Hot take: audiobooks are the best versions of books.
I’m no purist who insists books must be experienced in quiet, reflective solitude, or that the truest, best form of any novel is simple words on a page.
Nah fam.
I’m a reader, too, and as a reader I sometimes fall victim to all the pitfalls of reading. Skimming over obvious paragraphs. Speed-reading through good parts. Losing the pace.
Can’t do that shit in an audiobook, unless you’re an irredeemable Satanist who listens at 2x or 3x speed. You go at the pace of the narrator. And on top of that, you’ve got a professional who can bring your characters to life in theatrical fashion.
So I’m a big fan. And as a big fan, I always dedicate a lot of time and effort to the Audible versions of my novels.
Degenerate is my most ambitious Audible book yet, and I’m happy announce that it will be available for pre-order on October 30, just a day before Halloween. And that it will debut alongside the digital and print versions of the book on November 19.
As an audiobook, Degenerate weighs in at just over 15 hours, which also makes it my biggest audiobook to date.
I’ve teamed up with the incredibly talented Philip Nathaniel Freeman, who narrates the book with passion. We’ve got music. We’ve got what we call audio flourishes, meaning sound effects that enhance certain sequences. And in my opinion it all comes together in a beautiful way that allows Phil’s voice to remain the star of the show. I hope listeners find and enjoy it in this format, as a lot of love and work went into its creation.
Here’s a little sample for you. (Note: For the purposes of this sample, I’ve cut off the opening credits and crossfaded straight to the first chapter, but the final book transitions more seamlessly.)
Fam, we have a release date. And a final title. Headline spoiled it, I know.
I posted a couple polls and Degenerate beat out Anxiety most of the time. Also, some commentators said Anxiety made them feel, well, anxiety. So we’re sticking with the OG title after all.
Books industry moves too goddamned slow for me. I queried a lot of agents. Got a couple dozen rejections, which I’ll go into below. And I’m the worst self-promoter in the world because I just can’t be bothered to keep at it. I’d much rather get Degenerate out there so I can focus on the next novel, Dust and Fury, which is moving along at a rapid clip.
The good news is that November 19—chosen because it’s right before the Thanksgiving holiday but also because it’s nineteen, and any horror fans know the significance there—is set in stone. Barring an act of God. A publisher swoops in and buys it out from underneath me. And knowing what I know about the books industry, fat chance. So that date feels concrete.
Also positive, the book has been read, reread and reread, cleaned up and polished, copyedited to death, and beautifully formatted for digital and print. Meanwhile, the audiobook is halfway finished and the narrator nails it. More on that, including a sample, in my next post. There’s the AB-tested cover art. There’s the full spread for print. There’s the art for Audible. There’s all the marketing text, key art, illustrations, and more for store pages. And if you’ve never built a store page before, that shit has its own level on the Nine Circles of Hell. All of this to say, feeling pretty good about where the book is and where it’s going.
Fast forward to release so peeps can be like, “worst book ever Matt shoulda stuck to video games.”
I mean… maybe? You never know how your novels are gonna be received. My last two books have garnered a lot of praise from critics and customers alike, which I’m incredibly thankful for because, again, you have no effin’ idea how it’s gonna go.
So rejections. Not my favorite thing. I prefer ice cream, mind you, but I don’t hate them, either. They’re part of the query process, which is what I do hate. Not because you put something out there and it typically gets rejected a lot before someone cares. I’m okay with that. What I despise is how long this process takes. The books industry seems to be fighting tooth and nail to remain slug slow in a world that races at the speed of light. Agents sometimes take a year to come back to you. A YEAR, people. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’ve run a video game publisher for seven years or so. We get video games submissions daily. We respond to them within a week.
What I hate more than anything is the template response in rejection letters. It looks something like this.
“Thank you for allowing me the pleasure to consider your new book, [BOOK TITLE HERE]. Unfortunately, this project is not the right fit at this time. Please remember that yada yada yada…”
Un-actionable. Useless.
I would much rather this:
“Curse you for subjecting me to this gutter trash attempt at fiction. I read maybe two pages before it became clear to me that you should pursue another career or hobby. Not only is your writing rudimentary at best, the premise ludicrous, but your characters are thinner than the pages they’re printed on. This is unsalvageable. Please, never email me again.”
People. That is actionable feedback. I understand what didn’t work for this agent. They’ve told me my writing is so bad I should ponder a career change. That my story doesn’t work. That my characters suck. That, in their opinion, it’s all unfixable.
When we reject a game, we tell developers why we rejected it, and rarely if ever have we leaned on the gag-inducing excuse, “Not the right fit at this time.” And if we’ve ever used some variant, we’ve offered context. Because we want our partners to take action. We don’t just want them to go away.
A NOVEL CONCEPT 