To kick off Audiobook Month I invited Jeff & Susan
Dunman from the
Audiobook Jukebox to tell us about their great website and the services they offer.
1) How did Audiobook Jukebox come about?
Audiobook Jukebox was created to fill a need caused by the
exploding availability and popularity of audiobooks. As bloggers began
reviewing more audiobooks, potential listeners sought out those reviews and
publishers turned to bloggers as a new audiobook review outlet. But there
didn’t seem to be a place online that made it easy to find bloggers’ reviews or
get those reviews to a broader audience. Also publishers trying to find new
bloggers to review their audiobooks faced a daunting task. To address these problems,
Audiobook Jukebox was developed to connect reviewers, listeners, and publishers
by indexing links to online reviews to make them easier to find, offering
publishers a place to submit titles they’d like reviewed, and inviting
reviewers to select titles for review that are of particular interest to them.
2) As you know I request a lot of audiobooks from you. Walk
us through the process of getting and posting the audiobooks from your end.
We contact various publishers to let them know about our audiobook
review program, called Solid Gold Reviewer. We also welcome publishers who’ve
heard of us by word-of-mouth or happened on our site and read about the review
program. Publishers decide what titles to offer, how many copies to offer, what
format (CD, download, Audible download) and distribution (U.S., U.S. and
Canada, International). More detailed information can be found on our
guidelines page.
The publisher provided information is entered onto the
electronic template we use to upload each title to the site. We also find and
size a cover photo for each title. Finally, we post this data for each
individual title for review and tag it by publisher and genre.
3) So a reviewer sees an audiobook they would like to review
how do they request it?
They simply fill out a review request form, which can be
found on the
guidelines page. We only ask what they’d like to request, their
basic contact information, and the URL to their blog or Goodreads page. We only
use this information to get the review copy to the reviewer. We ask that
reviewers follow our general guidelines in writing their review and post their
review within 2 months after receiving their copy. We also ask they send us a
link to their review so we can index it and add it to the database.
4) Who can request an audiobook?
Anyone who likes to listen to audiobooks, is willing to
review per
our guidelines, and has a place to put the review online, such as a
blog, Goodreads or LibraryThing account. We try to make it easy and will
provide resources to assist new reviewers.
5) Does the publisher decide if a person gets a review copy?
Or is it first come first serve?
Generally it is first come first serve for all those who
have reviewed through the program. We request the review copy, credit, or code
be sent by the publisher to the reviewer.
6) The Audiobook Jukebox is so much more than getting review
copies in the hands of the reviewer; it is also a database of audiobook
reviews. I honestly can't remember how I first started posting links or how I
found the site, so... Where do all the review links come from? How do you find
them or do they find you?
The original purpose of Audiobook Jukebox was to aggregate
and index audiobook reviews from bloggers. The Solid Gold Reviewer program came
a little later when we saw an opportunity to allow reviewers to pick from a
smorgasbord of titles from a variety of publishers. The review links in
Audiobook Jukebox come from blogger submissions and from blogs we find. We
continue to find new bloggers and bloggers continue to find us. We are always
on the lookout for bloggers who review audiobooks. Currently there are over
15000 review links, for 6000 unique titles, from 400 bloggers.
7) The audiobook world seems to have really exploded and
finally earned some respect in the mainstream but there has been grumbling
about un-trained narrators, Have you seen this, since you deal with so many
companies and bloggers? Do you feel this is a narrator problem or a production
company problem?
The rapid growth of the industry over the last few years has
in our view outstripped the supply of good experienced narrators. It has
resulted in a large influx of newbies and wannabes in the business, which has
brought problems and opportunities. We have heard some very good work from a
number of talented new-to-audiobook voice actors who are taking advantage of
this new opportunity.
That said, we have also heard voice work from folks with
little more than one-trick pony voices unable (or at least untrained) to
effectively voice multiple characters, of various ages, and of both genders.
Then add into the mix the need for regional and foreign dialects and accents
and proper pronunciation (in character) of foreign words and names. The
voicings alone are a major challenge. Appropriate pacing and voice consistency
throughout add to that challenge. Doing all of this well and consistently is
what separates the true highly talented voice actors from the also-rans.
It seems that there are newbies who want to jump into the
business with no knowledge or experience in prepping, in self-directing, with
little or no knowledge of home studio basics, with little or no experience in
recording, proof listening, editing, and mastering their work. Some seem to
think they can just plug an inexpensive USB microphone into their laptop and
start reading. The result is a less than quality finished product that doesn’t
meet the expectations of today’s audiobook enthusiasts.
It seems like the selection process for casting narrators is
all over the map. We’ve heard cases of authors picking the narrators when it
wasn’t evident they’d ever listened to a good audiobook. It seems some think
straight reads of multi-character fiction are OK.
As for the answer to the last question, both.
8) What is the biggest change you have seen in the world of
audiobooks?
Digital downloads.
9) Now I am going to ask you to put on your Karnak the great
hat...
What do you see in the future for audiobooks?
Susan - From my perspective as a librarian, I see a bright
future for audiobooks, at least those in downloadable format. It seems that
what originally drove the popularity of audiobooks in CD format at libraries
was the sheer number of CD players in cars and home stereo units. It’s the
availability and convenience of the player that drives the format, and now,
folks want to download audiobooks to any number of their various digital media
devices. There is an increased demand from the public to learn how to download
the library’s audiobooks and many libraries regularly schedule workshops to
teach their patrons how to download to specific devices. Libraries that do not
yet offer audiobook downloads are finding themselves under pressure to offer
that service.
As a blogger, another change I see is increased recognition
of the narrator’s performance. This may be due to the fact that the trend in
narrating is to “perform” the text, rather than do a straight reading. It takes
skill and talent to narrate this way and both reviewers and listeners are
recognizing that fact.
Jeff - For the industry to grow substantially, the retail
price point has to be below the $10 mark, well below for back catalog titles,
to turn audiobooks into impulse purchases, similar to paperbacks.
I expect at some point there will be significant downward
pressure on narrator finished hour rates with deals morphing towards a
combination of a finished hour rate coupled with a royalty share arrangement,
in part to give narrators incentive to promote their work. Pay plus incentive
plans are the norm in many industries.
On the positive side for narrators, I see more recognition
of their incredible skills. I think they are the stars of Audiobookland.
One final thought. We’d like to thank all of the bloggers,
publishers, narrators, authors, and other audiobook enthusiasts who support
Audiobook Jukebox. Also, we thank Susie for interviewing us.
Thank-you so much for being a part of the kick-off to
Audiobook Month!
