Missing audiobooks?

Jennilyn asks:

“I can’t find the last few Frostborn audiobooks. Did you just stop making them after The False King and decide to leave the series unfinished in audio, even though you then offered audio for Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna? I don’t understand. I realize contracting out the audio rights is probably complicated, but it makes no sense to suddenly leave off one series midway through and skip directly to the next series. What happened?”

That is a good question, so let’s share with the class!

Here’s what happened:

When I start self-publishing in 2011, I had only a vague conception that audiobooks existed at all, and hadn’t listened to one in years. When someone said “audiobook” I thought of that shelf at the back of Barnes & Noble and Borders with all the CD bundles. Or those wire racks at rural gas stations that held audiobook CD bundles for long-haul truckers, next to the glass cases that displayed CB radio equipment and stereo upgrades. (You could get an audiobook, a coffee, a trucker hat, and a CB radio all in the same transaction!) Producing and shipping physical products myself was definitely not a business I wanted to get into (still isn’t), and so audiobooks weren’t on my radar at all.

Between 2012 and 2016, I started traveling by car more, and I began listening to audiobooks as I did. I realized that the smartphone revolution had changed things. Gone were the days of swapping out a million CDs, which was neither fun nor safe to do while on the freeway. Instead, you just connected your phone to the car speakers or a Bluetooth speaker, and listened uninterrupted for the duration of your journey. This was much more enjoyable.

Later, in 2016 when FROSTBORN started to do really well, I briefly gave some thought to self-publishing audiobooks, but decided it would be too expensive and too much hassle.

However, at the end of 2016, Tantor Audio contacted me about the audio rights for the FROSTBORN series. Specifically, they wanted the first five books. That was a good deal, so I said yes and they came out in 2017. In July of 2017, Podium Publishing contacted me, and was interested in the audio rights to SEVENFOLD SWORD. That also was a good deal and they have a good reputation, so I said yet to that as well. Later in 2019 when I started DRAGONTIARNA, I asked if they would be interested in that series as well, which is why the DRAGONTIARNA audiobooks have been coming out from Podium this year.

In December 2017, something completely unrelated to audiobooks happened – the US tax laws changed. Because of that, I had to change my business structure, and I needed more business deductions. Self-producing audiobooks finally made financial sense, and since Tantor had only been interested in the first five FROSTBORN books, I decided to continue the FROSTBORN series myself. So in summer of 2018, FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN came out.

Fast forward to the present – 11 of the 15 FROSTBORN books are in audio, all 12 SEVENFOLD SWORD, and the first six of DRAGONTIARNA. (To be fair, I still have to write the final DRAGONTIARNA book.) When it’s finished, FROSTBORN/SEVENFOLD SWORD/DRAGONTIARNA will compromise 37 books, and right now 29 of those books are available in audio! I would like people to be able to start listening to FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT and listen continuously all the way through to DRAGONTIARNA: WARDEN, which will be something like over 400 hours of finished audio.

We’re not there quite yet, but we are closing in on it!

And I have good news on that topic! Recording and editing has nearly finished on FROSTBORN: THE DWARVEN PRINCE, and barring unexpected challenges the audiobook should be out on Audible, Apple, and Amazon sometime in May.

-JM