The Sword and Laser discussion

So today I received my monthly credit and I went to Audible website to pick up our new book of the month. But when I got there, the cupboard was bare! There’s no audiobook showing on either the Audible site or the Amazon main site! I’m sure I checked availability and prices when the book pick was first announced, and decided to use my next credit for the audiobook … but it’s gone. What’s happened? Has there been some annoying rights issue which has led to the audiobook being withdrawn? Or am I having a Mandela Effect moment and there never was an audiobook available in the UK?? Is it still available in other markets?

I know one exists, because I'm waiting on a copy from my library through the Libby app in the US.

Also just showed up at the US Amazon store as available through Audible. So, yes I'm guessing it is a regional issue. Why?, I have no clue.

I just checked, and the audiobook is available in Poland, both from Audible and Kobo. So not a non-USA issue, but rather an UK one.

Not unusual. The uk/Australian publishers have not paid the license fee for the audiobook. Sigh. Known problem.

Iain wrote: "Not unusual. The uk/Australian publishers have not paid the license fee for the audiobook. Sigh. Known problem."

Well this sucks. Especially as my library has never heard of it and the kindle edition is £6.99 which seems like a lot for a four year old book.
Enjoy your audiobook, Americans and Poles, I’ll be over here grumping in the corner,

I suspect it’s because of the metric system. Here it’s Six Wakes but overseas it’s Eight Point Two Wakes.

Ruth wrote: "Iain wrote: "Not unusual. The uk/Australian publishers have not paid the license fee for the audiobook. Sigh. Known problem."

Well this sucks. Especially as my library has never heard of it and th..."

It's still 1,49 Euro in Germany, have you ever tried to switch Amazon accounts to another country? I know I did it at least one because there was a book not available in Germany, but it was available in the US. Not sure how legal this is, though, so I'm not exactly *advising* you to do that.

Anne wrote: "Not sure how legal this is, though, so I'm not exactly *advising* you to do that. "

It's not illegal. I do it occasionally. It is against Amazon's (Kindle) & Apple's (iBooks) Terms of Service, (but they know it happens and don't do anything to stop it.) You aren't breaking any laws.

Mur Lafferty still gets her cut. 😎

Ruth wrote: "Iain wrote: "Not unusual. The uk/Australian publishers have not paid the license fee for the audiobook. Sigh. Known problem."

Well this sucks. Especially as my library has never heard of it and th..."

It is one of those Brexit benefits I tell yer ;-)

Mur has talked about the rights issues on this book in her podcasts. Despite being nominated for all the big awards in its publication year, they couldn’t get a UK publisher to pick the book up.

Her solution was to self-publish a kindle edition into the UK store, but audio rights were more complicated and she couldn’t do the same with the audio recording.

Unbelievable that a uk publisher wouldn’t pick it up! Well, clearly not unbelievable since that’s what happened, but still…

Thanks for the explanation and tips y’all!