How To Make New Fans Love Your Older Fiction Podcast

I've been digging into the fiction podcast space for the last few days now as I get The End—a new short-form newsletter that fills a void in fiction podcast newsletters by highlighting COMPLETE shows (or seasons)—up and running!

And I've made a few observations.

OK, one primary observation. And here it is:

Many fiction podcasts aren't making it easy for new listeners to listen in the proper—intended by you, the creator—order.

The good news? It's an easy** problem to fix with some minor tweaks you can make in your media host dashboard. ??

For about five years or so, most podcast media hosting companies have allowed you to mark your episodes with a:

• ?season number
• episode number

And many—if not most—of you have been marking your episodes with them. Well done!

But there's another setting that a lot of you haven't changed. A setting that is perfectly designed for fiction podcasts that are designed to be listened to in serial order, from the beginning of a season or series.

Set it right, and your new listeners will love you! ??

Most podcasts are "episodic," and most podcast apps are set to present the most recent episode first.

But that sucks when you're 14 episodes into a 36-episode fiction podcast, right?

The best fiction experience is to listen to the *first* episode. Not the most recent! ??

Here's how to quickly fix that!

1. Log into your hosting provider and navigate to the dashboard, feed settings, show settings, or something like that. Wherever you'd change the title of your show, adjust your description, or upload new cover art for the show.
2. When you get there, look for something called SHOW TYPE or maybe FEED TYPE that has a set value of EPISODIC. Pull down the dropdown selector or flip the radio button to SERIAL. Save the page, and let the magic happen! ??

Now, with seasons/episodes tagged and the show type properly set, your fiction podcast will look fabulous in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music Podcasts, and more.

And by fabulous, I mean your first episode displays first. Woot! ??

BUT IT GETS BETTER! ??

With the new iOS16 (the latest iPhone operating system), Apple made some very smart tweaks. You were probably smart enough to tag your "intro" episode as a TRAILER. And you've probably tagged some "extra" episodes as BONUS types.

Apple now rewards you for hard work! ?[...]

Let's say you do a BONUS behind-the-scenes episode after each normal episode.

If both of those episodes have the same season/episode number, they'll be presented in the right order, so your listeners experience them sequentially as intended.[...]

Or maybe your BONUS episodes aren't tied to an episode. Cool! Leave the episode number off and it'll be at the bottom of the list of FULL episodes regardless of when you released the bonus!

No getting in the way of an excellent listening experience.

And there's an edge case I'd love someone to use:

If you mark TRAILER episodes with an episode number, they'll play before the full episode! This could be handy for anthologies that do several different multi-part miniseries inside a season, I guess? ??

Almost every hosting platform will easily let you make these changes, fiction podcasters. All but one, that is. Hence my "easy**" notation at the top of this thread.

Anchor does not support serial podcasts.

If you're on Anchor, you can't take full advantage. Sorry. ??

But all hope isn't lost, and it's very easy to move to a host—even another free host like https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/redcircle-inc/—that does support serial podcasts like the one you make.

Make the switch. Your new listeners will love you!

(If you need help, I'll walk you through it, gratis!) ??

Just doing my part to give back to fabulous fiction podcasters like you.

Oh, and do check out The End, And let me know when your series or season is going to be complete so I can help spread the word.

Cheers!

https://theend.fyi