So a few days ago I shared that one of my books from The Wild Rose Press is being offered through Audible.
3 Wishes went livelivelive to the book LISTENING world on April 17. So far, I have had some pretty good feedback on it from friends, so I wanted to share how the process came about and what I had to do to get the work out there in audiocyberspace.
About a year ago the WRP first notified authors they were going to start offering books on audio to get into this fast moving and rapidly growing market. Right now, audio books are the number one choice of millenials over e-readers and print version books. I know this as fact because I have a millenial for a daughter and she ( and her friends) are always on the go, busy, traveling and working. To devote the time it takes to sit down and actually read a book is time they don’t want to take, so they tend to listen to things like podcasts and books on tape ( or audio as it’s called now) while they are exercising at the gym, traveling for work, even in the car on the way to work. I will admit I hesitated for several months before I ever decided to dip my foot into this market.
First, I had to agree to a seven year extension of the book contract. Then I had to write and audition piece for the potential narrators to read and to, well, audition with. Once that was done and sent back to WRP I waited. And Waited. After about 3 months I received my first audition to listen to. The narrator wasn’t…right. It’s difficult to explain but hearing my words through her interpretation and “voice” wasn’t a good fit, so I rejected her. Guilt, party of one?
Audition 2 was better. The voice was engaging and younger, sounding as if the person was in their 20s-30s, so correct for the POV character. I accepted her and then she narrated the entire book, which I listened to 3 times for approval. There were some words she’d pronounced incorrectly, some phrases I wanted her to change, so that added another 2 months to the process.
Finally, On April 17, the audio book was released into the world, more than 6 months after I initially agreed to it. This is a long process, to be sure. In a perfect world I would narrate my own books because they are written in my voice – truly, my voice – the heavily Brooklyn-d accented, NewYorker voice. But alas, that’s not gonna happen in my lifetime.
If you’re an Audiobook listen-er, here are the links to 3 WISHES.
It’s available via Amazon, Audible, and i-Tunes.
Happy listening.
And if you need to listen to me talk ( Heehee) this is where you can find me:Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// Book Me
Peggy Jaeger, Author 