Audible

I am looking forward to the audible releases also.

I am as well. I keep checking every week...

Tantor has the publication date for Resurrection as April 18, 2017 and Rebellion as Aug 1, 2017.

Thanks so much. I will be waiting with anticipation for them to come out then.

These audiobook release dates are driving me nuts - not just for this series, but for the other ones I listen to. I've been listening to audiobooks for years, and it used to be that they came out along with the text versions. Now we're multiple books behind.

To be perfectly honest, I think many of these audiobook producers are simply disorganized and lazy. I'm not saying that producing hours worth of professional audio narration isn't time consuming and difficult, but I also have a decade's worth of audiobooks - hundreds in number - as a sample size for my complaints. The screwup with 2x01 is one that listeners of this series will remember, and you have to appreciate just how bad you have to be at your job to produce an 8 hour audio book with the wrong narrator and wrong pronunciation of names. That latter point happens with other books too, which for god knows what reasons change narrators at times. How it's even possible to know you're jumping in midway through a series of books and not spend 30 minutes checking pronunciation is baffling.

Then again, I've seen worse screwups. I think my favorite is still the book that had multiple instances of the MSN messenger notification sound playing throughout the book, which confused the hell out of me until I skipped back and realized it was the audiobook, not my device.

I love audiobooks, and by association Audible, but man, Audible and their partners are among the most incompetent media publishers I've ever encountered.

This is actually really good to know. I've noticed a decline in my audiobook producer's ability to get titles out in timely fashion. It's gotten to the point that I am considering producing them myself in the future.

That's probably not a bad idea, although I hope you'll be able to keep Kafer if you do.

To elaborate a bit on my experiences, here's a snippet of a review I left a couple of years ago when the Odyssey One series switched narrators:

"First off, switching narrators in the middle of a book series is a horrible, horrible idea. The new narrator basically just did whatever he wanted without caring for a second about how the first three books had been narrated"

So as you can see, even if the narrator changed is (I assume, since the new guy stayed on that one) planned, they don't bother paying attention to what has been done before. That one was from Brilliance audio.

Before I switched jobs I wrote for a tech website, and wrote about Audible a bit, including this rant. That was in 2012, when they had just gotten the feature where you could view a series.

Like I wrote back then:

Let's start with book series. What do you expect from any platform selling something that is part of a series? Well, I for one expect it to know that it's selling a series. How would iTunes look if all the TV shows were sold one episode at a time, with no indication of episode numbers or anything like that? That's Audible for you, at least the mobile apps. While the web version now has series (after years and years of not having that listing), the mobile apps don't have the feature. You can sort by date, title, author, or length. No series.

Still true.

Sorting by author is the closest thing you get, but due to the random naming scheme Audible uses, you're still not getting anything in order. Take the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd, currently counting 9 released books. In the Audible app, the closest you get to viewing that one as a series is scrolling down to the author in author view. Then you have a reversed listing (menaing that book 1 is at the bottom) which is in order until you reach book 5, which is number 6 in the list, and book 6 is number 5. Book 6 is also the only one that has the book number in the title, and none of them has the series name. If you're browsing an author with several series, chances are you'll have to squint at the tiny album art to actually see which one a book belongs to. Bottom line, if you ever try to follow a series on Audible, be prepared to have Wikipedia in a browser tab while you browse the books.

5 years later, you ask?

Then there's this:

Another shotcoming when it comes to series is any sort of listing of upcoming books. To use the iTunes example again, how would you like it if you couldn't subscribe to TV episodes, or even podcast episodes? Would be pretty hard to keep up with anything, wouldn't it? Again, that's Audible for you. Books suddenly pop up when they're released, which may or may not happen when they're supposed to be released. A lot of the series I'm following are a bit niche, so the authors interact with readers quite a bit, so I can tell you with certainty that not even the authors necessarily know when their books will pop up on Audible.

Granted, they do have pre-orders now, but no way to get notified of new books being available for pre-order. I very recently came back to Android from iOS, and on Android I can make some basic software for my own use, so I actually learned about the pre-order of Resurrection from my own home-made Audible series notifiers software. It took my about an hour to hook into their own systems and create a feature I've wanted for a decade and that would help them sell more if they themselves had it. And, of course, help you as an author sell more. This is a multi-billion dollar company failing to deploy a feature that would help you as an author sell more books, only to have the same feature be developed by a user in the scope of an hour. If that's not gross incompetence, I don't know what is.

All in all, 5 years later this still sums up what I think of Audible, despite being a very(!) heavy user:
"All in all, Audible is one of those companies that don't deserve being on top in their field. "

Hi Ryk,

Firstly can I say that I am a HUGE fan of your work. This series is incredible, a serious work of art.

I travel extensively for my work and I'm an big Audible user with hundreds of books in my library. I have recently completed the entire Saga back to back and simply didn't want it to end. In part this was due to Jeffrey Kafer's amazing narration. In fact I follow his work and it was he that led me to your books.

I very much hope that Jeffrey continues to narrate the entire series as the characters simply aren't the same otherwise.

As for August 1st for Rebellion, surely this is some sort of punishment from hell. I can't seriously wait for 3 months for the next book. Having finished the book no more than 10 minutes ago, I am clawing at the phone to give me more, Resurrection was just brilliant. "Getting the band back together" indeed!

Cheers and PLEASE keep doing what you're doing so well,

Al

I absolutely agree with Andreas.

I know that Jeffery does a lot of work with Tantor, but if you do move on PLEASE keep Jeffrey. It would be like Lee Child releasing a new Jack Reacher without Dick Hill narrating it. He IS Jack Reacher to all of the listeners. The same goes for this Saga. Please don't change.

While David Drummond is a great narrator, it was painful listening to someone else do Escalation. The pronunciations of all the names were "wrong", the pace was "wrong" and the characters voices were terribly "wrong".

+1 to Andreas' post. Changing narrators really sucks. There was another series I read/listened to where they did that and it was awful...

Ok long time lurker and long time fan. I think I've posted once or twice here since I found the site. Anyway I have to agree with my echo chamber in here that Jeffrey is the voice of this series. I almost stopped following this series due to Mike Drummond's performance as it was so starkly different from Jeffrey's. I hate seeing that we are now 2 books behind in the series on audible vs the written form but I'm sure you (Ryk) are putting all the influence you have behind getting it done as soon as possible. I want to say 5 months is too long to go between book release and audiobook if you want to keep this niche happy but I don't want to see the narrator change. I'll keep watching and pining for the audio version to be release frustrated and helpless.

Episode 5, Balance audiobook is posted on the Tantor site for release on Aug 29, 2017.

Hopefully that translates to Audible release date! I'm listening to 2x04 now, but the delays between releases have caused me to feel rather estranged with the whole series. It used to be my favorite scifi series of all times, but now that I've literally listened to entire multibook series in between each of the Frontiers books I'm struggling to maintain the same level of excitement.

Ryk,

Congratulations on such great books. As a veteran, I know its easy for us to pick military books apart. However, I find myself more and more into these series. In short, thank you for this story, great ride so far.

I've gone through all but balance. I'm eagerly waiting for the realease on audible.

Thanks again