A STRANGER KILLED KATY is now on audio

This past spring, I received an email from Tantor Media, a leading independent publisher of audiobooks. The company offered to publish an unabridged audio version of my true-crime book, A STRANGER KILLED KATY, which went on sale in January 2021 in hardcover, paperback and e-book.

Now, just four months after I got that email, readers can download the audiobook from numerous online sites, including Audible.com and AudioBooks.com. It has a retail price of $19.99, although you can find it discounted, or even free if you sign up for a trial subscription to one of these services.

If you’re a fan of audiobooks, you will recognize the name Tantor, as they have published more than 5,000 titles, including ones written by some big-name authors, including Allen Eskens, Marie Kondo and W. Bruce Cameron.

Small publishers like me also love Tantor because the company saves us the hard work of creating an audiobook while giving the same quality production that an author would receive from a traditional publisher. As part of my contract with Tantor, I was also given a chance to weigh in on the design of the cover, as well its choice of narrator.

How fortunate I am that Tantor chose award-winning narrator David Marantz, whose plain-spoken delivery nicely complements the serious prose of A STRANGER KILLED KATY. So far, he’s narrated more than 130 books through Tantor alone. David won an AutoFile Earphones Award for “The Mind Club” and was nominated for an Audie Award for contribution to “Rip-Off!”, a short story collection. David is a careful narrator. More than once in the past few months, through a Tantor representative, David asked me for guidance on the correct way to pronounce a person or place. David is also a New York City-based actor who has performed on stage, film and television. (You might have seen him in small roles on “Law & Order” and the science series “Nova.”)

I first fell in love with audiobooks in the 1990s when I spent a lot of time on the road visiting my family in Northern New York or going on assignment as a reporter for The Post-Standard. I remember many times I would become so enthralled with the story-telling that I’d almost find myself wishing the trip lasted a bit longer. These days, I mostly enjoy audiobooks at home, particularly in the evening, when they give me a chance to rest my weary eyes and get swallowed up by interesting storytelling.