Zoe’s Tale in Audio Form
Posted on September 12, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
Those of you hoping for an audio version of Zoe’s Tale to listen to during your commute or other activity in which your ears are not critical for survival will be happy to know that indeed it is out and available on Audible.com and will likely shortly be available through iTunes, as all the other stuff on Audible (Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Sagan Diary) is there already.
Regarding the Zoe’s Tale audio, I’ve already gotten questions about it regarding pricing, Audible credits, so on and so forth. I know nothing about any of this and have no control over any of it — seriously, they don’t even tell me when my audiobooks are being released, so imagining that I can do anything about fiddly details is optimistic. Sending me your retail or technical concerns and/or complaints does neither of us any good. Please don’t, since my response will be to gaze at your e-mail balefully and think why are you sending this to me. Direct them toward Audible, which has a whole area for customer support and questions.
One thing I can answer is why Zoe’s Tale is available on audio and in eBook form while The Last Colony is not. And the answer is: There is no good reason, it just happened that way. Both electronic and audio versions of The Last Colony are in the can (or near to it) and no one has a particularly good reason for why Zoe got out first. It just happened that way. That said, if you’re feeling mildly OCD about reading/listening to the fourth book in the series before the third, remember that Zoe and The Last Colony take place in the same timeframe; in terms of the series, it really doesn’t matter which you read or listen to first.
So, go ahead. Read or listen to Zoe’s Tale first. Really, it’s fine. You can trust me, I’m the author.
Update: for completists, here’s a link to everything I’ve got on Audible.com. Download away —
Trust you, the author? How could we – you’re just an aspect of the sociocultural zeitgeist, baby… without you there’d be a Valczsi or a Lazcliv or maybe a Shoeless John, at least that’s the theory.
In practice I like having you specifically around, but still, trust the author? My lit theory students would eat my lunch.
I think I’ll download this and listen to it while I get the Hell out of Houston before the Hurricane gets here. At least something is going right today.
I was going to point out that authors of fiction are habitual liars (at least in print) so trusting them might not be the wisest policy, but then I’m trying to cure my cynicism.
For a while now I have been wondering how it is that a cell phone call is automatically a hazard, but listening to a book, which typically takes more concentration, is fine.
I’m curious, did they have an actual teenage girl record it? I would think it’d be sort of … discordant… to have a solemn baritone narrating the inner voice of a sassy teen.
Coward: Nope, just the opposite. An audiobook doesn’t take any more concentration than listening to radio news or talk.
Brian: Now I imagine it being Don LaFontaine’s last project. “In a world where I looked forward to a new poem from Enzo every day…”
As far as the audible credits thing goes, yah, I’d be annoyed that it was two credits for a 10 hour work, because normally they only make them 2 credits when they’re 20+ hours.
But two points on that – many moons ago something went up in the number of credits it was (it was a bundle of all the Chronicles on Narnia I think) and I emailed them shortly afterwards, and they honored the old price. Now, there’s no older price there, but they do seem to have good customer service, so politely letting them know that you’d be buying this at one credit, but not at two, is information they’ll take into account.
And two, in the past things that started out as two credits have, in a few months, gone down to one. Of course, the example I had of this, the second Eragon book, I see is back at two credits. But I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it otherwise.
Brian @ #5: The narrator is a woman, but her name is not listed. I tried to check at the Macmillan Audio site, but they don’t even have the book listed yet.
Skip @ #7: They’re only charging one credit for the book today.
I picked up Zoe’s Tale in hardcover and The Last Colony in mass market at the same time and decided, for fun, the read Zoe’s Tale first. I enjoyed it a lot, but I think I ended up at the same place as some reviewers who did them in the proper order. Reading the second book (The Last Colony in my case) really seemed like a re-hash of what I had just finished with some side-story filled in. Maybe that was more a function of reading them one right after another rather than the order. In either case, they were both fantastic reads.
I read Zoe’s tale first, and still haven’t read the Last Colony (I look forward to it being out in ebook format, and will purchase it as soon as it is released).
I thought Zoe’s tale was one of the best novels I’ve read this year.
One annoying thing about Audible is that , living in Israel, I can download OMW, The Sagan dairy and now Zoe’s Tale, but for some weird publishing reason I am not allowed to download The Ghost Brigades.
Bloody annoying …
It’s showing as 2 credits, for me. From past audible experience (I’ve been dealing with them on and off from something like 1999) the price probably depends on where you live and/or what subscription plan you have. Length is absolutely not a factor; several 80 hour bibles are only one credit. It’s completely random, in my experience. I’ll see what the price of the audio work John’s editing does next month, and get it in December or February depending.
#11, yeah i had the same problem myself living in Sweden so i had a friend of mine living in the states buy it from the local itunes and strip it from DRM so i could play it. Really stupid with these regional restrictions.
I remember being a bit OCD about reading the dead tree versions of these books, which I prefer to lug physically from my bookshop: they didn’t have The Ghost Brigades, and so after reading Old Man’s War, I took in Zoe’s Tale. That was perfectly fine, but then I knew reading The Last Colony next would probably be a mistake, couldn’t see a way back to TGB after that, so I contented myself with The Android’s Dream. Then thankfully after a few more days, TGB appeared on the shelf. Obviously this is not the order that I would have chosen to read these four books, but behold, here and now I return from the arena of conflict, bearing the news that: it does actually work quite well!