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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

#111

Post by felipemnoa »

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…

>>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 things to read

I really don't think this is accurate. People that love reading will not all of a sudden stop reading because of audiobooks in the same way that people who loved music did not stop going to concerts when records became available. I have no real arguments other than to say that even though I know there are audio versions of the books I like to read I still prefer to consume them in print form. It is just a much more enjoyable experience.

Besides, turning a book into an audio format is the easy part [laughably easy when you compare it to the art of writing a really good book] Writing the book is the hard part. Really, really hard. That is not going away.

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

#112

Post by ericdykstra »

I’ve been an Audible subscriber for a fairly long time (2011), and really enjoy the format. I really wish it wasn’t tied to Amazon, though. The recent increase of their “digital book burning” is pretty egregious, and it’s weird to own books on Kindle and Audible that are no longer even available for purchase.

There are, fortunately, some authors that publish their audiobooks direct, and others that put their work free on archive.org. However, the vast majority are Audible-exclusive, and it keeps me locked in.

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

#113

Post by r00fus »

Jagat wrote: post #108
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, a little. You can't sustain a listening rate of less than nine books per year. That's because there are no plans that provide less than one credit per month, and you can only put your account on hold three months per year. I suppose you could bank extra credits indefinitely, but if you only want to read six books per year, then after two years you will have a year's worth of credits banked. After four years, y…

There's a hidden 'silver' plan which is one credit every two months. The only way to get that is to talk to/chat with the customer service.

Wow - I would totally benefit from that. I need to talk with them.

I do like to re-listen to some really good classics so I'd rather not cancel my Audible sub.

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

#115

Post by gnicholas »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #100
gnicholas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Libby is an app made by OverDrive, (which is in turn owned by Rakuten). Although OverDrive has published multiple open letters proclaiming their dedication to accessibility, they have done relatively little in this space. In one disappointing conversation with a senior executive, I was told that if they can’t charge libraries more for a feature, they won’t add it. To my mind, the definition of accessibility is m…

"To my mind, the definition of accessibility is making decisions that make a product more accessible even if doing so does not make more money." Their clients (libraries) are the ones providing a service to end users. It's up to the libraries to determine what's important when selecting a supplier or developing a custom solution. Imagine I download an app on my phone. And I find it can't be used with a screen reader…

I agree that libraries have some responsibility here. But as it happens, my conversation with this OverDrive exec was pursuant to a letter signed by librarians representing hundreds of libraries, asking OverDrive to offer a particular accessibility feature, and giving detailed reasons for why it would help library patrons.

Even with this supporting information and the backing of hundreds of libraries, OverDrive was not interested because they didn't think they could profit off the feature.

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

#116

Post by krtkush »

genera1 wrote: post #74
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.

How does one do that?

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

#117

Post by rahimnathwani »

gnicholas wrote: post #115
rahimnathwani wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To my mind, the definition of accessibility is making decisions that make a product more accessible even if doing so does not make more money." Their clients (libraries) are the ones providing a service to end users. It's up to the libraries to determine what's important when selecting a supplier or developing a custom solution. Imagine I download an app on my phone. And I find it can't be used with a screen reader…

I agree that libraries have some responsibility here. But as it happens, my conversation with this OverDrive exec was pursuant to a letter signed by librarians representing hundreds of libraries, asking OverDrive to offer a particular accessibility feature, and giving detailed reasons for why it would help library patrons. Even with this supporting information and the backing of hundreds of libraries, OverDrive was n…

In the letter from the librarians, was the feature described as:

A) Must-have (e.g. if we don't have it, we'll be breaking the law, and so can't/won't renew the contract to use Libby), or

B) Nice-to-have?

If A, then I'm surprised at OverDrive's response.

If B, then I'm curious to know how much the librarians offered to pay.

If OverDrive can't make a profit from a feature, then either it's not that important to the people who hold the purse strings, or the feature is too expensive/complicated to build/deploy/maintain.

Is there something stopping the libraries from using a different vendor, or developing a solution that meets their needs? (As far as consumer software goes, Libby doesn't seem that complicated at the front end, but perhaps there are lots of complex third party integrations at the backend, to support licensing/DRM/whatever?)

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

#118

Post by powerapple »

Doubl wrote: post #58
steve19 wrote: post #47

People 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 ai…

In the late 20th century I almost weekly got an audiobook in tape cassette form from my local public library to listen to in my car. As far as I can remember they cost me nothing. They had a room full of the things, so the selection was enormous. I have particular memories of listening to James Lee burke's books read by Mark Hammer. Later in the noughties I joined audible but it wasn't cheap and they had a couple of…

Scribd now offers unlimited audio books at cheaper price. Although the selection is smaller than audible, they offer books as well as music sheets.

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

#119

Post by visarga »

anbop wrote: post #102
satvikpendem wrote: post #42

I'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.

That would be good for books too esoteric to justify a professional recording, but machine learning will never get as good as a professionally narrated audiobook. The form is so distinctive that the training data would need to be the very best audiobooks.

I use TTS on almost all the text I read online. I'm using it even now. I find it helps me be more engaged and follow the text at a deeper level. It's not a perfect voice, but I have adapted to it and enjoyed it for more than 10 years (Alex from MacOS). Now I find reading with just my eyes a shallower experience. The great advantage is that I can use it anywhere - on forums, articles, books and even scientific papers. Places where speech was not a choice before.

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

#120

Post by disiplus »

lugg wrote: post #99
max76 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why would someone feel pressure to use a credit? A person can have several extra credits at time. The credit system has a lot of advantages for Amazon, but time pressure isn't one of them.

Credits expire and there is a max of 6.

it's 1 year from 2 April. I was thinking about canceling with the old policy but maybe not anymore. right now I have 3 unused credits.
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