No, of course you don’t. But what I’m getting at, albeit circuitously, is that I always thought of reading as an activity one performs with one’s eyes. I’ve since learned that doesn’t have to be the case. Plenty of us get as much or more pleasure out of a book by reading it with our ears.
I, alas, am not geared that way. I absorb verbal information far more effectively through my eyes than my ears. When I try to listen to an audiobook, my attention flags and my mind wanders. If I’m driving, it’s a distraction. If I’m safe at home, it’s a nuisance.
And yet I’m a huge fan of audiobooks as a medium. I know people who never found reading enjoyable until they discovered audio; it opened the entire world of fiction to them. And I know others, lifelong readers, who’ve found that listening to the narration of a fine vocal artist adds a whole new dimension to a novel.
So I’m all for it. I want my books to be read. I don’t care if they reach you through your eyes or your ears or the soles of your feet. If they’re a source of pleasure for you, I’m delighted.
Over the years I’ve narrated a number of my own books. I welcomed the opportunity, and enjoyed the work, but much of it was back in the bad old days of abridged audio. That’s what my publishers—Penguin, Harper Audio—wanted to publish. I always felt abridgements were an abomination, and there came a time when I insisted on a clause in my book contracts enjoining the publisher from bringing out or licensing an abridgement.
It hasn’t taken long, I’m happy to say, for unabridged audiobooks to become the industry’s standard. A remarkable number of my books have been given voice by some of the most accomplished narrators in the game, and three of the medium’s leading audio publishers—Recorded Books, AudioGo, and Dreamscape—have kept things moving. If you want to own a physical copy of an audiobook, in cassette or CD form, you can check the publishers’ websites, where audiobook rental is often an alternative to outright purchase.
Increasingly, however, the audiobook market seems to be moving to downloads; rather than pay for a physical book, you can simply download an MP3 file for play on the device of your choice. Audible is the leader in this area, and the links that follow are all to the Audible website, where all of the following titles are presently available. They have various special promotions, including this one, which gives you a free audiobook and a free trial membership.
Here are the Audible links. The 10-book Bernie Rhodenbarr series is complete, but you’ll notice several gaps in the Matthew Scudder saga, and both Keller and Chip Harrison are missing a book each. Tell you what—if you make it all the way to the end of the list, I’ll tell you the story about the recording session that soured me on abridged audio forever.
(Oh, sure, you could scroll down and skip the list and go straight to the Extremely Amusing Anecdote. But when you look in the mirror, is that the kind of person you want looking back at you? The kind that would skip the list? No, I didn’t think so…)
THE MATTHEW SCUDDER NOVELS
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE
IN THE MIDST OF DEATH
A STAB IN THE DARK
WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES
A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES
EVEN THE WICKED
EVERYBODY DIES
HOPE TO DIE
ALL THE FLOWERS ARE DYING
A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF
KELLER’S GREATEST HITS
HIT MAN
HIT PARADE
HIT AND RUN
THE BERNIE RHODENBARR MYSTERIES
BURGLARS CAN’T CHOOSERS
THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET
THE BURGLAR WHO LIKED TO QUOTE KIPLING
THE BURGLAR WHO STUDIED SPINOZA
THE BURGLAR WHO PAINTED LIKE MONDRIAN
THE BURGLAR WHO TRADED TED WILLIAMS
THE BURGLAR WHO THOUGHT HE WAS BOGART
THE BURGLAR IN THE LIBRARY
THE BURGLAR IN THE RYE
THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL
THE AFFAIRS OF CHIP HARRISON
NO SCORE
CHIP HARRISON SCORES AGAIN
MAKE OUT WITH MURDER
NON-SERIES NOVELS
AFTER THE FIRST DEATH
ARIEL
COWARD’S KISS
DEADLY HONEYMOON
A DIET OF TREACLE
GETTING OFF
THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART
GRIFTER’S GAME
KILLING CASTRO
LUCKY AT CARDS
NOT COMIN’ HOME TO YOU
RANDOM WALK
SMALL TOWN
THE SPECIALISTS
SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS
THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
YOU COULD CALL IT MURDER
BOOKS FOR WRITERS
TELLING LIES FOR FUN & PROFIT: A Manual for Fiction Writers
As noted, there are gaps. The Evan Tanner books were all available in audio once, but seem to have gone out of print. You may be able to find them in the aftermarket via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. At least one of the missing Scudder titles is due for release next month, and the missing Chip Harrison is on its way.
BUT I PROMISED YOU A STORY…
It was around fifteen years ago, and I was set to narrate an audio abridgement of one of the Burglar books for Penguin Audio. A few days before the recording session, Penguin sent out two copies of the abridgement, one to me and one to a fellow named Steve, who’d be directing the recording session and working the controls. He read it through; I didn’t feel the need, as I was as familiar with the material as I needed to be.
Steve and I had worked together before, and we got right to it, I in a more-or-less soundproof booth, he on the other side of the window. The process is demanding; if you don’t stay entirely in the moment, the performance goes flat as th energy drains out of it. After two or three hours, we were both ready for a lunch break. He called the deli downstairs, and while we were eating our sandwiches, he had a question.
“Larry,” he said, “Bernie seems like a regular guy, right?”
“Uh, right.”
“And Carolyn. She’s bright and perky, and I gather she’s attractive, too.”
“Right, Steve.”
“So I don’t get it. They’re together all the time, so how come he never puts the moves on her?”
“Um,” I said. “Did they manage to edit out the fact that she’s gay?”
His jaw fell. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Carolyn is gay?”
Oh dear. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that her lesbian nature would have been a sufficiently salient fact about Carolyn Kaiser to have made the cut. But evidently the artful surgeon who’d trimmed the book to a third of its original length hadn’t considered her sexual identity all that important. And I suppose readers already familiar with the series (and thus with Carolyn) wouldn’t have noticed the omission.
But a first time listener would be, well, confused. Darn it all, when are these cute and charming kids gonna duck behind a bush and get something going?
Yeah, right. Bernie and Carolyn, and a host of other characters, are eager to make your acquaintance in UNabridged audio. I hope you enjoy their company.
Thanks for listening!
LB
Bruce Coville, a well-known YA author, runs an audiobook operation called FullCast Audio. They use different voice actors for different characters, and often try to use the author for the narrative voice. All their recordings are unabridged, except for tags like “he said” made unnecessary by the multi-voice format.
Two of my own books have been done by Blackstone Audio and one by Tantor, and I’ve been quite happy with the results.
Thanks, Theofloinn. I was just now remembering a dear man named Irwin Gonshak, a fellow member of Writers Guild of America East and a tireless and passionate proponent of radio drama. While I’d be surprised if radio drama ever stages the comeback he’d hoped for (although with satellite radio I suppose it’s no longer out of the question) I think Irwin might see his dream realized in the form of radio-style drama for the audiobook market.
Speaking of radio drama, do you know John Dunning? He taught the first novel-writing class I ever took, when I was living in the Denver area. Great class. He’s the go-to guy as it were on old-time radio and wrote an excellent novel in the setting of live dramatic radio: TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME. He graciously allowed me to use the core idea of a book he was planning but eventually dropped, which became a finalist for the Hugo Award for best SF novelette. So I have fond memories of him.
(I also avidly read your columns in Writers Digest back in the day, and have on my shelf TELLING LIES and WRITING THE NOVEL, the latter which I used here.
There is a Sirius-XM satellite channel that runs old-time radio episodes. I sometimes listen to how audio drama differs from visual and written drama.
“I absorb verbal information far more effectively through my eyes than my ears. When I try to listen to an audiobook, my attention flags and my mind wanders.”
I am geared the same way. I believe it’s because my creative writing mind is constantly churning and awaiting the next moment my muse beckons my characters to speak.
I love that audio books are available for people, but I can’t successfully listen to them myself. I did a book signing at Morehead State (my alma mater) in 2007. A student walked into the bookstore with my book in hand and went to the sales desk. A minute later he came to the table for me to sign it. I asked if he had enjoyed reading it, and he told me that his mother was reading it to him. He was legally blind! I never suspected it because he didn’t have a cane, a seeing-eye dog, and got around wonderfully. He said that he could only see bright colors and outlines of objects.
As an Indie author, not having my books in audio is a handicap, but I’m not sure which companies would be best to hire for such projects. Any suggestions?
I don’t, Leonard, and it’s a very good question. Google presents a number of possibilities, but I don’t know anything about any of them. One of this blog’s readers may have some personal experience in this vein.
Some years ago I decided to self-publish an audio version of Telling Lies, and hired an audio director/producer I’d worked with on some of the Penguin Audio books. (Not the fellow who was shocked to hear about Carolyn.) That went well, but I wound up stuck with 2000 cassette editions just as CDs were rendering cassettes obsolete. But Recorded Books bought my narration, and it’s still on offer from Audible, so everything worked out all right.
Nowadays, of course, an indie could forget about producing physical books and offer the audio version as a download. Anyone have any experience with this? It does sound like a way to expand one’s market…
never tried audio but thanks for info, love and best, albee
Thanks, Albee. Worth a listen, and people who do a lot of driving swear by it.
I don’t believe I’ve met John Dunning, but know his work, esp. the Cliff Janeway bibliomysteries starting with Booked to Die. I haven’t yet read his novel of 1920’s Denver, but it looks interesting. Fine writer, and the book lore in the Janeway novels is irresistible.
Snicker. Snort. Funny story. I, too, prefer print over audio, though for long road trips I like listening to non-fiction audio books, especially biographies. Reading this made me realize something. My SIL, a Marine, suffered a TBI in Iraq. It affects his short-term memory and he has a hard time reading, especially fiction. I bet he’d be able to follow audio books just fine.
You could be right. Certainly worth a shot. Try him on one of mine—if he can follow that he can follow anything.
I will do that, Larry. I bet he’d love Keller.
Robert Forster’s unabridged recording of Hit Man is really good.
I listen to books while running, it really helps take my mind to another place, and one of the best has been Tanner’s Tiger. A perfect melding of story and narrator. He really nailed the humor and absurdity of the character and situations. Tanner’s horse riding escape from the Mounties has been a highlight of my listening experiences. Now I can’t help but hear his voice when I read the other Tanner books.
I’m sorry to hear the Tanner books aren’t widely available. I got my copy of Tiger as an mp3 from the library, and I’d recommend others check there too!
I can see how the scene you mention might tend to energize a run. I’m sure Tanner on audio can be found, if you dig hard enough. My guess is that one of my audio publishers will bring the books out again before too long, as CDs and downloadable MP3 files. Soon, I hope…
The story made me laugh – and I’ll have to do a little listening. My husband loves audio books. And, I have to tell you, you do know you’re the most very special man in the world, right? Just got home from Boston…
Um, someone could draw the wrong inference from the above, Julia…