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Originally Posted by Wasabihound
Hi
That's an interesting line of thought. Bundling sort of makes sense - especially now that Kindle can play music. I have used Audible and my account is linked to my Amazon account so all the Audible books I have bought are part of the archive on my Kindle. I have not tried downloading them as I am still pretty precious about my Kindle memory.
Steve - thanks for the insight into the process of creating audio books, congratulations on the books (both paper and audio). I wonder with the prevalence of iPods and other MP3 player MP3 based audio books will grow more popular and start to push out CDs. If bundling with an ebook takes hold this makes even more sense.
I would certainly give an ebook bundled with an mp3 audio (unabridged) some consideration. However I would not be keen to have to download both to my Kindle - although as I said I might just be being overly careful about my memory.
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That is a pretty valid point about downloading books to your Kindle. Something about Audible is book over about 6hrs long are broken into multiple parts with the 2nd best quality (format 4) runs about 70-100MB in size, so it's not huge so one can easily download a segment of a book whenever you need and delete sections you are done with. I haven't looked into what formats the Kindle will play if it can play format 2 downloads then the file size is a LOT smaller, smaller in size by about 50-60% from format 4 (I don't know about the new Enhanced Format books though).
Something to remember about MP3 playback is there are hoops you need to hump through in order to convert an Audible format book. Good news is there are free apps to do that...basically what they do is record the book while it's playing on your PC as Amazon is pretty protective over converting their .aa files. And that is one of the limitations I see for all reading devices with MP3 playback having a problem, they aren't Audible compatible so something else would need to change in the industry for that to happen. I find new CD/tape audiobooks still pretty darned expensive to buy new. The few I have purchased on tape or CD are used for a fraction of the original cost...ok, they are all the Harry Potter books which are a BLAST as audiobooks.
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Originally Posted by KarenH
I like this idea! I like to have a print copy (ebook or DTB, but preferably ebook) of my audiobooks. I don't use them often, but there have been times when I wanted to go back and look at something that happened earlier in the book, and that's pretty hard to do with an audiobook. Also, I will occasionally switch from audio to print to finish a book. I do most of my listening in the car or when doing yardwork, and if I get close to the end of a book and know I won't have the opportunity to listen again for a few days, I'll just pick up the ebook and read the end. Having both versions available in a bundle would work great for me!
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COOL!!! I I haven't done that yet when I buy an Audible version of a book after reading the ebook version but it's a great way to take advantage of the two formats of the book.
I use audiobooks to fall asleep to every night...my player is an old Creative Labs Zen Xtra which I have upgraded the HDD to an old 100GB drive so my whole library is on the player. but it has a sleep timer which when combined with bookmarks, I can guess about where it left off when I last was awake. Using that same basic setup, you could use bookmarks in both the audio and ebook copies...
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Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Actually, if you have a good reader, it only takes about $100-$300 per studio hour (ie, the hours of recorded content, not the actual work hours) to produce an audiobook (already been down that alley myself). So for a book that takes 6 hours to read at a normal pace (my books average about 20min per chapter, and 6-7 hours total for the entire book), which unless you're a speed reader is the normal pace you'd read a regular book at, will cost between $600 and $1800 total to produce. (this means that the tracks are leveled, and all studio work is completed, and when it's done you have a final product ready for sale.)
Add in the extras like cover, cd generation, ISBN and so on, and you've got at most $3000 into an audiobook which will sell for about $25 in cd form for 6 hours of listening, and about $15 for mp3. (Yes, audiobooks are a racket if you consider that the per unit cost for the packaging after production is about $2 per unit, making them nearly 85% profit) So personally I think that if someone is expecting wide distribution sales in considerable numbers, audiobooks are really economical to produce. The only time they might not be is if you have a celebrity reader like Patrick Stewart who would make the raw studio hours jump to like $20,000 without batting an eye.
I'm right now waiting for my audiobook files to come back from the studio (we use a 3rd party studio for all our audiobooks as it's just cheaper, easier, and produces better quality than if we did it in house), and once they do, I'll be offering them for sale in both packaged CD's and mp3's. So in the grand scheme of things, the only real *downside* to audiobooks is that it takes longer to produce them than a regular book or ebook due to all the extra steps you have to go through if you want pressed cd's like I want. If you don't want pressed cd's and only plan to sell them as mp3's, then the production time is actually far less, but still almost as long as for a printed book.
Anywho, that's my 2c in on this argument. As for doing bundles, I think it'd be a cool thing to do.
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That is some really nice candid insight into the overhead for a professional creation of an audiobook. And pointing out that "brand name" readers carry huge premiums. I imagine that the more popular readers have higher rates as well, but the nice thing is there have to be a lot of actors and just regular folks who can pretty much teach themselves to be readers so it could keep costs down to a reasonable level. And ultimately it still comes down to the book itself because even the best reader can't propel a marginal book to popularity or if the cost to produce the audiobook version makes sense as even, say $3500 is still a lot of cash requiring a fair number of sales to reach that "Mendoza Line".
Thanks so much for the look behind the curtain!!
Also glad to read it might be something you might consider trying out yourself. I know I would be attracted to a bundled option where I would NEVER look at buying a hardcover edition.
One real drawback of playing the books on your reader would be the battery life is significantly shorter so it might be better to have a basic Audible compatible MP3 player to carry around a few books on at a time. Though if ya know you are going to be near power during the day it's easy to charge your ebook reader. Another is I don't thing the Kindle, for example, has any sort of book marking ability on MP3 files. Not even sure it does anything more than remember where your were last listening for Audible books either.
I actually have been expecting Amazon to begin doing this bundling thing for a while now as I am sure a good percentage of their Audible subscribers also have Kindles and this would be a way to get subscribers to buy beyond their monthly subscription credits. I know I currently limit myself to the subscription credits. But bundles for titles I know I want as ebooks sure could make it a possibility I would bite. I figure the reason they, Amazon, has not tried this just yet is due to publisher problems because of who owns what rights for a book and none of the publishers seem to be willing to give up price for the shot at increasing the sales volume as well as increased exposure. And to make this attractive there would need to be some adjustments on most books.