While at work today I experienced an epiphany... I think the thought was something along the lines of I might actually be able to catch up with my reading of Angharad's Bike serial if I could just copy a buncha chapters to my phone in audio format and listen to them while at work... Which led me to, well, what if other people wanted to listen to my story while doing other things instead of taking the time out of their day just to specifically read. Or maybe even they might want to read along with me and hear the way I voice the characters in my head when writing.
Therefore, from now on, I am going to start doing official readings of all chapters of anything I write and post to BC. For now, that's only Open Your Heart.
If I do this before posting up the text version, it could cause a delay in chapters being posted, so I'd be interested in the opinions of my readers whether I should just post up each chapter hot off the keyboard and do the readings after and add them with a quick edit. Or if I should write each chapter, do the reading, and then post both at the same time.
When I finish the book, I'll add a link on the books title page to an archive of cdrom image files containing the entire book as an AudioBook. Additionally, a PDF containing a copy of the book formatted as I would envision it looking if published on paper.
I dunno if I'd be interested in getting myself set up with Lulu or anything, probably not. Free downloads and it's up to you to print/burn/whatever on your own. This and any future stories will be the same.
Well, I don't know for sure how long it'll take me to finish readings for the current two chapters, I'll be sure to reply to this blog post when I do.
Thoughts?
Comments
prefer text postings first
I would prefer that you post the text story first, and then later, post the audio versions.
Also, instead of posting audio CD images, I think you should just keep them as MP3 files. MP3 files are smaller than CD audio, so they are better for downloading over the internet, and should be playable by anybody with a computer. If anyone needs the audio as CDs, they should be able to make them from the MP3s.
You might look into the site, podiobooks.com. I have listened to some books from that site, and they may be able to host your audiobook as well.
--Brandon Young
--Brandon Young
I said archive of.
An MP3 is only smaller than a WAV file because MP3 is pre-compressed. The compression is even also known as lossy compression, meaning you lose audio definition in the process of compression.
I -could- just archive the whole chapter list of MP3's, true, but in the end, when I make a few cdrom images and then compress them with LZMA, and take the whole bunch of MP3's and compress them with LZMA, the end size of both will be about equal. If anything, due to a quirk in the process of compressing already-compressed data, the MP3 archive MIGHT even be larger, though most likely not by any truly significant margin.
Each chapter will be posted as an MP3, but after all chapters are completed, the entire book will be posted as an audiobook.
Sorry to go all technical, but I am a geek.
Thank you for your input though :) It is appreciated.
PS: I doubt anyone actually cares, but there has been proper testing done which supports my above statement that compression of already compressed source material often leads to larger filesizes than compression of pure uncompressed source material. I could dig it up and link it if I was so inclined and thought anyone would actually read it, but...
PPS: The acronym LZMA refers to what is presently one of the "best" compression algorithms in terms of compression ratios. In terms of compression and decompression speed and the amount of processor time it takes to handle a compression or decompression task, on compression, it is dead last, meaning, takes forever, and makes your machine crawl while doing it, on decompression, it's somewhere in the middle, there are "slower" algorithms, and there are "faster" algorithms. The most common program to handle archive's compressed with this algorithm is called "7-zip", and is a completely free and open source program.
Abigail Drew.