(Picture credit: audible.com) The New York Times ran an article in late June about the company Audible.com, an Amazon subsidiary, which provides steady work to many actors by hiring them to read books that will become audiobooks.
I liked the premise as someone who supports giving actors a living wage, and as a writer interested in new channels to disseminate her work. First, I'll point out that the actress featured in the article uses the money to continue to perform - certainly the best way to proceed. She hasn't given up on her art and she certainly has many more acting skills than simply reading with a clear voice, but that sort of gig will allow her to pay the bills and audition for the theater roles she loves, instead of requiring her to take a day job - like waiting tables - that makes no use of her talents.
From a consumer's perspective, I've enjoyed listening to Robert Caro's "The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol 4" during my many drives between Pennsylvania and Maryland. My only pet peeve with the system is that there should be samples for customers to listen to before they buy, since the reader's voice can turn any wonderful book into hours of cringe-inducing blabber. This thankfully did not happen for Caro's audiobook (Grover Gardner is a fabulous narrator), but a case in point is: The Odyssey read by Ian McKellen. It sounded like a great matching, and many people seem to enjoy the audiobook, but for me McKellen has an accent in that audiobook that makes listening to it simply unbearable.
I mainly listen to audiobooks when I drive and when I clean my home, so I'm probably not the ideal audience target for Audible, but as a writer, I see a lot of potential in that new medium. The traditional payment structure is flat-fee-per-finished-hour, and from what I've read, a 30,000 word-novella probably amounts to about 3 1/2 to 4 finished hours (using a 125-word-per-minute rule of thumb or a 9,400 words per hour rule of thumb). Many readers charge between $200 and $400 per finished hour, as a search of the ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) website will show, so it'd be about a $1,200 expense for a book like Isolde 1939. I haven't decided yet if I want to do it, but there is no doubt audiobooks are part of the future of the publishing and will within years become as common as paperbacks.
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