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Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

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Jewel Audiobooks

Winter 2014 Audiobook Releases

7 May 2014

I’ve got several recent releases to post, so you might want to get a cup of coffee and relax!

Earlier this year, I published The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, one of the leaders in the New Thought movement in the early 20th century.

This short book was first published over 100 years ago, but Wilcox offers advice for living a better and more spiritual life that is still practical today. Wilcox suggests ways to change your thinking and specific actions to take in order to feel better about yourself and improve your life.

For instance, have you ever noticed that the more you talk about being sick, the illness worsens and stays with you for a longer period of time?

I’m especially proud of this book because it is the first publication for my new audiobook company Jewel Audiobooks! Jewel Audiobooks will specialize in self-development and travel treasures and long-hidden gems of fiction.


 
Fans of Melissa F. Miller’s Sasha McCandless legal thriller series will be happy to know that book 5, Improper Influence is now in audio!

In this book, Sasha meets forensic pathologist Bodhi King, who asks her help in solving a case where young, healthy women in Pittsburgh are dying. In determining the cause of deaths, Bodhi also becomes a target.

Meanwhile, Sasha is working on a legal case involving corruption and another with a breach of contract. Could these cases be related to the deaths?

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, her hunky fiancé is getting antsy about planning their wedding.

It’s never a dull moment in this series!


 
I had the honor of narrating Mary Potter Kenyon’s Chemo-Therapist: How Cancer Saved a Marriage .

When Kenyon’s husband David contracted oral cancer, she looked for books and inspirational stories to help them get through the experience. She lets the listener know early on that her husband DID NOT DIE from his cancer treatments as she wanted to provide hope to those who are ill or caregivers for cancer patients.

She wrote with honesty and frankness about the state of their marriage at the time of his diagnosis and their steps to become closer as he went through treatments.

She also discussed the effect that his treatments and the couple’s re-commitment to each other had on their 8 children.

I wanted to narrate it because so many people are in a similar situation. I think this book can offer hope and encouragement to people who need it most.


 
Just in time for pool season, I’m delighted to announce that the Dixie Divas — your favorite summertime companions — are back with book 5 in this funny, cosy mystery series, Divas Do Tell .

You’ve heard of the book The Help? Well, this isn’t that book….but Holly Springs, MS resident and sister to one of the Divas Dixie Lee Forsythe was inspired by that book to write one of her own!

Bitty Hollandale and other own residents were upset about the publication of Dixie Lee’s tell-all Dark Secrets Under the Holly due to its thinly-veiled descriptions of townspeople. They were even more upset about the movie version…..that is, until they found out they could be IN the movie! Of course, wherever the Divas are, murders seem to follow.

It’s a fabulous day when I get to voice the dialogue between the main characters Bitty Hollandale and Trinket Truevine! I’m thrilled to learn that author Virginia Brown is already at work on book 6!


 
My latest release is Two Shades of Morning by Janice Daugharty. It falls in the category of literary fiction.

A woman looks back to the early 1960s and tells us about her relationships with her next-door neighbor. At the time, our narrator Earlene was 19, married, and accustomed to being the prettiest girl in her little N. Florida town.

Nothing changed — yet everything changed — the day her friend and neighbor Robert Dale Sharpe brought home his pretty new wife, Sibil.

“Nobody ever believed much about Sibyl Sharpe, least of all that she would die, and yet death is the first thing I heard about her.”

With an opening line like that, you know there are secrets to be kept and others exposed!


 
All of these books are great listens for those summer road trips and lounging by the pool. Enjoy!
 

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Books, Narrators, New releases, Recordings, Voice-Over Tagged With: audiobook, Dixie Divas, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, fiction, humor, Janice Daugharty, Jewel Audiobooks, legal thriller, literary fiction, Mary Potter Kenyon, Melissa F. Miller, memoir, Sasha McCandless, Southern, Virginia Brown

How I Started My Audiobook Publishing Company

24 January 2014

During the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I started seeing this wonderful ad from Dell, titled “Beginnings”:

Perhaps it caught my attention because I have my own story about the quiet beginnings for a new business:

Date: 10/6/06
Time: 10:10am
Place: 10634, the cabin number of a cruise ship docked in Mykonos, Greece

Becoming an audiobook publisher has been a rough road, full of potholes, downed trees, and diverging paths that didn’t necessarily lead me in the direction I wanted to go. Only by trudging forward and refusing to give up was I able to eventually reach the destination.

I offer this post as a road map for becoming an audiobook publisher on ACX with a public domain book. If you want to publish a book still under copyright, you may want to skip down to the end for more information.

Initial Obstacles

I recently wrote about how ideas love speed. I did take several immediate actions 7.5 years ago when I had the idea to create an audiobook publishing company. I read several books that hadn’t been made into audiobooks and contacted the authors about obtaining the audio rights.

One author was interested, but the idea seemed to be squelched by her agent’s lawyers, who were reluctant to be involved with a start-up. Another author wanted to narrate her book. It took her several more years, but I see on Audible that she did narrate her audiobook. A third author was someone rather famous. I didn’t receive a response to my inquiries, but I see that her book is now on Audible, too. Perhaps I gave her the idea.

Life intervened. With the loss of my mother and changes on my day job, I put my dream of becoming an audiobook publisher on the shelf. While ideas love speed, some ideas can’t be implemented immediately and often take years to develop.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

— Victor Hugo

With the advent of ACX, I knew that I could finally see this idea through to fruition!

Rather than start with a book from a contemporary author as I originally envisioned, I decided to start Jewel Audiobooks with what I thought would be a simpler project:  a book from the public domain (PD).

On 1 January 2013, I decided to publish the audiobook of The Heart of the New Thought by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, originally published in 1903. I wanted to produce a shorter work that would be new to audio and had a message I want to share. I often find myself in conversations about the power of our thoughts and words, so this little volume seemed perfect.

[Read more…] about How I Started My Audiobook Publishing Company

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Away From the Mic, Business, Law of Attraction, Narrators, Other Videos Tagged With: ACX, Andrea Emmes, Audible, audio publisher, audiobook, Beginnings, Dell, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Jewel Audiobooks, KDP, Kindle, public domain, publishing, The Heart of the New Thought

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Karen@KarenCommins.com

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