Journal - Audiobook Heaven Update

Okay, more exciting news about Audiobook Heaven! I’ve been listening to the audiobooks that Susan from Audiobook Jukebox and SF Site sent me. SF Site is updated twice a month with new book reviews. It works kind of like a magazine, but since it’s on the internet it’s called an e-zine. I had written reviews for two of the books Susan sent me in the first part of December and sent them off to her. When the mid-December issue of SF Site was published, I was a little surprised, and a lot pleased, to see that they had used both of them. I reviewed “The Golden Apples of the Sun” by Ray Bradbury, and “Hull Zero Three” by Greg Bear, and they can both be found there now. I sent Susan a third review just a few days ago so maybe it will show up in the early January issue. In the meantime, I’ve also requested two more books from Susan.
In other news, I’ve been exchanging emails during the last week with my contact at Blackstone Audio. I hadn’t heard from her for a while so I was asking about the audiobooks she was sending. She said they had gone out by UPS on December 6, and when they tracked it, it showed that the package was delivered on the 10th. Unfortunately, I never got them. Good old UPS. I hope whoever got those books enjoys them. I was pretty disappointed, ofcourse, not only because I had been looking forward to getting them, but also because I was afraid Blackstone wouldn’t want to bother sending me any more after the first bunch got lost. My fears proved to be groundless, though. My contact, Tanya, was very gracious and said she would send them again. She even said that in addition to the three books I had requested, she was sending me two more. One of the books I requested was “Mars” by Ben Bova, and Tanya also threw in the other two books in the series, “Return to Mars” and Mars Life.” I can’t tell you how happy that made me! I received her email on Wednesday saying that she had sent them out, and I should get them next Wednesday, the 29th. I was a little disappointed that she had sent them UPS again, but I suppose that can’t be helped. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed next Wednesday as I wait for the UPS truck to come around.
In case I don’t post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. Safe travels to those of you who might be traveling for the holiday.

Luke 2:10-12 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” NKJV

Journal - Free Audiobooks

Okay, here’s some more of the good news about Audiobook Heaven.

I already talked about Susan. She’s the person behind the website Audiobook Jukebox, and also the review editor for the website SFSite.com. She had asked me if I would be interested in submitting some reviews for SFSite and I said “Duh!” Well, I didn’t exactly say that, but you get my meaning. She told me about her list of books I could choose from and I was all happy about getting some free audiobooks. Since Susan is the editor of an audiobook review site, publisher’s send her the audiobooks for free since it’s good advertising for the publisher. Susan, in turn, sends the books out to her reviewers, of which there are about 12 including me.

As I was discussing all this with Susan, it occurred to me that hey, I run a legitimate audiobook review site of my own, why can’t publisher’s send free audiobooks to me? I looked around the web a little bit and found that this is a fairly common practice. Publisher’s like to send out review copies to reviewers at newspapers, magazines, websites, and yes, even little bloggers like me. So I started contacting some publishers. I’ve been reviewing for over a year so I know several of them. I looked up their contact information on the internet, and sent email inquiries to about half a dozen publishing companies to see if they would be willing to send me review copies. Of course, I provided them with links to my blog so they could check it out if they wanted to.

About eight days went by and I was beginning to despair, but then I got a bite! Someone from Blackstone Audio sent me an email saying that they were interested. She asked me how many audiobooks I could comfortably handle per month. The answer to that is between 15 and 20, but I didn’t want to seem greedy, so I said three. She had also asked me to go ahead and pick out some books from their website, which I did last Monday. Several more days went by, but on Friday she wrote back and said she had two audiobooks ready to send to me. The third one I picked is apparently still in production and not available yet so she asked me to make another selection, which I also did. Her only requirement is that when I review one of their books, I include a link to the product page at Blackstone for that book, and send her a link to the review I write, which is no problem at all.

This is really exciting! I haven’t heard back from any of the other publishers I contacted, but I’ll be getting audiobooks from Susan, and from Blackstone Audio, so that’s pretty awesome. Oh, the really exciting part is that Blackstone carries my favorite science fiction author, Ben Bova. I’ve been listening to audiobooks for about three years now and have never found a single one by Ben Bova, so I was really happy about that.

My career as an audiobook reviewer is really taking off! Now if I could just get someone to pay me! For now I’ll be content just to get somefree audiobooks. This will make a much wider selection available to me than what I’ve been able to find at the library.

Here’s the bible verse I got in my email yesterday:

1 Timothy 4:12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.

Today is my 40th birthday, but apparently God thinks I’m still young, so that’s good enough for me.