Star Trek Audiobooks!!!! - oh wait....

[bbailey861]

I don't understand why there aren't more Star Trek audiobooks. Surely the Star Trek franchise is popular enough to sustain a huge audiobook market.

Once again, just because YOU'RE interested does not qualify you to assert that it will spell success for the publisher.

Also, just because Star Trek is popular, does not qualify one to assert that fiction published in any and every format will be eaten up ravenously by the fans.

That was a tad harsh.
It's not unreasonable to wonder why more Trek books are not being turned into audiobooks.

GraphicAudio adaptations of Trek books would be amazing.

Well, I very much doubt they could afford the original cast. They'd probably have to rely on their usual stable of D.C.-area actors. It would take some getting used to the recastings. Although it might work for something like Vanguard or DTI that's mostly new characters.

I like the Vanguard and DTI idea and would even include Starfleet Corps of Engineers as well. I'm sure someone could be found who could do a passable Scotty and the rest would be pretty much free game.

 

[Smitty]

I would not care if they did a dramatization or had original actors read the novels. I would imagine either of those would make it more expensive to produce. But a standard narration by a professional like they do all the other books on audible would work great.
I listen to audible a tremendous amount in my commute to and from work, it is my primary way of consuming novels because once I get to work or home things are busy. Having said that, I typically will by the audiobook on audible and the ebook version on amazon as well for those few hours in a week where I can actually read the words. The whispersync function works great! yes, I end up spending a few dollars more for both formats but I get benefit from it and I am sure the authors/publishers like it as well. I can tell you that if they had unabridged star trek novels on audible I would be consuming a lot of them.

 

[ATimson]

It seems you and I have different definitions of what constitutes "audio drama". I've worked on dozens of different audio projects in varying forms (single-performer, two-hander, full cast, prose adaptation, original-for-audio, readings), and in my experience the key difference is if the work is "dramatic" (as in, a performance with music, effects, direction etc) or a just a "reading". YMMV.

Personally, I don't think that's a solid enough distinction between the two groups. "Readings" still usually have a director credited. And if music/effects make it dramatic, then all of the Star Wars audiobooks would qualify.

(Not that I have a good definition myself. Anything that I can come up with that puts the Companion Chronicles in the "dramatic" bin instead of the "reading" bin feels too involved and technical, and thus wrong.)

 

[Christopher]

To me, the distinction is whether the performers actually trade dialogue. That's the thing the Captain Sulu audios lacked, and I never really understood why they didn't take that step.

 

[ATimson]

To me, the distinction is whether the performers actually trade dialogue.

That was my take, but I couldn't come up with a good way to put it. I guess that's why you're the professional writer, and I'm not.

(I think there is potentially room for a dramatic one-person audio, or multi-person one where they don't trade dialogue; however, it'd have to be first-person with no narration or other characters.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

To me, the distinction is whether the performers actually trade dialogue. That's the thing the Captain Sulu audios lacked, and I never really understood why they didn't take that step.

Majel Barrett and John de Lancie come close to exchanging banter in the "Q-in-Law" audio.

But yeah, then-Viacom must have hoped to separately license dramatic audio at some point.

 

[Destructor]

Kindle has text-to-speech capability which works reasonably well. However the publisher makes Amazon disable that for the Star Trek books.

Isn't that tremendously discriminatory towards the vision impaired? I'd sue.

 

[Destructor]

Once again, just because YOU'RE interested does not qualify you to assert that it will spell success for the publisher.

Now, that's not fair. It's not self-centered to recognize that audiobooks in general are selling well and to wonder why Star Trek isn't participating in that market.

Big Finish audio dramas generally do well selling their 'Doctor Who' audio dramas (which are great fun, btw), even in the face of piracy. You'd think Star Trek could at least compete with Doctor Who in the same arena.

 

[ATimson]

Big Finish audio dramas generally do well selling their 'Doctor Who' audio dramas (which are great fun, btw), even in the face of piracy. You'd think Star Trek could at least compete with Doctor Who in the same arena.

For Doctor Who, you only need to pay 1-3 actors from the show. For Star Trek, you have to be able to afford, and schedule time with, 7+ actors.

You could reasonably do a Titan series (with only the two cast members required, canonically). Maybe even post-Nemesis TNG (with four, although Patrick Stewart may be a bit expensive). Anything else would probably require omitting characters, which I don't think would be appreciated.

Big Finish tried doing Stargate audios, which were under similar constraints. The first two series of Companion Chronicle-style audios were okay but not didn't really sell the medium. The third series was pretty good - but since it only had 2 main cast members, it definitely didn't feel 100% like the parent show.

 

[James Swallow]

Big Finish audio dramas generally do well selling their 'Doctor Who' audio dramas (which are great fun, btw), even in the face of piracy. You'd think Star Trek could at least compete with Doctor Who in the same arena.

For Doctor Who, you only need to pay 1-3 actors from the show. For Star Trek, you have to be able to afford, and schedule time with, 7+ actors.

That's assuming you're scaling for a full-cast, big-budget production. The 'Companion Chronicles' model Big Finish has used for their some of their Doctor Who, Judge Dredd and Blake's 7 audios works perfectly well with only two or three actors, and there's no reason why you couldn't make an 'anthology' series in the same fashion with Star Trek.

Big Finish tried doing Stargate audios, which were under similar constraints. The first two series of Companion Chronicle-style audios were okay but not didn't really sell the medium. The third series was pretty good - but since it only had 2 main cast members, it definitely didn't feel 100% like the parent show.

Actually, by and large the Stargate audios were pretty well-recieved by the fans who listened to them. As for what we did with the third series, that was a feature not a bug; as we had a smaller budget, we concieved the audios as if they were a spin-off (essentially, "The Vala & Daniel Show"!) and built a new cast of recurring supporting characters to support to leads from the TV series.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating; back in the day when we kicked around the idea of doing a Star Trek audio series at Big Finish, the concept was to base it around a new ship and a new crew (echoing what was happening at the time in the novels with New Frontier, Stargazer, Gorkon, Vanguard etc), with a format that would allow 'guest-star' roles for characters from other shows.

Big Finish have done a similar thing with some of their Doctor Who ranges like Bernice Summerfield, UNIT, Charlotte Pollard, the Cyberman and Dalek Empire series et al.

 

[ATimson]

That's assuming you're scaling for a full-cast, big-budget production.

True. I guess I assume that because that's where my interests lie.

As for what we did with the third series, that was a feature not a bug; as we had a smaller budget, we concieved the audios as if they were a spin-off (essentially, "The Vala & Daniel Show"!) and built a new cast of recurring supporting characters to support to leads from the TV series.

...huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. Was there any thought of giving it a different name?

(I'm wondering if that would have set my expectations better. I'm not the world's biggest Vala fan; obviously I was expecting it to feature her and Daniel, but I expected it to be a bit more SGC-based than it was. Or at least than I remember it being.)

Big Finish have done a similar thing with some of their Doctor Who ranges like Bernice Summerfield, UNIT, Charlotte Pollard, the Cyberman and Dalek Empire series et al.

True, though most of those spun off from existing characters, rather than being a brand new cast from scratch.

I'd like to think a brand new cast could be done. But if the book line hasn't been able to sustain most of those ranges (all that we have left is Titan, Seekers, and New Frontier in a limited fashion), I'm not sure Big Finish would find it viable either.

Or maybe Pocket's marketing folks are just wrong.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

I really like the new ship, new crew idea for an audio series. Though, ATimson makes a good point about sustainability.

Vanguard ended on its own terms and begat Seekers, but we did lose the Gorkon and SCE series (presumably) to low sales. Still, I'd be very curious to see if an audio-only series would be viable in the current market.

 

[James Swallow]

That's assuming you're scaling for a full-cast, big-budget production.

True. I guess I assume that because that's where my interests lie.

Sure, I get that. Full cast would be cool - I did exactly that when I worked with B7 Media on the Blake's 7 reboot, and Big Finish are doing the same now with the 'classic' B7 cast.

But to do that for a Trek show, to re-assemble the complete cast of a TV series? I don't think audios are popular enough to make the initial outlay profitable.

Not to go too OT here, but regarding Stargate and "The Vala & Daniel Show"...

...huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. Was there any thought of giving it a different name?
(I'm wondering if that would have set my expectations better. I'm not the world's biggest Vala fan; obviously I was expecting it to feature her and Daniel, but I expected it to be a bit more SGC-based than it was. Or at least than I remember it being.)

There was a brief discussion about giving the series a subtitle or something, but I think there was a licensing issue there.

Among the reasons why we chose to have Daniel & Vala as the leads were: the previous team-up story I wrote for them ("Shell Game") and Sally Malcolm's Daniel standalone ("Gift of the Gods") from series one were the best-selling titles in the line for BF; and the actors were both affordable and available for 6 episodes.

Also, we made it less SGC-centric so it would have a different tone and convieniently explain why the other SG characters weren't in the story!

I'd like to think a brand new cast could be done. But if the book line hasn't been able to sustain most of those ranges (all that we have left is Titan, Seekers, and New Frontier in a limited fashion), I'm not sure Big Finish would find it viable either.

Big Finish are great at this stuff, but they're not the only folks who could make something like this; to be honest, they're Doctor Who fans through and through, and I think to see them do a Star Trek project they'd need a dedicated Trek fan on the team to champion it. As it is, they've got their plate full of Who projects until 2020...

But as for the idea of a "new crew" Star Trek audio series being viable, I really do think it could be made to work - that, or an anthology series of standalone tales with known characters.

 

[Danlav05]

Klingon" (90 mins) and "Borg" (60 mins), using the already-available extended voice casts of the games

So basically 'episode' soundtracks with narration? (Though the former used Michael Dorn narrating in character as Worf)

 

[Therin of Andor]

So basically 'episode' soundtracks with narration? (Though the former used Michael Dorn narrating in character as Worf)

Yes, and the latter featuring Howard McGillin. All other voices are extracted from the games, IIRC. (Howard plays the male version of his character, but I think players in the game version can choose to be female?)

 

[chrinFinity]

Earlier in this thread, someone was lamenting that they were unable to use TTS on eBooks because of DRM.

For anyone looking to legally acquire DRM-free recent Trek eBooks, I have noticed that when you purchase Trek books on the Kobo online store, often times the "downloadable" version through the website's "My Books" section on your account will give you a DRM-Free version. This can be used with TTS.

On Kobo marketplace, whether a book is DRM or DRM-Free is decided by the publisher (or author maybe?) on a per-book basis, and you can actually see before you buy the book (on its details page) whether it is one or the other. In my experience, Kobo's Pocket Books Trek novels tend to be available DRM-Free for whatever reason (although I suppose there could be exceptions, so be careful before you buy).

When you buy a book, the file that sideloads directly to the Kobo device through the Internet seems to always have DRM, even on releases that are categorized DRM-Free... They stubbornly don't copy *from* the Kobo at all. But, when you then go on the PC through the Kobo website, you can retrieve the DRM-Free version of the book you bought, through a normal download.

If your TTS engine / app does not natively support EPUB files, you can convert DRM-Free EPUB files to HTML format very easily online thru free converter apps or websites.

Pocket Books Trek novels on Kobo are pretty reasonably priced, I've found. And there are sales too. As disclaimer, I'm not paid or compensated to promote Kobo, I'm just a happy Kobo owner

 

[Reanok]

I'm so glad there's going to be more audiobooks my best friend likes to listen to the Startrek ones. She's really excited about this news new Star trek series adventures. coming out soon.

 

[JD]

Earlier in this thread, someone was lamenting that they were unable to use TTS on eBooks because of DRM.

For anyone looking to legally acquire DRM-free recent Trek eBooks, I have noticed that when you purchase Trek books on the Kobo online store, often times the "downloadable" version through the website's "My Books" section on your account will give you a DRM-Free version. This can be used with TTS.

Note 1:
On Kobo marketplace, whether a book is DRM or DRM-Free is decided by the publisher (or author maybe?) on a per-book basis, and you can actually see before you buy the book (on its details page) whether it is one or the other. In my experience, Kobo's Pocket Books Trek novels tend to be available DRM-Free for whatever reason (although I suppose there could be exceptions, so be careful before you buy).

Note 2:
When you buy a book, the file that sideloads directly to the Kobo device through the Internet seems to always have DRM, even on releases that are categorized DRM-Free... They stubbornly don't copy *from* the Kobo at all. But, when you then go on the PC through the Kobo website, you can retrieve the DRM-Free version of the book you bought, through a normal download.

Note 3:
If your TTS engine / app does not natively support EPUB files, you can convert DRM-Free EPUB files to HTML format very easily online thru free converter apps or websites.

Note 4:
Pocket Books Trek novels on Kobo are pretty reasonably priced, I've found. And there are sales too. As disclaimer, I'm not paid or compensated to promote Kobo, I'm just a happy Kobo owner

The Google Play versions of the first two Prey books have a notification that they are DRM free, but oddly the third one does not. I also checked the Legacies trilogy, Pocket Full of Lies, Elusive Salvation, The Latter Fire and the Rise of Federation e-books and none of the have it either. Those are the only other recent Trek e-books I own.