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Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

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Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#71

Post by nytesky »

lucb1e wrote: post #50
zipperhead wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I was thinking of Ready Player One, and how it’s reading really was part of the experience. Did you mean to bury the lede that it’s read by none other than Wil Wheaton?

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#72

Post by dang »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #39
TylerE wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks. You missed the point. Good job.

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them and following them when posting here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#73

Post by ChildOfChaos »

gambler wrote: post #40

>Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines Unfortunately, this is a very accurate analogy. I like listening to audio books and Audible is definitely very convenient, but I am 100% sure that in the not so distant future Amazon will completely destroy the whole publishing ecosystem in US and that will have horrendous effect on the quality of what is being written and on the availability of…

I think Audible works though because of the monthly subscription and the fact people get credits a month in exchange for a book. This credit is purchased at a lot lower cost than paying for the book outright. But it's sold on the basis that people will stay subscribed and thus end up with books they wouldn't of otherwise bought as they are looking for something to spend their credit on this month.

A different model than someone actually knowing the author, waiting for the release and then buying it directly from them. It's essentially free money for author/publisher so they are all rushing to the platform.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#74

Post by genera1 »

miki123211 wrote: post #53

I hate Audible, with a passion. They have drm, so I can't listen in the app I like, and the prices...Back in secondary I've been listening to audiobooks at the rate of approximately one book a week. I've used polish libraries for the blind which were legal, free and had everything I wanted (almost). I can't even imagine how much money I'd spend if I had to use Audible instead. Actually I wouldn't even be able to, as…

Technically you can download audible .aa files and convert them to whatever format you want, default ffmpeg can handle the conversion.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#75

Post by blondin »

sorenjan wrote: post #26
goldcd wrote: post #21

Earlier 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.

you are making a good point imo. strange to me to read that audiobooks cost so much more than printed books. about the same amount of work goes into both. and i don't think people buy audiobooks because their favorite actor is narrating it. if they do then yes, they should be charged a lot. i also think maybe text to speech software makers need to get into that business. will drive the cost down a little.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#76

Post by frosted-flakes »

sxcurry wrote: post #61
_i____ii_______ wrote: post #3

Audible's greatest assault is on my wallet. So many audiobooks on that platform are exorbitantly expensive.

Many comments on this thread seem to be confusing cost with value. I have both Libby and an Audible subscription. Libby - free, limited selection, clunky weird interface, long waits for books, production glitches. Audible - nearly every book, available now, good production, return any book anytime, fairly good app, costs $ every month. Up to you which is the best value.

Libby has a "clunky weird interface"? It's different, but it works really well. I think it's fantastic, and it's certainly better than the old Overdrive app.

As for a limited selection, that depends entirely on how many licences your library buys. My local library has a very good selection. Alas, it also has a lot of users, so some of the more popular books will have long hold lines.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#77

Post by macintux »

blondin wrote: post #75
sorenjan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you are making a good point imo. strange to me to read that audiobooks cost so much more than printed books. about the same amount of work goes into both. and i don't think people buy audiobooks because their favorite actor is narrating it. if they do then yes, they should be charged a lot. i also think maybe text to speech software makers need to get into that business. will drive the cost down a little.

I assume the price of audiobooks reflects the fact that far fewer are purchased, so all of the engineering and voice work has to be recouped somehow.

I've done a little voice work before. It is insanely tedious, even for a book I loved.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#78

Post by jackconnor »

gambler wrote: post #40

>Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines Unfortunately, this is a very accurate analogy. I like listening to audio books and Audible is definitely very convenient, but I am 100% sure that in the not so distant future Amazon will completely destroy the whole publishing ecosystem in US and that will have horrendous effect on the quality of what is being written and on the availability of…

Why do you think people won't want the traditional book format any longer? I'm asking because i love podcasts, i love short stories, and i love books, and these all feel completely different to me, and i enjoy them much differently. To me it feels like publishing the business has changed, but that to us there's more great content of all these formats than ever before. I'm into it, i hope this trend continues.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#79

Post by DanielleMolloy »

_i____ii_______ wrote: post #35
dmitriid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”A few hours with a few people” is - often multiple hours in the studio because people make mistakes, they get tired, they want to re-do passages etc. - during recording you want at the very least a sound technician, the voice talent, and a director/author/producer to listen in and give direction/corrections/adjustments on the reading - after recording you need at least an editor, a director/producer to make sure the…

People do Librivox recordings free of charge as volunteers. Those recordings are just as good as Audible recordings. I myself, with rudimentary gear and a free DAW, can create an Audible level recording for the mere cost of my time. I'm going to have to totally reject your list of expenses. Sounds like a bunch of superfluous positions and bloat.

Partly true. I've listened to a handful of excellent readers on LibriVox. For audiobooks I don't care if audio quality is sub-par as long as I understand every word and the reader is good.

There were even these incidents with people ripping the best recordings off LibriVox and selling them on Audible where they ended up achieving high ratings..

However, bad LibriVox experiences were one reason why I didn't truly "get" how superior audiobooks can be for years. Enduring their endless copyright and chapter announcements also hampered the experience a bit.

LibriVox derivatives have now fixed the problem of finding good readers in some of the apps with simple user ratings. I believe a similar project based on WaveNet will make much of LibriVox obsolete soon by being better than many readers there, which saddens me a bit since in principle LibriVox is a good project that simply promoted free sharing of information and knowledge.

Both AI and most of LibriVox have a lot to learn to even come close to the quality of the professional Gert Westphal reading of "The Magic Mountain", or to anything Stephen Fry has read.

Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing

#80

Post by chihuahua »

dfabulich wrote: post #54
sorenjan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the approximate cost of recording an audio book then? Is it a lot more than preparing the text for print? How much does distribution cost compared to the paper version? My uneducated guess is that the profit margin on audio books are much higher than paperbacks, maybe hardbacks as well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+it+cost+to+rec... https://findawayvoices.com/pricing/ > An average audiobook created with Findaway Voices has about 50,000 words and costs between $1,000 and $2,000. We can estimate the cost of your audiobook by multiplying a per finished hour narrator rate with the estimated length of your finished recording. The longer the book, the higher the estimate will be. Playing…

200 finished hours for a typical book seems very high to me. I'm listening to a lot of audiobooks from the library (free) and most non-fiction books are between 10 and 30 hours.
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