Are Audiobooks Available For All Fantastic Beasts Books Volumes?

Most of the “Fantastic Beasts” books, including this one, are available as audiobooks. However, the Fantastic Beasts movie scripts, such as The Crimes of Grindelwald (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) and The Secrets of Dumbledore (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), may not be available as audiobooks, depending on your location.

I can typically find the screenplays (The Crimes of Grindelwald, The Secrets of Dumbledore, etc.) on Audible, Apple Books, Google Play, and via my library app (Libby/OverDrive). Sometimes they are available as an audiobook, other times as an e-book. Be aware of some screenplays being abridged or even ‘dramatized’, affecting the typical listening experience. If for some reason a particular audiobook isn’t available, it is often possible to download the e-book version and use your device’s built-in text-to-speech feature to listen to the book while, in my case, out for a walk with my dog. Awkward narrator and all, but it worked!

I answered this question in the body of the post already, but for the sake of clarity: while the original in-universe book by Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (a 2001 charity publication), has an audiobook, theFantastic Beasts movie screenplays, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: The Original Screenplay, and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: The Original Screenplay, are published as books in their own right, and may or may not have official audiobooks, depending on your region and the online stores you use.

This is why I try to stick to a few platforms for purchasing audiobooks, like Audible, Apple Books, and Google Play Books. For the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ textbook (published as a charity edition in 2001), I’m able to find the audiobook for purchase through these platforms, but for the movie screenplays of the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ movies, published as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: The Original Screenplay, and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (The Original Screenplay), I can only find the e-book versions of the screenplays, sometimes narrated, sometimes not.

So long as you state the title, that you are looking for it in a specific country, and what listening device you are looking for it on (such as Audible, Apple Books, Google Play Books, etc), you can search on the respective website for the audiobook. You can also try searching for the specific title in secondhand book stores to see if they have any copies of the audiobook on CD. In some cases, publishers will release the text as a text-to-speech audiobook. Other times the publisher will dramatize the story and include an abridged version of the text as well. This should be noted in the run time and by the narrator’s name in the title of the audiobook. Ultimately, I had to use a mix of the two (ebook and audiobook) for the series, but I managed to complete them all while on the long commute to work, and coziest of reading nooks.

I thought the information about this was on the Pottermore website. But from what I can recall the audiobooks of the screenplays were released at the same time as the ebooks and print editions of the screenplays. (The older books were not released at the same time and thus did not get audiobooks.) The release strategy of new franchise content is to throw a whole media blitz at it and release it in all formats at once. For older content, even something that is re-released as an ebook, adding a new audiobook is a lot harder. So anything released from 2016 onwards as part of the film series will have audiobooks. Anything released before that won’t unless it’s released as part of a new collection.

I despise it when franchises do this for the collectible's sake. Make collecting hard to do. Will I have to purchase this textbook in print and thus break my all-audio streak? Or do I simply have to ignore this and pretend that the screenplays are the only books to be collected here? Such first-world problems but yes, it is annoying. The other audiobooks are 10/10. It's a mystery as to why this one hasn't been recorded with a decent narrator and then put up for sale. Easy money for Wizarding World and the completist like myself. Alas, an incomplete audio collection it shall remain.