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Gaiman on MP3 Audio Books, Mirrormask
A reader writes: "It appears that Neil Gaiman released two of his books (Anansi Boys and American Gods) as books on CD. The interesting twist is that they are being released as MP3 - which for the world of audio books is something pretty new. ". Indeed; MP3 audio books, I think, have given the book publishers the willies because of the DRM issue - anyone else seen this before? And also worth noting that Mirrormask was released in motion picture form and rocks. I think to describe it would be equal parts The Dark Crystal and Myst, combine with Carnivale and a dash of The City of Lost Children.
The writeup seems to indicate that Gaiman is actually announcing something or recently held an interview, yet the only links in the story are to the front page of his website and to his books.
I find the only Audio books that have any effect on me are the instructional kind. For instance, learning a new language such as through the Pimsleur series.
I would be interested in knowing if anyone actually prefers the audio format to traditional page flipping.
In terms of going MP3, wouldn't the author have saved a lot in fees by going OGG, or is acceptance too much of a concern?
~jennifer.k~
MP3 cds for sale here:
o books_audio_books.html
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/shopsite/mp3_audi
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Saw it this past Friday, it's an amazing movie. The direction and art design is by Dave McKean; his style is absolutely beautiful, but it might throw some people off. I loved it.
After the show a friend noted that it has a feel very similar to "The Neverending Story", and I think that's accurate.
Anyone else wondering exactly how you market Mirrormask brand gravel?
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
Not huge yet, but let's face it... as far as security is concerned, If you can get the cd, you can rip to mp3. I do that all the time to get books to listen to while I'm running. Angela's Ashes will be playing for me during a marathon this weekend.
(For you national socialists at RIAA, no, I am not posting the mp3's. This is for my own fair use)
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The interesting twist is that they are being released as MP3 - which for the world of audio books is something pretty new.
My local public library has had a special section for MP3-based audio CDs for at least a year now. The only issue is that many traditional CD players in homes and in cars can't play MP3 CDs. But I'd rather have one MP3 CD versus 15 traditional audio CDs. Admittedly, it's a pretty darn good local library.
And regarding DRM - hell, regular audio CDs aren't DRM'd, so the execs don't need to worry about theft from an MP3 CD any more than they have to worry about theft from a regular audio CD. After all, an MP3 is only one rip away.
MP3 audio is supported in the latest Digital Talking Books standard used by the Library of Congress (ANSI/NISO Z39.86). The LOC is looking for contractors now to produce DTBs for the blind and visually imparied, so you'll be seeing a lot of these (or perhaps hearing them) soon. Digital distribution of talking books should result in more affordable equipment for playing the media and easier mass duplication.
I am not a crackpot.
They have collections of both human read mp3 audio books and computer read mp3 audio books (kind of weird).
Isis publishing has been releasing compressed format audio books for a couple of years. It makes sense, after all would you prefer 1 disc, or 11 discs, if you're manufacturing and shipping the things? OK, they currently use WMA, but at least they're trying :-)
If you put the stuff out on CD it will be ripped, end of story (no pun intended). If you can reduce your costs significantly and provide the same thing, then why not do it? It's not like audio books need --alt-preset extreme applied to 'em, is it?
MP3s of audio books are excellent for long car journeys, etc, so more power to the elbow of those making them: I'll keep buying them.
Audible has always used their own in-house DRM format, not MP3, so you got that wrong... (they do have a version of their file format that uses MP3 audio internally, but it is still wrapped in their DRM envelope).
You can, however, burn the books to unencrypted audio CDs...
I myself usually have both a regular book and an audiobook in progress, but Audiobooks, even the well acted kind, don't hold a candle to the likes of:
Big Finish http://www.bigfinish.com/ Fantastic scifi audio (mostly Doctor Who related)
or
Noise Monster http://www.noisemonster.com/.
Anyone wanting something more than an audiobook, but still staying in the audio medium should check out their stuff. It's written and produced directly for the audio, and in the case of Doctor Who from Big Finish, is licensed by the BBC and uses the original cast.
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
MP3 is not really optimal for speech. E.g. speex would provide much better quality/bitrate ratio. Sadly, speex is not very well supported. (I would love to have a digital portable recorder with a built-in speex codec.)
When American Gods was released in print, I was lucky enough to have the first chapter read to me by Gaiman at a signing, and it was fantastic to listen to him read that much of it. But the thought of lugging around multiple CDs (which is traditionally how they come) for one lengthy novel puts me off the audio bit.
I have a copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on CD that is supposedly fantastic, but it's almost a spindle-worth of CDs and I can't get into it because of that--what a commitment. And I'd rather carry around a tattered copy of the book than spend the time ripping them to MP3s that I could dump to my iPod so I could have them on the go.
MP3 format should make the audios involve less discs... and that appeals to me. BUT, I don't have an MP3 player in my car, so the disc would be ripped to my computer and dumped on my iPod for transport.
As an aside, Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael was given to me as a book on tape about 10 years ago. I wore it out listening to it and am now searching for another audio copy of that recording.
And I should probably also note that I am generally a very page-turning traditionalist when it comes to my reading...but audio adaptations/recordings do have their place.
Greatness. It comes in many forms, sometimes it comes in the form of sacrifice - that's the loneliest form.
You can also open the Audible format in Goldwave and convert to mp3. I only do this as a convenience for myself, however. I think Audible has one of the best internet entertainment services around. Much better than iTunes...my online library is HUGE (two audiobooks a month for $20/mo).
Huh? What kind of Slashdotter would receive an error like that? Don't we all use mplayer, or xine with libdvdcss? No way do we ever run into copyprotection issues with a DVD! j00 s|_|X0R, l4m3r!
Oh, hang on...
last night, I found myself curled up with comfy blankets, half a bottle of rum, a DVD, and this beautiful, brilliant, and generally amazing girl I had recently met.
Fine. You win...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I would be interested in knowing if anyone actually prefers the audio format to traditional page flipping.
For certain applications, I find that they're much better. Basically, they're great for "hands free" reading, in situations where you couldn't conveniently (or safely) read a book, like while exercising, doing housework, walking around (remembering to use your eyes extra carefully to subsitute for your occupied ears when, say, crossing streets).
Also, a good performance by the narrator can do great things for a book. There are some very fine voice actors reading these books, and the best of them are fantastic. Other narrators are, well, less fantastic. It's very much a personal preference issue, though: heated arguments over the quality of the narrator regularly break out in the reviews over at Audible.com. (Like another poster, I use my iPod mainly for audiobooks, and I've been doing Audible's two-books-a-month subscription plan for years, now. Not free, but affordable enough for me.)
One free audio book I can recommend is "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig, which a bunch of people recorded into an audio book, which was permitted by Lessig's release of the book under a Creative Commons license. You can find it over at www.legaltorrents.com. The narrators are enthusiastic rather than skilled, in some cases, but the material is so interesting that it's easy to forgive the occasional lapses.
I bought it, on a whim, on the recommendation of a shouting crazy guy in a bookstore.
GREAT, I'M GLAD YOU LIKED IT. FREEMASONS RUN THE COUNTRY!
Audio books are excellent time-fillers for long car trips, where reading a traditional book would give me motion-sickness. It's also a good way to "share" a book with other people; much like watching a movie together with your friends.
My personal favorites are audiobooks that are staged like radio drama, with multiple voice-actors and sound effects. Listening to these encourages me to use my imagination as if I was reading the book - what do the characters look like? What are they doing now? What was that "thump" just now?
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
Audible has always used their own in-house DRM format, not MP3, so you got that wrong.
That's as may be, but I bought The Hitchhikers Guide series one and two on MP3 from Waterstones last year. This story seems like a non-story to me.
I converted "Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers" to MP3 for my mom to listen to in her car. At 64kbps mono, you can comfortably fit all 15 CDs of either book to fit on one CD.
It reduces disc switching, which is a potentially serious issue when she's driving.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
It was basically Labyrinth turned inside out sans Jennifer Connely and David Bowie.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
"Since virtually no-one in the world has an OGG portable player (the market I'd imagine that this guy is interested in - would you want to sit at your desk/laptop to hear a book?), it makes sense to stick with MP3."
Actually IRiver and RIO both have players that support Ogg. Yes MP3 is a more universal format so using it for a an audio book is the logical choice. Too bad none of the portable players support speex. You could put a a lot of books on a pretty small player that way.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
MP3 has always seemed like a logical medium for audio books to me. Ever since my wife and son caught the Harry Potter bug a few years ago, they will buy not only the dead-tree version, but also the audio version on CD.
Its always struck me as particularly wasteful that these things were available only as conventional audio. A single book can span 20 or more CDs.
That has always seemed somewhat wasteful to me. I'm presuming that an audio CD of a person reading a book is availing itself of the full harmonic range that would also be applied to a more elaborate production, like a symphony orchestra or a rock or jazz band that would make much fuller use of that range.
Voice telephony is based on transmitting only a narrow band of the harmonic range used by most human voice communication. Putting that narrower range together with the compression techniques available through MP3 or other similar audio formats, it seems to me that number of disks needed to store one of these books could be slashed to a small fraction of what are produced now.
This may only have a negligible effect on the final price of the item, and the popularity of MP3 enabled CD players may not have hit the critical mass needed to make this sort of thing profitable yet, but I'd think that enough popular releases, like Harry Potter or some others, might actually stimulate their adoption, or at least speed it up beyond the current rate.
So does Samsung and iAudio. Last week my wife decided she finally wanted an MP3 player and, since I'd ripped most of our CDs in OGG format, I required that it support OGG. She required that it be "cute". This was far more difficult than one might think.
The first problem: Sorting out which players actually support OGG. Depending on what website you go to to compare, and what manufacturer you use, it can be quite difficult to find which players support OGG. Many of the manufacturers do not support OGG on all players (iRiver, for example). Some players claim OGG support in some places but not others.
The second problem: "What the hell is OGG?" That's what most non-geeks will say. Even some geeks who think that de facto standards trump open standards will give you a queer look when you mention OGG. Certainly you'll run into problems if you walk into Best Buy and say: "I'm looking for an MP3 player with OGG support."
The third problem (not for me, but I'm sure for many): It's not supported on the iPod. Ugh. Yeah yeah, AAC, whatever.
The fourth problem: You've made using iTunes much more difficult. Now you must either burn and copy or use something to strip the DRM. Of course, you could use another service, but then you get Microsoft DRM, which is bleh. Then you have eMusic, which is good accept it's a monthly fee service (the only point of joining a service like that is to get the occasional single, otherwise buying CDs is so much better) and it doesn't have as good of a library. There's the less-than-legal ways to get your music, but they shouldn't be considered (for this argument).
Wow, what a tangent.
Anyway, the flip side of this is when someone gets a player that supports OGG, but doesn't do so purposefully. They read something that says "OGG Vorbis support" and don't know what that is. Then they forget. After that, as far as their concerned, they don't have a way to play that.
I saw Neil Gaiman at a book reading/signing in Seattle, where he talked about the mp3 audio book. Apparently Gaiman had to fight hard with his publishers to get the book out on mp3. The publishers were worried about an MP3 CD having no protection against copying and sharing whatsoever. But in Gaiman's own (paraphrased) words "Most people, when they buy the audiobook, the first thing they're going to do it carefully rip it and put it on their iPod. So why can't we just do most of the work for them?"
So once again, it's a case of the artist fighting for better access for the listener/reader/watcher, against the wished of the business execs. They claim they're trying to protect the artist but when artists have to fight for things they want, like mp3 audiobooks, CC-licensed book, and torrents of albums, it gets pretty easy to see through the lies.
Stupid like a fox!
A couple of other good audio books as MP3's are Scott Sigler's EarthCore and Ancestor. He's been releasing them as a podcast, one episode a week. EarthCore is now complete, you can download the whole thing. Ancestor just started a few weeks ago. He went direct to podcast with these, and EarthCore generated enough interest that he got a book deal out of it. Dead tree edition is available in November.
fool! it's the illuminati!
FreeBSD for the impatient.