Anyone have info on MP-3 books?
 

Here is the deal. I like books, but often don't have time to read. I have looked into books on tape, but frankly, the spoken word takes a LONG time and that uses up a lot of tape. That does not make as much sense to me, plus the tapes aren't cheap.

After I heard the book, I would not be interested in keeping them. I know there are exhanges and rentals and such, but I don't like the hassle (I never rent movies).

The idea of an entire book on MP-3 really appeals to me. The players are a lot smaller. I can listen to them on my computer while I work, or my laptop when I travel, or my car when I drive. When I am done, I dump the data and download another book.

This seems like a good idea to me.

Are there many companies supplying this?

Are there MP-3s of books..beyond the obscure ones I have seen?

If there are, what about copyright issues? Or do you think that there is not a large market here so it's not big on the author and publisher's radar?

Damn Dude, post in the correct forum. Even though electronic, this is book related!

Sigh.. lamer

Moving to Book Forum

alternate randyc

Go to audible.com. They have a pretty sweet deal if you are into that sort of thing.

All MP3 books that I've seen have been MP3s that were ripped from audio CDs, and thus haven't been legal.

There might be legal ones, but I can't help you there, because i don't know where to get them.

:lol:

You can get legal ones from audible.com. Pretty good service if you are into spoken word stuff.

What bit-rate is used for MP3 books? I'm assuming that they can get away with something pretty low, for spoken-word only. Maybe 32 kbs? Maybe lower?

audible.com has 5 different types of bitrates, and recommends different types for different downloads.

Audible is good and legal, but you have to run total recorder to convert them into unencripted mp3.

Look into [<b>too</b> clever :lol:] They are into mp3 books too.

__________
<i><font color=blue>Geoff has included a Digital Milennium Copyright reference in the <A HREF="http://www.dvdtalk.com/legal.html" target="_blank">Forum Rules</a> so.... sorry <b>RoQuEr</b>, but we have to be consistent. And, before you even think it, re-editing would <b>not</b> be seen as a harmless prank.... </i> [Benedict]</font>

Thanks!

I noticed a few on Morpheus too.

Randy, there are VERY MANY mp3 versions of books in the Usenet newsgroups (including discussions) and requests for information can be accommodated:

alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.books

alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.d

alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.spoken-word

alt.binaries.sounds.spoken-word

When a Usenet newsgroup ends with ".d" that usually means it is a discussion newsgroup. This keeps the majority clutter of discussion (text) outside of the binary newsgroup. For copyright purposes, ignore all the binary files and read the discussions....

The Usenet newsgroup has way more mp3 books than does P2P (morpheus, gnutellanet, freenet, etc). However, IRC is also highly competitive in quantity if you want to review something before buying (especially if you want to verify if something is abridged or not).

What about radio adaptations?
 

The BBC has numerous books either read in full, abridged or adapted and peformed by a cast. If you have your PC up and running with the necessary software you can listen to (and perhaps record) the streaming webcast.

This Saturday - in a couple of hours time from posting - is the first in a series of three adaptations of European detective stories, Foreign Bodies: <A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/whatson/prog_parse.cgi?FILENAME=20011103/20011103_1430_49700_9821_60" target="_lank">120 Rue de la Gare</a>. Hopefully the <i>RealAudio</i> live link will allow worldwide access: <A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/live_feed.html" target="_blank">live_feed</a>

There is also an 7-day archive to try out but this doesn't include the comedy or drama shows: <A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml" target="_blank">link</a>

Later this Saturday, an hour-long show examining Sherlock Holmes <A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/whatson/prog_parse.cgi?FILENAME=20011103/20011103_2000_49700_9831_60" target="_blank">pastiches</a>!

There are programs which will convert text to MP3. Text Aloud mp3 is one : http://www.nextuptech.com/index.html I'm sure there are others. Download a free book from Project Gutenberg http://promo.net/pg/ and convert it yourself.

I've been using Audible for over a year and I like it. However, my MP3 player is not compatible with their software so I use Goldwave to convert the audible files to MP3s. It works great, you can choose your own bitrate, and is much faster that Total Recorder.

Another short story/radio play
 

In about 4 hours from now (i.e. 11pm Thursday, UK time) there will be a 30-minute broadcast of 'Corona' by Samuel R Delaney
<A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/live_feed.html" target="_blank">Click</a> for BBC Radio 4 Real Audio Live Feed.

<small>Search for my LOTR "reminder" post in <b>Other</b> for a possible alternative feed <b>not</b> requiring Real Audio.</small>

whee to buy ambrose audiobooks? wwii
 

i'd like my class to listen to some stephen ambrose books on cd. not the puny abridged versions but the 5 hour ones. where can i buy them for a decent price?

mostly want:

band of brothers
d-day
citizen soldiers


on CD! not tape..thanks, tom

[Shamelessly bumping the radio/mp3/audiobooks thread!]
 

Does anyone out there have any ideas concerning this post in an earlier thread?

Audiobooks are licensed for private use, and not public performance (lots of people listening). Many online bookstores sell "AUDIO BOOKS" and have a section on their website for such books on cdrom (great for use in a car if you have one hour commutes). Both abridged and non-abridged audio CDs might be simultaneously available for the same book, so read the descriptions carefully. If you are an employee of a large corporation, you might buy it thru a corporate acct for more discount, then stack a coupon/buyercard for additional discount.

Example: Barnes & Noble Audiobooks section - licensed only for personal use. Free shipping, no tax if you buy two or more items plus stackable discounts for employees of some large corporations and buyers' cards.

I would enclose Amazon.com links to Stephen Ambrose audio books, but I am supposed to help the authors' group bite their own nose off to spite their face in their persecution of Amazon.com recognizing and allowing used books to exist.

Followup for Stephen Ambrose CD audiobooks:

Americans at War (unabridged CD, 720 minutes) -- $64 (price includes discount)

Nothing Like It In The World (abridged CD, 256 minutes) -- $25

Band of Brothers (abridged CD, 300 minutes) -- $26

Citizen Soldiers (abridged CD, 300 minutes) -- $26

D-Day, The Climactic Battle of World War II (abridged CD, 240 minutes) -- $26

Wild Blue (unabridged CD, 540 minutes) -- $32

Audible.com?
 

Has anyone signed up for the Audible.com AudibleListener subscriptions?

Re: Audible.com?
 

This writer at ZDNet has: yo

-Spooon69

Re: Audible.com?
 

Yes I did it for morer than a year when it was 2/month for $8.95. I finally cancelled cause I had such a backlog of books. Pretty good deal IMHO.

OK, I used goldwave to turn the audible files into MP3s. Now I want to slice the MP3s into 6 minute segments. Is there a fast way to do this? Most programs I have tried convert the file to wav, then start slicing and many won't do more than 99 slices. Is there a good way to do this?

mp3trim
MPEG Audio Scissors

-Spooon69

mp3 trim tells me that the file is too big by 3929% after loading for 10 minutes. Not what I wanted.

This is something I have been looking at for some time. The pickins are slim in the newsgroups (at least on ATT's newsgroups) I did manage to get Poisonwood Bible though.

I signed up with Audible while they were doing a local promotion here in Portland last weekend. $15.95 a month for 2 downloads a month, plus a nifty 50 pack of CD-Rs for signing up during the promotion.

I have an MP3 playing CDwalkman and really want to convert these .aa files to MP3.

I have goldwave and MusicMatch 7.1 so, with the shorter titles, I convert the .aa file with goldwave to .wav then use MusicMatch to convert .wav to .mp3. The large files (60-100MB) seem to blow up goldwave every time during the conversion.

The Audible software won't burn to my CD-R drive. I get buffer underruns every time. My computer is a P3 866 with 512MB RAM the CDRW drive is a 16x. I dropped the record speed from 12x to 8x, to 4x down to 1x and still got the error. So, I sent the Audible folks an e-mail with the issue. They recommended switching it back to 12x. Oh well. So much for qualified tech support.

Anyways, Audible has signed a deal to get a new burner from Roxio, this should be arriving on their website in June.

So, any tips on successfully using goldwave?