10/04/2024
Are you still using Amazon? They won't carry the audiobook of my novel Locus Amoenus.
I loved Amazon in the early naughts when I was in grad school. I could get any book I wanted, immediately. Prior to that, I would have to trek to the NYPL and photocopy the rare book I wanted. Bezos' idea was a good one.
But I realized that, if everyone bought their books from Amazon, soon other retailers would go out of business. Bezos would then be in a position to censor books.
Never concentrate power.
A few weeks ago, the audiobook of my 2015 was newly released. Why didn't I release it before? Well, it did come out in 2015 and Amazon's Audible got a two-year exclusive from my publisher The Permanent Press. The audiobook came out several months after the hardcover, and a week after the novel was nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Immediately, book sales tapered off. It had held the number two position in political satire/dark comic novels behind Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five for months.
I became aware, after several weeks, that not a single audiobook had sold. Two years passed. Not one.
With some difficultly, I had the audiobook removed from Audible and got the rights back from the publisher. I sat on it for awhile, not knowing what to do. After the narrator, Ben Jorgensen, died in 2020, I gave the recording away in order to raise money for a fund to support actors doing audiobook production.
But I finally decided to make it more widely available. Locus Amoenus is my funniest book. I released it through a distribution company owned by Spotify, which works with 38 different audiobook platforms, including Audible, and libraries.
But Audible isn't carrying it. I cannot find out why. No one responds to my inquires.
This is devastating to the success of the audiobook. It's really hard to have a big hit if it's not on Audible because audiobook listeners tend to have a subscription. If you're already paying $15 per month for audiobooks, you're not going to pay extra to get one from Google, Apple or B&N or whatever.
I admit I've been a little depressed about this. My husband consoles me and tells me not to think less of myself because the audiobook isn't selling as well as I hoped.
No chance, sweetheart, I said. I couldn't be more proud of the work I did with Locus Amoenus. And Ben's performance adds another layer of genius.
The story is even more relevant now than in 2015. 9/11 conspiracy theory is pretty much accepted as conspiracy fact now, and I had the foresight to weave unhealthy agricultural practices in with the anti-war, corporate corruption themes.
Bobby Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again campaign recognizes that our food supply is tied up with a lot of what's wrong in our world today. I think the desire for healthy food might be a big political driver that the Blob hasn't foreseen.
A political revolution is afoot and yet where is the cultural revolution to accompany it? Every other revolution had its literature to spark it.
When was the last time you read or listened to a novel? And why don't you do it more often?
My answer is good books are hard to find.
Locus Amoenus is available on every platform, except Amazon's Audible.
If you can't find it on Nook, Spotify, Apple, Libre, or Google, etc, let me know, and I'll help. If you find it at your local library, tell me where you found in in the comments below
