Audiobook Week, Listen Up!

Where do you learn about great audiobook titles? Find reviews? Buy your audiobooks? Share your secrets with the rest of us!

One feature of my job is that I select the titles that go out to listener advisory services, which is another way to say that I send out free audiobooks to reviewers! Some of the listener advisory services are easy in that they want the whole monthly slate of titles or all titles in a specific genre. Other reviewers require more thought: Reviewer "X" really doesn't like narrator "Y" (and never will) or can't stand violence against animals or only likes a very narrow sub-genre... Then there's the part where I'm asked to provide only the best of the best and that's really tough. There are big titles with big narrators; but then again there are some smaller titles with great narrators too! At this point, I actually use an unusual standard, What was the narrator's response to the book when it was assigned or while s/he was recording it? There are narrators who are game for anything and everything and will take whatever we throw at them; but then there are those narrators who come back and say things like, "Oh. My. God. This book was absolutely incredible! I love this book! That denouement was mid-bending!" Or whatever. You get the idea. It's that little extra something that, while intangible, comes through on the recording. I never hesitate to recommend these titles even if I have not personally listened to them or worked on them. In this way too, those same audiobooks make it onto my own personal TBL-to list.

But believe it or not, I actually listen to audiobooks above and beyond the borders of the Blackstone Audio campus! My tastes are extremely eclectic and so I heavily rely on other bloggers' opinions. The blogs of Bob Reiss (@guildedearlobe at theguildedearlobe.wordpress.com) - Zombie, PA, SFF; Jennifer Connor (@lithousewife at literatehousewife.com, - litfic, #shakennotstirred #ArmchairAudies #ListenersList; "Beth Fish" (@BethFishReads at BethFishReads.com) - whose tastes are as equally as eclectic as mine, plus she also reviews graphic novels; and Jennifer Karsbaek (@DevourerofBooks at Devourerofbooks.com) - wide range of different genres as well -  are written by major audiobook advocates and audiobook bloggers whose views I respect immensely. I also like reading audiobook reviews from people who don't normally blog about audiobooks; but feel so strongly about what they've heard they have to post (e.g. Mike Alatorre a.k.a. @le0pard13 at It Rains... You Get Wet) - movies and references to "she who will not be named" and; some of the up-and-coming audiobook bloggers like Cassandra Neace (@CassandraNeace at Indiereaderhouston.com) - whose enthusiasm for the audiobook form is refreshing. There are dozens of others as well who are probably reading this and saying "What About Me?"  To those audiobook bloggers who I have overlooked (mea culpa), please feel free to leave your blog URL in comments below!

Where I actually get my audiobooks varies. Sometimes I pull them off the shelves over at the warehouse; sometimes I request a review copy from another publisher; sometimes I troll the publishers' sites and, yes, I've been known to try an audiobook I would not normally have considered if it was on my Maybe list but is now on sale :-)