The benefits of serializing audiobooks
I found the following comment on Falcon Twin™, an online graphic novel. On February 13th, the BMan said:
I’ve been aware of Podiobooks[.com] for a while but never really bothered to check it out. Part of the reason is that I don’t like going there and seeing lots of completed podiobooks; one of the things I find so compelling about podcasting is following along with things that are brand new.Podiobooks[.com] does have a solution, though: if you create an account, you can get a personalized RSS feed for each book that will give you the episodes one at a time, on a schedule you specify (like once a week). It’s still not the same as listening to the shows as they’re created, but it’s better than just downloading them all at once.
That’s correct, BMan. While the conventional way to listen to an audiobook is to download the whole thing and read it at your leisure, most of our listeners enjoy our audiobooks in true serialized form. Some, like yourself, enjoy replicating the “oh what will happen this week!” experience of following along as the author completes the book. Others, like myself, find that the serialized way of listening allows for the ability to listen to many books at one time — and never having to remember where you left off. But we’re not dogmatic in this approach. If you want to grab every chapter and listen to the whole thing: go for it! You can get all available episodes for any book in a single feed, or click-save to your system to your hearts content. Hey, we’re easy.
He finishes his comments with:
As far as I can tell, Podiobooks[.com] doesn’t have a recommendation system, which I think it desperately needs. There are too many books, and just finding stuff that interests me by chance requires a lot of time or extremely good luck.
I’d agree with that. In fact, we’re working in that direction. But a recommendation engine is only as good as the data polled, and we’re seeing a lot of commonality across listener behavior. I expect that will change as we continue to add new titles. And holy hanna… we’re at almost 100 right now!
February 20th, 2007 at 9:19 am
If this (recommendation engine) is true, Evo, then I hope you’re going in a different direction than the typical “rate it 1-5 and leave a comment” system that so many directories do. Those just don’t provide a meaningful amount of information for finding new podcasts. If anything they make it worse for us listeners because it encourages the authors to nag “Go vote for me!” every episode. And then all you end up getting anyway is people either voting 1 and saying they hated it, or 5 and saying they loved it, and very rarely anything useful in the middle. Ironically the people that do write a small treatise on the subject end up getting ignored because nobody has that kind of attention span anymore. You can’t win.
What I’d like to see is something more along the lines of “People who subscribed to this book also subscribed to…” because it’s harder to stuff the ballot box that way. You could measure people who are actively subscribed, not just people who subscribed and then cancelled. Subscribing and then cancelling could even be seen as a different sort of information, since it’s a different behavior than never subscribing at all. I’m willing to give lots of books a try, but I have no problem bailing out on them if I find myself hitting that skip button and never coming back to it.
Duane
February 20th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Well I’m here from Falcon Twin, so you can thank Bman for at least one new listener (and from the forums, quite a few more than 1).
Anyway, for the rating system.
Possibilities:
Develop a ratio of “Episode 1:Episode X” downloads that could be used to track people’s interest. I.E. track people who download Episode 1, and develop a rating based on whether or not they come back for more.
Problems: Vulnerable to ’subscribe and forget,’ doesn’t track ongoing books very well.
“People who subscribe to X also subscribe to Y” Solid, if unexciting. I’d throw in a bias towards new content in there which should correct for things like one great book showing up everywhere. Maybe ratchet the bias up for long-term subscribers (i.e. the longer you’ve been a member, the newer the content that you see is). Bias is hard to program, in my humble experience - at least properly.
“We Recommend…” The user fills out a short questionarre, and gets feedback based on what other people with similar responses subscribe to. Obviously, the more people fill it out, the more people will WANT to fill it out. That’s a flaw of the system, though (the first person will get zero benefit, at least initially - actually, more like the first hundred).
February 21st, 2007 at 8:09 am
I really like Duane’s idea of using a “people who subscribed to this book also subscribed to…”system . As a listener/consumer/reader I find this a really useful tool on sites like Amazon, for example, and as the podcast novel format grows I would imagine that it would be a little less controversial and much fairer than the dreaded “five star” rating system that so many websites use, which really tells you nothing useful.
Its also much kinder to those podcasters who, at the end of the day, actually go to the trouble of writing, reading and uploading their books for FREE for us punters to enjoy.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:24 am
“I don’t like going there and seeing lots of completed
podiobooks; one of the things I find so compelling about podcasting is following
along with things that are brand new.”
Thank god for the flexibility of the system! I can’t stand the preverbial …to be continued… If I am really in to a book the last thing I want to do is wait a week for the next 30-45 mins of reading. To each his own even I suppose.
“There are too many books, and just finding stuff that
interests me by chance requires a lot of time or extremely good luck.”
Oy? Maybe it’s just me, and my partiality on the part of being totally blind and getting most of my information audibly anyway, but how can one have too many audiobooks? I can easily read 3 unabridged audiobooks a week, especially when I am working or in the summer when I walk all around town with an earphone on one ear.
It’s always nice to see podiobooks.com growing, but honestly. 100 titles isn’t an overwelming prospect, especially when you consider that a large preportion are in the scifi and fantacy genras. How does he choose his 2 audible titles a month or whatever I wonder.
I’m sure this guy is in a very small demographic of users who think too much choice is a good thing. For myself, I plan to listen to a very large per sentage of the podiobooks.com catalog, and the order in which I do that depends purely on whim of the moment.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Listening to a book before it is completed is risky. What if it is never finished and you’re left hanging in the middle of the story?
Some books have been incomplete for several months (such as the ex-wifes). Is a new installment forthcoming? Or did the author get bored and simply quit?
Each to his own, but I personally won’t start listening to an audio book anymore until it’s completely finished and on my harddrive.
Have fun,
Bert
February 26th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Bert -
While there is no doubt that subscription numbers on books can and do raise when the book is finished, I feel the need to put your perceived risks in perspective. The vast majority of our in-progress books do in fact complete. In fact, of the 95 titles we currently have live on the system, only three of them appear to be in some sort of extended limbo. That’s a pretty small percentage.
Also, we have a system that notifies us when a book is “slow”. We contact the author and see how we can help. The biggest motivator for an author is to know that folks are listening, waiting on new chapters.