David Kudler's Blog, page 22

Author Uvi Poznansky, for whom I just produced the audio...

Author Uvi Poznansky, for whom I just produced the audiobook of her re-imagining of the Genesis story of Jacob and Esau, A Favorite Son, and with whom I’m in post-production on the audiobook for her bittersweet novel Apart from Love, is going going to be interviewed on Cowboy Wisdom NLI Radio tomorrow, April 2 at 8:00pm EST.

She’ll be talking about the two books on which we’ve worked together, as well as her other writing. She’s a fascinating lady — give it a listen!

Call in to speak with the host: (718) 305-6548

New Audiobook: A Favorite Son now available!

A new Stillpoint Digital audiobook came out today!

A Favorite Son, one of two titles that I’ve been producing for author Uvi Poznansky, was released on Audible.com today; it’ll be available on Amazon and on iTunes over the next couple of days.

A Favorite Son is the wonderful re-imagining of the the biblical story of Jacob (Yonkle) and Esau (Esav). Here’s an extract that Uvi posted on her blog:

Are You Jealous?

“Are you jealous?” I tease him. “I can’t believe it!”

To which he roars, “You do nothing, you! You cook, you hide. Coward! Aha, coward you!”

He takes one step forward; I take two back. The arrows slung over his shoulder clink against each other. It is a steely, menacing sound. With one blow of his hand, he smacks down the canvas; and, on the double, the entire tent is flattened into a lopsided mess, collapsing upon itself; its pegs flying clear out, bouncing over and over, over the soft sand.

He gets in my face; we are standing nose to nose. The moment I have dreaded all my life is suddenly upon me, and there is no way to withdraw. I have to face him, which forces me to examine him closely.

This excerpt, in Yankle’s voice, captures the beginning of a dialog between him and his twin brother Esav, who is coming back from a day of hunt utterly famished, and tested to the limit of his wits by the smell of the lentil stew. Here is this snippet in audio:

Download: FavoriteSon-esav.mp3

Yonkle and Esav

 

 ★★★★★ 13 Amazon reviews

“‘A Favorite Son’ is a favorite of mine”

Audiobook NOW AVAILABLE!

Get it here: A Favorite Son

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Bright Idea of the Day: The Author’s Voice

So, I started putting a post together recently with some resources for self-publishers. I came up with a wonderful overview about the process of self-publishing, Guy Kawasaki’s APE (Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur), Joel Friedlander’s excellent exploration of the process from a print designer’s perspective, A Self-Publisher’s Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish, and Liz Castro’s fabulous introduction to creating ebooks, EPUB Straight to the Point.

Looking at that list, I thought, Huh, okay — all I need is a good introduction to producing your own audiobook.

Went to find it.

Couldn’t.

Well, I spoke with some friends at the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, where the unofficial motto is, If you can’t find the book you want, write it yourself. Asked folks if they thought that I should write a guide to audiobook production.

They did.

So I think I am. I’m thinking of calling it The Author’s Voice: A Writers Guide to Recording and Producing Audiobooks.

What do you think?

Kids and teens are reading books — but how do they find them?

In a discussion about children’s ebooks on the LinkedIn group Ebooks, Ebook Readers, Digital Books, and Digital Content, two threads emerged that I thought were very interesting: first of all, children’s and young adult books are selling (up 22% in 2012); second of all, someone raised the question of how to encourage kids themselves to review books.

This second point raised a question for me — how do kids find out about books these days? My memory of how it worked back in the pre-digital age was that I’d notice when a friend was carrying a book whose cover I didn’t recognize. So… how do kids find out about/tell each other about books in the twenty-first century? Though paper-and-ink books are still selling well to kids and teens, ebooks are as well, in which case there aren’t any covers to show. (For many readers, this is a positive — no need to show off those embarrassing bodice-ripper or scantily-clad-sword-maiden covers.)

How do the kids you know find out about books? Word of mouth? On-line forums/social networks? Do you know of any good sites where kids exchange opinions on what they’ve read?

I’m posting a poll on the blog page of my site — so you can comment here, post an answer there — or both!

Publishing Snake Oil

My guest post over at thebookdesigner.com has sparked quite a lot of good conversation, which is great. Good thoughts, good questions, good suggestions — the perfect blogging storm.

That post also connected with another blogger, Candace Johnson, who used my post as a jumping off point to discuss some of the shadier corners of the publishing marketplace, Snake Oil Salesmen in the Editing Biz. In particular, she’s discussing two kinds of questionable “services” that are offered to writers: first, a site that charges authors to become part of a mutual editing group; second, sites that offer to read and review your work for a fee. She discusses each of these in depth.

For what it’s worth, here is my response:

That first company you mention raises my hackles as it did yours; charging a group of writers so that they can “beta” each other’s work seems disingenuous at the very least.

The second company? It really, really bothers me that there are so many “services” out there that are willing to take advantage of a writer’s passion, wringing money out of them while providing very little (if anything) in return. Reading/review fees are a red flag — professional literary agents are prohibited from charging such fees, of course, for very good reason; and I would hope that a legitimate publisher would either be willing to accept the challenge of the slush pile as a part of the cost of doing business, rather than as potential revenue stream. Other than a member of those two professions, who could possibly provide a benefit to an author through a “review” that was worth paying for? (Reviews-for-pay of published works are similarly disquieting.)

Another brand of snake oil makes me deeply uncomfortable is the current vogue for “writing coaches.” There seems to be very little incentive for them either to turn away someone who they don’t feel they can work with on the one hand, or to give a thumbs-up to sell a project on the other. I’m absolutely certain that there are ethical writing coaches; unfortunately, I have yet to run across any of them.

(Writing workshops run by a professional author, editor, or writing teacher are different: you’re paying them to teach you something, not to help you make your manuscript better, even if that’s an indirect result.)

Hiring a professional editor should be a clean transaction: the author (or publisher, or agent) is contracting an agreed-upon service that the editor will in fact provide — or not get paid.

What are your thoughts?

What Is Reading?

Whether I’m flipping paper pages, scanning through an ebook, listening to an audiobook or reading into a mic, reading a book is reading a book. Or is it?

As much as anyone, I live through words. I’ve been a professional actor. I’ve edited books. I’ve written them. I’ve narrated audiobooks. I’ve designed ebooks. It would be reasonable to say my life centers around words — that my life centers around reading.

But what does that mean?

My earliest memories have to do with books: being read to by my parents, reading along to picture books narrated on scratchy 45s, hiding under my covers with a flashlight and The Hobbit or Encyclopedia Brown. Many of my dearest adult memories are book related: reading the same copy of Ender’s Game side-by-side with my soon-to-be-wife; reading Where the Wild Things Are to my first-born and realizing that I remembered every word, having not seen the book in twenty-five years; reading all seven of the Harry Potter books (and many others) aloud to each of my daughters.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly reading is — because no longer is it a straightforward matter of picking up a piece or pieces of paper and looking over the words printed there. More and more, we take in words differently — whether we’re viewing them on a computer or ereader screen, or we’re taking the text in aurally with the help of a narrator or a text-to-speech program. In the past year, in addition to working on print and ebooks, I’ve created a picture book — yet another mode — as well as audiobooks.

So… is reading simply reading? Or does a change in medium fundamentally change the experience?

I have begun to realize that, for me, approaching a book through each of these modes of “reading” brings me down a very different path: that I really notice the language and the individual details in listening to an audiobook; that while ebooks make for a wonderfully quick read, they somehow aren’t quite as immersive as sitting with a bound ink-on-paper volume; that reading aloud, whether to someone in the room or into a mic as a narrator, makes me very conscious of the characters and the emotions, and of the affect the author is trying to have on the reader.

I’m still engaged in the same flow of ideas and arguments, characters and plots. I arrive, ultimately, at the same place. The words are the same.

The person who’s read them, however, is quite different.

Image by Linda Gardner (grandgrrl/flickr.com); used under a Creative Commons license

Two New Audiobook Titles on the Way!

Apart from Love by Uvi Poznarsky

I’m excited to be able to announce that Stillpoint has been signed to produce two new audiobooks for novelist Uvi Poznarsky. First up is A Favorite Son, Poznarsky’s retelling of the Genesis story of Jacob and Esav. Told through the eyes of Jacob — both as an old man and as a boy — the novella looks at the emotional challenges that come with Jacob’s assumption of Esav’s birthright, taking his brother’s place as the favorite son.

The other title — a very appropriate one for Valentine’s Day — is Poznarsky’s contemporary novel of a love that won’t be denied, Apart from Love. I’ll be producing this title, and sharing the narration duties with the wonderfully talented Heather Jane Hogan.

More announcements coming soon!

Man and His God iTunes Link

A Man and His God by Janet Morris

Since a few of you asked, here’s the link to the Man and His God audiobook on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/man-his-god-sacred-band-tale/id602908220

News! A Man and His God is now available!

A Man and His God, the audiobook that I produced for Perseid Press, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible! Woohoo!

It’s just under two hours of high-fantasy fun. (Oh, and the folks at Audible insisted that I let you know: if you sign up for an Audible account, it can be one of your three free titles!)

Murder Comes to the Stillpoint

Death in a Fair Place by W. L. Taylor

Stillpoint Digital Press announces the publication of its first murder mystery, Death in a Fair Place by W. L. Taylor.

Set on the idyllic campus of a glossy prep school in Northern California, this fast-moving detective novel involves intrigue, scandal, and, of course, murder most foul — right on school grounds. When the head of the prestigious Pemberley Oaks School is found dead in the school’s memorial redwood grove, the list of suspects includes just about everyone with a connection to the school — faculty, staff, parents, and teachers. It is up to Detective Bill Felkin to dig past the privileged, sophisticated veneer and discover the truth.

Taylor, who worked in independent schools for many years, says about completing his first novel, “Being a fan of murder mysteries, the idea came to me to write a detective story that takes place on a private school campus. After I came up with the germ of the idea for the book seven years ago, I paid attention to the old adage — write about what you know — and that provided me with a wealth of material.”

Death in a Fair Place is now on sale at StillpointDigital.com, as well as Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and most other ebook outlets.