QuoteQuote from: eytanz on May 07, 2008, 02:06:40 PMThis is only conjecture, but the hugo nominations came out very shortly after the audiobook version of Fragile Things came out, so I always thought that it's not so much that Gaiman said no, as that he didn't own the audio distribution rights. He could probably persuade his publishers to allow an excerpt from the audiobook to be released for free, but allowing a different company to make a second recording would probably have been too much for them.Your conjecture is close to correct. To be specific, I contacted Gaiman's agent, who referred me to his publisher, who held the audio rights on that story. The publisher was actually willing to let us run the story -- for one year, after which point we'd have to renew rights with them or pull it from our archives.I will never distribute a story on any terms other than Creative Commons, so this was a deal-breaker for me. As was pointed out, the audio was already available for free on Gaiman's site, so the world didn't miss much by not having it here.BTW, it was a similar story in 2006, with Margo Lanagan's "Singing My Sister Down." Margo was very happy to say yes for her part, but her publisher in Australia had the audio rights, and they never returned my e-mail. It seems that every year we get 4 out of 5, but please don't blame the authors the last couple of years.(In fact, now that I think about it, Stephen Baxter is the first author who's ever turned down an offer we've made.)
Quote from: eytanz on May 07, 2008, 02:06:40 PMThis is only conjecture, but the hugo nominations came out very shortly after the audiobook version of Fragile Things came out, so I always thought that it's not so much that Gaiman said no, as that he didn't own the audio distribution rights. He could probably persuade his publishers to allow an excerpt from the audiobook to be released for free, but allowing a different company to make a second recording would probably have been too much for them.
Or maybe the restrictions are no longer necessary two years later.Has it really been two years...gosh I'm getting old fast.
