This article has taken the thoughts right out of my mind. I struggle, as an achiever type, to "waste" time and therefore fill my mind with audiobooks from the library as well as audible.
The need to unplug is real.
Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
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Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#42I'm ready for when I can have my books read to me with machine learning à la WaveNet or similar, effectively cutting out the middleman and making a very cheap audiobook version. Google Books can already do this with epubs but it's not at the same level as a professional audiobook however.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Audiobooks in general are pretty expensive, especially when compared to the price of a print/digital book. The costs to produce one are higher, and the market is smaller (though the latter is changing, as the article shows).
Why are the costs to produce audiobooks higher? Librivox has public domain books for free, submitted by volunteers.
Yes, you've been plugging this throughout the thread.
I've been working on writing a book and want to sell an audio book alongside it. Could you go ahead and record it for free for me so I can sell it to recoup my own costs?
No? Why not?
I'm glad there are volunteer projects out there, especially keeping public domain works available and accessible to more people. I'm even more glad that you feel that the quality of your work stands up to the quality of commercial work, as mentioned in other comments in this thread. I've not heard your audiobook recordings, so I'll abstain from comment on that front.
But why are you in here claiming that your volunteer work diminishes the paid work of others? Is that something to be proud of?
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#44I just wish Audible had adopted a Netflix-style distribution system rather than an Amazon.com style one. Watching all the Netflix I want costs me fifteen dollars a month. Listening to all the Audible content I want would cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month because I'd have to purchase each piece of media individually.
Have you tried scribd?
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#45re: " Audiobooks are the fastest growing part of publishing..." I hate to jump in and jump off topic but statements like that really annoy me. First, when a market is tiny but growing even small increases look amazing as a percentage. And then there's the maturity of the publishing market itself. Anything new that's growing is going to be growing more than the otherwise mature no-growth market. The question here is:…
Audible alone did over $3 billion last year. "Major publishers have confirmed to Good e-Reader that 1 out of every 10 books sold is in the audio format ... HarperCollins stated that downloadable audio accounted for about 25% of all digital revenue in the recent first three months of 201" https://goodereader.com/blog/audiobooks/good-e-reader-global... Hardly tiny.
For context, the entire US publishing industry is only 26Bn.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/07/us-statshot-publi...
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#46Audible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.
If you are in the US, check out Hoopla digital for quite a few good audio books you can borrow. Bonus: you’ve already paid for it through your local library.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#47People complaining forget what the industry was like before audible. It was terrible. Audiobook cost an absolute fortune, and selections were very limited. Audiobooks in the late 20th century were, I imagine, simular to paper books in 18th century. Something most of the population could not afford to own.
I have been listening, and loving, audiobook for a very long time audible was, and still is, a breath of fresh air.
Combined with the similarly lax attitude to drm as the amazom kindle, removing drm is simple.
Audible has created a market that publishers were either ignoring completely or extreme price gouging (or some of both) .
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Individual prices of books exist solely to push you towards the monthly x-many-books model - which is pretty good value. I've been a member since 2005/6 (pre-amazon ownership) and I think my longest recurrent monthly thing. Audiobooks were historically insanely expensive - I used to borrow massive folders of cassette taps from my library of 'unabridged books' back in the 90s. Staple of my family holidays trapped in a…
How come audio books can be as or even more expensive than the same book in paper format? There's no production, shipping, and so on involved with digital products, and the recording itself is a few hours with the voice talent, often the author themselves, and a few more people in a small studio.
I can actually answer that (due to random quirks in my life).
1) Opposite my office there used to be an audiobook company. Whole office of people built around a sound-booth where an actor would spend a week or so recording a book. I used to see the famousish coming out for smoke-breaks day-after-day. Maybe a dozen people, for a fortnight, to make 'an audiobook'
2) My wife used to work for a publishing company for hire (used to knock out Disney branded books for supermarkets and the like). Books cost practically nothing to print in China. Then could be shipped around and sold at the lowest of rates/margins.
Saying an audiobook costs nothing to record, is like saying a band could just publish their sheet-music.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#49I'm ready for when I can have my books read to me with machine learning à la WaveNet or similar, effectively cutting out the middleman and making a very cheap audiobook version. Google Books can already do this with epubs but it's not at the same level as a professional audiobook however.
Oh please no, not for me. A well-read audiobook becomes an integral part of the art form. An example is the recent Beastie Boys book, which is read by the two of them, plus a whole host of guest readers. Some of whom completely transform the experience.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#50I'm ready for when I can have my books read to me with machine learning à la WaveNet or similar, effectively cutting out the middleman and making a very cheap audiobook version. Google Books can already do this with epubs but it's not at the same level as a professional audiobook however.
Oh please no, not for me. A well-read audiobook becomes an integral part of the art form. An example is the recent Beastie Boys book, which is read by the two of them, plus a whole host of guest readers. Some of whom completely transform the experience.
I agree, a well-read book can really make it. A bad reader not only makes a good book boring, it also works conversely. For example, Ready Player One was a mediocre movie, an alright book, and the audio book was really great (i.e. I also enjoyed the story itself much more because of the telling).
If you just want to read books without the effort of reading, and have "audio books" be cheap, text to speech is totally there. You'll miss some intonation, but modern speech engines are beyond understandable. If it would be just about understandability, try espeak (apt install espeak). An absolutely awful voice, but copy any decently sized text (maybe a pg essay) and listen to it. I find that after 30 seconds to a minute, I've adjusted enough to perfectly understand it, and after 4+ minutes I forget that I'm listening to the most horrendous voice known to mankind. And if you want to nerd out some more about our brain's capacity to understand speech and adapt to things that don't even resemble speech anymore, try whistling languages. I'm always amazed how understandable they can be.