Another peek overseas at Audible UK and the digital divide

Early last month, I wrote a bit about the regional digital divide, which sees Audible UK members having some excellent sf/f titles which Audible US members don’t have access to, from Elspeth Cooper’s debut Songs of the Earth, to The Scar: New Crobuzon, Book 2 and Iron Council: New Crobuzon, Book 3 By China Mieville, to Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho By Ben Aaronovitch, to Blue Remembered Earth By Alastair Reynolds, and more. Well, since last month, two more bits of digital regional divide-related for you.

The first was the (long-awaited) e-book and digital audiobook releases of the Harry Potter series, available only at the Pottermore shop. While they have both the US editions read by Alan Dale and the UK editions read by Stephen Fry, you have to be in the correct geography to get each; in the US, I can’t buy the Fry, for example.

The second was another quick browse over to the new sf/f listings at Audible UK, where I saw Use of Weapons By Iain M. Banks, which led me to find the 2006 audio release of The Algebraist, also not available in the Audible US store. Outrageous!

But, then again, I saw a pretty good list of audiobooks we’ve had on this side of the pond for a good while, which were finally released just in the past month in the UK:

• The Dervish House By Ian McDonald
• Ready Player One By Ernest Cline, Narrated by Wil Wheaton
• The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear By Patrick Rothfuss, Narrated by Rupert Degas

WAIT. WAIT. WHAT!? The US audiobooks for Rothfuss’s KingKiller Chronicles series have been narrated (quite ably) by Nick Podehl:

And now there are these new narrations in the UK, complete with the UK covers:

Well. The divide still cuts, sometimes in one direction or the other, sometimes in both at the same time.