Well, we did it . . . we’ve got Iambik Audio—a new kind of audiobook company—up and running, and we’re pretty excited about it. Iambik comes from some ideas I’ve had for a long while, ideas that flow out of LibriVox, a project I started way back 2005 that offers free public domain audiobooks (!).

What is Iambik?

The gist is this: There are an awful lot of great books out there that aren’t available in audio. And there are an awful lot of excellent independent audiobook narrators in the world who make wonderful audiobooks.

At Iambik, we’d like to connect those great books with great narrators to make great audiobooks. And if all goes well, it’ll be great for everyone: audiobook listeners, authors, publishers, and narrators.

Our First Collection

Our first collection, launching today, is made up of 11 literary novels from wonderful independent presses in the US and Canada. Among the collection, we have one giant of American letters, Gordon Lish; one Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lydia Millet; a number of new and upcoming writers like Felicia Luna Lemus and Laird Hunt; and one expert in late 1940s mixology.

To check out these books, just follow this link to iambik.com; or see below for a list of authors, books, and publishers we’re working with.

We have more collections in the works, some crime, some science fiction, and more.

A New Kind of Audiobook Company

Up there at the top of the page, I said that Iambik is a new kind of audiobook company, which warrants some explanation. We’ve got three main constituents that we’re trying to serve, and here are some ways that we’re a bit different, maybe a bit special:

For Audiobook Listeners

• We’ll be bringing you hand-picked collections of books, a little off the beaten path.
• We’ll keep our prices low.
• We’ll provide our audiobooks in mp3 and m4b (soon!), other formats if we get lots of requests, with no DRM.
• We’ll ask you, the listeners, for requests of audiobooks you’d like to hear, audiobooks that no one has bothered to make yet.

For Publishers and Authors

• If you make good books, we want to make them into audiobooks.
• We approach everything as a partnership: we want to help you sell print and ebooks, as well as audiobooks.
• We give you a good slice of the pie.

For Audiobook Narrators

• We also give you a good slice of the pie.
• We’ll try to get audio rights for books you’d like to record.
• We’re more like a collective or a co-op than a traditional audiobook company.

We’re not sure how radical all this is, but it’s fun. The first batch of books sure was, and we hope you’ll like them.

Our First Batch of Books

Here they are:

• Like Son, by Felicia Luna Lemus (Akashic Books), narrated by Kristin Hughes [sample-mp3]
• Century, by Ray Smith (Biblioasis), narrated by Gord Mackenzie [sample-mp3]
• All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman (Coach House Books), narrated by Gord Mackenzie [sample-mp3]
• The Impossibly, by Laird Hunt (Coffee House Press), narrated by Peter Yearsley [sample-mp3]
• No Lease on Life, by Lynne Tillman (Cursor/Red Lemonade), narrated by Karen Savage [sample]
• Castle, by J. Robert Lennon (Graywolf Press), narrated by Mark Nelson [sample-mp3]
• Icelander, by Dustin Long, (McSweeny’s and Movable Type Literary Group, agents), narrated by Miette [sample]
• Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, (Softskull/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Lippincott, Massie, McQuilkin, agents), narrated by Cori Samuel [sample-mp3]
• Collected Fictions, by Gordon Lish (OR Books), narrated by Gregg Margarite and Gordon Lish [sample-mp3]
• Edge of Eden, by Helen Benedict (Soho Press), narrated by Ruth Golding [sample-mp3]
• The Hour, by Bernard de Voto (Tin House Books), narrated by John Greenman [sample-mp3]

Thanks to all who helped get iambik off the ground, our great team: Janina, JC, Andy, Christine, Gesine and Julie; our advisors Richard Nash, Don Linn, Gene Quinn, Chris Goringe and Dan Parsons; our narrators, and partner authors and publishers; and of course our prooflisteners: Betsie Bush, Linda Andrus, Nadine Eckert-Boulet, Diana Majlinger, Mary McCullough, Elizabeth Medeiros, and MaryAnn Spiegel.