*Interestingly I was just telling Dan this morning that it’s not a good use of my time to learn to do audio narration and record my NOVELS — but I will do my short stories. I haven’t had time to create an improvised booth, and we live in a very high traffic street with a light a block away, so we get… noises. I’m going to record a story with an improvised booth and if that doesn’t work, get a booth for $200 or so. I intend to record the Darkship shorts first [they sell] and I’ll post my first attempts here [then delete them before I put them up] so you guys can make fun of me. [You know you will.] Meanwhile, here’s Sabrina’s experience — and I’ll try this as soon as I put novels up. [Right now I’m doing covers. I have the Shakespeare trilogy and two of the Musketeer Mysteries. I’ll share soon!]*
The Indie guide to Audiobooks on ACX
(disclaimer–this is based on the experience of publishing one (1) audiobook. No supreme wisdom on the part of the author is expressed or implied.)
I took the leap of trying the whole audiobook thing after reading about how clever ACX was, and being on the receiving end of one of Dean Wesley Smith’s rants about making your work available in all formats. Here’s what I found…
The Mechanics:
First, to use ACX you need to already have an account with Amazon, and have the book you wish to record in their system. Then you can go to www.acx.com and set up your account there, using your Amazon login. (They are sort of in but not of Amazon. Confusing, I know.) ACX will helpfully list a bunch of books using your name as a search term, which you can claim right there or do another search to find the one you want.
Next, set up the “project”. I went the route of wanting someone else to record and produce the book, but you can try recording yourself (see note below). The project profile is where you set up the description, book category, and indicate the ideal voice artist for the work (e.g. male/female, accent type, tone and so on). The section for additional comment is where you add enticing data like “I’m a NYT bestseller and have a private jet!” or whatever you think will encourage a voice artist to think you can earn them money. I mentioned my book’s ranking and how many it had sold.
You will also need to upload or link to the audition script. Pick a section from your book , roughly two pages worth, something that you think will be important to get right. In my book Firehearted, the one I picked for my initial ACX trial, II wanted the distinction between the voices of the male barbarian and the female Imperial warrior to be very distinct and suitable, so I picked a scene with lots of dialog between the two. I also added in the comments what I was looking for (e.g. she is cool and comes from a very rigid society, he is impulsive and prone to outbursts.)
Next section is deciding how you want to finance this. Options at present appear to be either pay a flat rate, or do royalty share. (OPINION) Good voice artists, the ones who can do consistent accents and different voices for different characters, will run $200 per finished hour and up. (My book ran to 11 hours, which is about average.) You have to decide if it is worth it to you. Also, if your *current* book sales will earn said voice artist enough to earn out that flat rate for your book to be worth their while (and now you know why you mention ranking and sales …) For me, a relative unknown, I didn’t have much to brag about. I got no auditions when I first put Firehearted up as a royalty-share option in September of 2012.
And Then a Miracle Occurred:
HOWEVER, ACX announced their stipend program about a month after I set up my project–and they picked Firehearted to be a part of it. All of a sudden I got three auditions, one within HOURS of the announcement email. This program paid the voice artist a fixed stipend up front, for a set rate per finished hour (I think it was $150) which was in *addition* to the royalty share.
Pending miracles or being a known bestseller, you can also check out the various artists sample clips and see if there are any you like and email them directly. I tried to do this, but really couldn’t get a sense of how they would do my book, and didn’t send any inquiries to artists myself. I may try this later with subsequent projects. I do have another project is up, for The Last Mage Guardian. It is set to royalty share only, and I haven’t gotten any auditions after several months. I suspect up-front money is key ;-)
Dealing with auditions: One of the three auditions I received really stood out. Tim Campbell is a professional voice artist, so my experience may be on the unreasonably good side. He’s also a professional actor, and has his own recording setup at home. It was easy for him to record tune-in audition clips, and to fix errors. We were both *highly* motivated to get this done quickly, both because of the stipend program deadline but also because we wanted to take advantage of the holiday gift season. after approving the proposal, I sent Tim the manuscript and a file with a pronunciation guide for all the weird names and terms that he was very happy to get. (e.g. “Talorgen” = Tah LOHR jehn) ACX has a messaging setup and he kept me posted on his progress.
“Proofing” the recording: This was the part I thought would be hard, but wasn’t. I listened to the whole bloody thing, and strangely the errors (mostly him reading too fast and skipping or substituting a word, which happened a whopping 3 times) stood out as obviously to me as it would have been in print. Tim easily fixed the errors and then I approved the whole thing for sale.
ACX approves: I’m not sure exactly what their process is, but presumably they have some poor slob checking to make sure we aren’t just saying “fnord” for 11 hours. This took MUCH longer than I wanted, but still cleared in time for the gift-giving sales bump.
ACX is weird: even though they are an Amazon tentacle, they don’t do royalties or statements the same way. They do give you sales data, but it is *cumulative* and not broken out by week or even month. Also, they send a physical check in a folder-sized envelope, along with the royalty statement. I’ve suggested more sales data and an electronic deposit option would be nice ;-)
More Waffling and Wild Guesses:
It’s pure speculation, but I think my book was picked for the stipend program because they wanted more Fantasy/SF content. Might be a growth option, hint hint.
On the subject of doing your own–I got a nice digital recorder to play with intending to do just that, and it even came with some recording editing software (~$300). On reflection, I think it is not a good use of my time to try to do books on my own, but I might try short stories. It takes a LOT of work to record a whole book well. Professionals are not just good at what they do, they are EFFICIENT. Tim stayed in character voice through the whole book, and I’m not sure I can do that yet.
By the way, I totally recommend Tim Campbell– he is a pro and a pleasure to work with.He had a lot of fun with my characters, and it shows.
Please let me know if you have any further questions about the wild world of audiobooks!
Ms. Chase’s website is website is Chase Adventures, and you can get all her books on Amazon, as well as on Barnes & Noble.
According To Hoyt 
Two years ago I spent a few months researching the pros and cons (and costs) of producing audio versions of my novels and in the end decided it was going to cost way more than I could pay. But this blog post changes things dramatically. Thanks for this, Sarah..
LikeLike
A quick note – ACX does not support non-US people, so the rest of the world (or RoW in finance lingo) will have to wait. I was about to do it and then couldn’t, which was a big downer.
LikeLike
Not cool. I don’t suppose you have someone in the US who could act as an agent? (Not literary agent, just representative.)
Barnes and Noble has that issue. I wonder if there’s something similar to Smashwords you can do to get to ACX?
LikeLike
I might be able to, but I don’t like the paperwork of contracts with middle(wo)men. As a substantial amount of money would be changing hands (thousands in the case of a normal-sized novel), I’d prefer to have paperwork in order, which adds a few lawyers of complications, which has been putting me off. :(
LikeLike
Oh, yes, definitely. And I hate that too.
LikeLike
LOl, a “Freundian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother” – LAYER of complications, not lawyer.
LikeLike
well… comes to the same, no? I have to establish a corporation and argh… I have to figure out if my DBAs transfer, and if we’re doing a corp, might as well fold the family into it, both for inheritance reasons and because both kids and husband also write and it’s simpler. And — ARGH.
I like my lawyer, but I hate “legal crap.” (I hate bureaucracy at least ever since I went to get my certificate from high school for transfer to US and got a paper saying I’d failed 9th grade, and practically had to climb over the partition to make them look in the book (it was all hard copy then) again to see that no, the other girl, in the facing page, had failed 9th and dropped out.)
LikeLike
I co-own an LLC, so I’m with you. Things will get really fun when I turn myself into a company (for writing/tax reasons). I have to admit, I’m dreading it so much I’m probably paying WAY too much tax just to not have to do it.
LikeLike
Same here, but with two kids in college that has to stop. Either that or we’ll get in real trouble, soon.
LikeLike
Doesn’t mean you can’t do it – just means you may not currently be able to do it through ACX.
ACX provides a LOT for their cut – but they take a cut. They probably make sure both sides – writer and narrator – are fair and get what a good business relationship should provide. Maybe you could start small, put up short samples of you reading a classic on Youtube, build a reputation, get experience getting paid… A lot of writers who can’t afford ACX MIGHT be willing to work with you.
Just saying.
LikeLike
Oh, I’m an author who’d be looking to hire a narrator. My own reading voice is crap, and I don’t really think investing in voice training would solve the problem. I’d rather focus on my strengths than deepen my embarrassments. :)
LikeLike
I’ve had some training as an actor, and consider my voice mellifluous (which may mean it puts you to sleep).
I’ll be trying it myself for fun – ‘read by the author’ somehow adds something to the mystique. Maybe.
LikeLike
Oh, if you’ve ever heard Alice Oswald read “Memorial”, there’s no doubt getting it “from the horse’s mouth” adds something. But with my kind of material, that won’t work. :)
LikeLike
You don’t have an accent that makes people think of Russian woman in leather and knee high boots, I presume? For me, it would be a very bespoke trade ;)
LikeLike
LOL – I BET there’s a market for that. :)
LikeLike
I’m sure there is, but from things Sarah has said, she’d be either puking or hiding in the corner before she got done reading it. :-)
LikeLike
Well… I can write B & D. I can’t write simple sex because it gets boring writing it, but B & D has a line of “authority” from top to bottom and a line of desire the other direction, so I can write it. I just usually make it funny halfway through, because, well… it is. (Except in Sword and Blood, where it’s serious as a heart attack, and gets more so — which is why it’s under a pen name.)
But READING it? Aloud? Oh. My. No. I’d either crack up or whisper.
LikeLike
Well… When I read my stuff guys tend to like it. I blame the accent, though for all the SF editors who ask me to dominate them! No, seriously. I can’t be out late at night at cons, because it gets weird. It has to be the accent. This happens while I’m in nice “mommy clothes.” (Winning line? “So, you’re married. You don’t have to touch me. Just order me, you know?” Me “NOOOOOOOOOO.” :-p)
LikeLike
Winning line? “So, you’re married. You don’t have to touch me. Just order me, you know?” Me “NOOOOOOOOOO.”
The proper response to that is, “Okay, I order you to go jump in a lake…with concrete shoes.”
LikeLike
He was such a sniveling little editorling, too… Next time I go out late at night at cons, I shall have you follow me. “For my answer I direct you to Mr. Bearcat!”
LikeLike
I thought the proper answer was, “Get out your checkbook, slave, and start with a 1, and add zeros till I tell you to put a decimal point in.”
LikeLike
oh, d*mn. YOU SHOULD have been there with me!
LikeLike
ROFL! I was once propositioned by a telephone Dominatrix who wanted to hire me for my “attitude”. And while I could have used the money as a struggling student, the idea of “whipping” people by slapping the handset seemed just a touch outlandish.
LikeLike
ROFL.
LikeLike
Whenever I tray to imagine the person at the other end of a 1-900-TLK-DRTY-2ME call I get an image of a little old lady in a cubical farm, using a breather (gives the voice that husky quality), knitting while wearing a quilted flannel robe and dust-mop slippers.
For the life of me I cannot understand anybody paying money for such a call.
LikeLike
Someone whose name shall remain secret said: “I just want to hear Sarah say ‘Moose and Squirrel must die!’ ” Really, You ought to use Natasha for one of your pen names.
LikeLike
I have actually played that and I have to say, it’s like imagining I sound like Ricky Ricardo if you are culturally illiterate. I sound “vaguely” Russian, but not like that.
LikeLike
I sound “vaguely” Russian, but not like that.
Aha, there’s the misunderstanding – As I noted before, Natasha sounds Portuguese. There’s even a perfectly coherent backstory there, what with all that spying and counterspying going on by all sides in Lisbon around the WWII years.
LikeLike
I’ve been trying to explain to my husband — the man has issues believing that I don’t walk on water, okay? — that I CAN’T read my novels. My shorts, maybe, particularly future ones, because who knows what future accents are like? BUT in a novel it would get really distracting. Unless I write A LOT of Russian characters. I SUPPOSE I could do that? Only I don’t want to.
LikeLike
Yes, same here. I do have a noticeable continental European accent, so even my Americans would sound “off”, and I cannot for the life of me do accents. (I even failed at doing a GERMAN accent, which you’d imagine isn’t THAT far away, me being German.) No, I firmly believe in hiring a pro.
LikeLike
Meanwhile, my Connecticut Yankee husband can do any accent known to man convincingly. There must be an actor among all his banker ancestors!
I told him if his job goes away I’m indenturing him to read the Musketeer Mysteries.
Kris Rusch tells me that audible easily becomes your largest stream of income… (Actually what she said was “License to print money.) Of course she is a trained voice performer (radio.)
LikeLike
I envy that talent. Maybe enlist him to read it? :)
And yeah, I’m hearing some good stories about audio in my space, too. It’s a higher-margin product than a book, harder to pirate (for the moment), and the per-piece cost is higher, too. In addition, it keeps earning money if you hire the talent outright, so it’s basically forever. And audio seems to be getting a real push overall – Amazon isn’t really in spaces that won’t make money. I got an Audible subscription and I’m now buying A LOT of audiobooks for the gym/commute. Hence I looked into getting my shorter work up there, hopefully using the proceeds from the short stuff to fund the long stuff.
LikeLike
I’d love to hear from people like you who consume vast quantities of audiobooks–what you look for, what you like and dislike. One of the reasons I hesitated to start recording audiobooks was I was flying blind, not being an audiobook consumer myself.
LikeLike
Ah, most things I listen to are big histories (military/cultural history), but two of my stories were put into audio by my publisher. One used an American to narrate Brits, and while I found nothing wrong with it, British friends of mine cringed at the accents. The other one had an extremely good voice actor who could have read me the phonebook and I’d have been entertained well. He even managed to read my sex scenes in a way that didn’t maker me cringe (too badly), which I think is the real test.
LikeLike
OMG. American characters read by Brits in Agatha Christie books. You don’t know whether to cry or laugh…
LikeLike
That is just sloppy craftmanship — something American actors steeped in “The Method” are all to prone to do. The same thing can occur when Americans read American characters, as the Beloved Spouse discovered when a Kathy Reichs reader employed a deep South Alabama accent for a character who ought have had Charlottean one. Despite what people in New York may think, there are discernibly different Southern accents.
LikeLike
Oh, Heaven spare us from Yankees and Brits trying to do Southern or Texas accents! I don’t know what they think they’re doing.
LikeLike
I still remember seeing “Romeo and Juliet” while I was in Texas. “She’s de-yad! My daughter is de-yad!”
(The rest of the cast had acceptable Shakespearian style, but Juliet’s father had the thickest Texan accent I ever heard.)
On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 6:00 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > Texan99 commented: “Oh, Heaven spare us from Yankees and Brits trying > to do Southern or Texas accents! I don’t know what they think they’re > doing.” >
LikeLike
“Oh, Heaven spare us from Yankees and Brits trying to do Southern or Texas accents! I don’t know what they think they’re doing.”
Neither do they.
LikeLike
I do consume vast quantities of them, too. I only started about three years ago, but we’re all living far too busy lives, and this allows me to clean or exercise, without precariously balanced books. this is why I know despite the attractions of “Writer reads own books” this will not do. You want the story, enhanced by some nice voice-acting, not an accent that makes you go “wait, what?”
LikeLike
I consume vast amounts of audiobooks, in digital, CD and tape format and I doubt my views would be very helpful, as I mostly look for books which I would read on dead tree.
As mentioned elsewhere this thread, I look for books with which I am already familiar as a way to limit time lost from lapses in attention — a greater problem with audio than silent reading. I generally like a strong narrative structure, something that encourages you to push on an extra five minutes when listening to the book while on a treadmill.
One exception is that I will sometimes choose a book which I am interested in having read but not so much in reading; an example of this would be Ron Chernow’s superb biography of Alexander Hamilton. I very much doubt I would have stuck with the book in lieu of a novel had I read it in dead tree, but found it a very informative and rewarding listen while commuting to work.
LikeLike
I don’t really consume audio books these days. Back in the ’90’s, I was commuting to law school with an hour and a half commute one way by car and would pick up audiobooks on cassette tape to play on the drive.
Worked out pretty good until I checked out of the library and audiobook, unabridged, of William Bligh’s Narrative of the Mutiny on the Bounty and Voyage by Launch. After a couple of hours of Bligh describing each day in the open boat (” … and on the 14th day, I served out 1/2 oz of bread, one quarter of a pint of water and 3 oz of fish for each man …” ), I decided it was too much of a metaphor of law school and chucked it out.
LikeLike
“Novels from the Portuguese”
On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:57 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > accordingtohoyt commented: “I’ve been trying to explain to my husband > — the man has issues believing that I don’t walk on water, okay? — that I > CAN’T read my novels. My shorts, maybe, particularly future ones, because > who knows what future accents are like? BUT in a novel it wou” >
LikeLike
ABE,
Aleksandr IS a writer. (And a d*mn fine one, if in a specialized field.)
LikeLike
Awww, thanks, Sarah. :) I’m branching out to less-explicit, more mainstream-y material currently. But whenever I’m reading my own stuff aloud, I’ll break every speed record in human memory. I’m terrible.
LikeLike
My experience with audio books (as a consumer) was very negative. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series had one in our local library: The Commodore. The reader did a fairly decent job for most of it, but his rendition of the voice of the character Stephen Maturin was horrendous. Maturin was supposed to be an Irish/Catalan physician, a polyglot who spoke several languages and an educated man.
The audio version made him sound like a Dublin dockworker. I’ve never been much interested in audiobooks since. It DID compel me to by the book itself. And it took multiple readings (of the series) to get the nasty ‘flavor’ out of my mind.
I’ve read you Baen Free Library offering, and it has convinced me to get the paper versions. But please pardon me from acquiring the audio versions.
LikeLike
As with so many things, Your Mileage May Vary.
Appropriate reader makes a world of difference, and some books are especially troublesome to adapt. For example, Beloved Spouse tried a very well done audio book of Pride and Prejudice and found that it was very difficult to distinguish the voices of the five sisters. OTOH. Louis L’Amour’s Sackett’s Land is set in an Elizabethan England rich with various accents which make it simple for actor/reader John Curless to distinguish which character is speaking
The audiobook of Lord of the Rings, by Rob Inglis [ Brief interview: http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/RobInglis.html ] is a very serviceable reading with some true pleasures. Because I have no particular ear for poetry or songs, this performance brought forth elements of the book(s) which I had tended to gloss over in past readings.
The most revelatory audiobook experience I have had was Zelazny’s Nine Princes In Amber, a book which I was reluctant to buy as the novel was abridged but, as it was abridged and read by the author I finally gave it a try. I was astonished to hear a narrative voice to be straight out of Raymond Chandler, an aspect I had never suspected when silently reading the book.
An otherwise superb reading of To Kill A Mockingbird was distrupted by one side of one of the audiotapes having apparently suffered a mishap during production, causing it to sound as if the narrator was reading it into a 40-gallon steel trashcan. Happily that side was late enough in the book that I ploughed on through; and not so far in as to spoil the reading.
LikeLike
I can’t recommend enough the audio book of Ill Met By Moonlight, (mine, not Lackey’s) which improves on the book a hundred fold or so.
LikeLike
This is fascinating, speaking strictly from the perspective of a consumer. In times when I find myself on the road a lot, I depend heavily on audio lectures and books to play in the car. I’m a big fan of “The Great Courses,” but fiction on tape is nice, too. I’m pleased to hear the recording and marketing process is getting more streamlined. I used to have a hard time finding unabridged novels or anything beyond the bestseller list.
The voice is important. I’ve got a bazillion-hour set of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall” read by a wonderful guy who sounds just like Winston Churchill. That should last me if I have to drive to and from Alaska about a hundred times. I haul it out every now and then and chew off another small piece.
LikeLike
Any word on how well ACX works from the other side of the coin? A friend of mine does a lot of bit-part voiceover work, and he would probably love this, but I know him and he’d want details and/or opinions of the Voiceover folks who use it.
LikeLike
Random note: I’ve been, since Robin Munn redirected me here, and thought I’d set up a social network with a niche for Odds. This is possible with Pinax, intended as a timesaver for Django, hailed as “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.”
In another base post, comments included starting an Odd religion, and I suggested a micronation. And I’ve thought a little further and thought that a simple social network may help. We obviously have a great community here, but the blog structure does not offer all the strengths of a bulletin board.
I’m working with a different version of Pinax and Django and have been working on the pedestrian task of porting from one system to another. And we’re talking zero to sixty in… um… uh… a week or so and counting.
Porting the code is valuable experience for me and may, if someone extends an offer to me, help me hit the ground running. But I’ve shifted porting the Pinax social project to “It’ll get there when it gets there” time.
In the mean time, I have rejected returning to Liferat–er–Liferay, which is the glitziest headache you’ll find. And in terms of what I thought would be helpful, I saw forums as central, and maybe a wiki. I had thought of presenting myself as “His Majesty King Jonathan, Master of Science, Master of Philosophy, and Herder of Cats,” and before too long realized that the ruler would be Sarah Hoyt, appropriately enough.
So I’ll make an offer, if anyone will take me up on it: Give me root on a Linux webserver and unless things are a lot rougher than I expect, I’ll install a phpBB, the best free bulletin board out there, and a MediaWiki if needed.
LikeLike
(I could also setup a Ning network, but you’d hardly need my help for that.)
LikeLike
You realize I’ve understood exactly zero of all this?
LikeLike
That makes two of us, I’m sure there are a lot of people on this blog that that made perfect sense to… I wasn’t one of them.
LikeLike
Sorry; I was describing, in perhaps too technical terms, communication technologies that I thought you’d be interested in. Basically, communication tools for your readership.
LikeLike
You were probably not too technical. I’m just a technology imbecile.
LikeLike
One suggestion for those experimenting with audio books done Indie. Try packaging the different formats of the books at a discount. I suspect I am not alone in preferring to listen to books with which I am already familiar — I listen while driving and if attention is distracted by something on the road (such as the clown who just swerved across four lanes to make an illegal turn) I would rather not have to back up the reading. Being able to get a package discount would encourage me to buy an item in both formats … especially if it was managed by including a code which would give me time to read the story and opt in for the audio version.
I doubt this is supported by Amazon, but authors selling Indie can probably find a way to do it.
LikeLike
Interestingly yes, I also prefer books I’ve already read — unless it’s research.
LikeLike
Because of the cost I suspect that people are more risk averse with audiobooks, thus they look for something that is (more of) a known quantity*. Similarly, the tendency is to select books you expect to listen to more than once — which makes it logical to pick ones you have already read and are willing to have somebody read to you while you commute, do yard or housework or otherwise can’t read to yourself.
*An audiobook is a performance, thus the performer is an unknown quantity and increases risk. If you are not familiar with the author/book this creates a very high level of risk to hurdle. While some audiobook readers can achieve a good comfort level (Lloyd James’ reading of Heinlein’s Citizen, Moon and Starship Troopers has established him in my mind as reliable) sometimes a performer and a book are just not a good match. The package edition of Lewis’ Narnia books contained a mix of readers. Michael York’s reading of LWatW sounded like an indulgent uncle reading to neices and nephews, while Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi’s readings of MN and VotDT respectively, proved thoroughly enjoyable.
LikeLike
John Cleese did an A-one reading of “The Screwtape Letters.”
LikeLike
Lawsy, YES! Which reminds me of a point I forgot to include with earlier comments: a rare few books are worth owning as performed by multiple readers. Screwtape is probably the prime example of this, with performances by Cleese, Joss Acklund (played Lewis in Shadowlands) and others, and each brings out different aspects of the letters.
There is a whole sub-genre of celebrity readings, such as Screwtape, with such performances as Hugh Laurie reading Gulliver’s Travels, John Cleese reading Dante’s Inferno, Alan Rickman reading of Hardy’s Return of the Native and more [ http://www.bettyconfidential.com/ar/ld/a/15-great-celebrity-narrated-audio-books-for-book-lovers-day.html ].
LikeLike
I cannot for the life of me listen to the audiobook of Friday. It’s clear the performer despises the main character, she reads her with a sort of simpering sneer, not applied to other characters. It drives me bonkers.
LikeLike
Ok. Put in less technical terms:
You, in another note, in talking about Odds, suggested a made-up religion.
I, as an Odd, don’t find that particularly strange; especially as ‘religion’ comes from the Latin ‘religare’, to bind together. Before today’s societies having their mixed religion, religion was what bound, religare, societies together more than anything else. But I wouldn’t be able to participate, and many Odds would not be able to go along with this goal furthered by creating a religion, be it seen as primary, secondary, or optional on both counts.
But what could be this “religion” not under that name or competing for space with existing religions, could be a set of social technologies intended to facilitate communication.
At present we already have one such set of social technology, your blog. And a blog format works well for some communication but not others. There are plusses and minuses to all communication technologies. And for our purposes, as for most purposes, not all technologies are created equal.
I was raising and attempting to address the question of what technologies would best support social fabric. And offering to help with the technical aspect, which is probably the least important once technology decisions have been made right.
This above is the assumption I largely skipped elaborating in discussion of what technologies would and would not work for a community. But you have an interest in connecting Odds, and your blog is one thing that does that–one technology that does that–and I was trying to say, “How can the same goal be done better?”
LikeLike
I have the technology I had intended working (kind of–I’m not set up for mail), at: http://stornge.com:1054/
Whether it’s useful or of interest to you is your call, but it’s a communication tool.
LikeLike
First time comment here, though I like your books, Sarah, and I really enjoy this blog and comments. Re audio books, I don’t do many, but I did a couple of Tony Hillerman’s mysteries with him reading … his unique voice and accent really enhanced the experience, in my opinion … but he was pretty much writing about where he lived, too. Would have been “too unique” for SF.
LikeLike
Learn something new every day, I thought Tony Hillerman was a woman. (I haven’t read any of his books, or it might have been obvious)
LikeLike
If you can find a copy of “Hillerman Country,” you might start there. It has photos of the areas he writes about, plus excerpts from some of the novels and his own descriptions. It and “The Great Taos Bank Robbery,” a set of non-ficiton essays, are good introductions if you are not sure about trying the novels. (I prefer the Leaphorn stories to the Chee, but that’s just me.)
LikeLike