The object of the game is to find a niche that is underserved and fill it. Try to be the first, but certainly endeavor to be the best.

Why is it so damn hard to find a blue-ribbon quality podcast for writers? Either the narration is insipid or the sound quality is painful.

Or they get podfade after 13 episodes.

Four years ago, American Writers put out a thirteen chapter podcast that was dynamite. Great stuff. But they covered the thirteen topics they wanted to cover and that was that.

Brad Reed made headway with the Inside Creative Writing podcast. Great insight. Good lessons. High production values. He was starting to land quality “get” interviews with articulate authors. Then… Thirteen podcasts in… Insert a litany of podfade excuses here: __________. Eye disease. Domestic issues. College. Whatevs. Sigh.

Closer to home a lot of people who don’t like me have a decent podcast, Write Pack Radio. The pack needs more (real) microphones and fewer panelists on a given show. Brad Cook is fantastic as moderator. I wish they’d stop stacking panelists in fear of a lull in the conversation and trust two or three specialist panelists per episode. And microphones. I can’t express how important that is. Microphones. Not the hole in the top of your laptop. Not a $9 lavaliere.  It makes the difference. They’ve got interesting writing topics. They’ve certainly got the “Pack.” Now if they’d merely pay a bit more attention to the “Radio.” Brad Cook could absolutely crush ass with a few tweaks to the show. He has that kind of professional charisma.

With great delight I stumbled across the podcast for the online magazine Lit Reactor. The Unprintable Podcast. Content is engaging. The hosts are charming. Two of the three Skyping panelists are using real microphones, so audio quality is two-thirds there.

Apparently Josh Chaplinsky suffers from some flavor of Turret’s where he is compelled to give me his political middle finger make a pithy and insightful political comment at least once every show, but hell. Stephen King has been doing that all his life and he makes millions.

I recommend the Unprintable podcast to harcore readers and wannabe writers. It’s the best thing going and they broke the thirteen podcast barrier.