The Audie Awards

Posted by Kate Pullen May 10, 2008

The Audies are an annual celebration of the best audiobooks and spoken word entertainment from the previous year. This year's Audie award ceremony is May 30th, and this is when the winners in each of the 30 categories will be announced. More information about the Audie awards can be found in this recent Suite101 article. A full list of the nominations can be found on the Audies website.

As you'd expect, there are nominations for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, read by Jim Dale, in the category of best male narrator and for packaging design. This was also nominated in the Audiobook of the Year category. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J K Rowling, set new records when it was released in July 2007 for audiobook sales. A phenomenal 225 thousand audiobooks were sold on the weekend of its release (source: Random House).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is up against strong competition for the title of Audiobook of the Year. The other titles nominated include:

• The Chopin Manscript by various authors and read by Alfred Molina
• I am America (and so can you!) by Stephen Colbert and read by Stephen Colbert
• Inspired by... Bible Experience (Old Testament) with multiple narrators
• The inventopn of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and read by Jeff Woodman

It will be interesting to see which audiobooks win this year's awards and which recording takes the title of Audiobook of the Year!