along with Serpent’s Reach and others. I wonder how they handled the knnn transmissions, eh?
I hear Chanur is now available on audible.com
by CJ | Aug 2, 2012 | Journal | 28 comments
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Many thanks to PurpleJulian for alerting everyone that the Chanur books are now in audio too, through Audible.com. I had a couple of available credits, so I saved some money.
Now Available in Audiobooks from Audible.com:
* The Pride of Chanur
* Chanur’s Venture
* The Kif Strike Back
* Chanur’s Homecoming
* Chanur’s Legacy
* Cuckoo’s Egg
* Serpent’s Reach
* Cyteen (all three in omnibus, but Regenesis is a separate book)
* Downbelow Station
Most marvelous, wonderful, audacious news!
…And now I have to free up some space on my iPad to hold them. Priority to coms! Incoming transmission…
Waaaah! Seven new Cherryhs, and fifteen Liaden adventures coming September 4th. I can’t afford half of them!
I think the t’ca would have help out with the translations from the knnn….maybe a ch’i to do sound effects?
Off topic, but CJ (or anybody) — need some Foreigner numerology advice. I know 1 (one) and 8 are infelicitous, and 9 is felicitous, but what about 2 and 3? Is 3 more felicitous than 2? and how about 12 and 15? If 8 is infelicitous, then what about 4? Inquiring minds need to know. . . .
Wow. Cuckoo’s Egg would be neat to hear… and I usually do not have the patience for audiobooks (I’m partially deaf and read muuuuch faster than speech).
Two is not. 3 is. 15 is 3 (good) fives (good) and indivisible by 2—good. 8 is awful, divisible by two and composed of double 2’s. But 13 is lucky, much more so than 12, which is sort of half and half: 2 x6, which can be divided by infelicitous two, or 3 which is good x 4 which is not. 😉
Thanks. You’ll find out the ulterior motive behind this question later.
This is wonderful news!! I can’t wait til I get my next credit…but which to get??
Does anyone here know a non-Amazon alternative, where one can simply buy the audiobooks? Preferably on CD, but downloadable MP3s that I can listen to on my Bebook would be fine too.
I don’t fancy being stuck in an Audible=Amazon book club for years at a rate of one or two books a month, every month.
Also, Amazon doesn’t list Bebooks as devices that can work with Audible, and with their love for DRM I don’t expect I’d be able to play it like ordinary MP3s.
The only (probably) legal ‘alternative’ I’ve found is a site called theaudiobookstore-dot-com, which doesn’t look like an illegal torrent; they’ve got the same books up as Audible but aren’t a real alternative as they seem to link one through directly to Audible or Amazon. They give an option for ‘Cuckoo’s egg’ to buy it on CD, but following that link leads to a CD on Amazon of a Bill Oddie audiobook with those words in the title.
Does anyone here know more?
I don’t. audible IS an Amazon company, and Amazon is not likely to let things out of its hands to a third party. Sheesh, book club? Does anybody know anything about that? My only suggestion in that would be that they’re doing a bunch of mine, and if you could line it up so you could wait until a year’s worth are available, have a 1 year membership and get what you want, then quit…I don’t know. Someone else is bound to know more than I do, which is not an unusual circumstance.
a one year’s membership can give you a cheap deal, if there are 24 books you want, you can have them all in one go, for £ 5.00 something a book, and there are other deals you can get from them, I think it doesn’t have to be the sign up for a club on a monthly basis thing. it’s useful, they keep everything you have bought as a library, and you can re-download (during my shift to the imac I lost the first 2 parts of Cyteen, but they were easily downloaded again. you can even share the audiobooks with family or whoever …
I called it a book club because I can find no mention of just buying the books. As far as I could figure out you have to become a member, for either 1 or 2 book-credits a month (1 credit-membership is $15 a month, with the first 3 months $7,49 a month). Then with this 1 credit a month you get for your membership-fee, you can buy an audiobook from them. 1 book = 1 credit (except a few that cost more). You can let your credits build up for only 6 months, after that you apparently lose them. That sounds like a book club to me.
They do mention, giving the impression they consider this a huge positive point, that even if you unsubscribe/stop your membership at some point, you will still have access to the audiobooks in your Audible library. I should think so, if I’ve bought and paid for them! This sounds to me like it means you can stop paying your membership dues and receiving new audiobook credits, but you will still be stuck with your audiobook-library in Audible/Amazon’s possession, and needing to log in to their site to get to your books – and they’ll graciously keep all your info on file even if you unsubscribe, just so you can get to your books.
It rather diminishes my enthousiasm for starting to build an audiobook library at this point; I think I’ll stick with my shiny new ebooks and paper old favourites.
Maybe I’ve got it all wrong: in that case please enlighten me, anyone here who uses Audible and knows better.
also you download the book to your computer – as many times as you want, and as many different computers (or other devices I presume) as you want, so no way are they making you log in to audible to get them. it’s just handy having them there if you happen to have an accident and lose them.
if you have credits you can pay for the books with them, if not you pay with your credit card, same as on amazon. generally having credits gives you a good deal, it depends on how many credits you buy at a time how much they cost you. I got the 24 deal, so I only pay £ 5 or so per book, instead of £ 18, or even more, so I think it’s a good deal. when I have used up the credits I can buy 24 more, or whatever, or stop.
if I download music from amazon they don’t keep it for me so that in a year’s time I can re-download it!
and it works very well with itunes. if I put an audio book into itunes via a cd, it won’t put it in the audiobook category, it goes in with all the music, which is quite a nuisance.
You can, I’m pretty sure, download your library to your computer. As the writer, I have a copy of Cyteen, and it shows up as a sort of MP3 file, but with further extensions which seeme to be a proprietary type of MP3. I understand that you can load it to PC, Kindle, (don’t know about Nook,) to phones, etc. http://audible.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3316/~/number-of-computers-and%2For-devices-you-can-use-with-audible
……….ok: I asked Audible directly. This, from them: “You can purchase audiobooks as you go at full price, or you can save money on the audiobooks with the plans. There is no obligation to the plans as you can stop at any time. Also our format is our own format which is .AA.
This works on over 600+ devices.”
So apparently if you buy at list price you can buy one book at a time, or if you get credits, you can apply them to get the books at a reduced price. HTH.
Thanks, CJ and PurpleJulian! My device is not on their list, so I’ll try out one book without the plan and see if I can get it to play.
There’s no need to depend on them to keep your library for you if you have enough storage– I think it’s something like 10 Mb a book. But if you get in a crunch for memory, you can delete them, and then download again after you have bought some more storage.
You don’t have to join; you can buy as a non-member, but the prices are 30% less if you are a member. Some books are less than you spend for a credit, so you should pay for those with plastic, not with your credits.
Audiobooks are definitely a luxury item, more expensive then e-books or paperbacks, sometimes more than hardbacks. But, with a good narrator, seriously cool. And the multitasking of “reading” a book while doing something else is marvelous.
Do you know how much money you get per sold audiobook? Is it the same as when you sell a regular book?
Since the links from Amazon are meant to make sure the author gets 1$ (?) per download (or did I misread that?), if I do decide to buy the Audible package of getting 24 books right then and there, does the author get that money anyway?
I like the voice of the narrator of Cucko’s Egg. He has a soft, low voice that seems to go well with the text.
The narrator for the Chanur books was well chosen as well.
Now, let’s hope Regenesis will get licensed and recorded very soon.
ericf
I think they rate each section as a book. I’ll try to look that up if they’ve returned my contract copies yet—the good news is that they, unlike regular Amazon, are sending checks through in a recognizable form (regular Amazon lumps things together in a check to my publisher, who has to dissect out what’s mine, theirs, and somebody else’s, and for a long while, they were selling illicit copies and weren’t paying us at all, since the publisher they attributed the contract to was long-defunct: that meant they were pocketing the whole thing, and I don’t think there ever was an accounting for those years, nor ever a payment for the defunct publisher in the first place.
I’ve now listened to Cyteen and Serpent’s Reach, and am in the opening sections of Downbelow Station. Cyteen was very well done, Serpent’s Reach- not so much. Not a good choice for the reader, and poorly edited. I think Downbelow will be okay. I’ve started sampling the readers for the other books before purchase, so far at least their voices are pretty good.
WooHoo! I say to this. Was was thrilled with Audible started going through the backlog of older books..when I say Cyteen up there I knew the Chanur books would not be far behind and I was right. I’ve read that series at least 5 times since the 80s and am not going through the Audio book versions!
Ugh, I seem to be full of Typos today, for some reason. Say=saw and I am NOW going through…ugh. This needs an edit option! :3 Or I’m just excited. Having a hard time putting the audio book down, just like every other time I read the series…one of the all time greats in my opinion. I miss Pyanfar, Hilfy, Tully and the rest…wish we could see more of the Hani…listening to the Audio books is like seeing old friends after years absent.
Welcome in! 😉
Takes me a bit to clear the first post in—you should now and forever after have an edit option. At least I hope that feature is showing up on the non-admin display.
So, in case you were interested, I’ve heard that Foreigner 1 is up on audible, too.