I was not an early adopter of the audio-book, but I am a thorough addict now. I must tell those fantasy writers who have their characters living off the land… that it is very tedious at times. Mechanization and knowing what to do help, but the reality is you will spend several hours of each day, at least, engaged in the kind of mindless and often back-breaking work that our ancestors fled from to the cities – even if the cities were population negative until quite recently (it is true. Cities killed more than were born there, often. they were kept going by constant inward migration. Migration because they SEEMED better. They did offer more. The trouble was that some of the more was disease.)

I like growing my own food, and being less at the whim of the erratic income of an author, but some things become very tedious, repetitive and require little mental processing. I like working with my hands too. A lot of forward book-thinking happens in that time, but the last few years, with our local petty bureaucrats trying hard to have us homeless, and preferably, gone, my mind turned to brooding on this instead of working out how my Atlantean heroes survive the mess I am putting them into. That tends to spill into the time I am trying to produce words. I find reading a good reset, as a great book transports me away, and absorbs me so totally that it takes shouting in my ear to get my attention. At least, with a good book, I come out uplifted, a little more hopeful.

But it doesn’t get the weeding done. With an audiobook the weeding gets done, and I might even go on a little longer just to listen to a bit I enjoy. But let’s face it, it hasn’t been a moneymaker for me as an author. Maybe the books just aren’t popular as audio (Baen have done a fair number). I have yet to see the pie-in-the-sky returns we hoped for. Part of that is Audible and their royalty rate, no doubt, so I thought I’d mention StoryFair – A link I picked up off X. It seems interesting, but I have no further information.

It’s an avenue I would like to pursue: I have the audio rights to quite a few books. I’d love an Audio of CECILY, or TOM or CLOUDCASTLES. I am a terrible voice actor, but I think my wife to be excellent, but we’re still in the too many other things in the mix situation right now. Our little brush with trying to use audacity was not a happy one. I don’t know if there is anything better or good place for a tutorial, so any advice is welcome.

And the other thing I wondered about was your thoughts on using different readers for different characters. I’ve listened to a couple of books like this, and one I found it annoying, and the other excellent — but I too ignorant to know exactly why.

comments?