Friends, I hope this finds you well. I thought I’d share some exciting news, primarily audiobook related, along with Some Thoughts that I’ve recently been having about audiobooks.
Those of you who follow my socials will know I’ve been a busy bee, promoting the new book (#3) coming out on June 13 – The Love of Her Lives, pre-orders on Amazon here – and getting stuck into writing a brand new manuscript that I’m extremely excited and passionate about.
But not only that! I’ve also been celebrating the release of my book two, The Love I Could Have Had, on audiobook (thanks, Spotify!) and… drum roll, please… toasting the news that I have also just agreed a new audiobook deal on The Love of Her Lives (double thanks, Spotify!) Wow! So, I get to do it all over again, and hopefully LOHL will be out on audiobook later in the year. The audiobook process with Spotify on LICHH was so awesome, I just can’t wait.
Having just listened to the brilliant production of The Love I Could Have Had on audio, I reactivated my Audible account. This was the first time I realized that some books that are free with the subscription are Audible exclusives, written entirely for the platform.
Am I the only one who struggles to get their head around this? This book I’m listening to… was never a book. It’s only ever been in audio, never print or e-book. And it’s very noticeably written for audio. There are sound effects, and dialogue between characters that actually switch, like real dialogue, between the two different narrators. Yes, there are whole passages of narration from one of their points of view, and sometimes they have to voice the dialogue of lesser characters, but then there will be a conversation with the other MC and the other narrator’s voice chimes in. All while traffic sounds are audible in the background.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s brilliant and I’m loving it. I’m on the second of Cara Bastone’s series of these Audible-exclusive books, and they’re hilarious.
But my question is… when is an audiobook not an audio-book? If it was never a regular book in the first place – and there are massive dialogue sections that are written like a play script – then isn’t it an audio-play? Maybe not, since it’s broken into chapters, like a book, and it has whole sections of real narration. But then it morphs into audio-play in the scripted dialogue sections.
Readers, I’m confused. All that said, I do know two things:
1) These books are hella fun to listen to, and
2) They’re listed on Goodreads, which means they count towards my Reading Challenge goal… which means they must be books, I guess!
Until next time.
CJ Connolly 