RonVitale.com

Stand Up To Cancer

First, check out the Stand Up To Cancer public service announcement. Then here are my thoughts about Stand Up To Cancer:

I remember growing up in the '80s, learning that my grandfather had cancer. Back then before there was Stand Up To Cancer, Livestrong and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, cancer was a word that was hardly spoken in my family. It was the "c" word--feared, unknown and final. When cancer was diagnosed, that meant death. So when I learned that my grandfather, who taught me how to ride my first bike, to drive a car and help raise me, had prostate cancer, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know much except I remember him talking about radiation treatments. He had a slow growing form of prostate cancer and did not die from it until January of 2003.

For over twenty years, cancer came into my family, faded away and then resurfaced again late in my grandfather's life. As I was a little boy, I only knew of what was whispered and talked about behind closed doors. My family was mum on the subject not getting into all the details with me. Yet in the last years of my grandfather's life, I saw him in pain, understood his frustration and his tiredness in fighting the disease. You see, his cancer had started to metastasize to his spine and as the cancer grew so would his pain. I am glad that he passed away before he was in too much pain, but how can anyone be glad of a loved one passing on. My grandfather lived to be 86 years old and had a full life raising two grandchildren and seeing one great grandchild and learning of my wife's being pregnant (for his second great grandchild) before he died.

Yesterday I saw the above public service announcement for Stand Up To Cancer and I was moved. I was excited to see such a national movement beginning, sad that my grandfather wasn't around to see it and proud to be part of the project. I work for the American Association for Cancer Research and our organization will be making certain that the funds raised by SU2C are put to good use. I've been working with the AACR for nearly 11 years and I've been so impressed to see how hard our members work in curing and preventing cancer. It's not just that the association that I work for will be working on this national project. It's not that. I'm not just proud of that. I'm proud to know that all my hard work and the tireless work of my colleagues and my association's over 27,000 members will now have the means to continue working to find the drugs, treatments and preventions to help people fight cancer.

About a year ago, the president of the AACR came to speak at my work and he talked about the cancer funding problem. The NCI's budget had not grown to help support cancer research as had been hoped. To explain the problem to his young daughter, our president explained to her: "Imagine a roomful of 100 cancer researchers. All of them have brilliant ideas to help prevent and cure cancer. However, only 10% of them will get the funds they need." That was a very sobering thought.

Now with the Stand Up To Cancer movement, monies raised will help fund those scientists who have amazing ideas but lack the funds.

I'm here in this virtual space to stand up. To invite you to stand up and take part. If you have money to donate, then do so. But even if you don't, take time out to visit the Stand Up To Cancer site. Read the information there, take part in The Stand (Facebook application) to share your story with others and help out. Stand up. Stand up today.

Now as I raise my son and daughter, I look at them both and hope and pray that all the work we do will help them and their children so that they will not have to deal with the suffering and death associated with cancer.

How to Create an Audio Book for Podcasting

I've started working on a major podcasting project and I've been amazed at how difficult it is to work on. Late last year I had put together The Jovian Gate Chronicles audio book for Podiobooks.com. Although that audio book was only four short stories that was 142 minutes in length, the amount of work to put the audio book together was daunting. But I am now working on a second (and much larger) podcast project. I wanted to write about this because I've found that it's a heck of a lot of work in putting together an audio book. So where to start in answering: "How do you put together an audio book or podcast a book?" Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's what I have been working on:

• First off, write down the steps you need to take. Think about the project, estimate the amount of time, money and resources you'll need to complete the project and then realize that you'll need more time than what you estimated.
• After you've put together your schedule, start the work.
• Purchase a web domain through a registrar. I've used Godaddy.com in the past and have lots of success.
• Make certain that you have a blog setup. You can build one on blogger.com (free) or buy space through Word Press or Typepad. Then build your site.
• Purchase or obtain (podsafe) music for your audio book.
• Make certain you have a good place to host your audio files (Libsyn.com) or work with Podiobooks.com.
• Get your equipment (microphone, mixer, software, etc.) and start recording. This is the hardest part. Here's a list of the gear I use: Microphone (MXL 2003), mixer (Alesis Multimix x8 USB) [I have an older model than the one pictured], a screen to protect against "popping" sounds and a stand.
• Software: Castblaster, Audacity and iTunes.

A word to the wise: be sure that when recording your audio book that you save the file as a .wav so that you can use this as your master file when you're doing editing and such. The final version should be a mp3. I save the file at 160 Kbps and keep the episode to around 30-40 mins. For Podiobooks, you'll need to save the mp3 as a joint stereo file.

Once you finish saving the recording as a .wav, you can use Audacity to do post editing work and when you're fully finished on editing then you use iTunes to convert the .wav file to a mp3 (joint stereo). iTunes is actually really good on converting the .wav files to a mp3.

Don't be surprised if your first episode takes several hours. It's a lot of hard work, there's a learning curve in the beginning and be patient. You'll make lots of mistakes in the beginning (in reading your work). I think having patience is probably the biggest bit of advice that I could pass on. And feel free to network with individuals in the podcast community for help.

Updated May 26, 2008:

Evo Terra left some great feedback and I wanted to address his comments in an extended post. Unfortunately, I had hopes of writing a much longer post last time, but I needed to put my daughter down for bed and I didn't get a chance to get back to the post. I had wanted to write down some of my resources and the steps I had put together to create an audio book podcast. For me, it's nice having a list of links to remind me of what steps I took to create the audio book. I wish I had an online version of the "How to Create a Podcast" article I wrote for the SFWA's The Bulletin a few years ago. I might not have an online version of that article, but I do have the article that MTGSalvation.com ran back in May of 2005. That article was: "Revitalize Magic Content: Create a Podcast!" It's rather interesting to look back three years ago to see that article and to compare it with what's available today. There are more resources available now than ever before. With a little work, some research, you can put together an audio book for your listeners. But there's some major points that I did not mention in the points above.

For example:

1. Research. One of the important tricks of the trade for authors is to read. Reading is important because not only do you learn what is being published (and why), but you're able to get a good feel for character development, plot, thematic placement and the full scope of why a novel works well. Similarly, for audio books it's necessary to listen to various audio books to learn what the format is, how one is put together and why one is successful over another. Two suggestions to start out with are: Scott Sigler's "Earthcore" and Mur Lafferty's "Playing for Keeps." Remember, there are many, many audio books available. When listening to the audio books, listen to the introductions, the recaps, when music is used and study the book's pacing (how fast or slow it's read).
2. Marketing. So now that you've done all the hard work, you're finished, right? Well, no. Not by a long shot. You may have put together your audio book, but you will still need to do work on marketing your audio book. I would highly recommend that you start networking with fellow authors as you'll can learn a lot from others who are headed down the same path as you. Another few tips: Focus on cultivating relationships with like minded bloggers. If you can put together an electronic press kit, then you'll be able to easily send out an audio promo, a picture of yourself, a short bio and a synopsis of your novel at a moment's notice. Heck, I'd recommend keeping the press kit on the home page of your website so that people can download them easily without having to take the extra step to contact you. You see, I wear two hats: Not only am I starting to walk down the path of creating an audio book, but I also put out a weekly podcast (The Magic Sock). When I'm putting together The Magic Sock, I often run promos of science fiction and fantasy audio books to help spread the word to my listeners. You never know who might stumble on your website and be looking for a promo to play on their podcast. Having the materials easily available is the way to go. Another suggestion is to work on conducting interviews with podcasts that talk about science fiction and fantasy. Get yourself out there and make friends. But remember, don't think you're entitled to an interview. I could go on and on with Marketing. You can attend conventions and network with fans or fellow podcasters. Start a Twitter.com feed and start putting out announcements about your audio book on a regular basis. Provide supplemental material to augment your audio book (Mur Lafferty did an excellent job of this with "Playing for Keeps"-- she podcast supplemental stories that other authors wrote, incorporating those stories into her RSS feed, allowed for the download of each episode's PDF [that had a unique comic book cover] in the RSS feed and had street teams to talk up her audio book online and in "real life."). I could go on, but you get the idea. Marketing is crucial and key to success. Think about your marketing plan. And then think some more.
3. Produce a hard copy version of your book through a print on demand company. I've used Lulu.com in the past, but with Amazon.com changing what print on demands books they'll list (as of this writing, they'll list a book from Lulu.com but as the creator you'll need to send Amazon.com 5 copies for them to store. If you use Amazon.com's POD company, you'll not need to do that. Putting together the book, is a huge project in itself. You have to think about the cover, the look and feel of the book, set the price point, etc. Do not overlook this part, but don't be surprised when you don't sell a ton of copies. Again, marketing is key.

To sum all this up, creating an audio book is a lot of work and takes careful planning. Do not expect to sit down at a computer, hit record and you're suddenly an internet sensation. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of free audio books out there in the ether. What makes yours better than someone else's? As Evo Terra wrote in his comment, gone are the wild, wild West days in which anything goes. Listeners expect an audio book to sound a certain way, to contain certain parts (recaps at the beginning of each episode) and the audio's quality is important. I've been podcasting for over two years now and I still feel like a novice. And I'm not justing saying that. It's not easy to learn new skills, to be creative and to put the work all together. If you think I'm trying to scare you away, that's not the case. But I want you to understand, that there's a lot of work involved and that this article of mine just scratches the surface.

Good luck!