I also love how audio fiction has always been a highly experimental medium, and likely always will be.
Financially, it has a low barrier for entry, a low point of diminishing returns, and a relatively small potential market. It's basically impervious to being taken over by giant studios - even the "big" networks like RQ would be considered indie in the film or game dev industries. With the exception of the BBC, they tend to dip their toes into audio fiction, figure out quickly that, although it's beloved by its fans, there isn't that kind of money in it, and proceed to leave us alone forever.
Then there's the fact that it propagates largely by word of mouth. Audio dramas owe everything to obsessive nerds forcing nearly everyone they know to listen to that podcast they just discovered.
So it's more about the thing being actually good, plus a decent amount of luck and persistence.
There's no optimally marketable success formula being relentlessly enforced by gatekeeping jellybean-counters because they don't exist here. So people make whatever they want. So it draws people to it who are looking for something different. And the cycle feeds itself, and the medium gets weirder (in a good way).
It may very well ALWAYS remain the wild west of storytelling.
So listeners tell your friends about that podcast!
And creators, make the weird thing! There are no rules! It can be an hour long or Breaker Whiskey short, or Re:Dracula all over the place length. It can be another tape recorder framing or another voicemail framing or basically just an audiobook. It can be any genre or blend of genres. This creative space gives us the opportunity to be our own target audience in a way rarely found elsewhere.
If you enjoy the thing you're making, odds are somone else out there will enjoy it too. I've already found this to be true, and my time as an audio fiction creator is still just beginning.
Peace and love on every planet, y'all!
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