Make Noise: A Creator's Guide to Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling

Podcasting is the fast-growing media platform in the world, with currently 650,000 podcasts out there, in 100 languages, and offering over 20 million episodes. And we’re only at the beginning. More and more podcasts appear every day, and more and more entrepreneurs, businesses, individuals, and distributors, like Spotify, are getting into this world. One person so many people turn to to help launch their podcasts is Eric Nuzum, a veteran of NPR and Audible who’s had a hand in creating and launching over 130 podcasts, including some of the most successful out there like TED Radio Hour, Invisibilia, Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel, The Butterfly Effect, and West Cork. And the reason is that Nuzum understands the essentials of what makes a podcast work, and knows how to help creators shepherd their vision from rough idea to finished product.

Make Noise brings all the wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking that any individual or business needs to make a successful podcast. He identifies core principles – create empathetically, i.e., think like the audience listens, and stay focused on what’s unique to you and what you have to say. He helps readers come up with a “Ten Word Description” that will guide them throughout the creative process, and then gets into how-tos – how to develop character, story, voice; how to conduct an effective interview; how to be mindful of the limitations of audio (be more like Hemingway than Faulkner). Here are the rules of storytelling, advice on how to test-drive an idea (make six individual lunch dates, talk it over with each, and by the end see how you’ve refined your thinking), and, when it’s all ready, how to develop your audience.

Make Noise won’t tell you what microphone to buy. But its insights and guidance will help readers better express themselves as an audio storyteller.

About the Author :
Eric Nuzum is considered a leading “go-to” expert in audio, podcasting, radio, and spoken word entertainment. He led NPR’s podcasting efforts in 2005 and remained its leading creative and strategic force for a decade. He brought programs like Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Snap Judgment, and Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me into the podcasting ecosystem and helped them become iconic hits. As a creator, he developed some of NPR’s most successful podcasts, including TED Radio Hour and Invisibilia. He continued his track record of success during his tenure as Audible’s leader for short-form content and podcasting, creating such recognised podcasts as Sincerely X (another co-production with TED), The Butterfly Effect with Jon Ronson, and Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel. Eric is based in the New York City metro area.

Review :
“Where should you begin your podcast career? With this no-nonsense book. Deep advice boiled down to clear ideas.” — Esther Perel, host and co-executive producer of Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work?

"…a big-picture view and the nitty-gritty of creating good audio."  — Booklist"

An interestingly idiosyncratic and personal vision of how to make podcasts." — Ira Glass