Adding audio to ebooks? What?

[JohnMorris]

I do hope that this never catches on.

http://www.booktrack.com/about.do

[ChristopherTD]

Paul Carr reports nicely on this at

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/04/boo...ally-horrible/

[rogue_librarian]

I'd get the audio book version if I cared for ambient noise.

[mbelec]

Well, recently on a road trip to Boston (I'm 4 hrs away), I would have liked to have continued reading my book during the trip but that was out. I considered trying to find the audiobook for the trip, but didn't have time. So, there might be something to this as an option.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

Paul Carr reports nicely on this at

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/04/boo...ally-horrible/

The problem:

As you work your way down the page, following a little animated arrow — not unlike a karaoke bouncy ball — to keep pace, the app matches music and sound effects to the text.

The hilarity:

The other title bundled with my demo edition — The Power of Six, by Pittacus Lore — takes the don’t-imagine-just-listen concept even further: providing assistance to any reader who might struggle to imagine the sound a police siren makes.
...
Certainly the founders’ public statements strongly hint towards a troubled relationship with literacy.
...
My God, he’s right. Similarly it’s hard to imagine an owl without wings — yet, until today, no-one has thought to graft a beak on to a cow.
...
Again, Cameron nails it: reading hasn’t been fun since kindergarten. Why don’t they make pop-up books for grown ups?
...
Ugh. I bet version 2.0 has badges.

[JoeD]

eBooks 2.0 with audio isn't interesting, just wait til we hit 3.0, with moving pictures and then 4.0 where the audio and moving pictures are sync'd and the text is removed...

To be fair, for _some_ books I think the additions of embedded sound, pictures and movies would really add to it. Most likely reference and auto-biography/non-fiction books though.

For a fiction book, the only extra I'd want is the _option_ to download the audio book and or author notes/audio/video and perhaps design sketches of the world (where available) as an extra.

The only real way I can see it working (for fiction books) without annoying anyone is by default you buy the book, it's text only and delivered to your reader. Then there's an option within the reader app to download the additional interactive content for the book along with an option to toggle that content on/off.

That way those who want the text only, get the text only, no wasted download time/space. Those that want to read author notes, see world layout maps/scribbles that didn't make it into the book or listen to extra audio/music and videos about the book/world can also do so. Change your mind, you get to turn it off.

The above is more for optional content, some books it wouldn't make sense as by default having interactive maps and audio/video available would really add to the book. Think reference/history books, kids books, biographies, travel guides...

The bigger question with those books is whether you ship the extra content with it. Too many videos and you're looking at pretty big downloads or low quality vids. Stream it and you risk your book only been half a book when the content servers go offline or the company decides to stop doing interactive content for older books. Still it's not really anything new, when CDROM first came out, encyclopaedias went "interactive" with embedded videos and other content. If that can be standardised and adopted en-mass, it could be quite useful, I just hope when it comes to fiction books, that it's 100% optional with an quick way to enable/disable the lot.

I'd be surprised if the booktrack thing takes off outside of kids books.

Edit: "Achievement Unlocked - Finish chapter 4 in under 3 minutes"

[Ben Thornton]

This is a great idea - but it doesn't go far enough. They should add visual augmentation, too, to help imagine what it would look like. In fact, the words would probably get in the way of looking at those, so they could make it a purely audio-visual re-imagineering of the story. This would remove one of the key blockers in encouraging kids to read - it's often the words part that they struggle with - so there could be significant educational benefits.

[BrowseTheStacks]

I could see a ebook with enbeded midi files. Small file size and could be turned on and off and listened to as background music while reading.

[Rtturvwsxmavpduc]

Tis a market for this sort of thing, of course. How big is the question. Or perhaps Booktrack isn't for adults. Maybe how big can be interpreted another way as well.

There are still people who believe audiobooks are only for illiterates and the blind so it's not a stretch to imagine investors convinced more deprived folks would listen if the experience was augmented. And we should never forget the passionate group who love to fondle leather or sniff fresh ink and refuse to buy e or audiobooks because they lack those two titillations. Could Booktrack be a nascent appeal to a variation on that fetish? Personally I prefer focus on the contents rather than the container.

Amazon, et al need to clean up their act and get rid of the typos in ebooks -and I'd really love links to extended information online- but I hardly need help imagining an audiobook scene when narrated by someone like Frank Muller or Dion Graham. For those who really crave mental assistance with colors and sounds while experiencing an audiobook, drop acid. Your local lysergic source won't even ask for your e-mail address.

Did anyone else initially interpret "booktrack" as a terrifying marriage of "1984", "Fahrenheit 451" and a librarian with a fanatic attention to late fees?

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Edit: "Achievement Unlocked - Finish chapter 4 in under 3 minutes"

If you read it on a Nook Color, you get a trophy instead.

[Hellmark]

Dupe thread. We've had this being discussed for a few weeks now.

[taustin]

This has been around for years. It's called a "web page." If the "extras" can be turned off, nobody will ever use them (like a web page that makes sound). If they can't, nobody will buy them all all (like a web page that makes sound automatically, that can't be turned off).

You really don't want to invent something such that people will devote web pages to how much it sucks.

[avariel]

The audiobook version included in the ebook wouldn't be a bad idea. It could read the page you are on and continue with each page you flip. It's a lot better than today's ebooks that are on CD as it is a pain to go back if you missed something. With this, it could be made so you can easily select the paragraph you want reread.

[xg4bx]

if somebody had just told me about this i'd swear they were trolling me. but to see that this is a real thing that actually exists....*shakes head* i'm embarrassed for the company.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by avariel

The audiobook version included in the ebook wouldn't be a bad idea. It could read the page you are on and continue with each page you flip. It's a lot better than today's ebooks that are on CD as it is a pain to go back if you missed something. With this, it could be made so you can easily select the paragraph you want reread.

Yeah, an audio book that synced to an ebook would be cool. Read it like a regular book, tap where you want to start the audiobook and it picks up from that point, and while it is playing it can highlight the portion of the text that is the current focus of the audiobook.