according to the Audiobook Style Guide, it seems everything is supposed to be standardized, which seems a bit off to me, coming from adding music releases where very little is standardized…
for example, the first example above came with metadata, which I used when creating the release. the second example didn’t, so I’ll standardize that one soon™
granted, I’m not familiar with how audiobooks work in the DB, so if standardizing is the standard, I’ll abide by it~
I’ve never had a problem with standardizing stuff with audiobooks, because they usually have awful existing metadata. And even when it’s okay, there’s no consistency among providers.
So the second example I would standardize to ‘Chapter: “[Title]”’.
I would only add ‘Chapter’ if it is actually split up into chapters - I see the guidelines aren’t actually clear what to do if tracks have a name but aren’t split by chapter? I believe we would just use the track names but maybe I’m wrong and it should be something like ‘Part X: “[Title]”’…
I don’t usually add the quote symbols but maybe I should
One thing I would definitely follow (when possible) is the release, track, and recording crediting style of ‘[author] narrated/performed by [narrators/performers]’. It would make things clearer for me when looking at these releases
they’re both split by chapter, with some chapters split into multiple parts, so that should be easy enough.
one thing I forgot to bring up, the first example (read by Prentice Osborne) actually technically has two authors. there’s the author of the main story, Fallout: Equestria (namely Kkat), but they also include a chapter written by another author, Chapter 20.5: “A Mare Worth Fighting For” by Pacce. once standardized, I know the tracks would be credited to the author who wrote them, but what about the release? should it be credited to just Kkat and Prentice Osborne, or should I also credit Pacce on the release?
for more detail, even though it wasn’t written by them, Kkat considers Chapter 20.5 to be a “deleted scene” of sorts. therefore some tellings of the story include it, whereas others don’t.
will do. however, since it’s not on the release cover or the official website, how would I choose the join phrase? in the audio for the Prentice Osborne recording, she says it’s “Read by Prentice Osborne”, so should I just put that? the CrazedRambling recording doesn’t seem to have any such credit tho…
Would be case-by-case, but in this example I would credit the release/tracks/recordings to: Kkat read by Prentice Osborne
Except for track 25 which I would credit to: Pacce read by Prentice Osborne
Because one track doesn’t qualify for a release credit imo
Yeah, use ‘read by’ I think, don’t know why I defaulted to ‘narrated’ in my last post
I don’t think that style guide has meant to literally add speechmarks to chapter titles. It would make little sense. Especially as these unicode ones can’t always be rendered by media players. I’d only add speechmarks if seen in the actual audiobook paperwork.
Look at the supplied examples at the top of the page. None of these use speechmarks.
And always used colons instead of hypens.
Speechmarks: Some authors don’t name their chapters. Or a long chapter is split up. In those cases I have seen the booklets use speechmarks to quote the first line of that section. This is the only place I would use speechmarks - when it is on the actual paperwork.
Notice on that guideline page it never says “put in quote” or “use speechmarks”. It is just an editor “who likes to quote stuff” as they “do it all over the place” on the whole page.
Linked examples is what I generally follow as the best guide to the standard in use.
You picked up on the point in your original post. Generally in MB follows “as per release”, but also tidy up punctuation styles with colons and commas in a consistent way. Seems a logical thing to follow through.
But then you look at all those examples as listed on that Guideline and they are quite a mess really and could do with fixing.
