Audio Book News | Discussing Celebrity Narrators, Book Piracy and Authors Who Tweet

by DorothyD on January 18, 2010

First I have to give a brief shout-out to Neil Gaiman.

You may recall that the author, in conjunction with BBC Audiobooks America, tweeted the first line of the cool Twitter audiobook project a few months ago called “Hearts, Keys, and Puppetry”.

Well, on Friday night he and Amanda Palmer, an amazing musician and artist, became engaged to be married. Congratulations to them both!

Celebrity Narrators

Take some time to check out this cool blog: Whose Voice is That? A new entry has a great list of audiobooks read by celebrities. I can’t imagine Jerry Garcia reading Stephen King… and I don’t think I want to. However I am tempted by Paul Giamatti narrating Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.

Book Piracy

It is estimated that there were 9 million illegal downloads of copyrighted books in just the last few months of 2009. Illegal copies of titles such as Freakonomics (downloaded over 1,000 times) and Angels and Demons (7,951 times) were tracked. Attributor, a company that tracks pirated downloads, estimates that losses to the publishing industry could be nearly $3 billion.

Stephen Fry

Authors Who Tweet

You may have figured out that I have a little Twitter addiction issue. Well, one of the reasons is that I love to follow authors on Twitter. Believe it or not, some bestselling authors and really interesting writers post “tweets” that give insight into their lives, writing, thoughts, and basically allow legalized stalking… Sort of. Anyway, here are a few interesting authors that you might consider checking out on Twitter.

Stephen Fry has particularly entertaining tweets. A typical entry? “600 people went to the theatre, not to see Oliver but to compete in a paper & chocolate wrapper rustling competition. Others came to cough” Comic writer John Hodgman tweets: “Desk is clear for the first time since beginning of book tour. Apparently it is made of wood”.

Author Paulo Coelho offers this insight: “I’ve learned more by not following bad examples than by following good examples”. Medical thriller author Michael Palmer is currently hosting a “thrilling tweets” contest. The people with the most “retweets” will win copies of his latest thriller. I was in fifth place, but have lost ground over the weekend.

There are certainly many more authors on Twitter, Neil Gaiman, Brad Meltzer, Joseph Finder, and more may be found by searching either on Twitter or through your favorite search engine.

Questions about Twitter or whether your favorite author tweets? Comment here and I will do what I can to find out!

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Written by :

DorothyD

AudioforBooks.com Author

Reading and writing are my passions. I read a lot of paper books as well as listen to audiobooks utilizing playaways from the local library. I listen to most of my audiobooks on my iPod. I read about one book/week and am rarely seen without one in hand. Come along and discuss this article in our friendly community forum.