Today marks the 500th episode of podictionary; a milestone of some sort.  My family gave me a cake to celebrate.

Mark Blevis is a podcasting evangelist and interviewed me for the April 20, 2007 episode of the Canadian Podcast Buffet. You can hear the interview starting at about the 25 minute mark. Dopey me, I never actually mentioned the name of the book.

As one of the earliest people to pick up on podictionary, and a generous supporter ever since, I deeply appreciated Dave’s book endorsement on behalf of The Word Nerds.

Dave said:

For over two years Charles Hodgson has wittily dissected the English language on Podictionary. Now Podictionary’s voice comes to print in Carnal Knowledge. This book is a must for anyone who speaks—or has a body.

I first encountered Erin McKean when I was writing up my book proposal for Carnal Knowledge (then called Body Words, maybe back in 2003?).  She was editor of the quarterly Verbatum.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized she was also Editor in Chief for The New Oxford American Dictionary.  I was over the moon when she offered to give my book a blurb.

She said:

A near-perfect body of work that will not only entertain your brain but tickle your funny bone, too.

I tip my hat (again) to Richard Lederer who was kind enough to give me Sandy Goroff’s name when I was looking for a publicist.  In Richard’s words she is a high-powered specialist in the area of word-books & broadcasts.  Sandy is now working with me and her contact info can be found here.

Until now I have not posted transcripts of the podictionary podcast, thinking that all that writing I’ve been doing (almost 200,000 words) might be worth something some day.  But two things made me change my mind.

The number of people who download my podcast via iTunes is in the thousands, but the people who visit my website is only in the hundreds (on a good day).  By posting the transcripts I hope to attract search engine traffic (they operate on text, mostly ignoring audio files).

As important is the fact that my potential audience who might read the podictionary episodes  via web or email is likely considerably larger than those who have downloaded and installed iTunes software.

Thus as of April 9, 2007 http://www.podictionary.com has gone textual.

The book’s official publication date will be August 9th 2007 although I’m told that St. Martin’s Press begins shipping to bookstores July 19th so it may actually be available before August 9th.  The book’s list price is to be $14.95 US, but I see it is already being offered at reduced prices at the online booksellers. 

The ISBN is  0-312-37121-7 

Because this book is softcover it’s a Griffin Original.