Sunday 28 August 2016

How did you get out of the rut called Writer’s Block?

A little over two years ago, I published my debut novel NRI: Now, Returned to India. I had planned out a four part series around the adventures of Amol Dixit, and things looked great. Then, this thing called LIFE happened. I took up a career opportunity with amazon, we moved to Bengaluru, and the disruptions to my writing began. My new job involved almost constant traveling. In fact, for the first nine months of 2015, I was in the office for a total of 12 days! Thats when I fell into the trap of not writing regularly, and began to use every possible excuse as my lifeline. The list of excuses included early morning travel, spending the whole day at construction sites, returning to the hotel room late at night. We’ve all used these excuses in some form or the other. I got back into the writing mode after nearly a two year break. Today, I write nearly 4,000 words per day in the form of blog posts, and work towards completing my next novel.
How do you/ did you get out of the rut called Writer’s Block? A little over two years ago, I published my debut novel NRI: Now, Returned to India. I had planned out a four part series around the adventures of Amol Dixit, and things looked great. Then, this thing called LIFE happened. I took up a career opportunity with amazon, we moved to Bengaluru, and the disruptions to my writing began. My new job involved almost constant traveling. In fact, for the first nine months of 2015, I was in the office for a total of 12 days! Thats when I fell into the trap of not writing regularly, and began to use every possible excuse as my lifeline. The list of excuses included early morning travel, spending the whole day at construction sites, returning to the hotel room late at night. We’ve all used these excuses in some form or the other. I got back into the writing mode after nearly a two year break. Today, I write nearly 4,000 words per day in the form of blog posts, and work towards completing my next novel.
A photo posted by Mykitaab Podcast (@mykitaabcast) on

Thursday 18 August 2016

My Blog Post on the Artist Unleashed Blog

My blog post got published in the Artist Unleashed Blog Today. You can read the blog post at https://t.co/wKnq2ntZ1F Below is the tweet by Jessica Bell, who started this blog.

Wednesday 17 August 2016

5 Mistakes I Made During our Podcast Launch

The good news is that the MyKitaab Podcast was launched in January 2016, and we have nearly 10,000 downloads for over 70 episodes. Not fantastic numbers, but that's the way we had planned it. Below is the post I had originally written on Medium on the day of our launch.  
In spite of hitting the refresh button to track the stats on Libsyn several times today, my wife and I could not see our excitement die down.But soon, we thought “what are the things that we did not get right?” So here is the list that we came up with.

The 5 Mistakes I Made During OUr Podcast Launch

Logo for MyKitaab Podcast

Mistake # 1:

Launch delayed by nearly 2 months

Our original plan was to launch the MyKitaab podcast in the middle of November, just after India celebrates Diwali, the Fesitval of Lights. For a variety of reasons (I was in a full time job till end of December which slowed down the editing and post production process, not incorporating in time, floods in Chennai delaying the incorporation process further, etc.) the launch got delayed by 2 months. As on today, for a 3 x a week podcast, we could have released nearly 25 episodes, today we have three. John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire podcast has written a post in which he says that a delayed launch cost him thousands of dollars, because he lost out on sponsorship for a month. While we wish we get sponsors soon, lost opportunity for sponsorship is a good enough reason to kick ourselves.

Mistake#2

Not understanding the finer aspects of audio recording well enough

Maybe it was an oversight, or the zealousness of jumping into recording. This mistake has cost us the most in terms of time and effort. Sound recording is, as we learnt, not an easy beast to train. We live near an airport and a train line passes close by, not to mention there is construction activity in one apartment or another where we live in Bangalore. But most of all, not thinking about soundproofing has really been a huge oversight. The helpful editors from Upwork (formerly elance/ odesk) are trying their best, but the feedback is consistent: “Try and reduce as much echo/ background noise, etc. during recording”. This goes for the guests as well as for us. Maybe more for the latter, because we can re-record the questions should the need arise. I just wrapped up an interview where there was construction work in the background, a barking dog, and flying aircraft coming from the guest’s end. Most likely I will either have to re-record, or scrap the interview altogether. Have done it for 2 guests out of 35 already. That is an avoidable waste. It is only from January that we have invested in a much better recording environment. Still my living room, but the recording is far superior.

Mistake #3

I wish I knew the right settings for hardware and software

i.e. How to conduct the orchestra and not just focus to tune an individual instrument

I use Skype for the calls, and use Skype Call Recorder for the recording. Microphone is a ATR USB 2100, with a pop filter. And I use audacity. Overall, a workable system, and it does work. But little did I know that I had the wrong settings for the Skype recording, The result: lot of echo, voice getting muffled, etc. That was because of some issue with hardware detection and also with the recording frequency. It got resolved over the weekend that went by. Last night, a musician told me about recording in ogg versus mp3. I did not understand much, but I changed the setting to ogg, and I absolutely loved the way the recording came about. If we add the effect of changed settings, and the soundproofing, the raw audio sounds 5 times better now. Which would mean lesser back and forth between the editor and I, and faster turnaround time!

Mistake # 4

We had too long a runway

i.e some of the episodes recorded 3 or 4 months ago are already dated!

We thought that it would be great to build atleast 2 months’ worth of pipeline (i.e. recorded shows) before launch. The first interview was recorded in last week of August, followed by another block in September, and November onwards, there has been a steady stream of interviews. As on date we have nearly 35 recorded episodes. that is a great ‘runway’ to have, (as someone mentioned it to me) but when I factor in the timeline, a lot of interviews or episodes are already dated. And the huge pipeline of episo0de launches ahead of me means that I cannot record more interviews till middle of March, that too, for shows that will go on air in end of April. That means saying ‘no’ to a lot of potential guests or rescheduling confirmed interviews to a future date. Not good.

Mistake #5

Not preparing for the best

i.e. Sir, your website is broken,and iTunes and TuneIn have thrown a surprise

This was a most recent and most callous of the mistakes. My wife and I were simply unprepared rather underprepared for a situation like this, and we did not have a Plan B. I am not quite sure what happened, but 2 days ago, all of a sudden, a lot of blog posts disappeared from the website. Turns out that they were in wordpress, just that the links to the files had changed. How? I wondered. Around the same time, to my surprise, both iTunes and TuneIn approved my podcast feed in less than 12 hours. I was told by the wise and those in the know that it can take upto 48 hours. In other words, instead of celebrating that the podcast is live before schedule, I am worried that the blog posts, the links and the shownotes are not available. lesson learnt- have a Plan B in place (in this case, maybe a simple wordpress site would have served the purpose till the website for the podcast was up and running again?)

Hope writing about my mistakes will help a podcaster or two in the future from repeating them!

Note: You can listen to the MyKitaab podcast on Stitcher radio here or subscribe to iTunes here.

 

Monday 15 August 2016

How To Publish Your Book in India: Listen to MyKitaab Podcast


We have interviewed over 70 guests so far, and as on August 2016, our shows are fully booked till end ot October 2016. In other words, we have lot more exciting interviews and discussions with the guests in the pipeline. How to get the shownotes for episodes Visit www.mykitab.in/podcast to access the shownotes for each episode. The shownotes provide the links, references and most noteworthy points mentioned by the guests that will be especially relevant to first time authors.

MyKitaab Podcast is present on the following social media sites
Twitter: @mykitaabcast
Facebook: MyKitaab Page
Instagram: @Mykitaabcast

Subscribe to MyKitaab Podcast on iTunes


Listen to the podcast episodes below

Wednesday 10 August 2016

The Story Behind the Name MyKitaab

The Word Kitaab Means a Book in Arabic, Hindi, Urdu and many other Indian languages. Before launching MyKitaab Podcast, I listened to several podcasts on book publishing for a number of years. I am adding a Small list of podcasts related to book publishing at the top of this post as a quick reference. Many of these podcasts are targeted towards self-publishing. I am adding a Small list of podcasts related to book publishing at the top of this post as a quick reference. Many of these podcasts are targeted towards self-publishing.The list is as follows:
  • The Creative Penn Podcast
  • Self Publishing Podcast
  • Rocking Self Publishing Podcast
  • Sell More Books Show
  • Writer 2.0
  • Author Strong Podcast
  • In the Trenches with Tom Morkes
  • Write 2 B read Podcast (now rebranded as Brand Architect Podcast )
  • Authorpreneur
  • Self Publishing Answers
  • Writing Unblocked
  • Author Hangout
  • Bestselling Fiction Podcast
  • Portfolio Life
  • Authority Self Publishing
  • Bookpreneur
  • Publishing Profits
  • Read to lead
  • Relaunch
  • MyKitaab (yes, why not?)
  • Copyblogger
  • The Marketing Book Podcast
Over the next few days, I will add reasons as to why I have included the above podcasts in my list.  For those who are interested in learning my podcast listening story, please listen to episode Zero of the MyKitaab Podcast.
   
  Image for Podcast recording courtesy www.Literalis.net on Flickr

You can visit the related page: How to Listen to MyKitaab Podcast.