Insufficient Funds: Scott Sigler

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

With new technology comes new forms of distribution and ways to get your name out there. We've seen this a lot in the musical field with everything from smaller bands trying to get attention to big name acts like Radiohead just experimenting. But author Scott Sigler's model might be the first I've heard of this sort of experimentation with tech when it comes to literature.

When I started delivering newspapers, I quickly became invested in audiobooks as a means for keeping my sanity when my music collection got boring. Have you ever looked at the price tag on an audiobook lately? I mean, I guess $20 to $30, or even more, is an understandable price when you think of the hours of audio you're getting, but when you think about the actual book cost it doesn't make much sense to punish those with limited time that would like to listen instead.

Recently, though, I was listening to The Nerdist Podcast and heard that Scott Sigler has been releasing all of his audiobooks as free podcasts for most of his career. I hadn't heard of him before, but if something is free I'll check it out. I downloaded all of his novel Infected and started it up. At first I thought it's "bro" sort of attitude was going to make me turn it off before finishing, but I soon got swept up in the, almost summer blockbuster-like, story. Just be warned, if Infected is any indication, Sigler enjoys torturing the reader with descriptions of some pretty gruesome scenes in great detail, almost making you as uncomfortable as he's made his characters. Still, it manages to really invest you in the characters and their situations.

All in all, I really like the business model he has plotted out for himself. I enjoyed Infected enough that I've already downloaded all of it's sequel, Contagious, and provided that is equally entertaining I will probably try out more. Should I find myself in a book store, I will most likely purchase his stuff as well. Once you're a fan, you're willing to fork over the cash, and that is something Scott Sigler has staked his entire career on.

You can find an iTunes feed of his most recent "podiobook" releases (released in chunks of a couple chapters at a time) here, or just search for Scott Sigler to find the individual books collected together. You can also get them from Podiobooks.com, or listen on his site, scottsigler.com.