![]() An absolutely awful voice, but copy any decently sized text (maybe a pg essay) and listen to it. ![]() If it would be just about understandability, try espeak (apt install espeak). You'll miss some intonation, but modern speech engines are beyond understandable. If you just want to read books without the effort of reading, and have "audio books" be cheap, text to speech is totally there. I also enjoyed the story itself much more because of the telling). For example, Ready Player One was a mediocre movie, an alright book, and the audio book was really great (i.e. A bad reader not only makes a good book boring, it also works conversely. I agree, a well-read book can really make it. The key to a good audio book, in addition to the book itself being good, is a good reader, so here are some of my current faves with splendid readers: A Clockwork Orange narrated by Tom Hollander Lincoln in the Bardo, Nick Offerman Mrs Dalloway, Juliet Stevenson Lolita, Jeremy Irons and Milkman, Brid Brennan. I can't listen to an audio book at just any time I need my hands for something else. And then there's the whole mind-wandering thing. You can't share an audio book with a friend, a downside of e-books too. (You want a different translation of The Brother's Karamazov? Ha!) You still need a hand, or at least a finger, to pause or go back, like when your mind inevitably wanders. Sometimes I start with the audio book, especially if the book is challenging, then later switch to the non-audio book. I often end up with both the physical or e-book plus the audio book. If so, then OverDrive needs to be incentivised by either:Ī) More money from existing libraries (what I asked about above), orī) Threat of competition, which would affect future customer acquisition+retention (which the SimplyE project you mention may provide).įor me audio books don't replace regular books, they supplement them, by expanding my reading time and by getting me to read books I'd otherwise not. ![]() But the platform provider will prioritise things based on what will make them money (get more new customers, reduce existing customer churn, or increase revenue per customer).įrom what you've said, it sounds like OverDrive has no competition, so the impact of accessibility features on customer retention and acquisition is zero. If I want additional features, of course I can ask for them. If I buy a licence to a platform, that enables me to provide services to my users, then of course I can only use the features that come with that platform. And if customers signal that they value a feature at $0, then that feature is likely to go to the bottom of the list. My point isn't that OverDrive should itemise their pricing, it's that market participants generally only invest money in R&D when it is expected to make them more money. "But I'm not aware of any platforms that charge extra for their accessibility features. Yet, how many authors do you know that actually do it? Technically, no one stops any book author from hiring a voice actor and then selling the result from their website directly. It's amazing that after seeing this process repeated again and again in the lat couple decades, people still can't predict when it starts to take pace in yet another industry. They're already edging that way with "originals". If Audible get really popular, it will just become a centralized long-form podcast service. It's good, because it benefits from the infrastructure that would not exist if books were created for audio instead of paper. I like listening to audio books and Audible is definitely very convenient, but I am 100% sure that in the not so distant future Amazon will completely destroy the whole publishing ecosystem in US and that will have horrendous effect on the quality of what is being written and on the availability of things to read.Īudible is good, because it's not sustainable. Unfortunately, this is a very accurate analogy. >Amazon, is to book publishing what Facebook and Google are to magazines
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |