I used to really love Audible because they had excellent customer service. Now I only tolerate them. One more instance of needing to send a dozen back and forth emails to their so-called customer support repeating the same message over and over and getting increasingly frustrated and upset because not a single goddamn one of their offshored drones actually bothers to read what you write before responding about something entirely unrelated and I will terminate the service I've had with them since 2002. Watching a company you loved dealing with destroy the human side of its service makes me very sad.
Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
81–90 of 162 posts
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's a variation on the theme "I own a DSLR camera and am capable of pushing the shutter button, therefore I don't understand how professional photographers can charge $$$$ for wedding photographs"
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#83I can’t resist the temptation to ask given this thread is on HN (a community I love) and Audible is a passion... for those who love Audible and Audio books, would you mind sharing 2-3 you particularly enjoyed? I’m always hunting for new ones. Here are some I would recommend:
Management
1. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People
2. Getting to Yes Great book on negotiation in life and business
3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things On management
4. Influence The psychology of persuasion
Non-Fiction Recommendations
1. River of Doubt True story of Teddy Roosevelt's exploration of a previously unchartered region of the Amazon River where he and his team almost perished.
2. Endurance True story of Sir Ernest Shackelton's journey to be the first to reach the south pole. Arguably one of the greatest survival stories of all time.
3. The Disappearing Spoon Story behind the periodic table, the elements, the people who discovered them and the context under which they were discovered. Learn a lot about day to day things you don't put much thought into.
4. Business Adventures Bill Gates was interviewed and asked what his favorite business book is - this was it (out of print for 40 years until 5 months ago). It's a collection of about a dozen 1-1.5 hour true business case studies (20th century). A lot of them were seminal events in corporate America (for example, the event that resulted in modern day insider trading laws, the creation of the income tax, etc). You'll enjoy this if you like business books.
5. Creativity Inc by the cofounder of Pixar. Good story.
6. Alchemy of Air Story of the investors of the Haber-Bauche process to convert nitrogen in the air to ammonia (the key component of artificial fertilizer, gas and gunpowder). Arguably the greatest discovery of the 20th century if you take into account the fact without this process, Earth's arable land mass can only sustain 2bn people. It also has resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths by allowing wars to wage on indefinitely
7. A Short History of Nearly Everything A fast pace, well written science book by Bill Bryson that covers what we know about the creation of the world thus far. You'll enjoy it.
8. The Boys in the Boat Very inspiring story about the men's 1936 olympic gold metal rowing team
9. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Very inspiring story by the creator of Nike. One of the best memoirs I've ever read.
10. Lessons of History by Will Durant Short and extremely thought provoking. Stylistically tough to get into but once you do it is quite good.
11. Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World The first half of this is better than the second but overall a very enlightening book about the impact of the Mongols, broadly considered to be Barbarians but in actuality far ahead of their time (first to broadly use printed currency, a postal system, a judicial system, military engineers, etc).
Fiction / Fantasy Recommendations
1. The Martian Awesome story and as realistic as fiction can get. Was a great listen.
2. Theft of Swords great story about two lovable characters. It is part of a trilogy
3. Red Rising Part of a trilogy, great listen but worth caveating it is an extreme hunger games like story that is quite violent
4. Name of the Wind Epic fantasy adventure, one of the highest rated books on Good Reads. Absolutely worth it but at 30 hours may be a large commitment as a first book
5. The Way of Kings This book gave me heart palpitations... again, a large commitment but I can't drop it from the list
6. Lies of Loch Lomura A very fun adventure story; reader's voice takes a moment to get used to but once you do it is very fun and endearing
7. Mistborn Great story in a unique world
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
An audiobook takes about six hours [1] to nail down one hour of final recording.
[1] https://audible-acx.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/664...
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#85Instead of Audible, I recommend downloading audiobooks for free from your local library. The San Francisco Public Library uses an app called "Libby." (I think most major US libraries support it.) It's free and convenient. No complaints.
My library has Libby(/overdrive) and Hoopla. I find that Libby only has recent bestsellers while Hoopla has actual audiobooks I’d like to read. (I’ve listened to 2 or 3 on Libby and at least 100 on hoopla).
Unfortunately Hoopla charges the library for every item checked out and since it has gotten popular they reduced the monthly limit from 15 to 10 to 5.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The usual 200pg bestselling fluff usually comes in at 5-6hrs unabridged.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#87Audible'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.
Do they have any artificial restrictions? Last time I tried a similar app (it's been a few years), I wasn't able to get an audiobook because someone else already had it "checked out".
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#88Earlier 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.
I listen to a lot of librivox books. There are some talented volunteers, but there are many that are just not that good.
Plus all their text is on the public domain.
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#89I have used Audible for a long time, but have recently switched to Libro.fm. Pricing is the same as Audible, and my local book store gets a cut.
Does it have drm?
Re: Audible and audiobooks, the fastest growing part of publishing
#90I absolutely love Audio Books, I think I went through maybe 25+ audio books, mostly non fiction, in 2018 alone. It is a fantastic way to maximize dead time, but generally I think non music audio is going through a sort of renaissance.
While the author of this post is really distraught about Amazons dominance with Audible I do think in some ways non music audio is much bigger than just Audibooks for example Podcasts are on the rise and at least for the moment they are totally open. I also think Amazons hold with audio books will be difficult to maintain especially as technology and AI gets better. Why pay them when a great sounding AI could read your book to you.
As a little shameless self promotion I have been working on a side project that does exactly this, it takes any Article or PDF from the web and converts it to great sounding audio so you can listen to it on the go. It sounds pretty good, and it’s a great way to maximize your dead time and stay informed on the go.
If you want to check out my project you can find it here: