[monkeyleader]

I love audio books, but I hate the price you have to pay. I'm wondering would this work, or as some have said it would get hit by the copyright police?

Interested in your thoughts.

Nige

[Iccz]

I'd imagine it's illegal.

It is property of the owner/publisher wether it's read by someone else or not is surely irrelevant.

[monkeyleader]

Originally Posted by Iccz

I'd imagine it's illegal.

It is property of the owner/publisher wether it's read by someone else or not is surely irrelevant.

They won't win the Kindle Text To Speech case - I really don't see how me reading this outloud to people is any different ...

[Iccz]

Originally Posted by monkeyleader

They won't win the Kindle Text To Speech case - I really don't see how me reading this outloud to people is any different ...

Because the words in the book are Intellectual Property

[Ned Senior]

You need to put an add in loot or whatever looking for New authors say offer £50 in a competition... then when you have something decent (poetry would do) send them a letter asking for permission to include there work in an anthology (include returnable authors release permission form!!!!) then when you have the signed forms back record away DO NOT FORGET you MUST offer to sell the author a gold cd with their work on for £39.95 + p&p
get some gold coloured discs and way hey this time next year we could all be MILLIONAIRES

[richard plumb]

if you buy the book and read it out loud and record it for later playback, that might be ok.

at a stretch, if someone else recorded themselves reading it, and you downloaded it but also owned the book, that might be ok (bit grey though)

if you download someone else reading a book but you don't own the original book, thats not ok.

[loz]

I am pretty sure it would fall foul of copyright.

The copyright holders 'exclusive rights' normally extend to all forms of distribution of the copyrighted work. That is, though printed first as a book, copyright would still extend to electronic and other forms of distribution of the work.

The only excemption I believe is for chariable organisations who provide audio copies for the blind.

[Ned Senior]

Originally Posted by loz

I am pretty sure it would fall foul of copyright.

The copyright holders 'exclusive rights' normally extend to all forms of distribution of the copyrighted work. That is, though printed first as a book, copyright would still extend to electronic and other forms of distribution of the work.

The only excemption I believe is for chariable organisations who provide audio copies for the blind.

Suddenly everything has gone dark!!!

If say you make a recording for blind folk.. is it legal to take monies from say Guiness or Andrex for advertising on said recording???

[monkeyleader]

I (as I'm sure many) grew up listening to Jackinory ... so was that illegal? What about those trips to the library where someone read to us school kids.

What's the difference between listening to someone live reading from a book that you don't own compared with the recording of someone live reading from a book you don't own ?

Nige

[loz]

Originally Posted by monkeyleader

I (as I'm sure many) grew up listening to Jackinory ... so was that illegal?

No, as I am sure the BBC would have paid any copyright fees...

Originally Posted by monkeyleader

What about those trips to the library where someone read to us school kids.

What's the difference between listening to someone live reading from a book that you don't own compared with the recording of someone live reading from a book you don't own ?

Well that is a different case. The library reading would be about performance rights as no copy is taken and distributed, the audio book is about distribution rights.

[Iccz]

Would be like bands making cover albums and not paying any royalties etc to the owners...


(open source means the source code is freely available)

[Liquid101]

It's a great idea - but as others have suggested, redistributing copyrighted works is a definite no-no. However, there are plenty of works that are out of copyright which might work - just think of all those classics. I believe there are already some Dickens available on iTunes for free.

My 5 yr old son also loves audiobooks, and is happy to spend an hour listening to them in his bedroom while he plays. He also loves the Star Wars graphic novels (Who doesn't) So I've started recording myself reading them so that he can enjoy them while I'm not there to read them for him - even the most devoted parent needs a break sometimes!

[Ned Senior]

+1 for all that liquid said above..
Years ago when Ned Jr was a tiddler he used to love audiobooks when driving on a long journey "The Man" being the favorite amongst he and cousins

[Iccz]

I have 'A Briefer History of Time' by Stephen Hawking as an audio book, they really missed a trick by not using Microsoft Sam to just read the whole book out, woulda saved them time, money and have it sounding like the book was being read by the author!

It's a lot easier to take in as an audio book than the actual hard copy too.


While I like the idea of OP sadly it's not going to happen, except on older books like mentioned a couple posts up.

[WibXL]

Originally Posted by monkeyleader

I love audio books, but I hate the price you have to pay.

Join Audible and you can either have one book a month for £7.99 or two a month for £14.99. With regards to your real question I think that it would be illegal.

[monkeyleader]

My point actually was more to do with the cost of audio books vs. the paper copy - this is what gets my beef.

I never was much of a reader, but as part of my grand plan for 2009 I wanted to read more. The trouble I find though is getting the time to do it. Audio books were the perfect way of doing this.

I was listening to the "meet the author" podcast the other day and got a real buzz about getting into some of the Danny Wallance books. Then I compared the price

- The Yes man £4.99 from most online stores (paper back)
- the yes man £11.69 from audible.co.uk (or £7.99 if you take out a monthly sub) £11.64 from Amazon, £8.95 from iTunes ...

And this is what I find with most audio books - almost twice the price !

Nige

[Wild Weasel]

Well I'm sure there's a lot of partially sighted people out there that would appreciate a larger libary of audio books too.

There's thousands of out of copywrite books you can download for free, so why not?

Google Book Search

Project Gutenberg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Iccz]

Originally Posted by Wild Weasel

Well I'm sure there's a lot of partially sighted people out there that would appreciate a larger libary of audio books too.

There's thousands of out of copywrite books you can download for free, so why not?

Google Book Search

Project Gutenberg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If it's for books that are out of copyright then sure...

But as for most new books it's not going to fly.

I like OP's idea and it could work for the older books but certainly not for the popular new books, the likes of harry potter etc etc.

J K Rowling still needs more money