunes

Creating Your Unique Style
I like to take a few moves from Duncan’s playbook but still keep mostly to the question/answer format. Duncan’s approach gave me the courage to dialogue with my guests. Your audience consumes your content because of YOU, not the guests you have on. You are the central character in the lives of your fans. It’s your filtering, your curating, your questioning and what you get out of your guests they they come for. It’s ok to engage in a little “parry and thrust” with your guest. It’s actually predictably boring to settle too routinely into simple Q&A. I encourage you to mix it up. Get in there and get dirty. More about what happens inside the container of an interview is covered in Talk Show Tips.

Show Flow
Here’s an example of a typical single Host, single Guest Format, thirty minute show. You should create your own personalized version of your show flow using this as a guide and customizing it for your own preferences.

Start the Show with Your Personalized Opener
Welcome Guest Name
(hi, great to be here)

Give a quick overview of who your guest is.
Guest is known for:
Attribute 1
Attribute 2
Attribute 3

Establish the theme of the show.
I’m pleased to have you with us today – I think our listeners really care about xxx and want to know more about xxx.

Tell your listeners the “game plan” for the show today – format and theme.
Today I want to talk to you about:
Subject 1
Subject 2
Subject 3
Get right into the meat by starting the discussion.

Let’s start with a few questions about xxx.

Ask 12 minutes of questions here (see Do’s & Don’ts on questions, bridges and transitions in the main eBook)

Make sure you unfold a story and delve deeply into their particular expertise. What do they know that nobody else in the world knows? Unfold this revelation…

Go to Break if you want a mid-roll ad slot
We’re going to take a short break to support our sponsors. I’d like you to listen to these ads. These are ads created by my sponsors for my show and they help me bring my work to you. If you can support them, I’d really appreciate it.

This is Host Name and I’m with Guest Name and we’ll be right back to talk about “something intriguing.”

NOTE: To keep your listeners or viewers from abandoning your show at the break, tempt them just before the break with the most juicy content you are saving for the end of the show so they’ll be compelled to stay with you!

5 second bumper with show identity (I use only a music bed here)

Break (silence for the count of 5)

5 second intro bumper (again, a music bed)

Bring Yourselves Back Into the Show
We’re back and I’m your Host Name and we are talking to Guest Name about xxx.

House Keeping
This is where I let listeners know about the DishyMix Fan Club and any other actions, like listener surveys or requesting iTunes reviews.

Before the break we were talking about xxx. I want to ask you about xxx.

Another Cluster of Dialogue if your show is longer than 30 minutes.
Questions for 12 minutes
(Follow same format for break and return if you want more ad slots.)

Engage Your Audience
Ask listeners to send you email or call to leave you a message. (I recommend K7.net for a free voice mail box.)

Wrap Up
We are almost out of time but I would like to ask you one final question – ask something that is a benefit to the listener and leaves them with an inspirational thought or feeling. Or however you want to end your show each time.

Thank you Guest Name for joining us and sharing your wisdom/insight/etc.
(You are welcome.)

Sign Off
Address listeners: join us next week on Show Name when we talk to Guest Name or we’ll be covering theme.

That brings us the end of the show, thank you for listening. For text and transcripts of this show, and other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, please visit our website at www.personallifemedia.com.
This is your host, Host Name
Your signature close here

Show ID – Closer
Personal Life Media Bumper

You can reformat this show flow to work for your show. It’s a great help when you’re first getting started. I always follow the same format so my guests can just listen, rather than wondering what is going to happen with format.

Now you know about the myriad options for formatting a show and how to move through your show flow with ease. If you haven’t listened to my interview with Susan about Commercial Podcasting, click here now.

Don’t forget to sign up for Susan’s free Mini-Course called “Easy Question Generators” where she gives you ten tips for coming up with killer questions for every interview. And, if you’re impressed with this bit of detail excerpted from her training system, maybe you should just go ahead and treat yourself to Talk Show Tips right now.

Happy podcasting!

Susan Bratton, author of Talk Show Tips, host of the Dishymix podcast and CEO of a publishing company called Personal Life Media that produces 40 different podcasts, is sharing some of her expertise in podcasting with the Digital Podcast fans.

In this guest post, Susan writes about Show Format and how to use it to build trust and engagement with your audience.

Here’s part one of advice from Susan Bratton, author of Talk Show Tips:

Show Format
In order to create trust with your audience, you have to consistently deliver both in frequency and format. Once you pick a schedule, keep to it. (I work ahead 3-5 episodes so I always have a significant buffer to weather guest cancellations and my own busy life.) The same with a format – keeping it consistent pays off by generating a level of credibility, professionalism and certainty. Sure, you can morph the format over time. I’ve tried show highlights and removed them because of audience feedback that they were confusing. Choosing and sticking with a show format allows your audience relax into the content, rather than wondering what the game plan is for every episode.

The 5 Divas: Sharon, Suzanne, Carrie, Julie and Amy

Carrie Runnals, Words to Mouth

Ryan Oelke and Vince Horn, The Buddhist Geeks

On our network, we have many formats and lengths:

• The DivaCast and Business Success Tips are a group of hosts who convene to discuss salient issues. The DivaCast is five “forty-something” women discussing life. Business Success Tips is as many as six male hosts talking shop.
• Family History and Tantra and Kama Sutra are single host/guest format.
• Joy of Living Creatively, Inside Out Weight Loss and Your Purpose-Centered Life are single host spoken word shows with huge followings.
• Camera Dojo, Buddhist Geeks and Digital Photography Life are dual-host and single guest format.
• Music for Midnight is very lightly hosted and mostly ambient and lounge music.

Some of our shows are 8-12 minutes long, some go over an hour! Some are loosely formatted discussions and others follow very organized question/answer formats. There are hundreds of formats and styles successfully employed. Don’t just choose one of the styles we use on our network, choose the one that supports your content, personality and Persona. (more about Personas in the main eBook.)

There’s a style for everyone. Some people love the conversational nature of our multi-host shows. That drives others crazy and they vehemently reject it. You must develop your style and find your audience. Your future fans are out there, as long as you keep your show tight, the content valuable and you don’t waste your viewer’s time.

Your Show Length
First, select your show length and format. My weekly show is about a half hour. I’d like to do a twenty minute show, but I can’t get as deep as I want in that amount of time. A hallmark of my show is depth, so I need that extra ten minutes to fully develop the character of my guests. My audience gives me that time because they like that character development too.

I also need to have pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ad slots because a big part of my income is advertising revenue. Sometimes I run six or eight ads in a single show. (My audience is marketers and they understand the sponsorship model. I never get any negative feedback on this number of ads because my audience “gets it.”) To generate the revenue for my show, I need thirty minutes of content with a break fifteen minutes in. I don’t believe my listeners, who are busy professionals, have more than a half hour, but there are a LOT of popular shows that go longer. Some of the shows on our network are always over an hour. If you are working in video, your duration is significantly abbreviated — typically :30 seconds to 4 minutes… You have the luxury of overlay ads on your video, whereas audio is more linear.

So pick a length. Then stay within that by 20% every episode. Internet shows have the luxury of being approximate, rather that exact in length. But don’t take advantage of that and go off format. It’s sloppy and erodes audience trust. Ninety five percent of my shows are thirty-ish minutes long. A really long show I did with Tim Ash about landing page conversions recently was a show with a lot of listener questions. I got great feedback on that show from many people. But I like those “bonus material” shows to be the exceptions, not the rule.

On the next guest post, Susan will show you exactly how she handles her show flow and give you a cheat sheet for customizing it to your needs.

************************

Susan has launched Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques as a training system for anyone who hosts a podcast, vidcast, radio or talk show or for experts who create information products that include interviews as material.

I have just had the privilege of getting a copy of Talk Show Tips which provides 72 Secrets to being a great talk show host. The author is Susan Bratton, host of the #1 social media podcast Dishymix and CEO of Personal Life Media. Susan produces 40 different podcasts from TheDivaCast to Buddhist Geeks to Inside Out Weight Loss, so she knows a lot about hosting talk shows.

Susan has launched Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques as a training system for anyone who hosts a podcast, vidcast, radio or talk show or for experts who create information products that include interviews as material.

In her new system, Talk Show Tips, she focuses on training you on everything you need to know to empower your audience (fans) to promote your show for you. She shows you how to consistently develop well-produced interviews so that your audience keeps on growing and increasing your chances for attracting excellent sponsors (if that is you want).

Even without focusing on getting sponsors, growing an engaged audience is the reward for the effort you put into producing your content. Susan’s Talk Show Tips provides a roadmap to make that happen quickly.

Susan has put together her best advice for establishing a show format and managing the flow of your show. Even expert radio show hosts and podcasters have complimented her on this thorough approach to shoring up their productions and making them more professional.
Talk Show Tips as a learning system, is chock-full of techniques that make perfect sense, the minute you hear them. Susan has a way of explaining things simply but with a lot of insight and detail. With her system, you can immediately integrate powerful new strategies into your show that include:

• Solidifying Your Show Format, Personas, Intros/Outros/Breaks
• Booking the Big Name Guest and Prepping Them for a Stellar Show
• Developing Great Questions No One Else Asks
• How To Do In-Show Bridges, Segues, Reframes, Power Pauses, Opens, Affirmations and Graceful Interruptions
• Managing Show Notes, Transcriptions, Editing, Contests, Google Mojo, Cross Promos, RSS and Free Widgets
• Using Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TweetLater Pro and Trackur to Promote Your Show
  Getting Featured in iTunes, SEO and Five-Star Reviews

Susan is even making ten of her best tricks and techniques available to everyone for free. Just go and sign up at TalkShowTips.com and she will send you the ten free tips.

As a bonus, Susan has written to posts for me sharing some of her expertise with show format and show flow. I hope you enjoy them.

And as a special bonus from me, Susan and I have created a special bonus audio download for you where she’s interviewing me about how to set a strategy and get started in commercial podcasting and new media publishing.

Check out the interview and go sign up for Talk Show Tips.

 

 Susan Bratton Interviews Alex Nesbitt [22:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A little while ago another newspaper group filed for bankruptcy. Freedom Communications, which runs the Orange County Register and a collection of 100 more newspapers across the country, joined Tribune Co. (operators of the other big local paper – The LA Times) and 4 other newspapers in bankruptcy court.

The problem is declining advertising revenue. The auto industry, one of the biggest buyers of newspaper ads, is in the tank. Craigslist et al have devastated the classified monopolies that provided huge profit margins for newspapers in days gone by.

This trend is not restricted to newspapers. TV is seeing the problem as well. According to Jack Myers, an industry consultant:

“2010 advertising spending is heading toward record-setting declines of 13% to 15% in 2009, according to the new Jack Myers Media Business Report forecast due to be released to subscribers September 14.”

And the trend is not just an offline phenomenon, online the price advertisers are willing to pay for impressions is dropping as well. Consider the following from the media focused MultiTasker

Cost-per-thousand ad impressions for online publishers are generally off about 20%, according to several people on both the buying and selling side, and sell-through rates are dropping. And where publishers used to unload 60% of their inventory, some are now able to sell only 30%.

What we are seeing is the law of supply and demand at work. The amount of available advertising space is growing fast and much faster than the demand. When supply goes up faster than demand that means prices will drop. And prices for impressions are dropping fast.

That means that anyone who tries to make a living by selling advertising impressions is going to feel the hurt. Offline, online – it doesn’t matter. Impression based advertising prices will continue to drop fast for just about everyone.

There will be exceptions. Big events will command good prices for impressions and may even do better. There is only one Super Bowl, one Academy Awards, etc. These will be situations where what is being bought is actually getting scarcer. Huge audiences all gather in one place at one time. This is what big TV shows used to be able to do. Now, that is the exception, and therefore will will likely see impression pricing rise for this shrinking segment.

Some will also point to Google as an exception. But in fact Google doesn’t make its money by selling advertising impressions, they make their money from people who pay them for potential leads (people who click on the ads). For the most part, you don’t pay for impressions on Google, you pay for clicks. In fact, Google won’t even let you get huge amounts of impressions without your ad being highly relevant to topic. Just do a search on any celebrity and for the most part you won’t see any ads, with the exception of Bing ads (Microsoft must has given Google a lot of money to promote Bing.) No, Google’s revenues are not driven by the economics of impressions, their revenues are driven by the economics of lead generation.

It is time for every media company to figure out life beyond impression based advertising. If you think you are going to make your living by selling advertising impressions, stop and think of something else.

I believe we are seeing the collapse of an media era driven by the economics of impressions and the emergence of an era that will be based on the economics of community.

Media is a beautiful social object. We love to watch, listen, talk about it, play with it. Media has the power to draw us together, and that can be used to create community.

We can and should recast the discussion from economics of impressions to the economics of communities. And what are the economics of communities? They are micro-economies where trade, commerce and personal interaction are all intermingled with each other.

I’m not talking about clicking on someone’s purse in a web show so you can buy it (although that might work), I’m talking about create real economies where consumers can trade with other consumers and trade with the media creators. Who knows what the audience will buy or sell. We won’t know until we see it. Our job is to find ways to enable it.

Here are 7 steps I think every publisher should be taking.

1. Cherish your audience – Your audience is your most precious asset. It should be cherished as such. Without your audience you are just a tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear it. Your audience is what makes what you do possible.
2. Engage your audience with you and each other – Don’t just talk to your audience, listen, listen and listen some more. Find out what they enjoy. Find out what their problems are. Make it easy for them to talk to each other and listen in on what they have to say. A good engaged audience will give you enormous number of clues as to how you can serve them better.
3. Serve your audience – It is through the gift of service that we show each other how much we care. If you serve effectively, the audience will respond. Some will seek more and more from you which will provide the opportunity to provide them with premium services and products.
4. Think like a marketer – It’s time to realize that marketing and publishing are merging. Brands now publish, publishers now market. Marketing may be new skill for publishers, but it will a major element in there survival. There are lots of ways to make money from publishing that have nothing to do with selling impression based ads. I mapped out ten ideas here that any publisher can pursue. Fundamentally, it’s about taking charge of your own destiny.
5. De-average your pricing – It’s time to stop selling every album at $13.99. Some will pay nothing, some will pay vastly more. Segment your offerings into free samples, low cost bite size morsels and really premium products (eg, personalized, autographed posters included, limited editions etc). Check out what Nine Inch Nails have done to see the power of de-averaging.
6. Give them games – Great games are addictive and bring your audience back even when you have nothing new in the way of content. It also gives you the opportunity to introduce virtual currencies and sell virtual goods, a massive untapped revenue opportunity.
7. Invest in a trading platform – There is a great deal of money to be made enabling trade amongst your audience. Just look at eBay – it’s a huge community that is monetized through a trading platform. I’m sure some members of your audience have things to trade and if you can take a small commission on the trade, or use your virtual currency the cash can add up.

These are my thoughts, what about yours? Is the future hopeless for media? Do you think media companies can make money in the future? What other steps should publishers be taking.

 

 7 Steps for Surviving the Banruptcy of the Impression Economy [10:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s JK Wedding Entrance Dance video on Youtube has met with extraordinary viral success. As I write this, the video has been viewed 17.3 million times. It is a joy to watch and I’m sure it was a joyous day as well. Jill and Kevin have added links to the video and to the video download page to support the Sheila Wellstone Institute, which is dedicated to ensuring that ending violence against women and children is a national priority.

I hope the 17+ million viewers have been able to make a serious donation to the institute.

On the commercial side of things the video is set to R&B star Chris Brown’s hypnotic dance jam “Forever.” And that’s been a real business bonanza for the rights holders as reported by Youtube.

As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the
massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” —
in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have
skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on
the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other
Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this new found interest in
downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding
Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music
video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last
week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies
around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional
and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But
in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s
“Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on
the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.

Quite a story. As my Aussie friends would say Good on Ya Jill and Kevin! I hope you have a joyous and marvelous life together.

Brian Clark, of Copyblogger, has just released a free report called Authority Rules. Brian’s a great writer and he has done a superb job of growing Copyblogger into a high traffic authority on blogging and copywriting.

If you’re a content producer of any kind, his new report is a fast 18 page read that’s worth getting and reading a couple of times. He focuses on the value of authority and it’s role in building your “tribe” (audience). He goes on to provide 10 rules for how to build authority on the web.

Here’s the list:

1. The Winning Difference – What makes you and your content unique and valuable?
2. Don’t Sell.. Teach – It works better.
3. Cornerstone Content – Some awesome content that your audience loves and loves.
4. Headlines and Hooks – A killer headline is the difference between 2 of 10 reading your stuff or 8 of 10.
5. Win Friends to Influence People – What other people say about you matters a lot.
6. The Money’s in the List – I’ve said it myself, build your list.
7. SEO Matters – Optimizing your content for search engines makes it findable and ranks you higher
8. Code Google Loves – Google likes good code and helps those that provide it.
9. Design Makes the Site – Pleasing packages build trust
10. Tend to Your Tribe – love and protect your audience – they trust you.

So what’s missing? What would you add to the list?