EDIT: Figure I oughta add this right at the top:
Here are links to listings of all my audiobooks:
AmazonAudibleiTunesTypically Amazon has the best price.
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So, as you may have figured out from the not-terribly-subtle hints I've been dropping for the past month: I narrate audiobooks now. Audiobooks are cool.
My first one, Dinosaurs in the Home Depot, written by Bret Wellman, is now available on
Audible ($6.95 at the time of this writing) and
Amazon ($6.08). Both URLs contain the string "B00B", which pleases me.
Also, it's supposed to be showing up on iTunes sometime soon; I'll add a link when I've got one. (If you see it before I update the post, feel free to share with the class.) UPDATE:
Available on iTunes; $6.95 as of this posting.
The audiobook is 18 minutes long and delivers what it promises. There is a Home Depot. There are dinosaurs in it. The story does not waste time on details like why there are dinosaurs, why somebody decided to leave them in a Home Depot, or actually bothering to give any of the characters names (unless you count "the ugly giant" as a name). It's mostly people fighting dinosaurs with power tools.
If you would like to read the story before you decide whether it is worth six of your hard-earned dollars, you can read it in its entirety for free on
the author's website. If you would like to know what it sounds like coming through these beautiful baritone pipes of mine, well, there's supposed to be a three-minute preview if you click the "Sample" button on that Audible page but it doesn't seem to be working for me just at the moment. If you can't get it to work either, you can try it on
my ACX profile page.
EDIT: Or just listen right here:
Audiobook Sample: Dinosaurs in the Home Depot---
So what is this thing, anyway?I became aware of Amazon/Audible's ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) about a year ago when Neil Gaiman started talking about it on his blog. It follows a simple premise: audiobooks don't need to be a rarity anymore now that you no longer have to carry around a binder full of tapes or CD's to listen to one and are in fact probably carrying a device that can play them in your pocket right now.
So, ACX -- anyone who's got a book can advertise it and look for a narrator; anyone who wants to narrate a book can audition and look for a book.
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DRM?Yes. Audible uses DRM. My opinions on DRM have not changed since yesterday, so obviously if you do not want to buy my audiobooks because they have an inconvenient copy protection mechanism on them, I can understand that.
I haven't played around with it much; the only Audible download I've gotten to date is Go the Fuck to Sleep. I remember it being mildly inconvenient to set up the codec, and I think I had to listen to it in Windows Media Player. If anybody has a fresher memory of the user experience, feel free to share.
You shouldn't have much trouble getting it to play on a Windows/Mac/
iOS/Android/Windows Phone/Blackberry device. I'm guessing it's a bit more inconvenient under desktop Linux, but probably not much; there are tools for stripping the DRM off if you want to look for them but it's probably best we not link any from here.
If all else fails, there's always the old "burn it to a CD and then rip it from the CD" trick. Yeah, DRM doesn't fucking work.
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What's this paying you?Probably a bit gauche to talk about, but for the curious and since this is all public information anyway:
All the books I've recorded so far have been done on a royalty basis. I haven't made anything from them yet, and won't until people start buying them. Yes, that kinda sucks. (Here are
two blog
posts about me trying to explain royalties to the unemployment agency. Spent some more quality time on the phone with them today. Still have not convinced them that I did not earn any money the week of January 5.)
My royalty share depends on a
sliding scale. At present, for every copy sold, Amazon takes 50%, the author gets 25%, and I get 25%. The more it sells, the less Amazon takes and the more we get. If Dinosaurs in the Home Depot becomes some kind of runaway smash hit, those numbers can slide as far as 10/45/45.
Also, if it's one of your first three downloads from Audible, the author and I each get a
$12.50 bonus. (That's right: you spend $6, Amazon pays me $14.)
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Copyright?These are work-for-hire deals. I get royalties but I don't have any ownership of the work. The three I've done so far are all owned by their respective authors.
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Three?Yeah, I've recorded two more so far: Your Average Ordinary Alien, written by Adam Graham, and Dinner on a Flying Saucer, by Dean Wesley Smith. They should be available in the coming weeks. They're both short stories, though they're a little bit longer than this one. I'll talk more about them once they're available; for now you can listen to samples on my profile page.
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Promotion?This is the first thing I've written to promote my ACX work, but I'm planning on a blog post, of course, will probably put some links up on my LinkedIn profile, maybe put the samples up on YouTube. I've also got a second website that's more oriented toward professional projects than saying "fuck" and reposting Frank Zappa videos, so I intend to put some links up there too. If this looks like something where I can actually attract a fanbase, I might start fucking around with Facebook and Twitter, but that's not a priority at the moment.
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Thaddeus R R Boyd?Yeah, I figured what the hell, name like mine, no sense NOT being pretentious with my credit. Besides, all my favorite fantasy novels are written by guys with those middle initials. (Also besides: it was already the name on my Amazon account. But mostly it's the pretension.)
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Guess that's it for now. If you want to check this thing out, buy it, review it, that'd be swell. If not, well, that's cool too. But if you read all the way down here, I think we both know that means you like listening to me talk for eighteen minutes.
Author
Topic: Thad's Audiobooks (Read 3656 times)