Will Sprint ask Evo Terra to promote their new HTC Evo phone?

Sprint announced the release of the first 4G phone at CTIA 2010 in Las Vegas. Who better to pimp this new technological marvel than podcasting guru Evo Terra?

Reasons that Evo Terra would be a good representative for this phone:

• Evo’s been a Sprint customer since December 1, 1999.
• Evo is well recognized throughout the podosphere. He has his own show with an established audience.
• Evo’s a geek. He hangs out with other geeks. The word of mouth potential here is huge.
• Evo has a substantial presence within the social media sphere. And he is not shy with his opinions. If he likes your phone, it will be all over Facebook (~1500 friends), Twitter (~5300 followers), etc.
• The phone is named the Evo. How much more serendipity do you need?

Sweet! We won two Founder’s Choice Awards from PB.com!

I was pretty psyched when I saw that Scott and I had won (2) 2009 Founder’s Choice Awards from Podiobooks.com for the novels I produce for him over there. Both Contagious and Nocturnal received 2009 Founder’s Choice Awards.

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2009 Podiobooks Founder’s Choice Awards

Evo began awarding Founder’s Choice Awards in 2008, which is when the Sounding Board was created. Scott and I won an award for Infected in 2008.

2008 Podiobooks Founder’s Choice Awards

If you’re not familiar with the Founder’s Choice Awards, here’s how they work:

The Founder’s Choice Awards are given annually — well, they will be given annually — to serialized audiobooks of impeccable quality. There are four criteria for choosing winners:

1. The final episode* must have been posted within the calendar year
2. Must have passed our panel of Sounding Board Editors who decide which titles are featured on the site
3. Evo (that’s me) must have listened to all episodes
4. Evo says it wins

“The End” warns me to be wary of established thought patterns

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THE END
by Mysterious

Many thanks to my friend Donna Mugavero aka Ms Information for posting “The End” within her blog. I seriously doubt I would have seen it otherwise. It touched me in a very odd way. I doubt I can really describe it, and I’m not sure I want to do so publicly anyways. I can do so partially with another video:

outside the box from joseph Pelling on Vimeo.

Thanks to Evo Terra for posting “Outside the Box” within his blog. At least I’m pretty sure that’s where I saw that one. It was a while ago, but it has stuck with me.

Arioch braves the flames of Hell to appear on Evo @ 11

Yes, it’s true. I was actually stupid enough to go down to Phoenix when temperatures were above 100 degrees. And you wonder why I call it Hell. I was quite happy to return back to my cool mountain abode up here in Flag, thank you very much.

Evo Terra, Sheila Dee, and Debbie Walker were gracious enough to welcome me onto their anniversary show, which was actually my initial incentive for going down to Hell in the first place. If you’d like to check it out, here’s the links:

Evo @ 11 webpage

Evo @ 11 show # 50 direct link

Please be forewarned that a good portion of this show was a potty episode. Definitely not for those who are offended by foul language or frank discussions of bodily functions.

Evo Terra, you’re my *hero*

Okay, that’s not exactly news or anything, but I haven’t talked about it in this blog, so I figured I should. Evo came up with this brilliant concept. “Why don’t we turn the publishing model on its head? Let’s give audio novels away for free and have the audience decide what they’re worth after they listened to the content.” Frakkin’ genius. Thus was Podiobooks.com hatched from the mind of my mentor and friend Evo Terra.

First, select a book that looks interesting to you. They currently have over 300 titles to choose from. Download however many chapters of the title you want. You can have the whole thing without paying anything if that’s the way you want to do it. The site will also let you listen to chapters without downloading them, but I rarely utilize that feature. Listen to whatever novel you’ve picked.  If you like what you hear, consider making a donation. The author gets a full 75% of whatever you give. 75%!! A traditional publishing house only gives an author 8-12% of the cover price of a hardcover novel, depending on how good a deal they were able to get. If you thought the book was crap, delete it. Don’t donate.

How much fairer of a distribution model can we ask for? The readers and the authors both win here. The middle man gets cut out because they’re no longer needed. As long as the reader donates when he feels that the author has provided good value, this system works beautifully. Here’s a list of my top ten novels over at Podiobooks.com in alphabetical order:

1. 7th Son Trilogy by JC Hutchins
2. Billabub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris
3. Brave Men Run by Matthew Wayne Selznick
4. Chasing the Bard by Philippa Ballantine
5. Diary of an S & M Romance (ADULT) by Dollie Llama
6. Immortals, The by Tracy Hickman
7. Nina Kimberly the Merciless by Christiana Ellis
8. Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty
9. Rookie, The by Scott Sigler
10. Singularity by Bill DeSmedt

If you really like the novel you picked, there’s a good chance that it is available in treeware, as an e-book, or both. All ten of the above have been published in a more traditional format after (a couple before) being released as a podiobook. I’ve purchased half of these as treeware or e-books in addition to making donations for the podiobooks. The idea of the author losing sales because they are giving away their content in laughable to me. I *might* have picked up one of those ten books above, and it’s questionable as to whether I would have purchased it. The way Evo has things set up, I bought all ten once, and half of them twice.

You’re still here? What are you waiting for? Go to Podiobooks.com and see what they’ve got. I’m sure there’s something there which will interest you.