Podcast interviews, and how to get on one
Podcasts are the most underrated channel available to a nonfiction author and a useful one for a novelist. The reason is arithmetic. A social post buys you about a second of attention, an ad buys you less, and an interview buys you thirty or forty minutes of someone's undivided time while they drive or walk the dog. Nothing else free comes close.
The second reason is borrowed trust. A listener has chosen that host and keeps coming back. When the host introduces you, some of that transfers, and you start the conversation as a person worth listening to rather than a stranger with something to sell.
Here is the honest qualifier. This works reliably for nonfiction, where you are the expert and the book is the subject, and unevenly for fiction, where it works only when the subject of the novel or the story of how you wrote it is a hook in its own right. A historical novelist who spent two years on nineteenth-century whaling has a show to go on. A novelist whose only pitch is that the novel exists does not.
How to actually get booked
Pitch the show's subject, not your book. This is the whole thing, and almost every pitch that fails gets it backward. A host does not need a guest; a host needs an episode. They have a slot to fill every week and a standing problem of finding someone interesting to fill it with. Arrive with the episode already half-formed and you are solving their problem. Arrive with "I have written a book and would like to promote it" and you are asking them to solve yours.
Find shows by subject, not by searching for book podcasts. Shows about books are a small category and mostly already booked. The shows you want are about the thing your book touches: the period, the profession, the illness, the region, the hobby, the industry. A book about grief belongs on a therapy show. A thriller set on a fishing fleet belongs on a show about commercial fishing.
Small and specific beats big and general. A small show whose listeners all care about your exact subject will sell more books than a far larger general one, because the small show's audience is already your readership. Big shows also say no to almost everyone, and small ones answer their own email.
Listen to two episodes first. You will pitch better, you will not suggest something they covered last month, and it takes an hour.
What a pitch contains
Keep it short enough to read on a phone.
The show's name, spelled right, and one specific thing from an episode you actually heard. This is the line that separates you from the mass emails, and hosts can tell instantly.
One line on why their listeners specifically. Not why you are interesting. Why this audience would want this conversation.
Two or three concrete things you can talk about. Phrase them as segments, near enough to episode titles that the host can picture the recording. Specific beats broad every time: not "the research process" but "what ships' logs from 1840 get wrong about the weather."
A link to something that shows you can speak. Another interview, a talk, a recorded reading, anything. A host's real fear is booking someone who gives four-word answers for forty minutes. Thirty seconds of audio removes that fear.
A one-line bio and your book's title. At the bottom, where it belongs.
In the tools. Mockups render your real print wrap as a physical book and the Social Pack makes matching stills from the same cover, which is what a host needs for the episode artwork and what you attach to the pitch. Start a book → · about the tools
What to prepare
Three stories you can tell well. Not talking points — stories, with a beginning and an ending, that run two or three minutes. Interviews are carried by specifics, and the guests who get invited back are the ones who answer a question with a scene rather than a summary.
A twenty-second answer to "what's the book about." You will be asked this on every single show, usually first. If it takes you ninety seconds and three false starts, the episode opens badly. Write it, say it out loud until it stops sounding written, and stop at twenty seconds.
One place to send people. A single memorable destination, said slowly, ideally your own site or newsletter. Nobody types a long link while driving, and nobody remembers a tracking URL at all. Say the same short thing on every show so it accumulates. See The author website, reduced to what it needs.
The equipment reality
A quiet room and a decent microphone matter more than a camera. Most shows publish audio, and the one thing a host cannot fix afterward is bad sound.
The laptop's built-in microphone puts you in a room with an echo; a speakerphone puts you at the bottom of a well. A basic USB microphone is the cheapest improvement available to you, and any soft room — carpet, curtains, clothes, not a kitchen — does the rest. Wired headphones stop your own voice bleeding back into the recording.
Hosts do decline guests who sound bad, and they rarely say that is why.
Afterward
The episode is an asset, not an event. It keeps working: link it from your site, add it to your press kit, and mention it when you pitch the next show, because one booking makes the next easier. See The press kit nobody asks for until they do.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: The press kit nobody asks for until they do · More: Events, signings and selling books in person · Should you make an audiobook? · Promotion after launch week