Service Update Author Platform – Update

[AgentPete]

Let me give you another running update of what’s happening behind the scenes.

We’re still in beta mode, although it’s a public beta, meaning that everything is now public facing – your blogs, your newsletters, your podcasts, your author page, and so on. The past week has been entirely focused on the podcast feature, which is now very tightly integrated with the “Hear me Read It” button on your blog posts (see screenshot below):

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I think this is going to be a killer feature. Many people now prefer to consume writing as audio, and hearing you – the author – read and talk about your latest article is ideal listening for the daily commute or any other activity (running?) that can be enhanced with a pair of headphones.

Speaking of which – and this is relevant – the Audio Publishers Association's annual survey has found that consumers’ willingness to try AI-narrated audiobooks has dropped from 77% in 2023 to 70% in 2025.

And among dedicated audiobook fans, rejection is near-universal: a 550+ respondent Reddit community survey found over 99% would refuse to pay for an AI-narrated title.

The world is clearly going our way. The Litopia Author Platform has one clear and unambiguous purpose – to help you own your reader. This means building a solid, unbreakable person-to-person connection between you and your reading public, one person at a time.

Yes – person-to-person. Not listener to AI bot.

Anyway, that’s our guiding principle.

The audio aspect has taken far more time than we expected to get right. This is mostly caused by Apple’s own Byzantine technical requirements. I don’t know about other podcast hosting operations, but I’ve taken the view that we must be totally technically compliant right down to the last detail (even if that detail doesn’t really make any sense). This has necessitated a major restructuring of the way in which we serve your audio files (now complete) and a rethink of the way in which we serve your podcast feed (almost complete).

Incidentally, you may be interested to know that YouTube now leads the podcast space with 31% of weekly listeners, followed by Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%). It’s a fiercely-contested market. Your Litopia podcast will be compatible with all of them.

More anon… p.

 

[Sedayne]

Thanks for this, Pete. I love these new audio features.

[Hard to believe 21 people have listened to me narrate a book review in the last 48hrs. Who are these people?]

 

[AgentPete]

Thanks for this, Pete. I love these new audio features.

[Hard to believe 21 people have listened to me narrate a book review in the last 48hrs. Who are these people?]

Yes, I know!

That’s where the newsletter comes in. It’s the only way you can be certain of knowing who they are, or at least knowing their email addresses.

Btw, we’re starting to get some pretty wild visitor numbers now to the main Litopia home page. I’ve set up a (temporary) display that takes Cloudflare’s data and displays in near real-time, here:

Visitors – Litopia

This is just a temp link, I’ll find somewhere else to put this data eventually.

 

[mickleinapickle]

Yes, I know!

That’s where the newsletter comes in. It’s the only way you can be certain of knowing who they are, or at least knowing their email addresses.

Btw, we’re starting to get some pretty wild visitor numbers now to the main Litopia home page. I’ve set up a (temporary) display that takes Cloudflare’s data and displays in near real-time, here:

Visitors – Litopia

This is just a temp link, I’ll find somewhere else to put this data eventually.

126.00k. What the heck does that mean?

 

[Claire G]

Thanks for this, Pete. I love these new audio features.

[Hard to believe 21 people have listened to me narrate a book review in the last 48hrs. Who are these people?]

How do you know this Rachel? Am I missing a feature? xx

 

[Claire G]

Thanks for this, Pete. I love these new audio features.

[Hard to believe 21 people have listened to me narrate a book review in the last 48hrs. Who are these people?]

How do you know this Rachel? Am I missing a feature? xx

 

[AgentPete]

126.00k. What the heck does that mean?

In the same period, 37k of those unique visitors were from bots. So you could subtract that from the total unique visitor count. But even having done that, the stats still look encouraging.

Bots, btw, analyze for that period as below:

 

[Sedayne]

How do you know this Rachel? Am I missing a feature? xx

On the podcast dashboard it tells you how many listens you've had.
If you click on view all by the list of recordings, it gives detailed info for each narration.

 

[mickleinapickle]

In the same period, 37k of those unique visitors were from bots. So you could subtract that from the total unique visitor count. But even having done that, the stats still look encouraging.

Bots, btw, analyze for that period as below:
View attachment 22242

Sorry... I didn't understand what 126.00k meant. Got it now. 126 point zero thousand. Told you I was a bit fick.