Hi David
I'm struggling to believe that anyone can be quite so unexcited about
an increase from 25,000 to 29,000 books available to borrow for free
from the RNIB Talking Book service! I don't know whether you know how
difficult it is to persuade organisations to wave or share their
copyright for the benefit of blind and partially sighted people, but
it's not easy and I believe that this is a major step forward. I hear
what you say about Audible books being available to disc and USB
users but, given that Audible is an online service, I can't imagine
that these books won't also be available via Overdrive but I can
check, or perhaps one of the RNIB staff who are members could clarify.
At no point did anyone suggest that people should give up their
Audible subscriptions, but if you did, rest assured that it is an
incredibly simple matter to subscribe again, that's business ... they
want your money.
The deal announced via this link may well be followed by others and I
know that the team at RNIB is working hard behind the scenes to
increase the number of titles available to the tens of thousands of
people who use this great service on a daily basis.
Talk soon, John
At 21:06 20/08/2016, you wrote:
Very interesting and certainly sounds good news but in the intro bit
it raises a lot of unanswered questions/ clarifications needed. I did
not listen through the sample from the Militarist Audio Book to its
conclusion so these questions/clarifications may have been addressed
later. But assuming they were not.
1. It only mentions eligibility for those using the USB/Daisy Disk
service - what about those who have switched to the Download Service?
Are we excluded?
2. It seems to suggest though does not make clear that actually only
a tiny sub-set of books on Audible will be available to the RNIB .
That is the 4,000 books for which Audible directly hold the
copyright. Audible is massively bigger than this though. Presumably
this means that only 1 in 50 of the over 200,000+ books available
(according to Google when I checked just now will actually be
available to RNIB members.
3. What people should definately not be doing then is cancelling
their Audible membership in the belief that they will get anything
like the selection of books they currently enjoy.
4. If I am correct in all this I think it is possibly misleading not
to include this clarification at the stage of the announcement,
certainly my first thought was should I now cancel my Audible Membership?
This is not to downplay what is an important marginal development. An
increase of 4,000 books is certainly an uplift on the current 10,000
books that the RNIB hold.
If as a Download Talking Book User I can access these titles I will
certainly appreciate not having to expend my Audible Credits on them.
Still I think the announcement should be clearer to prevent people
taking premature stpes regarding cancelling Audible membership that
they may later regret.
David Griffith
ON 20/08/2016 17:45, Michael Allan wrote:
Here is a link to the announcement concerning this.
https://audioboom.com/boos/4951397-audible-team-up-with-rnib-talking-books
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