Disclosure: I may earn affiliate revenue or commissions if you purchase products from links on my website.
Promotion: I wrote Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media. It's an outgrowth of everything visitors have liked about this blog since 2016. It's now on sale for $3.99!
I published Framed on the last day of February. Now, as April wraps up, my debut seems like a lifetime ago. Because of Framed, I’ve met dozens of people, most of whom were intrigued by the book. I’ve also been presented with dozens of sales pitches. As a first time author, it’s been exhausting to wade through everything and try to stay on the course I originally charted.
After realizing that journalists had next-to-no interest in my book, I started thinking about podcasts. “Surely,” I thought, “there are hundreds of marketing, social media, and technology podcasts that I would be a good fit for.”
After scouting tons of them, I validated my hypothesis. I was right. Tim O’Hearn, the author of Framed: A Villain’s Perspective on Social Media, would make a fantastic podcast guest. I watched many podcasts and took notes. Generally, I felt that my talking points and knowledge was far beyond that of the average guest. So, I started pitching podcasts.
The first response I received asked for a $6000 appearance fee.
This was significantly more than Neil Patel’s podcast, which I give credit to for actually revealing its $2500/$1500 costs ahead of time.
Since I didn’t have much to sell on account of not having written a guidebook or something tailored for a general audience, I wasn’t willing to “pay to play.”
However, I explored other avenues for podcast appearances and, as of writing this, I’ve had 25 appearances scheduled or completed.
Podcast Parity (Your value as a guest)
The sucky thing about the vastness of the internet is that high-quality content gets lost. High-quality content creators regularly get discouraged and decide to move on. Unfortunately, the currency of the internet is not “talent,” per se, it’s what you can do for your host.
Podcast hosts aren’t in the business of predicting the future. They want immediate results. Although that does mean that they want guests who are “vetted” and who are interesting, they primarily want to see a substantial audience or external validation. The idea is that a guest with tons of followers will be able to direct some followers to a podcast host, and perhaps they’ll convert to subscribers.
If not, money might need to change hands. I wouldn’t expect to speak to Joe Rogan for free (but for some of these others charging thousands for an appearances: you’ve got to be kidding me).
My numbers are tiny and I’m not embarrassed to admit that, aside from a small growth in blog traffic and my mailing list since I published, it’s not like I’m a mega-successful author. I don’t know if the Amazon accolades or editorial reviews could be construed as “success” at all. For the podcast host, there’s a very strong chance that zero of my audience would convert to regular listeners of their podcast.
It’s important to be aware of this. Even though I’ve received some very kind feedback and positive “relative” comparisons from podcast hosts, those with busy schedules and high production costs aren’t in the business of taking risks on people like me. Who cares that I sold a few hundred books on Amazon?
In a few cases, I tried time-consuming sales pitches like responding to direct points made in recent episodes as well as offering a free copy of my book. Although a few prominent hosts accepted copies of Framed, as of today, nothing converted into an appearance.
If there isn’t parity between guest audience and host profile, be ready to pay up. Don’t be delusional.
PodMatch vs PodcastGuests vs Rephonic
If cold outreach to medium and large podcasts doesn’t work, what is the nonfiction author to do?
Anyone doing cold outreach will quickly notice how difficult it is to find email addresses for podcast hosts. There are tons of sites that curate this information. Most of them charge for it, offering no guarantees beyond that.
Rephonic was recommended to me, but the cost was too steep for something that I didn’t expect high ROI on, so I never tried it.
On another recommendation, I signed up for Podcast Guests. This required forking over $20 for the month. From the start, I had my doubts, so I ensured I didn’t get tricked into the full year commitment. Although I don’t doubt the value proposition of the Podcast Guests site, I found it to be disappointing and confusing. As far as I can tell, there is no way for guests to contact podcast hosts, which is counterintuitive.
During the time I was signed up, I wasn’t contacted about anything, but witnessed the regular emails where potential guests paid to be featured with the aim of being selected by a podcast host. My friend told me that he had a few appearances sourced from this platform. It was a waste of money and time for me.
The service where I had the most success was PodMatch. PodMatch, which has thousands of guests and hosts, is balanced and features a matching algorithm not dissimilar to a dating app. I created my profile, I started swiping. Within the first week, I had a few appearances lined up. These weren’t famous podcasts, most were indie with small audiences, but I was happy to speak with them.
As I completed more appearances, I found that I was being accepted by marginally “better,” more-experienced hosts. PodMatch offers two tiers for guests: $32/mo and $64/mo. I’m currently on the premium tier, but since I long-ago exhausted my potential matches, I’ll likely downgrade after a few more weeks of cold outreach.
Although I’ve still been ignored by many hosts who I would be an ideal guest for, my conversion/response rates on PodMatch seemed to track with the averages of roughly 20%.
White glove podcast matching service from Book Thinkers
Sorting through all of the sales pitches has been difficult. I liked what Book Thinkers had to say, and I was really impressed by my initial meetings with them. Book Thinkers charges roughly $100 per placement for podcast appearances. For them, they aren’t compensating the host, rather they have enough pull that the hosts are happy with their talent scouting.
Book Thinkers gave me the impression that they didn’t just reach out to every author (meaning that they had standards). Whatever is actually going on behind the scenes, they’ve been responsive, professional, and effective.
Am I going to keep doing this indefinitely? No, not unless I start seeing huge sales bumps. But the value of this service is clear. I’ve been scoring appearances on higher-quality podcasts than what I’ve generally encountered on PodMatch.
Random Professionals on Reedsy
After seeing Reedsy recommended everywhere on Reddit, I spoke to a few professionals there about promoting my book. I selected one who had significant experience with non-fiction promotion. We had a kickoff meeting where I explained what I was looking for. And then…nothing.
I spent over $1000, bumped up by Reedsy’s crazy platform-exclusive fees, and received pretty much nothing, not even one message per week or really any updates at all.
I know that the general advice is to never hire someone who “guarantees” anything in the self-publishing space, but my experience with Book Thinkers, which did provide a guideline number, was infinitely better than my experience with the Reedsy professional, who provided, effectively, nothing of value.
Should authors expect to get sales from micro podcast appearances?
There’s no guaranteed formula for solid returns on marketing efforts in the nonfiction space. It’s a totally different topic and one that I can only speak to from the perspective of someone whose book was not a conventional success.
Although there is considerable lag time between podcast interviews and the appearances being published (I’ve also had some where the host ghosted and seemingly stopped publishing episodes), the appearances can definitely move the needle on marketing efforts.
I didn’t embed any special tracking links in my appearances and trying to draw causality from publication to sale is difficult, but I’m confident in saying that I’ve had a few sales from my efforts. What really mattered–what made it “worth it”–was the validation of the appearance. My newsletter posts and LinkedIn posts concerning podcast appearances have all had fantastic engagement.
I highly recommend PodMatch for those getting their feet wet. Services like Book Thinkers can come later for those who are seeing decent results from podcast appearances.
