Audio books - narrators/listeners wanted.

[A.L.]

I have just had a narrator produce my first audio book (yay) and I am intrigued about other people's experiences. I am looking for narrators to come forward for interviews and rights holders to discuss the ups and downs of their end of the process.

Also listeners - how many books do you buy/download a month?
I can interview you as well. I think audio is a neglected side of reading/publishing and it would be great to open this up for debate/interest.

Anyone interested please PM me with 'audiobook/listener/narrator' in the subject line.

[Karen]

I had my first 'Quilt Detective' novel produced as an audio book by local Talking Newspaper contacts who used to produce audio tapes professionally - but they're now retired. Haven't done anything with the audiobook though, apart from give it to my partially sighted mum to 'read'. She gets the vast majority of her audio books free from the RNIB and from Calibre - the standard of readers is variable though and often puts her off, so I am now very wary of getting anything else recorded!
I do enjoy listening to audio books, but they are really expensive compared with ebooks, so I just listen to the few classics mum and I have bought. BBC radio 4 & 4 extra have lots of serialised & dramatized books which are well worth listening to. And they don't cost a penny.
I noticed one of the audio book companies recently closed, which was a shame as they had some lovely titles, but they are really expensive. Marketing audio books must be a nightmare!

[Tim]

I get an audible credit each month, but I generally stick to series and narrators I know I'm going to enjoy. I did listen to one of Steve Robinson's Jefferson Tayte books, which was not bad, although the narrator's American accent was rather dodgy.

I don't often get stuff outside the credit system, unless it's something I particularly want and is substantively cheaper (not everything costs £8+)

[Karen]

The ones we've bought have been nearer twenty pounds, but they are good quality, with good readers - and the text is unabridged, which a lot of the cheaper ones aren't. But I've found there's no interest in them when I've tried to resell them - the postage is high to start with.

[AJ]

I'm a bit of an audiobook junkie. I listen when I cook, clean, in the bath, can't sleep. Some days I will spend all day roaming about the house listening to an audiobook just because its sucked me in. Most of them I get from the collection we already have but I use the Librivox app a lot. Its books that are in the public domain and people will read them and put them on the site. I started out picking books by author but then moved more to which narrator it is. If I find a narrator I like I will listen to pretty much anything they read even if its possibly not something I wanted to read/listen to.