Audiobooks

HarperAudio will release audiobook versions of fifteen backlist titles by celebrated Czech author Milan Kundera. This marks the first time these Kundera titles will be available in audiobook format.

Actors Richmond Hoxie (fiction) and Graeme Malcolm (nonfiction) will narrate these works. They will be released throughout the rest of this year.

Executive editor Terry Karten had this statement in the release: ”The publication in audio format of the complete works of Milan Kundera, one of the most distinguished and innovative authors of our era, is a major literary event. Harper Perennial has recently reissued Kundera’s backlist with new covers featuring original artwork from the author. These developments are sure to bring renewed attention to this renowned author.”

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Stephen Colbert will release his first children’s book on May 8th, and actor Tom Hanks will read the audiobook–complete with “interruptions” from the The Colbert Report star.  

You can see the cover of I Am A Pole (And So Can You!) at Amazon. Above, we’ve embedded a video of Colbert talking about the book: “the inspirational story of a pole trying to find his place in the world.” According to the publisher, both Hanks and Colbert “will donate 100 percent of the monies they receive for the reading of this audio recording to U.S. Vets.”

The kid’s book began as a comic moment during Colbert’s interview with  came about as a result of a two-part interview with Maurice Sendak.

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Audible.com, Amazon’s audiobook e-commerce store, wants the obtain the audiobook rights for titles directly from authors. To encourage authors to work with them, Audible is launching a new program, “Audible Author Services,” in which authors can earn $1 for each audiobook sold out of a $20 million fund. (This includes sales from Audible.com, Audible.co.uk, and iTunes).

Audible explains the idea on its site: “We want to foster direct relationships with more authors. We have had great success working directly with authors, and these partnerships have led to audience expansion and greater consumption of audiobooks. We know authors work very hard to promote their books; we want to encourage authors to promote their audio versions at the same time. We want all authors in the Audible store to benefit from working with us.” Since the idea is to help support authors, the fund is only available to living authors. Read more

LibriVox.org, a website that makes public domain audiobooks available for free through the Internet Archive, has seen 100 million audiobooks downloaded. In recognition, the volunteer-run LibriVox has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Here is more about how they will spend the grant from LibriVox’s website: “The Mellon grant will go towards rebuilding LibriVox’s technical infrastructure, and improving accessibility of the LibriVox website (if you’re interested in a job helping with this, see this post).”

LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire added this statement: “It will be put to good use, helping our hard-working volunteers create many more free audiobooks. We’ve made 5,500 free audiobooks to date, and we hope to make many more in the future.”

Today on the Morning Media Menu, Buddy Media communications VP Joe Ciarallo shared a dispatch from the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). He told us how publishers are developing content for a very unexpected new platform: cars.

Ciarallo explained in the interview: “NPR has built an app for Ford cars. Obviously, NPR listeners spend a lot of time listening in the car. Now Ford has an app platform for their vehicles, and NPR built a voice-enabled app for your car. You can get in your car and say, ‘Give me the news’ and boom, Morning Edition comes on. That was an interesting, thinking about the automotive company as a media platform, we’re seeing more there.”

As cars get more advanced, audiobook producers, podcasters, literary app developers and publishers should get involved in this space–a great way to bring books to a new kind of reader.

Audible.com has hired major actors to produce “tour de force performances” of new audiobooks. The stars helped choose the books, and the lineup includes Samuel L. Jackson reading A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes and Kim Basinger reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

What celebrity would you choose to read your favorite book? The program will add more celebrities in the future. We’ve included the current list below…

Kate Winslet explained why she read Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola:  “You use a different part of your brain and it keeps your creative juices flowing … It is challenging, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun as well. As a listener, being able to tune out and be taken into another world, an atmosphere, an environment that is being created entirely for you by somebody else’s voice is really a wonderful, magical thing.”

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Film and stage legend Vanessa Redgrave will narrate the audiobook edition of Joan Didion‘s upcoming memoir, Blue Nights.

The book will explore the tragic death of Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. In 2007, Redgrave played the great journalist in the theatrical adaptation of another Didion book, The Year of Magical Thinking.

Here’s more from the Joan Didion Info blog: “in 2009, Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter, the actress Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident in Canada … The resemblance of their personal tragedies seemed to give rise to a close friendship between the two women. Didion was reported at the time to have visited Richardson in hospital in New York shortly before she died.”

Samuel L. Jackson earned hundreds of thousands of downloads last week when he read Go the F*** to Sleep for Audible. In addition, YouTube users have watched his reading nearly 20,000 times.

Adam Mansbach‘s profane children’s book for adults has spawned a number of unofficial videos on YouTube as well. These earnest readers have earned hundreds of thousands of views, sharing the book with a new online audience.

We’ve embedded a few video book readings below, but beware: ALL THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN NSFW LANGUAGE.

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Samuel L. Jackson recorded a six-minute audiobook version of Adam Mansbach‘s profane children’s book for adults, Go the F*** to Sleep.

Currently (as of this June 15 writing) Audible is offering the funny audiobook for free–follow this link to download. Apparently filmmaker and brilliant narrator Werner Herzog will also record an audiobook version.

Jackson explained in the narration: “I was anxious to do the audio read of this book because my agent has twins and he gave me the book and I read it and I fell out laughing. I remember all those times when I did read to my daughter when she was that age. Everybody tells you reading stories will put kids to sleep, but it never works. It didn’t in my house.”

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The Audio Publishers Association is hosting a “Get Caught Listening” contest. To enter, create a three-minute or less video promoting audiobooks.

The grand prize winner will receive $5,000 while second place gets $2,500 and third place gets $1,000. Judges will narrow down the contestant pool to ten finalists and make an announcement on June 1st. After that, readers will vote for the top three favorites.

The contest ends May 15, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Check out all the rules and the entry form here.