Audiobook Business News

From George Smiley to the complete Harry Potter

Once the ritual traditions of giving and gorging are over, that quiet, becalmed period between Christmas and New Year is the perfect time for catching up on all the books and programmes you've missed during the year. My recommendations for presents and personal indulgence include blockbuster boxed sets whose marathon running times will take you through to next summer, plus a random selection of shorts, single-CD audios for people who prefer to dip.

Best series: The Complete George Smiley (BBC, 21hrs, £80). The award-winning Radio 4 dramatisation of all eight Le Carré books featuring the tubby, bespectacled spymaster with "the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin". Everyone remembers Alec Guinness's inscrutable Smiley in the TV version. Simon Russell Beale's portrayal takes inscrutability to vertiginous new heights.

Best music: Opera Explained (Naxos, 79mins, £5.99). The antithesis of every "Famous operatic arias" and "Best of Verdi" cherry-picking album. Thomson Smillie's patient, unpatronising analysis of a score of operas on one CD apiece (except for Wagner and Gilbert and Sullivan, who each get two) covers social context, composer's biog, anecdotes and, of course, cherries.

Best novel: The Sisters Brothers (Whole Story Audio, 9hrs, £17.35). The first western to be shortlisted for the Booker, Patrick de Witt's quirky modern morality tale about a pair of contract killers in Gold Rush America will make you laugh. It may even change your mind about psychopaths, especially if they clean their teeth.

The other day, we at Listen Up came across audiobook narrator Xe Sands’s amazing audio/visual production of Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit.

Many of you may already know Sands from her weekly Going Public audio clips — check out THIS LINK for her reading excerpts from everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Lady Chatterley’s Lover — but if you haven’t seen and heard her Velveteen Rabbit Storybook, now is definitely the time.

Is there a stranger kind of celebrity than the voice actor?

Countless children grew up watching the adventures of Tommy Pickles on Nickelodeon's Rugrats, but virtually none of them would recognize Elizabeth Daily, who voiced Tommy, if they passed her on the street. The same goes for Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson), Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime of Transformers), or Cam Clarke (Leonardo of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Ubiquitous but nearly anonymous, traditional voice actors reach millions of children who will always remember their voices—but never know their names.

At least, that's how it is on TV. But when it comes to movies, recent years have seen big-screen Hollywood voice acting dominated by A-List actors like Bruce Willis, Angelina Jolie, and Robert DeNiro. The latest celebrity-dominated animated film comes now in the Shrek-inspired Puss in Boots, which represents the unholy trinity of Hollywood's recent favorite trends: 3D, prequels, and spinoffs.

So, last week our Internet connection at home was pretty spotty. If you stopped by, and I haven't responded or visited your blog, I'm going to try and remedy that this week.

With all the extra time on my hands, I popped down to my local library, signed up for a library card, and checked out my first book on CD. I picked up Stephen King's The Gingerbread Girl.

I was intrigued by the book because it's read by Mare Winningham and my instincts were right, she does an excellent job.

Listening to a book was definitely different than reading one. It's not quite like watching a movie, but also not the same as the act of reading. Listening really threw the inner editor for a loop and for the first time in several months, I got to enjoy a book without over analyzing it. (Woohoo! Except now I'm over analyzing the whole experience. LOL.)

I've enjoyed hundreds of recorded fiction books, but no non-fiction books. I've written a non-fiction book that includes some elements that I'm not sure how to approach when recording it.

The majority is simply text, but a some textbook-like elements are also incorporated. These elements include: multi-page comparison tables; end of chapter exercises with a list of choices in a table ; call-out quotes from a book contributor that are located here and there on pages throughout the book.

“I make it sound as if I had no choice.”
– The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

“They put on thick white robes and sit side by side on chaise longues as if they are, in fact, on board a ship.”
– I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

It’s arguable that the words we think and speak are representations of abstract things. Once consciously formed and ordered syntactically, these abstractions appear before us, suddenly reified (that is, concrete, imbued with meaning). And yet, as we reflexively conjure more words, as we hear others’ words, our very engagement with these processes mediates language: concrete turns mushily transitory; meaning becomes what I meant, though not exactly, really.

Despite our inability to access the concrete from abstract, (Is there any word whose meaning all six billion of us can categorically agree to) we humans seem bent on trying: we deploy words and re-order our syntax in a Sisyphean-like effort to unpack and define ourselves, our nature, our existence.

When AudioFile magazine awarded the Late Rain audiobook with its Earphones award, they remarked that “listeners feel like eavesdroppers.” This is high praise for authors. For audiobook people, it’s the kind of compliment that might train them to walk on air. And in the case of Late Rain, it’s very well-earned. Here’s narrator Kenneth Campbell with author Lynn Kostoff.

Kenneth Campbell: First I want to let you know how much I enjoyed narrating Late Rain. It was great fun and pleasantly challenging to attach voices to the personalities you developed in the multitude of very interesting characters. Never a dull moment! What inspired you to you come up with the story line and such unique characters?

Advances in digital technology are helping a growing number of people trade in their conventional 9-5 jobs for a unique form of gainful employment – and all they have to do is talk.

Voice Coaches, a firm specializing in voiceover training, in conjunction with the Conroe Parks and Recreation Department, will host an introductory voice coaching seminar from 6:30-9 p.m. Nov. 7 at C.K. Ray Recreation Center in Conroe.

“This is a great seminar for anyone who is curious about voiceover work,” said David Bourgeois, founder of Voice Coaches, a company specializing in professional voiceover talent. “If you’ve been told you have a great voice and ought to be in radio or do commercials, this is a good way to find out what the industry is all about.”

While most people associate voiceover talent with commercials, Bourgeois said this accounts for only 10 percent of the current work available to voice talent professionals. Recorded books, documentaries, training materials and Internet opportunities – like podcasting – have created a range of work for spoken word actors.

I’m in a fairly unique position. Not only is my primary job as an audiobook narrator and producer, but I also work with CrossRoad Press in casting and doing the post production on the audiobooks they produce through ACX. As of right now, we have close to 180 books waiting to be cast, 70 or so in production and over 40 already completed. 90% of them are royalty-share. And I get to see both sides of the process.

I reject far more auditions than I accept, even if no one else is auditioning for them. And if you find this true of the auditions you are sending out, here are some possible reasons why you’re not getting cast and what you can do about it. 99% of the time, you’ll never know why you’re not getting cast. So Consider this a gift.

With the release of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 less than a month away, new audiobook samples have been released to give you an early preview of the upcoming book. The official Stephen King website plans on posting a new audiobook clips every Monday and Friday from now until October 24th.

11/22/63 will be released on November 8th as a hardcover, as well as an eBook and audiobook. The film rights to 11/22/63 have also been recently acquired by director/writer Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), with the intention of it being his next film.