I just received an email from an aspiring podiobook author, who wanted to know how long it takes to create a single podcast novel episode. I thought I'd share my reply with you guys. When I was creating and promoting the 7th Son podcast novel trilogy, the workload broke down like this. These results were also typical for the other podfic projects I've completed. For a finished 45-minute episode:
- 90 minutes to record
- 5 hours to edit
- 2 hours to write/record/edit "talky talk" openers and closers
- 1 hour to upload and post, with shownotes
This doesn't include the heroic number of hours spent promoting the podiobook, or interacting with listeners via Twitter, Facebook, email and IM. That was often as many as 30 hours a week -- from the time I got home from the day gig to the moment I went to bed.
This also doesn't include the time it took to write, edit, and rewrite the novels before they were recorded as podcasts.
That's a lot of time, peeps.
--J.C.