Podcast Novel Collects Over 5,500 Readers, and Counting

[newstech]

I'm just now getting into e-books and now there's this whole new thing called "podiobooks."

The typical print run for a first-time novelist ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 copies. EarthCore, one of the world's
first podcast-only novels, already has over 5,500 readers after just four
weeks and five episodes.

EarthCore chapters are hosted at Podlot.com, which provides the
statistical tracking that validates the subscription numbers.
"Podlot.com confirms that each chapter of 'EarthCore' has distributed
nearly 5,900 copies in the month of April," said Russell Holman, president of
Podlot.com. "Based on its record of growth, we expect that number to grow to
over 6,300 by then end of the month."

EarthCore, written by Scott Sigler, is a free action/suspense audiobook
that was launched on March 24. Listeners tune in to EarthCore in two ways:
subscription to the RSS feed, and by clicking on the chapter links to manually
download the MP3 files.

"Despite the rising popularity of podcasting, most listeners get their
weekly fix the old-fashioned way," Sigler said. "Direct-click downloads
outnumber podcast subscribers 4-to-1. You don't have to know what 'podcasting'
is to enjoy the book."

EarthCore (http://www.scottsigler.net/earthcore) currently has 1,400
subscribers to the RSS feed, with another manually 4,500 downloading each
chapter.