I have listened to hundreds of audiobooks. The deciding factors of whether or not I will buy an audiobook are
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The Reviews
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The audio sample
Publishers. Why on earth would you EVER use the dedication as the sample to the book? Why would you EVER use the introduction to the book that is read by the author and not the narrator? For the love of god, why would you EVER use anything other than a gripping passage that really shows what the experience of the book is?
Because every time the sample is just the dedication, the introduction, or someone reading it who is not the narrator it is an instant no-sale from me.
by silentblender
6 Comments
It’s silly indeed. There is something called the “page 99 test”: to get a better idea of whether you like a book, have a look at page 99. It’s sufficiently far into the book already to be more representative than the introduction, yet not too far advanced neither.
However, I was wondering if there are legal barriers disallowing publishers showing content from in the middle of a book? Don’t know, but it’s silly indeed.
Exactly! They used to pick a piece of the ACTUAL story and now it’s just 4 minutes of whatever is at the beginning. I hate it.
It’s because what you are suggesting requires a custom audio file, when most of these “samples” just give you access to the first few minutes of the file. That requires no extra effort and is easy to implement.
I don’t listen to audiobooks, but that does seem like a no-brainer.
I can’t imagine a movie trailer that’s just the protagonist driving to work before any of the action starts.
>why would you EVER use anything other than a gripping passage that really shows what the experience of the book is
I don’t know that I would love hearing a gripping passage out of context so that it’s ruined when I actually get to it in the book. (However, I also generally do not watch trailers for movies because I do not want to know anything ahead of time.)
Counterpoint : they do love money.
Which means that their professional estimate is that the additional cost entailed by picking a relevant excerpt for the sample (instead of the X min at the start) outweighs the additional sales.
It’s very likely that marketing and name recognition are more important sales drivers that sample relevance