Inside Macmillan’s 2018 podcast strategy

If you run a hit podcast, you might have a couple avenues open to your for monetization. You could host live events and charge admissions, like what we’ve seen with Slate’s Political Gabfest and Pod Save America. You could, like Gimlet Media, launch a membership program and charge $60 a year for free tshirts, exclusive bonus content, and access to a private slack channel. Or you might turn to running sponsored ads within your podcasts, an approach that generated $220 million for podcasts in 2017.

But Macmillan’s podcast network is more diversified than most. The book publisher has been producing podcasts since 2007, and in addition to selling host-read sponsorships, it’s also generated revenue from running programmatic ads on its website. But what’s perhaps most interesting is how it’s leveraged podcasts to elevate the brands of its authors in order to sell more books and audiobooks.

I recently sat down and interviewed Kathy Doyle, vice president of podcasting at Macmillan, about the publisher’s strategy heading into 2018 as it expands its podcast lineup.