Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

Way back before the dawn of time (or at least October 2005) I reviewed a podcast novel called Earthcore. Earthcore was a science fiction / horror novel by Scott Sigler and it claimed to be the first podcast novel.

Since then the idea of podcasting books has really taken off and if you’d like to sample some, let me direct you to Podiobooks.com where you can browse a wide range for free.

Why do I mention this ancient history? Well it seems that Scott Sigler was not content to rest on his laurels and has gone on to podcast a number of other novels. He’s also making his mark in traditional book publishing with his novel Infected available in hard cover today. What is particularly unusual though is that he is still making Infected available for free as a podcast.

The success (or failure I suppose, but success seems much more likely) of Infected may tell us a lot about the power of podcasting. There has been a very active campaign online in the podcasting community to promote Scott’s work and I’ve been seeing status updates on Twitter all day.

Of course science fiction, fantasy and horror make perfect breeding grounds for this sort of grass roots campaign. Something about these genres really seems to encourage cult followings and the podcasting format has allowed Sigler to solidify a fan base before he got into print. Well that and the fact that Sigler has proved himself to be a master of promotion.

And it seems to be working. At the time of writing Infected was listed as #18 on Amazon’s Movers & Shakers list with a sales rank of 153. So are we looking at the beginning of a new trend in publishing? And will we see new or “mid-list” science fiction and fantasy writers finally able to capitalize on their loyal followers and get their books into print?

Link:Find out More at Scott Sigler’s Official Site