Plug your book with a podcast

It's official: Big publishers are aboard the podcasting bandwagon. Today's New York Times gives another example of the speed of sound. Author Mignon Fogarty, host of the Grammar Girl podcast, took just a few days to crank out an audio file of her upcoming Holt book and rushed it onto Audible.com right before an appearance on Oprah. The hour-long $4.95 audio went to No. 1 on iTunes, and she cashed in on the Oprah publicity even though the book wasn't on the street -- in fact it's not even written yet.

Other publishers also are experimenting with such changes, including Hachette Audio ... which in 2005 released the audio version of Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” on Audible and iTunes several weeks before the book.

“Publishers always want to hit the best-seller list at No. 1, and there had been some concern that releasing an audio version first would drain away sales from the hardcover,” said Beth Anderson, senior vice president of Audible, which, along with iTunes, had brisk download sales before Mr. Stewart’s book and a CD-format audiobook were simultaneously released. “But the publisher told us releasing the audio helped to sell the print version, because having the audio out there really helped to build the buzz for the book.”