It's a common assumption. You see people walking down the street, wearing earphones leading to an iPod or another type of MP3 player, and you think they're listening to their favourite music.

That might not be the case.

They could be listening to a podcast.

"A pod-what?" you might ask.

The term podcast is most commonly thought to be derived from the words iPod (Apple's popular portable listening device) and broadcast -- although once you look into what podcasting is, you'll see it's nothing like a broadcast.

Radio stations transmit a generic flavour of content to a wide audience, attempting to capture and please a large demographic. Podcasts are quite often very focused.

There are thousands of podcasts available on specialized topics. They're as varied as the subject matter available. Music. Entertainment. Information. Public services. Education.

But there's also a specific niche of podcasts starting to capture attention:

Podcast novels or podiobooks.

Podiobooks are similar to the unabridged audio versions of books that have long been available on cassette and CD, except they are often recorded by the authors themselves and produced chapter by chapter via free RSS feeds on the Internet.

Listeners can subscribe to them through a variety of different "podcatching" applications like iTunes.

Fantasy author Tee Morris was one of the first authors to prove that giving your novel away for free in audio format could actually boost the sales of a book.

Morris, who co-authored a fantasy novel MOREVI: The Chronicles Of Rafe & Askana with Lisa Lee in 2002, created a podcast of the novel in 2005, making it the first book podcast in its entirety. This not only resulted in a peak in sales for MOREVI three years after its initial release, but also boosted online presales for the sequel, Legacy Of MOREVI.

That experience led Tee Morris and Evo Terra (authors of Podcasting For Dummies, an introduction to the world of podcasting with step-by-step assistance for creating your own podcasts) to set up a website called Podiobooks.com.

This entirely free web service has allowed hundreds of authors to get their work out to the masses.

Of course, authors haven't just used podcasting and podcast novels as a way of getting their published novels noticed -- many of them have used podcasting to get discovered by traditional publishers.

The first author to release a podcast-only novel (a novel that had not been published in print form) was Scott Sigler.

Sigler, who'd been writing science-fiction horror thrillers for 15 years, had faced repeated rejection from major publishers who refused to believe his unique cross-genre thrillers would sell. Refusing to quit, Sigler released Earthcore in 2005.

Available as a free downloadable 22-episode podcast, Earthcore first attracted a few hundred listeners. That audience quickly grew to several thousand; and by the time Sigler posted two followup novels (Ancestor and The Rookie) his fan base had grown to 30,000.

The forward-thinking Canadian publisher Dragon Moon Press quickly acquired rights to these novels by Sigler, helping him break into print.

And on April 1, Sigler's novel Infected was launched in hardcover. In keeping with Sigler's style, Infected is also being released in segments as a completely free podcast at scottsigler.com.

Similarly, Canadian author (and McMaster University alumnus) Terry Fallis pitched his novel The Best Laid Plans to traditional publishers as well as agents but couldn't get anyone's attention.

Determined not to continue banging his head on the locked doors of the publishing world, Fallis released 20 episodes of his novel via podcast on his own website (terryfallis.com) as well as through Podiobooks.com.

Shortly after, Fallis self-published his novel through iUniverse and started to see some success in having various regional bookstores carry his novel.

In Hamilton, Bryan Prince Bookseller and Titles bookstore at McMaster University were among the first to recognize the novel as one customers were likely to enjoy.

With his podcast, Fallis was surprised to find that his satire about Canadian politics had a worldwide appeal. Fans from Europe and Australia raved about it, and the podcast was aired on prime time European satellite radio in November 2007.

The buzz about The Best Laid Plans grew significantly in March 2008 when it was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Fallis managed to land an agent within a week of that announcement. Several weeks later, when he won the $10,000 Leacock award, he also landed a deal with Douglas Gibson books, who will be releasing his novel this fall.

Podcast novels have proven their worth. Keep your ears open for more interesting news. Better yet, give one a listen.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre is a Hamilton writer and book operations manager at the McMaster University bookstore.

How to listen to a podcast novel

Finding an RSS feed or "Subscribe to this podcast" link is a simple way of downloading a podcast novel. The most popular application to subscribe with is iTunes. You don't need an iPod to download and use iTunes for free. Any computer or portable MP3 player will play the audio files.

For illustrative purposes of how to listen to a podcast online or manually download the files, the example used here is The Best Laid Plans podcast novel by Terry Fallis.

If you go to terryfallis.com you can find a "subscribe" and RSS link. However, for simplicity, we'll be following directions from Podiobooks.com, a great online source of free podcast novels.

* Open up your Internet browser and type the following into the address box:

podiobooks.com/title/the-best-laid-plans

* To easily sample the Prologue, click on the "Play" button conveniently located near the book cover picture and description.

* To manually sample or download the Prologue (or any of the other chapters), scroll down until you find the desired "Chapter" and click on the "Title" link. Your Internet browser will go to the address below, open up QuickTime and automatically start streaming the audio through your computer so you can listen to it live.

www.podiobooks.com/sample/50702/PB-BestLaidPlans-01.mp3

* If you'd rather manually download the MP3 to your computer so you can listen to it at your leisure, on your computer or MP3 player, right- click the Title link mentioned above and select the "Save Link As" option. A window will open up asking where you'd like to download the file to on your computer. Double-click that link, and your computer will open up your audio player of choice.

-- MLF