The best is the enemy of the good
I have mixed feelings about writing this but it is dawning on me that LibriVox - a group of public-spirited people making out of copyright texts into public domain audiobooks by reading them - could be one example of a problematic trend enabled by the Internet. That trend is - as the subject line suggests - the manner in which the Internet enables the free distribution of ‘good enough’ products at the expense of paid-for content.
In this case it concerns me that the existence and growth of free public domain audiobooks read aloud by members of the public could make it increasingly unprofitable to put out paid-for audiobooks of public domain material. This would be a shame because the quality of the readings is so variable. I find myself listening along happily to a work like F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise or The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin only to be brought up short by a weird mis-pronounciation by one of the volunteer readers.
In principle there is no problem here - if listeners find such a problem they might complain and someone from the Librivox community might volunteer to re-read the offending chapters. Unfortunately the work of reading audiobooks isn’t easily editable once complete as a textual composition is, which means to fix even a simple problem (like someone persistently mispronouncing the hero’s name) you would have to ask someone to spend at least a half an hour re-recording a whole section (or would have to do it yourself). Unfortunately also I imagine volunteer readers would not take kindly to having their public-spirited work criticised - everyone thinks they can read aloud. So it seems likely such problems will go largely unremarked and un-addressed.
I wouldn’t want to put you off trying out Librivox - their hearts are definitely in the right place, the results are mostly at least adequate and if you want something a little different to listen to on your iPod it would be well worth checking out their growing catalogue for yourself. But if you have the cash and want to listen to something public domain that you really expect to enjoy and attend to, I encourage you to check out commercial sites like Audible and keep the professional audiobook industry in business.
April 14th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Hi David, a few quick comments (previously got erased):
- quality: while the quality of the librivox catalog is variable (by design), some of it on par with any professional recordings I have heard. we have a firm internal policy of not rating things, but the internet is well set up to allow people to provide that service elsewhere, for instance on blogs etc. here is a list of of some of my (relatively random) favourites from librivox:
http://hughmcguire.net/2007/04/05/librivox-recommendations/
-”if listeners find such a problem they might complain and someone from the Librivox community might volunteer to re-read the offending chapters.” actually the preferred solution is that the complainer will record the chapter, or the whole book, and we’ll put it up alongside the offending chapter. that is, our objective is to get more and more people recording audiobooks.
-solo vs collaborative: for those more used to a traditional professional-sounding recording, our solo projects (done by one reader) are a better bet. it’s also much easier to gauge quality of the whole work with solos.
-our catalog is necessarily restricted to pre-1923 books. so i think to consider us a competitor of professional audiobook makers is a mistake - since the vast majority of their market will be modern works (which is even better for everyone, since it means that an author is actually making royalties on the audiobooks!)
-in fact, i’d argue that projects like ours, plus ubiquitous ipods etc, mean that audiobook sales will continue to see *increased* growth, not decreased. i suspect we will introduce many new listeners to audiobooks - thereby creating new markets, rather than eating into existing ones.
-in addition, we publish all sorts of stuff that a commercial audiobook publisher would never touch, because the market is just too small, eg Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory:
http://librivox.org/relativity-by-albert-einstein/
-i think the claim that the availability of free X’s always hurts the market of Xs for sale is a false claim, especially in cultural objects. germany has the biggest per capita usage of wikipedia, accompanied by an increase in encyclopedia sales. libraries do not harm book publishers. radio & television have *always* given their content away for free (in exchange for ad revenues).
-also, there are lots of aesthetic reasons why i personally prefer librivox recordings to professional ones… but that’s another story.
-so rather than asking: will librivox hurt audiobook publishers? the question should be, I think: how will commercial audiobook publishers become more innovative and responsive to the needs of their listeners (existing & future) in response to new projects such as librivox?
April 14th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Note: Hugh (above) is the founder of Librivox
Some comments on his comments:
“we have a firm internal policy of not rating things, but the internet is well set up to allow people to provide that service elsewhere”
In principle, yes, but I don’t think I want to hint around dozens of blogs to find out what people’s favourite recordings are (and in any case my main interest in an audiobook is the book itself not the recording quality).
“the preferred solution is that the complainer will record the chapter, or the whole book, and we’ll put it up alongside the offending chapter.”
Indeed - but this is not a really good way of encouraging people to complain or fixing problems as the cost of fixing them (in terms of time and effort) is a lot higher than the cost of doing a simple edit in a text document. I would be interested to know how many times people have ended up correcting a book or chapter as opposed to just shrugging and moving on.
I do take your point, however, that librivox audiobook recordings could act as a “gateway drug”, introducing people to the joys of audiobook listening who then go on to both buy audiobooks and consume librivox recordings. So there may indeed be a net gain. But I nonetheless would encourage you to provide an easy-to-use user rating system for Librivox and to institute a policy of encouraging high rated readers to record more and providing remedial help (possibly including selective replacement of things they recorded) for people whose recordings are rated very poorly. Because a really poorly recorded segment in the middle of a book can -at least temporarily - ruin your enjoyment of an otherwise good story.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
“In principle, yes, but I don’t think I want to hint around dozens of blogs to find out what people’s favourite recordings are”
-perhaps a site will present itself that does this work well…but we are concerned with a long-term objective of making a complete public domain audio library … so short term things like rating recordings are not high on list of priorities - and in fact are believed to be a hindrance to our objective (by discouraging new readers).
” (and in any case my main interest in an audiobook is the book itself not the recording quality).”
-then your objection to recording quality is puzzling!
“Indeed - but this is not a really good way of encouraging people to complain”
-agreed. i would much prefer they participate.
” or fixing problems as the cost of fixing them (in terms of time and effort) is a lot higher than the cost of doing a simple edit in a text document.”
-no kidding! for librivox too. hence our insistence on technically acceptable recordings that are true to the text - the rest is “buyer beware.”
“I would be interested to know how many times people have ended up correcting a book or chapter as opposed to just shrugging and moving on.”
-grave errors (missing text, mistaken text) is usually fixed. minor errors (a stumble, a minor mistake) are usually left. we peg an informal 99% accuracy rule - same as gutenberg.org for text (much easier to fix, as you have noted).
“But I nonetheless would encourage you to provide an easy-to-use user rating system”
-that is because your focus is on the listener. ours is on the readers: our objective is to make a free library of all public domain audiobooks. not the “best” audiobooks. or “professional quality” audiobooks, but audiobooks full stop. and pragmatically this meas that we have had to favour the reader over the listener, which, so far has stood us in good stead, and allowed us to be incredibly prolific. some excellent quality stuff, some middle quality. very little poor quality. all of it true to the texts, that ought to be able to handle a less-than-fantastic reading. … in any case: I can’t listen to Britney Spears, but others seem to like her. there’s no accounting for taste.
“for Librivox and to institute a policy of encouraging high rated readers to record more”
-you try! … that is, we have done an exceedingly good job of doing just that, and I am quite sure a rating system would instead discourage most readers, rather than encourage good ones.
“and providing remedial help”
-again: you try! how would you propose to set up such a system in a totally volunteer organization?
“(possibly including selective replacement of things they recorded) for people whose recordings are rated very poorly.”
-we already have a policy to put replacement audio alongside existing audio.
“Because a really poorly recorded segment in the middle of a book can -at least temporarily - ruin your enjoyment of an otherwise good stor”
-sure … it might even inspire a listener to make your own, much better, recording. which is the preferred long-term solution to the problem. otherwise a listener is free to suffer, to skip the chapter, to ditch the book, to try another, or to ditch LibriVox altogether. whereas our focus is on making free audiobooks where before there were none, and one day, perhaps in 50 years, there will be 8 versions of each public domain book, and listeners have your choice of many different versions. possibly rated on the external and unaffiliated: RateLibriVox.com
in the mean time, though, we *are* considering making a “best of”/”librivox picks” page - not ratings per se, but to help new listeners choose the really good stuff, get hooked, and then explore the rest at will. this i think is a better way to address the rating issue.
(by the way, we host our stuff at archive.org, and you can rate the recordings there
).