Joining the IBPA

Why Appaloosa Radio is now a Publisher

A number of long-time friends of this work have asked why we are looking to become “publishers.”

The short answer is that we have evolved from just creating our own stories to producing the work of others.

Appaloosa Radio began as a collaboration between a group of friends and relatives who thought it might be fun to create a piece of “audio theater.” We had a former radio broadcaster, an experienced audio theater actor/writer, a local theater performer who had an interest in doing voice overs, and me, a wanna-be historical fiction writer. We discovered that Microsoft had a collection of computer voices that we could use for free. Over a period of several months, we created a work (using a combination of live actors and computer-generated ones) and then decided to put our drama onto the Web.

We needed a name. I live in the Granite Springs development and the street around the corner was Appaloosa Way. So, we created Appaloosa Springs Audio Theater.

It was a fun first project, but casual collaborations seldom last. One of our members died, one moved out of the region, and one accepted a managerial position in her own job.

Which, of course, just left me. I could have given it up and returned to writing my ghost town stories, but I really came to enjoy the intimacy of the medium. Listening to audio stories is a uniquely personal experience. It is immediate and all encompassing.

I began a learning process.

I found that there were some truly great audio dramas produced by the BBC, some not-so-good ones on Spotify, and Cindy Snidery’s YouTube Channel that Webcasts classic out-of-copyright stories.

I also found that technology was changing rapidly. Having tools like Amazon Polly and Eleven Labs AI gave me access to high quality, natural sounding voices, and the process of getting text into voice was now very straight forward.

I got to work turning my file of previously written stories (the ones in my green zippered binder) into audio dramas.

There are still some questions about what to call them. The industry uses four designaions: “audio dramas,” “audio fiction,” “podcast novels,” or “audiobooks.” So far, we’ve been doing primarily short stories, but we plan to add a new feature, called “First Chapters” where we share the first chapter of a book.

When I joined the Sacramento Suburban Writers, we began to produce some of their previously published stories.

Now, we seek to open Appaloosa Radio Online to an even wider array of writers.

We remain not-for-profit and non-commercial. We are not currently charging writers to publish their audio stories on Appaloosa Radio, and we hope to continue to be able to do so.

As I write this blog post, Appaloosa Radio Online has been optimized for the iPhone and for Android, and we have published 167 audio stories written by 16 different authors. And we are very proud of the quality of our audio and of our stories.

Additionally, our podcast had about 4,000 downloads during 2023.

However, it is time to move beyond just creating excellent works of fiction. We need to increase our audience, adding both more writers and more listeners.

To do so, we need to focus on marketing, and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) has many excellent resources that we now have access to. Our application for IBPA membership was approved in mid-February.

As I reviewed their directory of 3,400 independent publishers, I found that we are the only exclusively audio publisher.

We seem to occupy a unique niche.