I couldn’t sleep this morning. It may have been the fire alarm that lacked a fire that went off at my friend’s place at 5:45am. I guess beggars can’t be choosers when they’re in hitchhikking mode…

While I was trying to go back to sleep, Scott Sigler tweeted that Little, Brown had invented podcast novels on 23 July 2009. From the article:

“Sarah Shrubb, editorial director of Hachette Digital, said: ‘This is the first time an audio has been serialised in this way, and we’re very excited to be doing something so groundbreaking.'”

What makes this statement really impressive is the fact that Sigler and many others (Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, James Melzer, Mark Jeffrey to name a very few) have been making at least a part (and for several it’s a large part) of their living off their podcast novels for years now…

And they have very devoted fans who almost instanteously came down hard on the comments for the article decrying the lies put forth.

To be completely fair, the article was not on the publisher’s website, and the quote came from the editor and not the author. And I guess it might be a first for Little, Brown (though I haven’t done any research on that, and I’m not very familar with their publications), which is something that should be celebrated. Readers familar with the new territory techonology has opened should encourage traditional publishers taking steps into this unfamilar territory because they are making some effort to adjust to the new ways they could be engaging readers and publishing books.

And with any first steps, there are bound to be some falls. This first step, because of the quote that accompanies it, seems like this might be one of Little, Brown’s falls. Which is a little sad, since the community they are attemtping to enter is rather brutal and unforgiving of mistakes easily avoided by a simple Google search.

I hope Little, Brown’s stumble and the reader reaction doesn’t prevent them, or other publishers, from attempting this kind of new step again.