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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.
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!
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.
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!