Lee Child, Debbie Macomber, and Daniel Handler joined narrator and host Dion Graham to celebrate the audiobook industry yesterday at the 12th Annual Audiobook and Author Tea at BookExpo America.
The event, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, featured a series of often-hilarious remarks from Child, Macomber, and Handler and concluded with an audience Q&A session.
Child, who admitted he had no audiobook story to share, opted instead to tell a surprisingly funny subsidiary rights story about a surreal Bulgarian book tour replete with hand-gun wielding body guards, retired wrestlers, and an elaborate press conference held at a flagship gas station.
In her remarks, Macomber—who has dyslexia and described herself as a slow reader—praised audiobooks as a means to help children learn language. “I’m an audiobook connoisseur,” she said, adding that she listens both for pleasure and to keep up with publishing trends.
And Handler—who kept the audience laughing for the bulk of the event—described his ill-fated decision to replace Tim Curry as the narrator of his popular Lemony Snicket series. “It was a terrible idea,” he said, describing in vivid detail his “stuttering, stammering, lip-smacking” attempt at audio narration.
