Podcast to article

What podcast to article is

Podcast to article is the rewriting of one episode into one written piece that reads as though it was always meant to be read. You send the audio. You get back an article with a structure, an argument and an ending, none of which existed in the recording, because conversations do not have those things.

A pasted transcript is not an article. This needs saying twice for podcasts, because the temptation is strongest here: the file already exists, it is long, and it contains every word. But two people talking for fifty minutes produce interruptions, half-finished points, three false starts on the same idea and a ten-minute stretch about something else entirely. Published as text it reads as a recording of two people talking, which is exactly what it is. If a readable record is all you actually want, an edited transcript does that job honestly and costs less.

When you need one

You need this when an episode contains something genuinely useful that nobody will listen to an hour to reach. A guest explained a process properly. A customer described a problem in the words your buyers use. The host finally said the thing the business has been trying to say on its website for two years.

The second case is a show with a back catalogue and no written pages. Thirty episodes and thirty audio players is thirty pages that can never be skimmed, quoted or found by somebody reading. Six of those episodes are probably worth articles; the other twenty-four are not, and I will say which.

You do not need this for every episode. Most shows need show notes per episode and an article only occasionally. And if the recording is a prepared talk with slides rather than a conversation, the work is lighter and the right buy is video to article.

What I need and how the rewrite works

The input is one audio or video file of twenty to ninety minutes, the guest's name and title spelt correctly, and a note of anything that must not be published. The rewrite is heavier than for a talk, because there is no spine to inherit. The structure has to be imposed.

• Finding the argument. An episode usually contains one good answer buried under the conversation that surrounded it. The article is built around that, and the rest goes.
• Collapsing two voices into one. Question-and-answer format is kept only where the exchange itself is the point. Otherwise both speakers become prose, with the guest quoted directly where their own words beat a paraphrase.
• Cutting the digressions. The tangent about hockey, the technical problem at minute six, the three minutes of catching up before the useful part started.
• Filling the gaps. Things both speakers knew and never explained, because they were talking to each other. A reader arriving cold needs the definition said aloud.
• Words people search for. Titles and headings written in the plain language a buyer would type, rather than the in-joke the episode was named after.

What you get

The article. A thousand to sixteen hundred words, headed and subheaded, in an editable file and as clean HTML. Attributed properly to the host and the guest, and readable by somebody who never presses play.

A quote set. Six to ten sentences the guest actually said, verbatim, with timestamps. Useful for the page, for posts, and for the guest to share.

The working transcript. The edited transcript the article was cut from, delivered alongside it.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Halifax accounting firm runs a monthly show for small business owners. Episode nineteen is a fifty-two-minute conversation with a bookkeeper about what happens when a company is late filing. The useful part runs from minute fourteen to minute thirty-one. The first fourteen minutes are a catch-up, and the last twenty are about software neither speaker likes.

Rewritten, it becomes a twelve-hundred-word article on what a business should do in the week it realises a filing is overdue, structured as the five steps the bookkeeper described but never numbered. Three of her sentences are quoted directly because they are better than any paraphrase. The hockey tangent is gone. The firm publishes it, links the episode underneath it for anybody who wants the full conversation, and finds the page is the one people arrive on when they have the problem at eleven at night. The episode had eighty-one listens; the article does not need anybody to press play.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which episodes, what the show is for, and where the articles will be published. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per episode, agreed before anything starts, with a batch price if there is a back catalogue.
3. The files. You send the audio and the spelling list. If there are many episodes, I listen through and say which six are worth articles.
4. The work. Transcribe, edit, then rewrite. Six to eight working days for one episode, which is longer than a talk because the structure has to be built.
5. Your review. One round of changes, and the guest sees the piece before it goes up if they are quoted.
6. Delivery. Article, quote set and transcript, in one folder.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the length of the episode, the sound quality, how many speakers there are and whether it is one episode or a catalogue. A standing arrangement that turns one episode a month into an article is priced per episode and stated in writing. The pricing page sets out the four ways of working, and your number is fixed before anything begins.

What happens next

People usually start with one episode, see what the written version does, and then pick the next five. The article itself splits neatly into a fortnight of posts once it exists. If the episode was a customer talking about working with you, the more valuable output is a case study rather than an article, and that is a different job. And if the show needs a shape so that future episodes are worth rewriting, that starts with an episode outline. One article from one episode is finished work on its own.