Podster Gabrielle Guerra

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Shelf Media Group's digital magazine about podcasts and podcasters.

Buzzing Around Romance.

BY BECKY & LEAH

About the Podcast

The Hosts of Buzzing about Romance love talk about all things in the Romance Book Genre. They chat with the authors we know and love. Yet they also love to share about the new on the scene author. Authors can be Indie or traditionally published. They want the world to know just how amazing the HEA is.

Some of the way they share this love is with their weekly Sunday Podcast, Buzzing about Romance. New Episodes are released every Sunday.

READ THE INTERVIEW ON THE NEXT PAGE.

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Podster is a column for podcast listeners and serves as a curator for the best of known and unknown podcasts.

BUZZING AROUND

ROMANCE BY BECKY BURRIER

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TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF/ SELVES.

BAR: I (Becky Burrier) am a 40 something mom and freelance copy editor by day. I am an avid unapologetic romance reader. I live in Ohio with my HEA (Happily Ever After ) of 23 plus years. We have 2 teenagers (they are great kids). I have always been a reader and lover of books. Many of my fondest memories involve books. I have been reading romance since I was 14 and it has always been my most favorite genre of books.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WITH THE PODCAST?

BAR: Like most podcasters it was an idea I had toyed around with for years. It really started to take form when the announcement of the Bridgerton Netflix Deal. I wanted to be able to talk about that series and share thoughts. Life and kids created easy excuses to not pursue it, so it stayed a pipe dream. When Covid stay at home orders started I became a lot less busy, and a lot of excuses were not there anymore. I had also started to work in the publishing industry mid 2019 and that provided some insight I had not had previously.

My husband and I kicked around the idea of a podcast and how we could do it and what would work. He fully supported me. I was also lucky that he had the knowledge and the background to produce the podcast for me. So, we just dove in. It was very much a trial by fire.

Buzzing about Romance like anything had an evolution. We started under another name, Drinks with the Bees and we stumbled a lot. We had some issues finding footing and figuring out what worked as we moved forward. What kind of episodes we wanted to create but also what we wanted out of the podcast.

My original co-host had some life changes, so we parted ways. This was the time where I could look at where we had been and what I wanted going forward.

I felt like I had learned a lot in that 6 months and had a much clearer idea as to what I wanted the podcast to look like. I wanted to make sure the name reflected what we were talking about. I wanted it to be approachable for anyone. So before relaunching under the new name I really thought about what kind of co-hosts I wanted and what was important to me in the whole thing.

I roped Leah into becoming my co-host.

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Leah was one of my original supporters and after chatting and “interviewing” a couple of different people Leah and I just clicked and Buzzing about Romance was born.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PODCAST?

BAR: Our podcast is for the Romance Book Reader. We want to share the amazing stories of Romance and the people who write them. Our whole goal is to help people find their next favorite romance and author. If we go a week and have not encouraged you to add at least one book to your TBR (To be Read) we aren’t doing our job.

We are very real and awkward. When we have authors on, we fangirl over them. We are a bit nerdy when it comes to talking about books. We love the science of romance, the tropes and nuances that come with each story. We also love that they are so sex positive, and everyone deserves an HEA. With our podcast we also wanted to create a community of romance readers. One thing we often hear and have experienced ourselves is that not many of us have friends IRL that read romance. And because Romance books are kind of given a bad rap, which is crap because they are the best, many people don’t talk IRL about reading them.

WHAT’S THE MOST CHALLENGING AND MOST SATISFYING PART OF RUNNING A PODCAST?

BAR: The most challenging thing about podcasting is at times it is herding cats. You have so many moving parts and pieces you are always afraid you are missing something. Buzzing about Romance is a 100% indie, so we do all the marketing ourselves and it is not my favorite part. It has been mostly trial and error to figure out what works for us. I don’t want to chase the algorithm or even the trends. I want this to be authentic and feel like friends chatting books.

Another challenge is trying to stay relevant and that you are meeting your listeners needs. That we are up on current trends and topics in the book world but also what books and kind of books people are reading. I don’t want to talk into a vacuum. I want to connect with the listener on some level. Be it a mutual love of a trope or excitement for an anticipated read.

Most satisfying…. This is easy…. connections are the BEST part of Podcasting. That comes in so many

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different forms. It can be connecting over the love of a story, or we share a favorite author or sub-genre. Our community is close, and our listeners have let us into their lives, we share the joy, struggles and sorrows, all the while helping you find your next 5 star read. It is also connecting with our favorite authors. Hearing about their upcoming projects and the excitement they have for their stories.

HOW DID YOU GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT YOUR PODCAST IN THE BEGINNING, AND HOW HAVE YOU GROWN YOUR AUDIENCE?

BAR: We used social media to our benefit. Instagram is where we started. In the book world on different social media platforms there are niches. I joined “Bookstagram” in October of 2019. Once we started the podcast in July 2020, we would share it on Instagram. We do have a small following on “Booktok”.

Our audience grows mostly from word of mouth or when we feature an author, and they share the podcast with their readers. We realize we are a pretty niche podcast, and our growth has been slow and steady.

WHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE EPISODES?

BAR: This is such a hard question. We have interviewed some amazing authors and had some really great discussions. I think the episode that is my most favorite is our annual Hockey Book Boyfriend draft. One of the founding types of books we read is Hockey Romance. It is really one of the things that united our community. For the last two years one of our podcast contributors Heather and I go head to head building a hockey team from our favorite hockey reads. We release this episode in February around the NHL All Star Game since they are the all stars of our book shelves!

WHAT IS YOUR UPLOADING SCHEDULE, AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE WORST BESTSELLERS IN THE UPCOMING MONTHS?

BAR: We are super chaotic and we always have fun events and stuff going on.

For the summer months we will still have our regular Sunday Episodes every week. These are usually about 60-75 mins long. Sometimes we have author spotlights, but we also are doing Trope Talks, and what we call our list episodes. List episodes are

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where we battle or draft our favorite books against some of our contributors.

For June and July, we will drop one Quick Shot of Romance Episode a Week, typically we do 2 a week. Quick Shots of Romance are our 20 min or less book review episodes. We release these as traditional podcast and on our YouTube channel. These will drop on Thursdays.

We are hosting our Second Annual Summer Reading Challenge. It involves over 35 authors and over the course of the summer will be giving away signed paperbacks and swag. We did this last summer, and it was so much fun!

Once a month we host a Book Club. We lovingly call it Drunk Book Club. We are usually joined by the author of our selected title. (You can find details on our website about this).

We also have some special Happy Hour Livestreams on YouTube coming up. These are live author interviews where authors join us to promote their latest release and interact with the book community. We have authors Priscila Oliveras, Lucy Score and Sawyer Bennett scheduled so far. We will close out summer with our National Read a Book Day Read-a-thon Livestream on Youtube on September 5th. Last year we livestreamed for 8.5 hrs with 14 different romance authors. They came on and did a short reading from either their WIP (Work in progress) or a current release. It was such a fun event, and we are looking forward to it again this year. We are working on finalizing our lineup.

WHERE CAN LISTENERS FIND BUZZING ABOUT ROMANCE ?

https://www.instagram.com/ buzzingaboutromance

https://twitter.com/buzzingromance

https://www.tiktok.com/@ buzzingaboutromance

https://www.facebook.com/ buzzingaboutromance

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ thehivedrinks

https://www.patreon.com/ bookcaseandcoffee

https://tinyurl.com/BooksonYoutube