Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Beeb do some Superman audio dramas in the 1990s? This doesn't seem too far afield from that, and it would be about the same time.
Star Trek Books As A Podcast
- Thread starter Man of Steel
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Those were great! That was The Adventures of Superman, which was produced by the brilliant Dirk Maggs (who also did a UK version of Independence Day, Batman, Spiderman, American Werewolf in London, along with the later Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy series). But Dirk's stuff is produced by his independent studio for the BBC, not by the BBC themselves.
I LOVE BBC's "radio" shows.
I think the obvious choice for an audio TREK treatment is the various short story collections including SNW.
I think the obvious choice for an audio TREK treatment is the various short story collections including SNW.
Hang on- are there no Star Trek audiobooks? I remember Shatner reading me his Shatnerverse novels and Janeway reading me the two Jeri Taylor novels. They were awesome. Are they on iTunes? (quick check: Yes, there are 67 ST abridged audiobooks on iTunes)
Q for Christopher: If I make a recording of me reading Over a Torrent Sea and made it publicly available, wouldn't that be... well, an order of magnitude worse than just making up some fan fiction set in the Trek universe? Couldn't I expect some lawyers to ask me to shut that down, since in theory it might reduce sales of your book if people could just download me reading it for free? Fan fiction is relatively harmless, that doesn't mean CBS doesn't aggressively maintain copyright in situations where it might lead to financial loss for them.
Q for Christopher: If I make a recording of me reading Over a Torrent Sea and made it publicly available, wouldn't that be... well, an order of magnitude worse than just making up some fan fiction set in the Trek universe? Couldn't I expect some lawyers to ask me to shut that down, since in theory it might reduce sales of your book if people could just download me reading it for free? Fan fiction is relatively harmless, that doesn't mean CBS doesn't aggressively maintain copyright in situations where it might lead to financial loss for them.
http://therinofandor.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/i-hear-star-trek.html
And I believe I recall Zachary Quinto is reading the upcoming novelization abridgment.
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Yes as a Janeway fan I have Mosaic on my ipod ( as well as owning the actual book - the audiobook is heavily abridged - I suppose to avoid being seven hours long!). It's read by Kate Mulgrew and it's absolutely brilliant.
She does the other voices pretty well, but I can see how an audio drama, with a few different voices, would be a million times better again. Preferably shorter than a novel so you could listen to it all in one go, maybe typical Star trek episode length. That would be amazing, I'd be a sucker for buying every single one.
I don't see how they'd sell well enough to pay everyone who took part though - the rest of the world doesn't seem to agree with me these days that the production of a Star trek audio drama would be the biggest leap forward in popular entertainment so far this century
From a personal standpoint, yeah, it would probably be somewhat jerkier than coming up with your own story. From a legal standpoint, I don't know. I don't see that making an audiobook would necessarily hurt sales any more than a library or used-book store would. Especially since, no offense, there's no guarantee that an amateur audiobook would be performed with sufficient competence to be worth listening to. I can envision people being interested in a Titan audiobook read by Jonathan Frakes or Marina Sirtis or Tim Russ, but just some guy they've never heard of?
If you charged money for such an e-book, then you'd be in violation, because the publisher (and I, to a very small extent) would be entitled to a cut of the profits. That's when you'd unambiguously be costing the publisher money, and that's when the lawyers would come after you and your little dog too.
Audio drama rules; that's why.
I would simply be happy with UNABRIDGED audiobooks of the existing novels out there. Only a couple are out there that are unabridged, the rest are abridged which leaves out so much. I am on book 2 of the Titan series and would love to be able to listen to it during the 8-10 hours a week I spend commuting to/from work.
I agree...especially the SNW stories with a focus on dialogue which don't involve a lot of complex visuals, making them easier to translate into the new medium--not that I'm suggesting any story in particular.
Doctor Who audios are by and large the latter, though there are a few exceptions. But as you might expect, there are as many approaches to audio drama as there are writers.
I love audio drama-- I've written and produced amateur stuff for ages (fan stories and original), but I've never done anything professionally, alas.
Podcasts of books I think could actually help sales, hence Scott Sigler getting a major book deal because of his podcast, and all the work he puts in. Plus he wrote into the contract that he gets to Podcast all his future novels for free as well. If an author develops a presence like that I see it working to a huge advantage, and NOT taking away. While Sigler is one in a million in the pod-o-sphere, it just proves hard work and dilligence pays off.
As far as audio goes.....I'm excited to say I'll be playing a part in the new Star Trek: Temporal Investigations series coming up, the first episode is almost done, and the script for episode 2 should be coming to me soon.
As far as audio goes.....I'm excited to say I'll be playing a part in the new Star Trek: Temporal Investigations series coming up, the first episode is almost done, and the script for episode 2 should be coming to me soon.
Oh I'm definitely going to do something like that one of thee days. I LOVE radio drama.
Who do you play or um one line you say which is:
And um is Scott Siegler any good? What's his best book podcast to put on my iPod?
The one liner I have is the character of Neutron, towards the end of the 3rd episode, which comes out later this month, like May 21st or something.
As far as Scott Sigler goes....yeah, he's the man as far as podcast novels go. My favorite, is The Rookie, which is kind of like Star Wars meets Any Given Sunday meets the Sopranos or something along that line.
Crown books, which is a division of Random House Publishing gave him a 3 book deal after his success in podcasting, by self-promoting his books, when his book Ancestor came out by an independant publisher, he was able to be #7 overall on Amazon behind Harry Potter and Oprah and #1 in Sci-Fi and Horror. For example a great first run for an indy publisher is around 2500 books, Scott hit around 15,000 or something outragous like that. A major publisher threatened to pull their books from Amazon if they sold Scott's books and Amazon then made all their pre-orders go through hoops to get their book. But he previaled and won that battle.
After that the Crown Book deal happened, and his podcast Infection became the book Infected, and then his sequal Contagious came out, and the third is Pandemic (I think), after that....he's got enough sales to continue his deal with Crown. There was such a buzz around Contagious that they pushed his deadline up by 6 months, they wanted it before Christmas, or at least the end of the year of 2008.
JC Hutchins and Seth Harwood are two others that got book deals based off their podcast novels.
As far as Scott Sigler goes....yeah, he's the man as far as podcast novels go. My favorite, is The Rookie, which is kind of like Star Wars meets Any Given Sunday meets the Sopranos or something along that line.
Crown books, which is a division of Random House Publishing gave him a 3 book deal after his success in podcasting, by self-promoting his books, when his book Ancestor came out by an independant publisher, he was able to be #7 overall on Amazon behind Harry Potter and Oprah and #1 in Sci-Fi and Horror. For example a great first run for an indy publisher is around 2500 books, Scott hit around 15,000 or something outragous like that. A major publisher threatened to pull their books from Amazon if they sold Scott's books and Amazon then made all their pre-orders go through hoops to get their book. But he previaled and won that battle.
After that the Crown Book deal happened, and his podcast Infection became the book Infected, and then his sequal Contagious came out, and the third is Pandemic (I think), after that....he's got enough sales to continue his deal with Crown. There was such a buzz around Contagious that they pushed his deadline up by 6 months, they wanted it before Christmas, or at least the end of the year of 2008.
JC Hutchins and Seth Harwood are two others that got book deals based off their podcast novels.
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