I’ve been a big fan of Scott Sigler ever since I heard the podcast of his first book Earthcore. Sigler’s style is simple, pure entertainment through ultra violent sci-fi. That alone is enough to interest me, but what makes Sigler unique is his approach in the industry. Sigler releases each of his books as a free podcast audio book. Earthcore, the worlds first podcast-only novel, quickly gained popularity driving over 10,000 subscriptions by the end. Sigler continued to grow his fan base as he released new novels, Ancestor, Infection, The Rookie, and Nocturnal which is still in progress.

The podcast model of releasing a few chapters a week as episodes, leaving the listener on constant cliffhangers. Sigler’s tag line summed it up best: “You can’t peek at the end”. As the Earthcore podcast was well underway fans, began calling it Earthcrack citing their need for more. Sigler responded by referring to his fans as “Junkies”, a term of endearment he uses to this day.

This hard core fan base has been the driving force of Sigler’s popularity. It’s rare today for people to become infatuated with authors. Many people compare Sigler to Stephen King for that reason. But there’s something different amongst Sigler junkies, there’s a community. That’s something you don’t see out of the mass publishing industry.

The best example of this community at work happened just last year, on April first. Sigler requested that all of his fans buy his new book, Ancestor, from Amazon.com on the same day. The idea was to drive Ancestor to the top of the Amazon charts, if only for that day. Not only did it work amazingly well (he was number 1 in sci-fi and horror for days and number 7 overall), but it lead to his first deal with a major publisher.

The power of instant fan feedback has shaped Siglers style, and is shaping the industry as well. Infection, the podcast, was released in 2006 as a complete story. When Sigler signed with Crown Publishing to print Infection he rewrote large portions of the book, working directly from fan feedback. The final work, now named Infected, is in many ways a different story. This kind of living novel I believe is the future of written storytelling.

So I was a good Junkie and I went to the Borders on April first to buy Infected. I’m looking forward to seeing what changes were made. I might even read this time, even though Sigler is releasing the revised story as a podcast as well. I must warn you, this book is not for the squeamish. I won’t ruin it for you, but let’s just say the phrase “Save Perry’s Balls” will haunt me forever. You’ll have to read/listen to see what I’m talking about.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.