Brian Price, of Great Northern Audio, has written an essay over on the Audiobook DJ blog entitled Public Allan Poe. In it Price discusses the ubiquity of audio dramatizations and audiobooks based on the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. His thesis seems to be that because Edgar Allan Poe stories are such a hot property and don’t have any licensing costs associated with them that producers of modern AD based on original scripts are finding it hard to compete. Sez Price:

“From the independent audiobook writer/producer vantage point the public domain is tough to compete against. If I write, produce and try to distribute an original piece and a perspective buyer goes on-line and sees my title and then sees The Tell-Tale Heart he or she is 90 percent of the time going to buy what they’ve heard of. New writers have a hard enough time battling the likes of Stephen King without fighting his Uncle Edgar, as well.

He’s right, of course, but it isn’t all thorns and tears. Price also points out how good most of those adaptations are. One thing he doesn’t consider is that for every version some audio producer creates of an Read the whole essay |HERE|.

Posted by Jesse Willis