Rants and stuff.

Well, here it is a couple weeks later.  Just finished audiobook #4 a few days ago.
It's a good feeling to push the "I'm Done" button on the ACX page.
Book #4 is Flashing My Shorts, by Salvatore Buttachi,  I think it turned out great.
So now I wait for 3 weeks for it go up on sale. It is now in limbo while it goes through QA (quality assurance) at Audible. Which, I guess, they do things like check levels, amounts of noise and format the files and put in chapter or track markers and get it ready for the websites.  Listening to many samples on Audible, it seems that thier QA is easy to get through. I heard some terrible quality audio being marketed as audiobooks. When Postmertem Scrapbook was released, of course I went to Audible.com to listen to a sample. What I heard, honestly made me sick.  The retail sample for people to listen to sounded so bad, I can't imagine anybody buying it.  It sounded waaaaaaaay overprocessed, like it had been run through a digital nightmare!  So,....... I contacted ACX and Audible.com. to see what the problem is.  In the end, I was told that it sounded great, don't worry about it. The retail audio sample is like the "AM radio of quality".
It is a very low quality sample to help webites stream it effectively, but "yours sounds great!". Soooooo...... I told them of course, that I believed that was a terrible strategy to sell audiobooks.  They assured me that the end user customer recieves a much better quality audio based on what format they want.  I told them (audible.com) that sucks. If they really wanted to introduce people into the world of audiobooks, or any other product, you should always, always, always, always, put your best foot forward! NOT crap it down because it's easier! They said "we'll pass your ideas and opinions to the people who make these decions". I hope they do. I hope the owner of of the company sees the wisdom I imparted. I hope they take my advice, because in the end, it makes for more and happier customers and guys like me the ability to make a dollar.Rant 2 done  AND.................The Postmortem Scrapbook by my friend and talented author KR Helms has only sold 1, yes 1, copy. I can't believe it! People need to know! This is a fun and captivating bunch of stories. You should buy it, and tell everyone you know to buy it.
Ok, rant 3 done. F. Scott Fitzgerald continues to sell about 2-5 a day, 160 sold since  3/14. Not bad I guess.  I hope Flashing My Shorts does well.  It's a really strange and odd, eclectic collection of stories. It goes from vampires and zombies, to time travelers and ailiens, to the childhood memories of a recurring young sicilian boy (the author) and his large and interesting family.  Most of the stories are very, very short and it seems like as soon as you know it, you're full on into it for 9+ hours. How coulda you not a like a dat huh? Ciao!