A common mistake I am starting to encounter with booking guests for either my major two Podcasts ‘Spoken Label’ and ‘Reading in Bed’ is not the lack of suitable guests but the fact that people sometimes who get in touch hasn’t researched the Podcast they are contacting.
As a writer and ambient musician, I have found personally the best chance of acceptation is by simply researching the publication or label in question before submitting.
Take for example with my ambient / drone band Ocean in a Bottle – if you look at my official Bandcamp you will notice releases on all kinds of labels, one for example “Camembertelectrique” has released two of my albums to date and several other tracks simply because I made a point of listening to a number of releases and sent a covering letter exampling how I felt my work fitted in with the label.
The same also applies to my Podcasts Spoken Label and Reading in Bed. I have pages on matchmaker.fm for example and if you look around you can get in contact with me about both Podcasts. While I have being some really good approaches from writers and poets I don’t know previously, the amount of approaches I get for Reading in Bed about interviews on this Podcast is staggering in particular since Reading in Bed is a book review Podcast not an Author interview Podcast.
There was one occasion on matchmaker.fm where one person got in touch asking to be a guest on Reading in Bed, and when I declined them stating this is not a guest Podcast they turned round and said to me, well what kind of Podcast is this? I then explained to them out of kindness what kind of Podcast Reading in Bed and advised to read the profile describing the Podcast.
They then submitted what perhaps is best described as an erotic fiction meets a S & M love story. I remember showing the blurb for this book to Amanda (my co-host for Reading in Bed) and was left shocked like me as neither of us had ever reviewed like that in over three years and had no interest whatsoever.
I politely declined again, and then received a proposal straight after from the same reader asking would we review ether of her other two books, one was a very poorly drew children’s book aimed at six to eight years old (she said) and also a even more racey romance book you could say.
There has other authors who have claimed they have listened to certain episodes of Spoken Label and in one case even claimed to personally know one of my guests. The problem with this second aspect, the guest they referred to was a writer friend off mine I had known personally for over fifteen years and they said they had never heard off him.
I don’t want this article to be a constant bad mouthing of contacting Podcasts, as over half of my guests on Spoken Label and books reviewed on Reading in Bed are by writers and poets I have never spoken with before rather a suggestion for everybody to be careful who you are approaching.
Rejection hurts I know from experience but it is pointless wasting both yours and somebody else’s time with bad or no research.
Spoken Label and Reading in Bed Podcasts are available on all of the usual networks and has a central database at spokenlabel.bandcamp.com and readinginbed.bandcamp.com and are always open to suitable submissions.
I'd be very interested to find out how you manage to find all the people who would make good guests for one or other of your podcasts.
ReplyDeleteSurely Matchmaker.fm isn't the only way for presenters to find guests?
I imagine you often come across people who you feel would make an excellent guest for one of your podcasts.
How and where do you hear of them?
Once you've decided to ask them onto the podcast, how do you approach them to ask them?
It would be very interesting if you wrote about this in a future article or blog post.