Was that a Tweet or a Chirp Chirp at the Audies?

Well a distinction that I will claim for myself - as best I can tell I was the only Twitter voice covering the Audies this year.  Granted without the flair of the best Twitterati.  Even so, this gets to the point of my last post.  The audiobook industry is not enough engaged in the medium which will take it to the next level - the web.  No tweets.  Not even a blog post tonight.  Try searching BEA on Summize or Google blog search.  There's activity there.  Why is the audiobook industry silent over the last two days?  If there is an important event happening and there is not immediate web buzz happening, then the event is not engaged enough in the web.  That doesn't work anymore.

Technology aside, the Audies were really enjoyable.  We all groaned a bit about the length... it was a long night.  But the food was nice, especially the dessert sampler.  Everyone looked great.  Scott told us all sorts of things about himself, often with a good sense of humor.  Audible won the Audiobook of the Year with its creative The Chopin Manuscript, a book that was written by something like 15 different mystery authors, published as an audiobook only, and released serially.  Beth did well to thank Charles Dickens in accepting the award.  The promise of serial publication of audiobooks (especially looking toward 3G phones) is exciting for the industry.

ChristianAudio did not win in the Spirituality category.  It was hard to imagine Zondervan not winning with their Old Testament Bible Experience.  They did.  Even so, I feel a bit bad for Grover, who deserves an Audie, not just because he was nominated for a book we published.  The guy needs an Audie because he's the Audie-worthy.  Let's see that put to rights next year folks.

Comments

[Susan]

I agree completely about the audio industry not using the web to get the word out! I'm an audiobook fan but can't make it to the big show. And I've not been able to find out much of anything about APAC or the Audies as they are happening.
So now, here it is, the morning after the Audies, and your post is the only one I can find about the Audie Awards. (Thanks for staying up to post) The winners will be posted on the Audio Publishers Association website June 2 - that's the web equivalent of posting it weeks later.

Now I know 2 winners and I'm hoping you'll post later about the winners in other categories. This info should be hitting all kinds of web sites/blogs this morning. Instead, everyone who knows about it is still crashed out after a long awards evening in LA. Just another example of how we're not using technology to generate buzz about what the audiobook world is doing. BTW,I'm not faulting you for getting some shut-eye. But someone in APA should have been assigned the thankless task of staying up to post the Audie winners info around the web a bit before calling it a night.

[Dave Bruno]

Susan, thanks so much for the comment. We'll have to get on bringing the audiobook industry up to web-speed. You know, your site is great! I apologize for not having seen it before. We need to talk.

[Mary Burkey]

I, too looked for information on March 30th and found none. But the total list was available on www.theaudies.com the morning of May 31st - in time for me to write my blog post focusing on the youth titles that were nominated or winners. Wish I had thought to check for your Twittering!

Mary Burkey
http://audiobooker.blogspot.com/

[DB Ferguson]

It amazes me that in this era of Twitter and IM's and iPhone blogging that no one liveblogged or livetwittered the awards. I too was looking forward to the announcements of the Audies (Stephen Colbert won Humor! Whoo hoo!), and had the darndest time finding anything about the winners. I didn't even realize that the winners were listed on TheAudies.com until Mary Burkey's blog post because they hid them so well.

[Dave Bruno]

Thanks for the comments. I had some good post-APAC/Audies conversations. Hopefully we'll be able to get the audiobook industry more real-time by next year. We'll be working on it. Dave