Just chiming in here with my not-so-great Tantor experience.
The first time was with a trilogy I had sold to one of the big 5. I said I wanted a particular narrator. They came back and told me that narrator wasn't available. I said, "I literally had coffee with him yesterday. He's available." So they backed down and signed him. But when it came time for book 2, he again "wasn't available." I had to fight HARD to get him for the entire trilogy (audiobook listeners HATE when narrators are switched mid-series).
They also refused to let me proof my own audio, insisting they were doing me a favor by taking it off my plate. This is now an absolute dealbreaker for me with audio. If I can't proof it, and the contract doesn't explicitly state that I have to approve the audio, I'm not signing the contract. This isn't me being a control freak. It's the resukt of having one too many audiobooks released with blatant errors that I would've caught had I been given the opportunity.
Later, Tantor approached me for one of my indie books. I told them I had written it specifically to be narrated by two narrators, who had already agreed to it. I'd be willing to sign the contract IF they kept the narrators. I was told they would do so. Shortly after I signed the contract, one of the narrators was suddenly "not available," and we wouldn't be able to use him for that book. Except I'm very good friends with that narrator, and he confirmed that no one at Tantor had reached out to him at all. When I reminded them this had been a condition of me signing and that the narrator was very much available, they grudgingly signed him.
But those two experiences weren't what made me slam the door and say I'd rather eat glass than work with Tantor again.
No, on that dual-narrated book, I was once again denied the ability to proof the books. More than that, they refuse to allow the narrators to do any edits until they (Tantor) have reviewed the book.
Now, one of the narrators used a method where he would leave long pauses while he worked, and he'd remove them during editing. This isn't an unusual practice. For whatever reason, Tantor would reject the files if he'd already removed the pauses, so he would submit them, pauses and all, and Tantor would reply with a list of corrections he needed to make (including removing the pauses).
I always download my audiobooks the instant they're up for sale and listen to them straight through just to be absolutely sure nothing went awry (lesson learned the hard way). Imagine my horror when I listened to this book and found that ALL THE PAUSES WERE STILL THERE.
I had to FIGHT Tantor to take the book down, as they insisted it had passed their QC (red flag, if that can pass their QC).
After the defective audio was up for A MONTH, I'd had enough, and I demanded back not only my audio rights, but the rights to the recording, as I wasn't going to have the narrators re-record the whole thing (and I had, after all, written it for them to narrate). They sold me back the recording for an eye-watering amount of money, and I re-released the corrected version.
The book was and still is one of my bestsellers EVER, the first in one of my bestselling trilogies BY FAR, but the audio sales never really recovered from this. To this day I still get negative reviews from readers who downloaded the first version and just now got around to listening to it (it came out in 2019). The second and third books sold okay, but not nearly as well as they should have, given the success of the ebooks.
And from the POV of an audiobook listener, I'm very hesitant to buy books from Tantor anymore because they've been riddled with errors, sound quality issues, etc., that just make them hard to listen to. Which is a shame, because there are some truly amazing books in their catalog.
As an author, though, I would sooner chew glass than sign another contract with Tantor.
(EDIT for typos and clarification)
