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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

#121

Post by dredmorbius »

_i____ii_______ wrote: post #94
zaat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't tell the difference between the average LibriVox recording and the average commercial audio book, there is no way you can produce an Audible level of recording. Even if half the volunteering recorders and their gear were as good as those of the commercial offerings, just sitting and selecting those that are not good enough for publishing and those that require some re-recording is a massive extra work.

What is so special about Audible recordings that is unnattainable by Librivox? You mean sound quality? You mean some holy grail vocal mics? Or vocal talent? I don't get it.

Mostly talent, production, and editing.

I've listened to a few Librevox recordings. They're usually (though not always) tolerable. Occaisionlly good, but that's exceeding rare.

Good audiobooks -- and a friend listens to many -- are far more often vastly superior. Even then, a poor reader is exceedingly grating.

Libravox may improve with time. History of volunteer efforts has been compeling. But not yet.

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

#122

Post by mongol »

Causality1 wrote: post #4

I 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.

This is what Storytel and others provide in Sweden. The price is 169 SEK per month for as much listening as you want. The English spoken assortment is quite big but uneven, there are gems there. I believe the Swedish spoken assortment is quite close to cover all there is.

I subscribe to Storytel and use it mostly as background listening. It is not worth it to pay by the book.

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

#123

Post by gnicholas »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #117
gnicholas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

I don't think they said it was legally required, just that it would be very beneficial. They didn't offer a price, nor were they ever asked how much they'd pay. But I'm not aware of any platforms that charge extra for their accessibility features. Are there any?

The reason there isn't much competition in the space is that OverDrive has a huge lead, and it is very complex on the back end. NYPL is doing good stuff with the SimplyE project, which they are offering to other libraries as well. Hopefully this will spur innovation in the space, in many regards!

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

#124

Post by HlessClaudesman »

I really enjoy audiobooks, but I dont think Audible is letting the medium flourish to its full potential.

My main concern is that audible is missing the long tail which naturally forms in any price sensitive market, where older products tend to depreciate to the point where they find a buyer. With paper books I can find an old book for cheap and that is great for a lover of words.

Audible distorts the audio-book market with its credit system: as far as I can tell they never discount older or less popular works, cutting off the long tail of potential readers. Why waste a precious credit on an audiobook who's physical cost is now fraction of its cover price?

More marketplace competition, and price / demand sensitive business models would be welcome.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by rahimnathwani »

gnicholas wrote: post #123
rahimnathwani wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

I don't think they said it was legally required, just that it would be very beneficial. They didn't offer a price, nor were they ever asked how much they'd pay. But I'm not aware of any platforms that charge extra for their accessibility features. Are there any? The reason there isn't much competition in the space is that OverDrive has a huge lead, and it is very complex on the back end. NYPL is doing good stuff with…

"But I'm not aware of any platforms that charge extra for their accessibility features. Are there any?"

My point isn't that OverDrive should itemise their pricing, it's that market participants generally only invest money in R&D when it is expected to make them more money. And if customers signal that they value a feature at $0, then that feature is likely to go to the bottom of the list.

If I buy a licence to a platform, that enables me to provide services to my users, then of course I can only use the features that come with that platform. If I want additional features, of course I can ask for them. But the platform provider will prioritise things based on what will make them money (get more new customers, reduce existing customer churn, or increase revenue per customer).

From what you've said, it sounds like OverDrive has no competition, so the impact of accessibility features on customer retention and acquisition is zero.

If so, then OverDrive needs to be incentivised by either:

A) More money from existing libraries (what I asked about above), or

B) Threat of competition, which would affect future customer acquisition+retention (which the SimplyE project you mention may provide).

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

#127

Post by maaaats »

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.

I got it as an option when I tried to cancel. Went forward with the cancellation anyway, as I found it deceptive.

Esepcially the part that canceling would lose all my credits. Didn't know what to spend them on either, so just bought random stuff to use them.

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

#128

Post by maaaats »

sorenjan wrote: post #23
carrja99 wrote: post #7

I just love audio books. I listen to them while walking the dog, working out or doing chores around the house.

I've tried it a few times, but I have a few problems with them: I can't skip boring parts, like long descriptions or other annoying parts. I zone out from time to time when doing other things, and I have to skip back and try to find where I lost track. Sometimes I have to go back and reread numbers, names, and other important info, but that's much harder with audio.

There are often abridged versions of audiobooks, where they skip stuff like that and shorten the book considerably. Maybe worth a try.

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

#129

Post by computerphage »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #124

I really enjoy audiobooks, but I dont think Audible is letting the medium flourish to its full potential. My main concern is that audible is missing the long tail which naturally forms in any price sensitive market, where older products tend to depreciate to the point where they find a buyer. With paper books I can find an old book for cheap and that is great for a lover of words. Audible distorts the audio-book mark…

I've found books in Audible on sale for as little as $2.00.

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

#130

Post by AndyMcConachie »

krtkush wrote: post #116
genera1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

OpenAudible.org

Then I wrote a script.

https://github.com/smutt/mp3_split

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