Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
What better way to close out the month of November on the Audiobooks.com Podcast than with an author, and a book, that would make for a great Christmas gift! By the next time we’re streaming into your ears, we’ll be beyond Thanksgiving and into the season of shopping and of gift giving. For children, and for those with childlike imaginations, we recommend the novelette The Tale of Nottingswood by J.R. Young.
To help seal the deal on this gift, we had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with Justin himself, who, before writing this book has made a name for himself in acting, voice acting, and public speaking. We get to ask Justin about how he made the leap into writing, what the process was for turning his book into an audiobook, and the aftermath of releasing both.
The Tale of Nottingswood is written in verse and, as Justin says himself, needs to be read aloud. Deeply thought provoking, moving, and enlightening, the tale follows a boy and a girl, twins, who live in a land which cast out their majestic guardian, built a wall to block out the sun, and find contentment in decay. But then this brother and sister stumble across a Creature who changes their lives forever, and thus The Tale is born
We play a clip from the audiobook, which Justin recorded himself, to give you a quick glimpse into just how wonderful this story is. If you end up giving this gift as a Christmas gift, please follow up with us after the book has been opened and read and share the experience you had while reading it aloud or listening to it! Based on the feedback Justin has received thus far, and the opportunities it’s provided him to speak with schools and students, we have no doubt that great conversations can be had from that experience.
Get in touch with J.R. Young! We encourage you to reach out to him, buy his book AND audiobook, because the illustrations alone are a sight to be seen, and share your experiences with the book with him. Justin says the best way to keep in touch and be updated on what’s going on is to visit Nottingswood.com. He can also be found on Facebook.
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Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
Welcome to the Audiobooks.com Podcast! Every week we have the great privilege of chatting about the audiobooks industry, sometimes talking about what we’re currently listening to, other times getting to speak with people on the business side or authors or avid book lovers. The spectrum of guests has been enlightening and rewarding and we look to continue that streak with this installment, featuring special guest Sanjay Singhal, CEO of Audiobooks.com! Our conversation with Sanjay covers everything from where Audiobooks.com started from to where the industry is headed and to what is currently in his audiobooks queue.
Meet & Greet
We’re getting an inside look this week from the man who devotes his livelihood to anticipating and innovating the future of the audiobooks industry. It is both encouraging and exciting to hear about the passion Sanjay has for the industry, and audiobooks in general, because it only means good things to come our way in the future.
Inspired by Netflix and the methodology of delivering entertainment to the doorstep of a consumer, Sanjay and his business partner launched Simply Audiobooks in Canada back in 2003 with monthly fees and an assortment of titles in their collection. After sticking with the business despite a rocky first year, audiobook rentals have exploded into a lucrative and evolutionary business.
Looking at the last couple decades of audio, it’s amazing to see how the preferred medium has transformed the delivery; from cassettes to CDs to digital media, our methods of consumption have changed tremendously, and industry leaders like Sanjay have been on point to meet new needs as they arise. As the escalation of technological advances shows no sign of slowing down, the format of audiobooks will no doubt continue to change as well.
Watching the market, watching technology, and listening to the consumer base helped Sanjay to guide the delivery of audiobooks in a transformative way. This same attention, and same passion for making audiobooks accessible to everyone, is now leading audiobooks into the next phase of life as interest and competition increases.
Finishing Well
Lately, we’ve been talking about some peripheral topics surrounding reading and listening to books, and this week we approached the question of whether it’s imperative to finish a book once you’ve started. Brian is reading a book that he considers mostly review for him for where he is in his career, but isn’t quite sure how he feels about quitting on the book.
What do you think? When is it appropriate to set a book aside, with no real interest in completing it? Do you have a rule you follow when you find yourself in these situations? Send us an email and let us know your perspective!
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Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
From Tamara Ireland Stone to Fred Godsmark to Tucker Max, we’ve had a lot of authors and audiobook business persons featured on the podcast, so this week we get back to the receiving end of audiobooks. Welcome business coach and audiobook lover Ellory Wells to the discussion! Ellory lends us his perspective on the listening experience and gives us a lot of recommendations for audiobooks to explore.
The Experience
We’ve discussed on the podcast before the differences between listening to an audiobook for entertainment purposes versus listening to an audiobook for reasons of time constraints or circumstance. It is much easier, and safer, to listen to an audiobook while stuck in traffic, for example, than reading a hardcover book! If the purpose we have to listen to an audiobook is entertainment, then the narrator contributes a great deal to that experience.
The book series that Ellory is currently reading, Undying Mercenaries written by B. V. Larson, keeps him engaged largely because of the narrator, Mark Boyett. Earth is visited by visitors from another galaxy in this book series, and instead of being exterminated, mankind joins with their visitors and go on adventures in space. Ellory says they’re easy reads, but are engaging and he enjoys the way Mark Boyett brings the characters to life. The entertainment value is high.
The same goes for The Martian, a book and audiobook we’ve discussed previously on this podcast, and one that continues to receive good reviews. The narrator for The Martian does a fantastic job of conveying Mark Watney’s, the main character, personality. Heavily sardonic, but an articulate intellectual, who has been well trained to survive in circumstances that normal people do not face. The narrator brings charm to Watney’s voice and a deep emotional connection with the man living alone on Mars.
Is It Cheating to Listen?
Does the method of consumption contribute to the legitimacy of an experience? Do we lose something by listening to, rather than reading, a book? This is one of the questions we ask Ellory, and his response is very interesting! We’re going to let you listen to the podcast to hear his perspective, but in the meantime, let’s take another look at this concept.
It should come as no surprise that in our modern, 21st-century culture, scientists have explored the differences of effects between reading and listening to books when it comes to how the brain processes and absorbs information. Researchers have done studies for decades about listening comprehension versus reading comprehension and their correlation to different personalities and different learning styles. But even through all of this research there seems to be inconclusive evidence that a person absorbs or understands better either through reading or listening.
A well-known phrase, coined by Marshall McLuhan in his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, says this: “the medium is the message.” One of his first objectives is to demonstrate how the content of a particular medium is also a medium. In the case of audiobooks, if we were to ask what the content of an audiobook is, the answer might be “book”, whereas we’d say the content of a book is “the written word”.
The question of whether it is cheating to listen to a book becomes a little different in this context because there is a degree of separation between the written word and the way it is absorbed. If scientists can’t find conclusive proof that we, as humans, understand better through reading or listening, then it’s difficult to say that listening is straight up cheating. There is certainly something to be gained by various learning styles from listening to audiobooks, but it can also neither be a blanket statement.
In Understanding Media, McLuhan argues that a medium translates content. While reading a book, the written word translates the story for our brains to absorb; while listening to an audiobook, the narrator translates the story for our brains to absorb. In both cases, our brains still achieve direct access to the story; our mind’s eye must still create the story in our imaginations or our intellect must process the information for application.
Is it cheating to listen to audiobooks? Science and social theory may never be able to give us a direct answer to that question. Perhaps that question is tied into a deeper social issue of the modern age as we witness other mediums fade into the category of obsolete technology. Whether we use technology as an excuse or a crutch to avoid a tedious task is also called into question. In the end, we love audiobooks for the similar reason we love the theater, or a film, or a rock concert: it is another medium through which we can absorb, learn, grow and be entertained.
Get In Touch!
As always, we would love to hear what you are currently listening to and what is in your queue! Send us an email or hit us up on Twitter. And while you’re at it, send Ellory a quick thank-you for talking with us this week!
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Site: http://www.audiobooks.com/podcast | Email: podcast@audiobooks.com
Welcome back to the Audiobooks.com Podcast! Halloween has passed, November is upon us and we can finally start thinking about Thanksgiving here in the United States. No more being shy about ordering pumpkin spice lattes, it’s now a shameless request. There are a lot of fantastic autumn beverages that often get overlooked, though, like Masala Chai and apple cider. If you have a favorite autumn beverage that gets overlooked, write us and tell us what it is!
We have a very special treat for you this week as we invited entertainer and entrepreneur Tucker Max to join us. The truth is, every week is a special week, every guest is a special guest, but we are excited to share this interview with you because of the unique change Tucker has brought to the world of books and audiobooks.
Google and Wikipedia will tell you about the Old Tucker Max, the one without a wife and a son, the one who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, and the one who basically helped form the genre fratire. What they don’t spend a lot of time describing is the New Tucker Max, the one who we got to chat with in this interview and the one who is re-inventing what it means to author books.
As much as we celebrate audiobooks on the appropriately titled Audiobooks.com Podcast, we also celebrate the opportunity to consume knowledge from those who have the expertise and experience to provide it. Unfortunately, by the nature of that position in life, a book containing that knowledge often ends up being compiled in a memoir. The relevance of its content, upon release, is already losing its criticality and is thus treated by the media and public as more of a biographical work.
Book in a Box is changing everything. Tucker Max and his business partners have developed a method which enables a person with expertise to get relevant knowledge out to its target audience while it is still critical. As audiobook lovers, we can appreciate the time it takes to either read or listen to a book, which says nothing about the time it took an author to write it. The greatest aspect to Book in a Box is that it does not take a person with this critical knowledge more than 12-16 hours over the phone! Time, as a caveat to producing relevant content, is almost negligible.
This process has amazing potential and we are excited to see the products that result from it. Check out the links below for more information on this enterprise, as well as the books that Tucker Max has written! Then, send him a thank-you for taking the time to chat with us.
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