Will the Penguin come back?
October 26, 2007
New York Times reports that publisher Penguin Audio has ended its agreement with eMusic, the digital music and audiobook service, by pulling its 150 titles from the program.
The main reason are their concerns over digital piracy.
“At this moment we’re not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated,” said Dick Heffernan, publisher of Penguin Audio, according to the Times. “We wanted to take a chance and see how it would work out, and our very senior management at this moment decided that we didn’t want to do that. We hope to possibly come to some kind of agreement down the road.”
While worry about digital piracy is reasonable, it appears wide of the mark here. Consider, people who purchase audiobooks, have long had the option to take them out of libraries instead. In fact, many libraries now offer digital downloads of audiobooks.
This indeed is the problem with Digital Rights Management. Traditionally, national laws require content owners to grant “fair use” rights for products consumers buy. This means that the buyer has to be allowed to make copies of the purchased audiobooks, in order to use them in car, in portable digital audio player, in laptop computer, etc.
Somehow DRM system needs to know when the copying is allowed and when not –as i.e. users have rights to make copies to their closest relatives, etc.
However this has been solved by allowing to copy the original file. But the copy of the original file cannot be copied any further. Obviously this also causes problems, if user deletes the original file, but still has the legal copy of the file
Book publishers need to realize that consumers will be more likely to purchase their product, not less, when it comes in a format they want.
Will Penguin come back? It is a matter of time ….
Hearts in Atlantis
October 11, 2007
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS offers five novellas, each examining both childhood and the Vietnam War.
William Hurt opens the series with a absorbing narrative of a summer in the lives of three children and the adults who influence them in the small-town Harwich, Connecticut. His alternating narrative style clearly characterizes the images of childhood, and the perturbing ways of grown-ups, as well.
King takes over for the title story, which describes between 1960 and today, each beautifully interwoven tale is deeply rooted in the sixties, each is haunted by the Vietnam war.
In 1960, there’s a newcomer to the town, who introduces Bobby Garfield to the joy of reading and the horrors of ‘low men in yellow coats’;
By 1966, it’s bellbottom pants, pot, patchouli and peace-signs and at Maine University, Pete, who has fallen victim to the addictive game of ‘hearts in Atlantis’, will learn a lesson in humanity;
By 1983, ‘Nam vet ‘Blind Willie’ is paying penance;
In 1999, there are reunions, funerals, and the eternal questions – ‘why we’re in Vietnam’; a year later, Bobby comes home to where his heart is, where the past is always present, as ‘Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling’.
On Audado: Hearts in Atlantis
How to use your IPod efficiently!
October 10, 2007
There is a very interesting article which shows you many tricks using your IPod.
Especially for all those who use a fourth-generation IPod, it might be very compelling to learn how to re-create Audio Controls for the listening of audiobooks. This article will show you the option to make the playback speed faster or slower.
To learn more about these 22 top iPhone tips
Could Stephen King make a living as storyteller?
October 2, 2007
After the sudden death of his wife Jo, successful author Mike Noonan is plagued by writer’s block. Tyrannized with his dreams haunted by the summer house he shared with her, and questions about the last months before her death, he reluctantly decides to return to the isolated lakeside retreat.
There he finds his town in the hold of the powerful tycoon Devore, who takes advantage of this small community to his own purpose.
Mike gets involuntarily involved in a family conflict, in which Devore attempts to take his young granddaughter away from her widowed young mother.
Mike falls in love with both of them and is further drawn into the mystery of this ghost-like town.
Listen to Stephen King how he uses careful scene-setting to lead us into the sensible, rational world of Mike’s home and family. Then, he slowly moves into an unreal world. Where good and evil spirits emerge and situations become spooky events. The crawling revelation gets under your skin and drives the story.
Noonan’s efforts to help a young woman and her child reveals a dark secrets in their lakeside borough.
Stephen King’s audiobook is enriched with great blues music, and King even sings a few bars without overshadowing or diverting at all.
This is a treat for fans and for listeners who haven’t read his work.
King’s magnificence at storytelling has never been better.
On Audado: Bag of Bones
Stephen King, a comic?
October 1, 2007
Can you imagine that the kingpin of horror is also a comic?
King fans have long appreciated both the broad and subtle humor in his writing. In this audiobook he manifests his humor in front of a live British audience in the Royal Festival Hall in London. It is the story about the relationship of partners in marriage and their pets’ relationships.
King’s native Maine accent offers a clear picture of the plot, but his characterizations are far from polished. There’s no happy ending, of course, but, as usual, King shows us how artful he can be about people’s impulses.
A previously unpublished Stephen King story, now available on audio, read by the author himself.
This story not available in book form being read to an audience who will never forget the night they sat absorbed by Stephen King, the world’s master storyteller.
On Audado: LT’s Theory of Pets
