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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
From blog sales there is a broad range of price acceptance for audio up to about 25 dollars. Obviously more sell when Amazon marks audio down to 1.99 or 2.99, etc (they control prices for indie audio unlike with books where the author decides on price). They also only offer a flat 50 cents to 4 percent for associates for audio so there are not a lot of sites vetting audio or even mentioning it when it's available.
And yes, I've heard the voice actor makes a big difference. The good ones are a lot more expensive to hire, of course. Because it can be so difficult to earn back the expenses, there are not tons of indies rushing into that market. The Big 6 don't rush in either. Sales have to be doing very well with a book before they will consider an audio expense.
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It varies. For many major books, the audiobook comes out at the same time as the hardback/ebook or comes out within a couple of weeks. For example, Gaiman's Norse Mythology, all three were released at the same time. John Scalzi's upcoming book, The Collapsing Empire, is also a same day release (Wil Wheaton again, should be good). Wen Spensor's latest came out in ebook/paper this week and will be released as an audiobook in a couple of weeks. It looks like that is going to be a Baen full cast audio type. Some of the others I suspect that its a combination of waiting for the voice talent to free up and waiting to see how the book does in paper/ebook. For example, the previously mentioned IIona Andrews (the reason I get ads for Romance novels, which isn't exactly my cup of tea) had a new sweeper novel come out late last year and the audio book is coming out next week.