Spent two weeks last month recording the audiobook of the Pocket Coach Series in my own voice. Two hours and fifty minutes finished length. Five chapter markers, one for each book. A question I got from a patron earlier this week: why do an audiobook for a reference manual that is specifically designed to live in your back pocket? Fair question. Reference manuals are bad audio. You cannot flip to the right page mid-emergency. The format is the format. But the books are not really reference-only. They are also the doctrine behind the moves. The first reading is doctrine. The pocket carry is reference. Two different modes for the same content. The doctrine mode is what audio is for. The person who listens to Tac-Med on the drive home from a 12-hour shift is hearing the why behind a tourniquet decision. He is not at the bleed. He is preparing for the moment when he will be. The audio works because the listener has space to absorb. My voice on it matters because the doctrine is mine. A studio narrator would have read the words. He would not have stopped at the right places, leaned harder on the parts that should land hard, or put the small dry observations in the right tone. Those are the parts that make the doctrine stick. The audiobook is two hours and fifty minutes of me explaining things I have spent decades learning the slow way. It is for the listener whose hands are busy but whose mind has space. Pre-orders ship Saturday June 14 for Father’s Day. — Patch
