Simply Audiobooks Inc.

Well I’m back from my trip, during which I managed to read all 850 pages of Wizard’s First Rule despite its’ heft. On the plus side, I can now do one-handed pushups. I loved the book. I don’t mean I liked it. I LOVED it. Immediately bought the sequel, “Stone of Tears”, and I’m loving it just as much, although it’s also 800-odd pages and is a direct continuation of the first book. I’ve realized that it’s really just one 1600 page book. He must have split it up into two books to make it accessible to the 95% of the population that can’t do one-handed pushups.

So why am I going on about this, albeit great, NON-audiobook? Because when I opened my mailbox on my return, I had my next audiobook rental waiting for me. Yes, you’ve guessed right. It was “Wizard’s First Rule”. I was a) astonished at the coincidence, given I have 40 titles on my rental queue, b) annoyed that I’d just lost out on at least a month of great listening, and c) pleased that I could at least do one-handed pushups.

I’m going to write a book now on the harm audiobooks are doing to the general fitness of the population. I suspect that the how-to fitness book industry is benefiting though. I’m undecided as to whether my book should be published in audiobook format. On the one hand (ha ha), it seems wrong to take advantage of a flaccid public. But on the other hand, do I really care?

I was in an airport bookstore today trying to decide which overpriced bundle of paper I wanted on the plane with me. I have a couple of audiobooks on my mp3 player, but no trash fiction, which is my preferred channel to obliviousness while flying. I’ve been wanting to read ‘Next’ by Michael Crichton, but it’s only available in hardcover – shorthand for overpriced AND inconvenient.

I eventually settled on a fantasy book I’ve heard about – “Wizard’s First Rule”.  It’s a paperback (cheap, light paper) and yet quite heavy (856 pages), so a good overall value I thought. Little did I realize that once on the flight, the weight would quickly become a liability. As soon as the guy in front of me reclined his seat, the tray that I was resting my book on jammed into my chest. So I had to lean over the tray to read my book, thereby cutting off the light from above.

I tried holding the book up with both hands, but then my blanket kept slipping off, and it was hard to turn pages. So I tried holding it up with one hand, but quickly got tired. I had bought too many pages – it was just too heavy. Fortunately, the ordeal weakened me enough that I fell asleep easily. Dreaming of the audiobook version of course.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been able to find any websites out there that recommend books for me to read, the way that Netflix provides an automated recommendation service for its’ customers. In fact, there are multiple such services for movies, and one I like, Pandora, for music. I stumbled across a website, Nextfavorite, that is combining all three (movies, music, books) into one smorgasbord of laser-targeted media hedonism, and of course I was drawn to it like an audiobook addict to a, um, audiobook recommendation engine.

Technically, Nextfavorite doesn’t specialize in audiobooks. So narrator (as just one attribute) doesn’t get taken into account. Basically we’re just ranking books here, and you hope the publisher did a good job with the audiobook. Compare this to Simply Audiobooks’ own recommendation service – pretty basic – that says “People who liked this, also liked this…”

When I’m looking for books to add to my shelf, I do one of several things.

1. Look for an author I like and see if he/she has any new books out (Frederick Forsythe just came out with Afghan!)
2. Search for a specific book someone has recommended or that I’ve heard about (Apparently I just HAVE to read Freakonomics!)
3. Add a book that I see highlighted in the SAB newsletter, or if I see a good review of a book on the members home page.
4. Last resort – start browsing the recommendations on the site.

I wish I wish I wish, that I could just magically populate my bookshelf with a bunch of titles that I have better than a 70% chance of liking. Nobody knows my tastes though. Christmas this year proved that once again. So of course I wonder, why isn’t there a recommendation engine for audiobooks? I’ve listened to over 200 of the damn things, you’d think some computer somewhere could figure this out.

You can see where this is headed. We’ve finally committed (internally at least) to developing a real recommendation service for our own customers to use. When it’s ready, it will have some pretty slick features for reviewing titles, auto-adding titles you’ve already reviewed to your database, and moving recommended titles directly to your bookshelf. At least, that’s what our developers tell me. Developers never mis-forecast, do they?

Anyway, send any suggestions you have directly to our friendly member services folks, and you’ll see progress reports here from time to time. We won’t be unveiling this new new thing until May at the earliest (beta), but when we do, it’ll be worth it.

Well, according to the author herself, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be published on Saturday 21st July 2007 at 00:01 in BST in the UK, and at 00:01 in the USA. It will also be released at 00:01 BST on Saturday 21st July in other English speaking countries around the world.”

And then, presumably, the fun ends. My 11 year old daughter keeps telling me that this is the end for Harry. I don’t know if she’s just being a doomsayer; I have no opinion myself as I am (blasphemy!) not a Harry Potter fan. But it would be a shame, as the franchise has been the most successful in audiobook history, particularly because the audiobooks release at the same time as the hardcover and the mass hysteria extends to the audiobook world.

Go Harry!

It occurred to me today to wonder who the most popular authors of all time are. Kind of like most popular movies. From the box office reports, you’d think Titanic was the biggest movie of all time, but the newspapers never factor in inflation and ticket prices. A more accurate ‘most popular’ would be based on number of views, or tickets sold. Either way, “Gone with the Wind” and “Sound of Music” rank right up there at the top.

So what about books? J.K. Rowling the most popular author of all time? Nope. Not even the top 3, although I suspect she might be one of the wealthiest. The top 2 are obvious if you think about them. The third is a bit of a surprise. Here’s the list of top authors (english language).

1. God. Available in every hotel room.
2. William Shakespeare. Or whoever wrote all those plays.
3. Agatha Christie. She dunnit.

So take that, Harry.