The Book World Goes Sensibly Digital

in Audio Books, Books | May 18th, 2007

There are some ear­ly signs that pub­lish­ers and book­sellers may be see­ing the light.

Until recent­ly, the book world applied an irra­tional log­ic to down­load­able audio­books and pod­casts. As we not­ed back in Feb­ru­ary, the paper ver­sion of the best­selling busi­ness book, The Long Tail, ran con­sumers $16.47 on Ama­zon. And yet the cheap­er-to-pro­duce audio ver­sion implau­si­bly amount­ed to $31.95 on iTunes and $27.99 on Audi­ble. Did it make sense? Hard­ly.

Since Feb­ru­ary, a lit­tle bit of rea­son has been inject­ed into the mar­ket. As the The New York Times recent­ly not­ed, the pub­lish­er Hen­ry Holt made a smart move. They took the pop­u­lar pod­cast, The Gram­mar Girl (iTunes Feed Web Site), and with­in days spun off an hour­long audio­book priced at a sane $4.95. The next thing you know, it became the best­selling audio­book on iTunes. Here, the audio­book for­mat let pub­lish­ers respond to a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty — and far more quick­ly than they ever could have with a tra­di­tion­al book. (A tra­di­tion­al Gram­mar Girl book won’t come out until next year.)

Ratio­nal act #2: Some pub­lish­ers are now releas­ing audio ver­sions of new books before issu­ing the actu­al hard copies. Why? Because, they’ve found that dig­i­tal copies can gen­er­ate buzz and greater sales for paper copies. And yes, in these sit­u­a­tions, the dig­i­tal and paper ver­sions are com­pa­ra­bly priced.

Final­ly, book­sellers are now using audio to inform con­sumers and moti­vate them to click “Add to Shop­ping Cart” a lit­tle more often. Take for exam­ple the new line of pod­casts from Ama­zon. Cre­at­ed by in-house edi­tors, Ama­zon Wire (iTunes — Feed ) offers inter­views and exclu­sives with authors of new books. Ama­zon Book­Clips (iTunes — Feed ) puts a spot­light on up-and-com­ing and best­selling authors. And with Sig­nif­i­cant Sev­en (iTunes — Feed), Ama­zon points you to new must-read titles. How well inte­grat­ed into Ama­zon’s sales efforts, and how effec­tive these pod­casts will be at gen­er­at­ing sales, all remains to be seen. But it at least points to a more sen­si­ble way of bring­ing the dig­i­tal and paper worlds togeth­er.

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The Death of the Book Review?

in Books, Video - Arts & Culture | May 11th, 2007



Nybookreview_3
Posts are fly­ing around the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere lament­ing the Death of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Now, by my count this par­tic­u­lar demise has been pre­dict­ed at least three times in the past few decades, so why wor­ry now? The short answer is that more books are pub­lished annu­al­ly than ever, and now there are few­er book review­ers. The LA Times recent­ly fold­ed its free­stand­ing book review into the rest of the week­end paper and news­pa­per staffs around the coun­try are trim­ming review posi­tions in favor of syn­di­cat­ed wire ser­vice reviews.

Michael Con­nel­ly, a crime fic­tion writer, pub­lished an op-ed in the LA Times protest­ing the move and he paints a dire pic­ture of our cul­tur­al future:

The truth is that the book and news­pa­per busi­ness­es share the same
dread­ful fear: that peo­ple will stop read­ing. And the fear may be
well-found­ed. Across the coun­try, news­pa­per cir­cu­la­tions are down — and
this is clear­ly part of the rea­son for the cuts to book sec­tions. At
the same time, the book busi­ness increas­ing­ly relies on an aging
cus­tomer base that may not be refu­el­ing itself with enough new read­ers.

Should we blame cash-strapped news­pa­per com­pa­nies or a cul­ture that’s shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media alto­geth­er? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your iPods–to lend rea­soned analy­sis, we now turn to Steven Col­bert, who inter­viewed Salman Rushdie on this sub­ject ear­li­er this week (click below or watch the full show on iTunes):

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20+ Great Book & Literature Blogs

in Books | May 9th, 2007

Below, you’ll find a list of 20 fine lit­er­ary blogs. Like our pod­cast col­lec­tions, this list will grow over time. In fact, it will become part of a larg­er list of great cul­ture blogs. Over the com­ing weeks, we’ll roll out new install­ments and then mash them togeth­er into one larg­er list. Stay tuned for more.

If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us.

  • Blog of a Book Slut: Book­slut’s edi­tor-in-chief, Jes­sa Crispin, pro­vides links and com­men­tary for those who love to read. The pop­u­lar relat­ed web­site includes fea­ture sto­ries, author inter­views, reviews, columns about book-relat­ed con­tent, etc.
  • Book­Dad­dy: It’s your source for intel­li­gent book blath­er. The stat­ed mis­sion of the site is to “pon­der print media, lit­er­a­cy & pub­lish­ing. Any­thing on wood pulp, pix­els or stone is up for dis­cus­sion.”
  • Books, Inq: This blog offers a behind-the-scenes look at a book-review edi­tor’s world. In this case, the book review edi­tor is Frank Wil­son, of the Philadel­phia Inquir­er.
  • Book World: What you get here is one wom­an’s attempt to read what’s worth read­ing and say some­thing about it along the way.
  • Chekhov’s Mis­tress: An oft-cit­ed lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Bud Parr, a book lover who also runs a net­work of lit­er­ary blogs called Metax­u­Cafe.
  • Con­fes­sions of an Idio­syn­crat­ic Mind: Sarah Wein­man puts togeth­er here “a respect­ed resource for com­men­tary on crime and mys­tery fic­tion.”
  • Crit­i­cal Mass: Offer­ing com­men­tary on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, pub­lish­ing, and writ­ing, this blog is writ­ten by the Board of Direc­tors of the non-prof­it that issues the year­ly Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Awards.
  • Eve’s Alexan­dria: A nice­ly bal­anced mul­ti-per­son lit­er­ary blog com­ing out of the UK.
  • Lau­rable’s Poet­ry Weblog: A poet­ry weblog that spe­cial­izes in con­nect­ing read­ers with audio of poets read­ing their work.
  • Maud New­ton: A wide­ly-read blog that spe­cial­izes in pub­lish­ing & writ­ing indus­try news, plus occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics, and rants.
  • Moor­ish Girl: A well regard­ed book and lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Laila Lala­mi, author of Hope and Oth­er Dan­ger­ous Pur­suits.
  • Rake’s Progress: Named by The Guardian as one of the 10 best book blogs.
  • ReadyS­teady­Blog: Run by Mark Thwaite, this is an “inde­pen­dent book review web­site … devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.”
  • Slate Books: Even though tech­ni­cal­ly not a blog, it should be on your read­ing list.
  • So Many Books: Giv­en the tagline ‘the agony and the ecsta­sy of a read­ing life”, here’s a laud­ed blog that takes you into the read­ing world of Stephanie Hollmichel.
  • The Ele­gant Vari­a­tion: A well-reviewed and respect­ed book blog that tends to give spe­cial atten­tion to the LA lit­er­ary scene. Fea­tures a real­ly exten­sive blogroll that’s worth pick­ing through.
  • The Guardian Book Blog: It’s not exact­ly your aver­age inde­pen­dent book blog, but it’s got valu­able con­tent and it’s worth your time.
  • The Keny­on Review Blog: If you’re a writer, you sure­ly know The Keny­on Review, and you should also get to know their blog.
  • The Lit­blog Co-Op: A use­ful blog that unites the “lead­ing lit­er­ary
    weblogs for the pur­pose of draw­ing atten­tion to the best of
    con­tem­po­rary fic­tion, authors and press­es, strug­gling to be noticed in
    a flood­ed mar­ket­place.”
  • This Space: A lit­er­ary blog writ­ten by Stephen Mitchel­more, a blog­ger who Ready Steady Book deems “the finest writer we have in the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere.”
  • Vulpes Lib­ris: “Vulpes Lib­ris: A mul­ti-nation­al pack of book­fox­es blog­ging, review­ing and chat­ting about books and book mat­ters. Par­tic­i­pa­tion wel­come.”
  • Words With­out Bor­ders Blog — This weblog is the online com­ple­ment to Words With­out Bor­ders: The Online Mag­a­zine for Inter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­ture. And, yes, as you’d expect, it’s a lit­er­a­ture blog with an inter­na­tion­al focus.

Stay tuned for more to come!

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Authors@Google: Video Talks From the Epicenter of the Universe

in Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | April 28th, 2007

More good news for book fans: Google has launched a new col­lec­tion of videos called Authors@Google. The videos fea­ture talks by authors, writ­ing across many gen­res (lit­er­ary fic­tion to sci­ence fic­tion, soci­ol­o­gy to tech­nol­o­gy, pol­i­tics to busi­ness) who have made recent vis­its to Google campuses.You can access the talks via a new home­page, or just go imme­di­ate­ly to the video archive itself. And there, you’ll find talks by Mar­tin Amis (House of Meet­ings) and Jonathan Lethem (You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Nov­el), but also ones by Strobe Tal­bott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton, and Car­ly Fiorina.To get a bet­ter feel for Authors@Google, we’ve includ­ed a clip below from Jonathan Lethem, who wrote Moth­er­less Brook­lyn, a favorite of mine that offers a tru­ly unique, lit­er­ary take on the tra­di­tion­al detec­tive nov­el, and which always leaves me feel­ing a bit home­sick for Brook­lyn. For more infor­ma­tion on Authors@Google, click here.Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

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New SciFi and Horror Podcasts

in Books, Sci Fi | April 9th, 2007

Here’s a lit­tle ear can­dy for the fan of adven­ture­some lit­er­a­ture. Over the past week, Escape­pod (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) released anoth­er one of its pop­u­lar short sto­ries, “Start The Clock.” You’ll also find in the feed (and pre­sum­ably soon on iTunes) an audio ver­sion of Isaac Asi­mov’s “Night­fall,” which was pub­lished first in 1941, in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion. Great com­bo here of new and old.

Next, Pseudo­pod (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the world’s first audio hor­ror mag­a­zine, has issued two new sto­ries in recent weeks: Stephanie Bur­gis’ “Stitch­ing Time” and Dave Thompson’s “Last Respects.” We think you’ll like them. (Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing for the heads up on these.)

Final­ly, we want­ed to high­light Stranger Things, (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This series fea­tures sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple stum­bling into strange worlds (a la The Twi­light Zone). This is not just your every­day pod­cast. The sto­ries are cre­ative, and they’re told/acted out in very high qual­i­ty video. This puts it on the cut­ting-edge of what’s being done with pod­cast­ing. Def­i­nite­ly have a look.

Oth­er free audio books with­in these gen­res:

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Nietzsche, Melville, Jane Austen & More: The Latest Audio Book Classics Released by Librivox

in Books | April 3rd, 2007

Nietzsche_4Through­out March, the folks at Lib­rivox were putting on the full court

press. Stag­ing their own ver­sion of March Mad­ness, Lib­rivox and its army of vol­un­teers com­plet­ed 70 audio record­ings of pub­lic domain texts. Among them, you’ll find some essen­tial clas­sics in lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy. The list of new addi­tions starts with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files) and Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files), but it also extends to oth­er time-test­ed clas­sics. Let’s list them quick­ly:

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

 


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Free Podcasts of Classic American and British Thrillers

in Books, Literature | March 6th, 2007

 

Drjekyllandmrhyde_2Among the grow­ing col­lec­tions of free audio book pod­casts, you’ll find a large num­ber of “thrillers”
that grew out of the Amer­i­can and British lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. It’s per­haps safe to say that the vol­un­teers who record these books like a good, fear-induc­ing read. But who does­n’t?

The list of sus­pense­ful nov­els avail­able as free pod­casts starts with the “mon­ster nov­els” of 19th cen­tu­ry Britain. These nov­els, which fre­quent­ly offered a round­about com­men­tary on the anx­i­eties pro­duced by a soci­ety in the midst of rapid indus­tri­al­iza­tion and wide­spread colo­nial involve­ment, include Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (1818), Robert Louis Steven­son’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886), and Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la (1897). Mean­while, across the pond, Amer­i­ca was pro­duc­ing its own dis­tinc­tive thrillers. In the trove of free audio books, you get Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing’s clas­sic 1820 short sto­ry, The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low (lis­ten here or here) as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s great short tales: The Tell Tale Heart (1843), The Raven from 1845 (lis­ten here or here), and The Cask of Amon­til­la­do (1846). (Amaz­ing that he wrote all of these before he died at 40.) Last­ly, we’d also point you to the famous ghost sto­ry, The Turn of the Screw (lis­ten here and here), writ­ten by one of Amer­i­ca’s greats, Hen­ry James.

You’ll note that some of these pod­casts come from Lib­rivox, and that’s because Lib­rivox, with the help of vol­un­teers, has quick­ly put togeth­er a strong col­lec­tion of audio texts from the pub­lic domain. If you like audio ver­sions of the clas­sics, then you’ll want to spend some time review­ing their cat­a­logue, and, in the mean­time, enjoy these sus­pense­ful tales.

P.S. If you haven’t seen it before, check out our recent favorite: The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

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The War of the Worlds on Podcast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riveted A Nation

in Books, Literature, Media, Most Popular | February 8th, 2007

Today, by pop­u­lar demand, we’re run­ning an updat­ed ver­sion of one of our more pop­u­lar posts to date. Enjoy…

At has­tened speeds dur­ing the past year, we have seen book lovers record­ing home­grown audio­books and post­ing them on sites like Lib­rivox (see our col­lec­tion of free audio­books here). For obvi­ous copy­right rea­sons, these audio texts large­ly come from the pub­lic domain, and, yes, they’re some­times of uneven qual­i­ty. Some good, some okay. Among the recent releas­es, you’d expect to find great clas­si­cal works — the major plays by Shake­speare, the essen­tial trea­tis­es by Pla­to and oth­er philoso­phers, etc. — and you do get some of those. How­ev­er, far more often you get texts by more mod­ern writ­ers who wrote with­in the thriller, sci fi and adven­ture gen­res. Here, I’m talk­ing about Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Robert Louis Steven­son, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells. (Find these pod­casts here.)

It seems rather fit­ting that Wells, the father of sci­ence fic­tion, would be among the first to have his writ­ings dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and dis­trib­uted. Nowa­days, you can down­load, sync and lis­ten to his major works – The New Accel­er­a­tor (mp3), The Invis­i­ble Man (iTunes — feed), The Time Machine (iTunes — feed), and The War of the Worlds (iTunes). But what’s bet­ter than all of this, at least in our minds, is this vin­tage gem …

Here you can down­load the ver­sion of The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles famous­ly adapt­ed and aired on nation­al radio in Octo­ber 1938. Pre­sent­ed so that it sound­ed like an actu­al news broad­cast, the Orson Welles ver­sion was mis­tak­en for truth by many lis­ten­ers who caught the pro­gram mid­stream (more info here), and, soon enough, they found them­selves flee­ing an unfold­ing Mar­t­ian inva­sion, run­ning down into their base­ments with guns cocked and ready to fire. You can catch the mp3 ver­sion of the famous Welles record­ing here (and also alter­na­tive­ly here). Have fun with this broad­cast. It’s a clas­sic.

Relat­ed con­tent: For more old time, sci-fi radio broad­casts, check out this nice col­lec­tion on iTunes.

Also see: Vin­tage Radio Archive: The Lone Ranger, Abbott & Costel­lo, and Bob Hope

Sub­scribe to Our Feed and peruse our col­lec­tion of Free Audio­book Pod­casts

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