It Growed like Topsy – Anatomy of an Audiobook Month

In keeping with the audio theme and in honour of the occasion of our final Talking Books post,  I’ve recorded it.  If you think your constitution can stand it, you can listen by clicking on the ‘Play’ button below.  I apologize beforehand for the background hum, mushy sound, slightly melancholic delivery, nasal quality and the occasional Mrs Tiggywinkle-like snuffling noise, the last three being due to  pneumonic plague – or possibly a slight head cold.  Other than that, it’s just fine.

For those of a nervous disposition,  a dial-up connection or any degree of discernment at all  … read on:

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I had intended to say that our Audiobook Month – Talking Books – was like The Lord of the Rings in that it grew in the telling – but then it occurred to me that Topsy’s explanation of how she came into the world was much more appropriate, because Audiobook Month did, indeed, just grow – and usually when you weren’t looking.   You’d go to bed thinking it was all in order, but by  morning, another interviewee had slithered in under cover of darkness, or some bright spark had thought of something else we should be covering or a press release had arrived about a certain well known publisher acquiring a certain well known audiobook company ….  One week became two and two became three and STILL it was like an overstuffed suitcase.  As fast as we shoved the socks in one side, the knickers were popping out of the other … metaphorically speaking … and so eventually, in spite of having serious reservations about it (chiefly that we were going to bore everyone, including ourselves, to distraction), we opted for our first ever theme month.

And that was the easy bit.

Having taken the decision to fill the best part of a month with all things  audiobook, we then had to tackle the scheduling – interspersing reviews of books that hadn’t been received yet with interviews with people who hadn’t even  said “Yes” yet and feature pieces by Book Foxes who hadn’t actually written anything yet.

By the time Week One was upon us, we had just enough material to fill the first six days.  Behind the calm facade, we were none-too-quietly losing our reason, sense of perspective, sense of humour and will to live – in no particular order.  Everyone was promising faithfully that they’d meet their deadlines … but when you’re sitting there staring at a  schedule that’s more like a fairytale and wondering, slightly hysterically, how many pieces you can write under how many pseudonyms without being rumbled, it’s hard to have faith.

The refusal of our little ducks to arrange themselves obligingly into rows necessitated some drastic rescheduling just one day before kick off … and from there on in, it didn’t really get any better.  At one point, mid-month, there was  an ominous silence from one of our  interviewees, another was so completely  immersed in rehearsals for the Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe that he was virtually incommunicado and a third had only said “Yes” in principal and seemed to be perpetually in transit somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean;  at the same time, two of the audiobooks we were supposed to be reviewing STILL hadn’t arrived, nobody anywhere was apparently  answering their emails and we weren’t remotely confident that we could get the technology to co-operate for the  intended hip and happening podcast.

In the end, of course, everyone did meet their deadlines, the audiobooks arrived and our guests were superb and professional and hit all of their marks faultlessly.  Talking Books sailed regally through September like a swan across a mill pond and no-one ever suspected it had left a trail of  gibbering idiots in its serene wake …

It was a steep learning curve  but, perversely, we rather enjoyed it -  and we hope you did too, perversely or otherwise.  Thank you for your tenacity in sticking with us …  if you did stick with us … for your comments, both on and off the site, your support and your general reassurance that we hadn’t, in fact, collectively taken leave of our senses.

It now only remains to thank  our guests – Nicolas Soames of Naxos Audiobooks, Barnaby Edwards of Textbook Stuff, Mark Buckland of Cargo, Victoria Williams, Bea Long and Nicholas Jones of Canongate and CSA Word, Pat Beech of the RNIB, Martin Jarvis, Trevor Byrne, Rosy Thornton, Caroline Green and Phoebe Benedict – and last, but very far from least,   our actors – Stephen Greif, Edward Petherbridge and Jay Benedict.  Thanks, too, to Yashoda Sutton of the RNIB for all of her help and enthusiasm – in spite of the almost total absence of notice and my incessant worrying.

And by the way – the next time  we decide to do a theme month … I fully intend being out of the country.

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