Short answer: Yes! As long as you hit our technical requirements, we’re happy to host the files for your serialized free audiobook. We’re not in the business of determining quality. We leave that to the listeners. If they like it, they’ll listen. If they don’t, they won’t. No harm, no foul. Though we do encourage you to do your best.

Longer answer: In the almost six years (holy cow six years really???) we’ve been doing this, we’ve rejected a grand total of three books.

Three. Out of 496 current titles and something well north of 500, some of which are paused or removed at the request of the author/producer. That’s a tiny number!

The first was rejected as hate speech. It was written from the “ex gay” point of view, which isn’t as much a point of view as a twisted and perverse broken lens from which a tiny part of a made-up world is viewed. Hate speech comes in many flavors. And hate speech — of any kind — isn’t welcome here.

The second book we rejected was a medically negligent manifesto that through readily falsifiable information attempted to persuade people with a life-threatening disease that it was all a government conspiracy and that the medicine they were receiving for their illness was the actual cause of their illness. This wasn’t just pseudoscience or alternative medicine. This was going to get people killed. Sorry, but I’m not going to help spread that lunacy.

The third — which happened today — was a single file (already rejection material because it’s impossible to serialize a single file) that was nothing more than a blatant infomercial. No, that’s not harsh enough. It was a 17-minute-long commercial, imploring the listener (as if there would be any) to buy buy buy BUY! Ugh. No. No sales brochures. I wrote a humorous (I think) and very off-color and NSFW post about it on my personal blog if you want more details.

Now, that may lead some of you to the slippery slope argument, or to suggest that I’m (Evo) rejecting books that I don’t agree with. I assure you that is not the case. Do a little digging on me and you’ll find my opinions and understanding of how the world work run completely counter to some of the books presented here on Podiobooks.com. Not only do I allow these books, but I actively collaborate with the authors/producers to make them better. Because I’m not so (or rather no longer so) naive to believe I can convince everyone to think like me.

So there you have it. Yes, we’ll take your book. Probably. Well… 99.994% of the time.

So I’m taking this post to do a little “inside baseball” commentary. If you have no desire to submit work to Podiobooks.com and are content to simply be a listener, feel free to skip this. But if your plans include making your own serialized audiobook and joining the others here, please read this! It will save both of us much time and aggravation.

Follows is my process for checking all new submissions. I tend to work in the order of reverse-difficulty. In other words, I look at the easiest things to fix first, then move up the food chain to the more complex. Keep in mind that if anything is wrong during this waterfall of events, I stop checking and reject the file. My rationale for doing so is this: if you’ve screwed up the easy stuff, you’ve probably boinked something more difficult down the chain, and I’m not going to waste my time going further.

Every new submission is sent via email to me. I typically (though not always) open the email to check to see if the file name is correct. I don’t download anything at that time, as I prefer to wait until Sunday and process all new submissions and once. But the file name doesn’t take much work to check, so I’ll look. If it doesn’t follow the format outlined in the guidelines, I’ll send you a note telling you to try it again. I get lots of file names with spaces in them and with extra “.mp3″ extensions tacked on the end.

On Sunday, I steel my nerves and start downloading the dozen or so new submissions from first-time providers. Some submissions are brand new. Some submissions are prior week(s) rejects that are trying again. Or again. Or again. Remember: I only check once a week. Miss it the first time, and I won’t check again for seven days.

I download the file and first check to see if the encoding specs are right. At least half the submissions are rejected due to encoding errors, typically when the submitter doesn’t know the difference between stereo and Joint Stereo. Plenty of folks haven’t nailed the bit rate or sample rate, either. Why? They aren’t looking, or don’t know where to look. If that’s you, don’t submit. It will be wrong. Find out how to check. Google it. Ask the mentorship forum. Fire up the “Help” documents for your editing software. The .mp3 encoding specs we’ve set aren’t suggestions. They are the law.

Next, I check the ID3 tags. Lots of people skip the Grouping tag. Not all editing programs let you set the Grouping tag. If yours doesn’t; find one that does. But plenty of other errors are made. Like forgetting the Track, confusing Album for Artist and other mistakes. Again, our guide clearly spells out what needs to be here. And don’t forget to embed an image!

Finally, I open the .mp3 file in Audacity and look at it. Here’s where I can tell if the submitter bothered to try and maximize their sound. Most don’t. Or they have a really loud intro and a really quiet narration track. I stress the use of The Levelator, but many don’t use it. It’s a shame, really.

After looking, I listen. Not to the whole file, but parts. I tend to listen to the entire opening, which should be short. And often isn’t. I listen to the whole outro — assuming you have one (which you need) — to see if proper attribution and other information was provided. I then do some spot-checking throughout the file to see if stumbles were edited out. I don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, so I just try and listen to a few minutes here and there. Very few things I find during listening will cause me to reject a file, by the way. Ultimately, the provider is responsible for the content. I just make suggestions from experience. Experience that is mine own culled from watching every single comment made by listeners since we started doing this in 2005. I think that counts for something.

Then, and only then, I’ll send the provider the all clear and give them info on how to get me the rest of the information I need to get their book live. After that, it’s jut a matter or scheduling.

That’s it. The whole process. Any fail point and it gets rejected and a quick email from me is sent. They are free to resubmit, but I won’t look again until the next Sunday. It’s the only way I can stay sane.

In case you missed anything, here are the quick hits of my checking process:

1. Check filename

2. Check encoding settings
3. Check ID3 tagging
4. Check overall waveform
5. Check for intro/outro

I purposely didn’t put the things I check for in this blog post. I know how many shortcut takers there are out there. I’m one. All the information you need on each of those steps is clearly detailed in the Submission Guidelines, linked above. If you want to build your own checklist from that, be my guest. Because I’ve got one in my head that I just outlined above. Might as well follow it, too.

“DRM is dead, isn’t it?

Well yes, Jonathan, it is. Even though your organization clung to it like mad and shoved it down the music-buying public’s throats, spouting bullshit statements that claimed DRM was somehow better for customers and that files with DRM would see “significant boosts in online downloads.”

Bullshit.

But music-buyers don’t have to worry much any more. iTunes has said that 2009 will mark the end of DRM-crippled music in their Music Store. Amazon.com’s MP3 store has been DRM free since inception. Good news for music buyers.

But not so for audiobook buyers. The leading downloadable audiobook marketplace — hi, Audible — is still DRM riddled. Amazon.com — owner of Audible — sells downloadable audiobooks. A quick search reveals 39,609 titles available for download, but only 3,156 are in MP3 format. My assumption that the other 36,453 are crippled by DRM.

So rather than bitch, we’re doing something about it. We’re committed to DRM-free files. In the coming weeks, you’ll start seeing us offer — for sale — complete downloadable audiobooks in MP3 format. You’ve been turning to us for free serialized versions of audiobooks for five years now. We’ll keep that going on, as we see the value in helping our authors reach a wider audience by giving those versions away.

But for those who want to skip the serialized experience — which I love, by the way — and just buy an audiobook; it’s coming. Soon. And maybe that’ll help put more nails in the DRM coffin. For good.

For the record: Yes, you can read an audiobook. Stating otherwise shows, at best, your ignorance. And at worst, proves you to be a discriminatory and insensitive buffoon. So stop it.

When a friend of mine says he’s just flown from LA to NYC, I don’t correct him. I don’t point out that he’s merely sat on a couch for five hours, and it was the pilot that did the flying.

When a person in a wheelchair runs a marathon, I don’t insist that he rather wheeled the 26.2 miles.

Movies need not be watched in a theater. The difference between barbecuing and grilling aren’t worth debating. And I’ve had more than one beer that was absent of any malted grains.

So for the love of all that is holy, stop insisting that there exists a categorical difference between consuming information with your eyes rather than your ears. We live in a world where technology outpaces dogma. I honestly don’t care if you find sublime pleasure in one form over another. I’ve enjoyed audiobooks when the print version didn’t do it for me. Other times I’ve abandoned audiobooks before the first episode finished, only to find myself so absorbed in the printed version that I consume it in a day.

And I’ve read every single one of those, regardless of how the information got into my skull.

It’s requires the creation of a false dichotomy. A mandate that you fall into one side or the other. The assumption that you can’t do… both. And there in lies the idiocy of even having the argument.

Which is better? Flying in an airplane or driving in a car?

Which is better? Swimming in the ocean or swimming in a pool?

Which is better? Eating breakfast or eating dinner?

One does not preclude the other as a lifestyle choice. In certain circumstances, one option will logically be “better” than the other. But given an equally likely set of circumstances, the reverse will occur.

It’s not an issue of replacement. Yes, most sports fans would rather watch a game live than see it on TV. And yes, there are plenty of people who want to avoid the crush of the crowd and watch from the comfort of their own home. But that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s close, but this decision is often one of personal preference of one option over another.

When it comes to listening to audiobooks or reading books, it’s not an issue of personal preference for me. Hell, it’s not even a matter of choice. I cannot choose to read a book while I’m driving. If there’s a choice to be had at all, it’s to listen to audio or not. The choice then becomes to what am I’m going to listen. I can’t very well read text on a page while I’m cutting the grass, either. Again, my choices are a) listen or not, and b) listen to what? There is no option to read with my eyes.

So stop the argument. Please. For it really is no argument. And if you continue down this misguided path, find a visually impaired person. Ask your obtuse question of them. And be thankful you have an extra sense with which you can receive information.

So that their is no confusion: this guy broke the law and deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. He profited off of the work of another. Blatantly. He was not a “file sharer”. He was selling fakes on eBay. He was stupid and dishonest. Enjoy prison.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, the article as posted by the BBC gets me a little out of joint right here:

It is estimated his fake audiobooks resulted in a retail loss to the publishing industry of over £1m.

I highly doubt that. Full versions of Harry Potter are going for (according to the article) £300. He was selling them for £6.49. That’s a 98% reduction in price. Quite the bargain. Enough of a bargain, perhaps, to entice people to purchase the set who would not have considered spending £300 for the legit version.

I say this not to defend his actions. I think I was pretty clear on that earlier. Nor am I suggesting the court should reduce the length of his incarceration based on a reduced value. Nope. Not at all.

But I am suggesting that had Mr. Sloper not engaged in his scam, the publishers would not be £1m the richer. And rather then speculate on how much they would have made without Mr. Sloper undermining their hard work, I think it’s a better expenditure of our time to toy with this concept: how could they sell more?

To start, we have to assume that Mr. Sloper turned a profit on his six-and-a-half pound sale. He certainly didn’t do that by selling multiple-disc copies of the book. I’ll assume he was selling a DVD version, and likely in a highly compressed .mp3 format. Creating those en masse would have cost him under a pound or two — plenty of room for profit.

How much does the publisher sell a DVD, MP3 format version of these books for? Well… they don’t. A quick search of Amazon.co.uk turns up a single entry for the complete Harry Potter set — and it’s available in CD format only, selling for £227.50 currently. That’s well over 100 CDs, as each only holds 70 minutes of audio and the books total 125 hours of listening. Yikes! Even in mass publishing, I’ve got to assume that’s costing them at least $100 with packaging. Probably more. And if it’s less, I’ll bet it’s not much less.

I’m going to further assume that the bootlegger was using a ridiculously low bit rate, enabling him to fit it on a single 4.4 GB DVD. Now that’s going to sound like crap, but to save 98%… That, and this wasn’t a “try it before you buy it” method. Not like he had to worry about returns!

But the publisher would. If they stuck with a 96 (I prefer 128) kbps bit rate¹, they’d have a great sounding (better than the popular download sites) audiobook on less than 10 discs. Now that saves a TON of cash. This would allow them to sell a seriously reduced price audiobook collection. How about £50? That’s a deal for all of the books. At that price point, consumers get to make a choice: do I drop the cash for the convenient CD version ² or do I save money to get essentially the same product, though I may have to do a bit of work to get it playing on my audio playing device?

I think Mr. Sloper proved that many customers are OK with the last one. £85,000 worth of customers, actually. And without the promotional power of a publisher, mind you. The question is this: will the publishers see the opportunity and react? Or will they stick with their misguided assumptions and continue on their current path?

And hey, if you have access to BookScan numbers, I’d be interested to know how many copies of that audioboook collection are actually selling.

^{1 – Apologies for the number-puking here and above. This way anyone who wants to check my math can.}

^{2 – If you consider lugging around some 100+ CDs convenient. Not me. Fewer, please.}

Mad props to xkcd.

1. They’ve listened to something “new media” and were underwhelmed by the quality. I’m sure that happens frequently. There are LOTS of bad new media examples out there, so it’s possible. But that doesn’t mean all new media is bad. But it can reinforce the uneducated position that “all this stuff must suck”.

2. They haven’t listened, because they know that no one could possibly do it as well as they do without being paid/trained/ordained. This is… unfortunate. But also understandable. Many traditional media producers have invested a lot of time learning their craft.

   It’s unsettling to think a bunch of upstarts can just come along, practice really hard and figure all this stuff out for, well… free.

   It’s unthinkable that dedicated people could get their hands on tools and equipment necessary to produce comparable products for, well… free.

   And it’s unconsciable that entire industries built on this separation of knowledge and skills are not immune to changes in the marketplace and democratization of technology, information and ideas.

So what do we do about the problems above? Perhaps nothing. There has to be a better solution to #1 than creating yet another filter. Though I’ll be damned if I can think of one. The second is perhaps more insidious. This impacts peoples world-view. Change is tough for many. The normal reaction is PRESERVE AND PROTECT rather than adapt and change.

And maybe they aren’t “problems” at all. Maybe they are simply what they are, and we’ll all go about our business, watching the lines between the two continue to blur until there isn’t any difference. Or maybe the outside world already sees it that way, and this is just my perception as an insider? Or maybe I’ve just spent too much time thinking about and commenting on this thread.

So I’m making this proclamation: The audiobook business is broken. Sure, you can point to thousands of happy customers who are unaware of just how broken it is, but that doesn’t change things. And believe me, things need to change. As I see it, there are (at least) four things wrong with the audiobook industry.

1. Availability
   Call it “The Tyranny of the Trees” if you will, but almost any book you want is available in printed form — even those out-of-print if you look at the resellers. But only a relatively small percentage of printed books ever make it to audio form. Why? Simple. Publishers aren’t willing to make the additional investment required to turn every book into an audiobook.

   Now I know it’s hard for a guy distributing well under 300 books to criticize the industry based on scale, especially when there are places boasting 40,000 available titles. Well… we’re working on that. And we don’t expect to bring about this change in thinking through our site alone. Our goal is to leverage something the other audio houses haven’t thought of or are only experimenting with — letting the authors do much of the heavy lifting. No, it doesn’t always sounds as well as paying professionals. And I have no beef with pro audiobook narrators and producers. Love ‘em to death. But faced with having no audiobook at all, author-read/produced seems an acceptable alternative, significantly lowering the cost of production.

2. Usability
   The act of listening to an audiobook is, well, difficult. CDs are great delivery devices for a 90 minute album, but what about 20 hours worth of a single story? That’s a lot of disc-changing and not at all conducive to most peoples’ on-the-go lifestyle. Better for that are downloadable files that play on computers and portable media devices. But these are plagued by their own problems. DRM doesn’t stop illegal copying of files, but it does make it nearly impossible for legitimate users of downloads to enjoy their purchases in more than one location or on more than one device — if they can get it to play at all. True, some sites are eschewing DRM and I hope that trend continues. But I’d like to see the next advance not require special software to “manage” the download. Thanks all the same, but my computer handles downloads just fine, to the tune of thousands of files, links and images every single day.

   But if you do successfully manage to navigate through the needlessly cumbersome process of a digital download, you’ll likely be disappointed in the audio quality of the product. Low bit rates are the norm in the download space, and it’s really unnecessary in a world where bandwidth and storage space are anything but scarce. Digital downloads sound like a good idea. But there’s no reason that the final product should not come with a comparable quality to that which you get with shiny plastic discs. (Of course, allowances should be made for lower-speed connections.)

3. Accessibility
   It’s not uncommon for audiobooks to cost more than twice their hardcover counterparts and be an order of magnitude higher in price than the paperback version. To combat this, leading audiobook retailers have taken up a sort of “book of the month club” approach to the market, charging a recurring monthly fee, giving you “earned credits” and discounts for purchases… anything to make it seem less expensive. And for some, perhaps it is. But it sure makes it hard to try anything out and locks you into a commitment. Thanks, but not for me. Things are different for disc-distribution. It may cost more to stamp out 20 discs than it does to print 400 pages. But when looking at a digital download, the cost to distribute approaches zero.

4. Profitability
   If you’re an author fortunate enough to have your publisher produce an audiobook version for you, you’ll likely enjoy compensation on par with that which you already receive for your dead-tree version. And that is what it is, which kind of stinks (published author speaking here). But what if you don’t get that offer (see “Availability” above) and are on your own, ready to invest in the equipment/time/resources to produce your own? It’s an abomination that major audiobook download companies pay out a similar terrible rate — 15% to 20% of sales – for a book that they didn’t pay to have produced. And for a product that has no intrinsic “cost” for each unit sold — it’s a digital download. The cost to carry these titles is incredibly small. So why not pay out more?

So… how do those problems get fixed? Looking back over my list, the last three seem like easy fixes:

• Stop the Quixotic file-hobbling.
• Get with the times and improve quality — easier without your worthless proprietary software that is costing you needless cash to support.
• Use some of that cash to pay out better rates.

I’ll grant you that #1 is the biggest challenge. Yet plenty of authors are already changing that on their own. I like to think we’re helping with that.

The good news? I honestly think it won’t always be like this. Not because we’re going to run everyone into bankruptcy by offering a few hundred serialized audiobooks for free. Heck, we’ve got our own problems with people not understanding how our file downloads work (working on that). At this point, I just want us to be an alternative to authors, distributors and listeners. If I’m right, like minded people will follow along, and our interesting novelty of a site may become part of a larger movement. Now where did I put those signs and banners…

Tips and and Tricks of Success
So you want to make a podiobook, either out of your work or out of some Creative Commons material, do you? Excellent. You’ve made a wise choice in embracing the concept that “information wants to be freed”. The good news is that the path has been well-blazed before you by authors who have learned things the hard way. We highly recommend you do not fight against the tide, but rather stand on the shoulders of giants and embrace these eleven tips for success.

“From 98 to 99 percent of all books ever published are now out-of-print, so they don’t show up in traditional bestseller lists.”

That comes from Anirvan Chatterjee, founder of BookFinder.com founder. I pulled that from a post on The Book Standard if you want more information.

But I don’t. I’m a little disgusted. Forget the part about the best-seller lists. Why are any books ever out of print? The hard and fast reality is that, with current technology, digital copies of many (if not most) out of print books exist. And all of those digital copies could be very easily converted into the format necessary for one-off printing. And at a reasonable — if not downright cheap — cost.

There’s no excuse for it. Not one I’ll buy, at least.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher’s bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own Creative Commons-licensed novel, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”

As a result of SFWA’s takedown notice, hundreds of works were taken offline — including several that had not been written by Asimov or Silverberg. It appears that the list was compiled by searching out every single file that contained the word “Asimov” or “Silverberg” and assuming that these files necessarily infringed on Silverberg and Asimov’s copyrights.

Cory Doctorow has a great write up about this on BoingBoing.net. I can’t add much to the conversation, only that it’s another indication that technology moves to fast for some. Yeah, terribly ironic, considering those involved.

Cory Doctorow has given us permission to put copy of his self-recorded audiobook, Eastern Standard Tribe, here on Podiobooks.com. And for those that are new to the site everything we put up on the site — with the rare exception of a smattering of public domain titles — was provided to us either by or with the author’s explicit permission. Yes, we encourage the sharing of the audiobooks you can find here on Podiobooks.com. That’s the whole idea!

We hear from many people quite frequently who tell us how great the site is, how they appreciate what we’re doing, and why they are nominating us for sainthood. Hundreds of people send in cold hard cash to support the authors each month, and a handful of folks send money directly to the site just to try and help out.

Don’t get me wrong — I love all of that. Keep ‘em coming. Seriously.

But it can’t all be good, can it? Surely there must be some things about the site or our business model (hah!) that leave you at best frustrated and at worst peeved beyond belief. Sure, we get the occasional “I can’t get this chapter” or “why don’t I see all of the episodes in my feed” questions/reactions. 9 times out of 10, these don’t point to a problem with the system and are usually an issue of human error — on one side or another.

So consider this your open call to tell Chris and I what you don’t like about the site. The sky is the limit, so blue sky the hell out of it. What do you wish we did better? We’ve got a few (dozen) ideas on what we can do to improve your experience, but it’s best when we hear from you. So unload on us, right here or email me directly. My first name at this domain dot com will do the trick.

E.

[W]hy do so many of them still want to attract traditional agents and publishers when they’ve been frustrated and rejected by these same folks so often in the past?

An excellent question. Feel free to answer it here or answer it there. Either way, I look forward to the conversation.

Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath¹ berth their 200-foot yachts. And, second, why, when such a stiff penalty is not applied to the owners of Rockefeller Center or Wal-Mart, it is brought to bear against legions of harmless drudges who, other than a handful of literary plutocrats (manufacturers, really), are destined by the nature of things to be no more financially secure than a seal in the Central Park Zoo.

Mark is falling into the trap that many of the zealots of copyright often do — confusing intellectual property with real property. Looked at in this light, his argument doesn’t hold water. In fact, the rights of intellectual property holders are far more stringent than that of owners of real property. I’ll illustrate using various analogies from Mark’s post.

• Rockefeller Center & Wal-Mart – Actually, nothing is stopping anyone from copying the exact business plan of either entity. In fact, many try. While the names of either business are protected, that’s a trademark issue and not copyright issue. If you want to do everything they do and try and beat them at their own game — go for it. Nothing² is stopping you.

• Automobile manufacturers – Automakers patent the mechanics of their cars, and those patents run out in much less time than the current US copyright statutes. Some manunfacturers have also put special protection on aspects of their brand (Porsche is notorious for protecting its “silhouette”), but this again is more of a trademark issue than one of copyright.
• Farmers (he says “…drew its living from the land”) – Farmers have the least amount of protection. Take a drive across the plains sometimes. One field after another planted at roughly the same time, using in some cases identical seeds, creating a monocrop which all matures and is ready for harvest at the same time. Talk about your copy infringements…

His argument just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Yes, copyright should be enforced and defended. And even though ideas can and do continue on for years after the person who created those ideas has passed on, it’s ludicrous to try and attempt to assign perpetual financial benefit to those ideas. The heirs of Sam Walton will collect their check from Wal-Mart only as long as it remains a viable competitor in the marketplace and remains a going concern. The children of a farmer will only reap benefit from the land for as long as it remains fertile and they are willing to work it or pay for it to be worked. What other situation allows heirs to do nothing more than sit back and relax for 70 years after the death of the originator, counting the money it still brings in? I’ll grant you that trust funds and nest eggs do serve such a purpose, but without careful reinvesting, they to will run their course.

No, the holes in the argument are too great to even start contemplating the sheer magnitude of attempting to enforce such lunacy. Get me past those, then we can have fun on figuring how how much I owe to Shakespeare — or how many of his decedents would be lining up to receive their fair share!

¹ – I had to look up this link to get the reference. I think he’s trying to say that Slvia’s heirs are deserved of large boats, though I’m not sure, having been unfamiliar with her or her work prior to this mention. Color me undereducated.

² – Some things, like store layouts and inventory management systems, are in fact protected by copyright. Understood.

So…I was reading Neil Gaiman’s blog this morning and apparently he has recorded a new and unabridged audiobook of Neverwhere… I am a little bit wary of this, as I am a little bit wary of all audiobooks-read-by-the-author because reading aloud is hard to do properly and many people (myself included) do not manage it properly.

Say again? Reading aloud… is hard? Good thing no one told that to my mom when I was tiny. She must have have tirelessly worked through the obstacles, struggling to have the words on the paper transform into sound vibrations as she fought with her lungs, lips and tongue in a valiant effort to… you know… speak.

OK, I’m willing to admit that the author of this post probably didn’t mean to infer that reading out loud is difficult, and that he (or she) really meant to say that giving a proper vocal performance of the written word is not without its challenges. And I’d concur with that. But we’re not talking about piloting an F-14 here. Audiobooks do not, and should not, come with the label: Warning. This reading was performed by a trained professional under laboratory conditions. Do not try this at home or serious maiming may result. People have been reading aloud and performing for others for the past tens of thousands of years. Yes, I see the place for trained actors — voice or otherwise. Do they make it better? The certainly can. Does everyone possess the innate ability to effectively deliver spoken performances? Probably not. But to automatically discount the quality of work based on the lack of a pedigree… seems rather limiting.

I have mixed feelings about this service. The site doesn’t seem to make any outrageous claims and puts everything up front — you will be paying them to do some work for you. But the lower end of the spectrum, where I’m guessing that they do most of their business, there’s nothing that they are doing that a motivated author could not do for his or herself. Maybe I’m just a DIY kinda guy. And yes, I do have some experience in the multimedia production world. That’s why I know this stuff ain’t hard.

Still, there is a need for the DIFM (Do It For Me) movement as well. Many authors would rather just be authors and leave the messy promotion stuff to someone else. Fine. I get that. And if you fall into that category, rock on. Heck, I could change my own oil, but I don’t. Maybe this is the same thing? But then again, I know how to do it and just choose not to. Perhaps that’s a part of the equation, too,,,

Back in September, Matthew and I got involved in a strangely heated debate with an author who we’ll call Don (because that is his name) who wanted to release his SureFire Way to Stop Smoking™ book on Podiobooks.com. (OK, so that’s not the real title name, but it might as well have been.) I say “strangely heated” because this guy Don was, for lack of a better term, off his friggin’ rocker. He had the oddest questions — not about formatting, recording or even technical specs mind you, but about how much money I personally make as a writer. I tried to gently explain that I’m the guy that facilitates other folks to make podiobooks, but I’m not a podiobook author myself. This all took place on a discussion forum and he managed to offend just about every one of the regular posters. I started giving the kook single sentence (or words, if I could manage) answers to his queries and he eventually went away.

Then today, Tee pinged us about some new wacko, also with a Smoking Cessation AudioBook (his caps). Why the moniker “wacko”? He asked if (and I’m paraphrasing here) there was any way he could give us his book “whole” and not break it up into chapters. Seems that his Special Sauce™ requires that the book be listened to straight through in order to work its Magic™. (Yep. All those ™ symbols are examples of me being snarky.)

But Tee didn’t give the wacko a snarky answer at all. In fact, he said this:

… yes, it needs to be episodic as that is what makes a podcast a podcast. If you cannot do your podiobook as an episodic program, it would be hard to carry on PB.com.

Very nice. Very un-snarky. Nothing at all in this that you could take as a dig or suggestion that his work was “unworthy” of inclusion.

And here’s where I wonder if overexposure to nicotine causes significant brain damage or just paranoid delusions, at least from those who kicked the habit and feel that their Foolproof System™ is the only way to go¹. This wacko takes supreme offense to Tee’s explanation, going so far as to posit that we are in some way censoring (yes, he use the exact word) his work.

But maybe there was misunderstanding. So Tee, again taking an incredibly high road in my opinion, gently explains:

A podcast can be whatever you want, but through Podiobooks, we are trying to make it episodic and give it a running time. If your podcast is one episode one-and-a-half hours long, then your podcast may perform better on your own feed on your own server. At PB.com, we’re looking for something with a “running time” or several episodes be they 10 episodes or 50. Does that make sense?

But alas, I’m afraid it didn’t make sense, as the final reply from said wacko was a snippy “enjoy your empire”. Like I said: wacky.

So while I’m certain that there are sane and rational authors out there with genuine advice on quitting smoking who might enjoy the distribution opportunities of podcasting and perhaps even Podiobooks.com… neither of these guys qualify, obviously. Next!

E.

¹ – I smoked for about a year and a half when I was 19. Not because I thought it was cool, but because I found out what an excellent delivery device cigarettes were at delivering the drug nicotine to my stressed out college-boy system. But I don’t have an addictive personality, so quitting was no issue for me. I sympathize with those who struggle with it, I really do.

Yesterday, J.C. Hutchins’ novel 7th Son was awarded the Best Podioboook prize, with Christiana Ellis’ Nina Kimberly The Merciless and The Rookie and Infection, both by Scott Sigler, taking the other finalist spots. Perhaps or perhaps not in that order. Kinda hard to tell. So first, congrats to J.C., Christiana, Scott and anyone else who won or was a finalist in this round.

But digging deeper, I’m puzzled by the award and how it’s presented. The administrators/members are pretty clear that they don’t want this to be like so many VOTE FOR ME VOTE FOR ME places:

Top Ten or Top Twenty-five lists are little more than popularity contests. You’ll find some great shows there, shows that deserve their popularity. But you’ll also find quite a few that are, well, let’s just say that more people listen to Brittany Spears than Miles Davis. If you rely on popularity based lists and awards you’ll be missing some of the best shows out there.

Where can you find the best podcasts in the universe? Right here, at the Podcast Peer Awards. These awards are given by the people who know podcasting best – other podcasters. They recognize quality. They celebrate creativity. They ferret out the small, unnoticed, and otherwise ignored shows you’ve missed. They debate and discuss and argue about these shows as they vote for (and against) audio and video podcasts that cover every style and every approach to podcasting. And in the end, only the best, only the very best, win.

Not a bad approach, in my opinion. But fellas, come on… you’ve gotta do something to raise the awareness of your product in the podosphere, people! I’m not saying that I’m the cats-ass when it comes to staying on top of the latest in podcasting, but I like to think I’m relatively well informed. Yet I had no idea these awards were being given away and that any of the books here on Podiobooks.com had been nominated. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a category for Best Podiobook! That just strikes me as odd.

So I don’t want to take anything away from any winners. And I don’t want to belittle the worthiness of the selection and/or voting process. It’s a great honor and I like the approach these folks are taking. But the strength of the award is only as good as the acceptance of that award in the community. I have no idea if I’m the typical in-the-know podcaster who is not in-the-know, or if I’m an anomaly. I think I’d like to know more about these awards and would like to have them talked about more, but it’s so quiet around here… I’m not sure.

I pay pretty close attention to the business of audiobooks as you might imagine — especially attentions in the world of digital downloads, mp3 files and internet marketing. Some sites have a unique product offering, like Simply Audiobooks. Others, like Audible, are the 800 lb. gorilla in the category. And then there are folks like us here at Podiobooks.com trying to put our own spin on the world of audio books by offering them in serialized format.

Personally, I think the sites above actually add to the conversation and generally contribute to the health of reading and literature in general, as well as providing valuable services to the “listeners” as well. And yes, there are others which I haven’t mentioned. Lots, in fact.

But a growing trend in this industry can only be classified as “fungus”, and it’s creeping around. Maybe you’ve seen a site with a menu bar that looks like this:

Which bears a striking resemblance to:

Look familiar? I’ve seen it presented as:

Or like:

All four of those images were captured by me in about five minutes of searching. All are from SuperGreatAudioBooksFromTheFourthDimension.com or some other domain of greater or lesser idiocy. All of these sites (not just those four, but the dozens I’m sure I can find) are simply wrappers around the same collection. It’s got to be as easy as 1) picking a domain name and 2) choosing your color scheme, and bang! you’re the proud owner of an online downloadable audiobook store.

Now while these fungi owners don’t have to worry about pesky things like maintaining an inventory, updating your database or any of the stuff that business have to deal with, some of the more enterprising ilk have taken to spamming Technorati, Del.icio.us, blogs, forums and the like. And this, happy campers, is where my weenie gets a little chapped. It’s been bad enough that I have to wade through their asinine posts designed to try and siphon as much Google juice as possible, flooding my aggregator with crap. I can handle that. Cost of doing business. But when they start showing up here and spamming my posts on my webite? Then I get a whole lot torqued.

These sites add nothing to the conversation. It’s homogenizing the offerings available, and probably turning more than one person off who’s just discovering audiobooks for the first time by making it look like every place offers the same stuff. Not true. Not true at all. I haven’t figured out a way to combat these nitwits. Maybe it’s just a fad that’ll go away. Maybe the search engines will take a hard look and say “Hey, this is the same stuff as that other site, just with a different wrapper” and delete them from the index, lowering the attractiveness of this offering. Fungus, I tell you.

Sorry for the rant. It’s been a long week, and when that spam came in… well I kinda lost it. Have a good weekend, everyone.