Star Trek Audiobooks!!!! - oh wait....
- Thread starter Smitty
- Start date
That's interesting. I tried the text to speech function a long long time ago on my first Kindle and it was awful, completely too grating to ever use. I have no idea if my newer Kindle is any better but it might be worth looking into. Except for the ebook exclusives though all my Trek books are in print. I'm weird that I still collect Trek books in print, but I already have such a large collection of print Trek books I like them that way. The Kindle price is pretty much higher or nearly the same as the print books anyways, which is crazy.
Most are far more expensive than used. I would have thought prices would trend downward after a few years.
Also found that s.c.e. miracle workers has tts enabled. The robot voice on my little fire HD 6 isn't bad. It does seem to stop every couple pages which requires pressing play again. Not suitable for the 4 hours of driving I do on the average day. Good enough for housework or lounging though.
Also found that s.c.e. miracle workers has tts enabled. The robot voice on my little fire HD 6 isn't bad. It does seem to stop every couple pages which requires pressing play again. Not suitable for the 4 hours of driving I do on the average day. Good enough for housework or lounging though.
Publishers don't see used books as competition, they see them as a threat to be eliminated through technical or legal means. Easier to do with textbooks than novels, but I'm sure we'll see it in time. ("Want to read the final chapter? Go to this website and enter this one-use code to download it!")
I've never noticed much of a problem with my KindleFire HD 8.9 when using tts. No random stopping. Though occasionally when it comes to a word it doesn't know it sort of skips. ex: "the Th said" instead of "the Thot said"
Heck, plenty of us German Trekkies prefer this stuff in English, be it on the page or from a speaker set.
I used to snobbishly look down on audio books as "not real reading" for a long time, but I really enjoy them nowadays in situations where I can't (or shouldn't, e.g. too much light before sleep if time for sleep is tight) read. More Trek audio books would be lovely indeed.
I read a lot of print books too, but I do a lot of driving for work - probably an average of 8 hours or more a week, and I really enjoy audiobooks and audio dramas. They keep my mind occupied and entertained, and it's an easy way to get more "reading" done. I also will listen while I'm walking the dog, doing housework or anything where my body is working but my mind is otherwise unoccupied.
I hope that the German audiobooks sell well enough to persuade the publishers to release them in English as well.
I hope that the German audiobooks sell well enough to persuade the publishers to release them in English as well.
I recall corresponding with John Ordover, on the old Psi Phi BBS, about this back when he was Trek editor at Pocket. The problem with audio dramas was that Simon & Schuster Audioworks had not bought/renewed the rights to producing audio dramas.
The closest they had come were three "Captain Sulu" exclusive-to-audio adventures. These were each 70 mins long, helped to pioneer a then-new "3D sound" system (which worked amazingly well for the CDs used with headphones, but less effectively with audio cassette), and featured a larger cast of actors.
Then they did audio adaptions of the CD-ROM games, "Klingon" (90 mins) and "Borg" (60 mins), using the already-available extended voice casts of the games, but when it came time to do the "Starfleet Academy" game, S&S Audiowork's license for ST audio drama had expired, and they continued to publish the one-voice-narrator abridgments of (hardcover) novels. (Actually, it seemed, at least at first, that a rival publisher had optioned the audio drama license but had then sat on the rights rather than produce anything. But perhaps not.)
Huh. Interesting to hear that, I'd always wondered what went on behind the scenes there...
At one point, Pocket Books was licensed to do Trek novels and "Amazing Stories" magazine was licensed to do Trek short stories. Also, DC Comics was licensed to do TOS (when LA Times Syndicate was doing daily comic strips) and TNG comics, but the DS9 license went to Malibu. The toy licenses for action figures and bobbleheads are with different companies, even though they are all figural plastic toys.
It's not the number of performers that's the issue; one is an adaptation of an existing prose work, the other is a brand new work written specifically for the audio medium - hence the seperation of licenses.
Not necessarily. The company GraphicAudio, for instance, does audiobook adaptations of novels as full-cast dramatizations. They've done so with two of my novels, Only Superhuman and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder, and some of Greg Cox's DC novelizations.
Conversely, the three Captain Sulu audiobooks were original stories, but they were not full audio dramas. They had several cast members each, but with no direct interaction between them, so it was more a dramatic reading by several different people than a fully dramatized performance. Or rather, it was as close as they could get to a performance without actual dialogue exchanges between different actors. I'd conjecture that the reason they did them that way is that they didn't have the license to do a full performance as distinct from a reading.
GraphicAudio adaptations of Trek books would be amazing. I suppose you or Greg would know if the books they chose are comparable in sales, popularity and potential audience to your Trek work.
I was pleasantly surprised to see them select your Spider-Man book from several years ago. I would think a concurrent release of a brand new book would generate a lot more market synergy.
It seems you and I have different definitions of what constitutes "audio drama". I've worked on dozens of different audio projects in varying forms (single-performer, two-hander, full cast, prose adaptation, original-for-audio, readings), and in my experience the key difference is if the work is "dramatic" (as in, a performance with music, effects, direction etc) or a just a "reading". YMMV.
But regarding Idran's specific point, I'm suggesting that the "differing licenses" issue might be due to a "talking book" or a dramatization being a derivative work based on an already-licensed book (and thus part of one license), while an original audio drama is a new work that might not be covered under the auspices of an existing "book" license (and might need to be considered under a seperate license). Ultimately, it's all down to whatever kind of deal is in place...
Once again, just because YOU'RE interested does not qualify you to assert that it will spell success for the publisher.
Also, just because Star Trek is popular, does not qualify one to assert that fiction published in any and every format will be eaten up ravenously by the fans.
Now, that's not fair. It's not self-centered to recognize that audiobooks in general are selling well and to wonder why Star Trek isn't participating in that market.
Similar threads
