[bookshare-discuss] Books on computers: format combines text and audio narration

"Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 8 Sep 2004 16:45:46 -0400

September 8, 2004
Books on computers: format combines text and audio narration
By MEGAN LEACH

TORONTO (CP) - If you think of how DVDs have transformed the movie-watching
experience over the past few years, it's little
wonder that other media are turning to technology to breathe new life into
existing products.

Take books as an example - more specifically, audio books. Audio recordings
of books on cassette or CD are hardly new, but
new technologies are hoping to transform the reading experience by combining
audio and text. With today's portable MP3
players that can hold hours of music, a new breed of high-tech printing
houses are finding new storage solutions.

One company, AV Books Inc. of Lighthouse Point, Fla., wants to take the
publishing world by storm with a product that can be
"read" on a computer.

An AV Book comes on a single CD-ROM disc. It can be read visually on the
screen at the same time as an audio narration of the
text is heard. The text highlights as it is narrated by the computer, and
bonus features include a built-in dictionary and
note-taking capabilities.

The company's first title - Agent Orange, the tale of an attempted rescue a
downed U.S. navy pilot during the Vietnam War -
will be released later this year. It's by AV Books founder George Hay, who's
hoping to make deals for other books with major
publishers, educational outlets and government organizations.

"I love to listen to audio books, but I also love to read books and I like
paper books. I thought it would be neat if there
was a combination of both," said Hay.

Agent Orange is narrated by actor William Shatner. Hay said it wasn't hard
to get Shatner involved with the project. "I sent
it on Friday and by Monday morning he'd read the book," said Hay. "He said
'I love it, I'd be happy to do it.' "

Audio books have traditionally been used by the visually impaired or by
those who want to read when a printed book just isn't
practical, such as while commuting. Portability has always been an
attractive feature of books, but audio books that stretch
across multiple CDs or cassettes can be more cumbersome than convenient.

With an AV Book, the audio is stored on the CD as MP3 files which can be
downloaded to a portable music player such as an
IPod, or the disc itself can be played in an MP3-CD player.

Hay feels the concept has practical applications for the classroom and said
the company is working on producing a series of
classic books in both student and teacher editions.

In addition to the note-taking feature, the books could also contain
built-in tests. "Kids can actually answer the question
right in the book by typing in the answers," said Hay. "If it's multiple
choice they just highlight the answer. And of course
the teacher's edition has the answers." The books could contain pictures,
built-in movies or flash presentations.

"It's hard to get a child to read, but it's never hard to get a child to
play with a computer," Hay said.

Meanwhile, Apple's IPod music player has inspired software developers to
make creative use of the gadget's text screens. In
addition to reading news, weather or song lyrics, IStory Creator allows
users to write their own choose-your-own-adventure
type stories, which can be read using the IPod's menu interface.

But are these new e-book formats really what readers want?

"From what I can tell, at this time, they're not really changing the
industry much," said Derek Weiler, editor of the
Canadian book-trade publication Quill & Quire.

"Especially in the Canadian market, they just haven't gotten much of a
toehold with general readership."

E-books have also suffered from the lack of an industry standard, Weiler
said.

"It's kind of the chicken and the egg syndrome," he said. "Without a lot of
material, no format is attracting a lot of
readers, and publishers aren't willing to place a lot of material into an
untested format."

Then there's the downloading issue. A quick search of the web reveals a
large number of sites offering free, downloadable
audio files of books. Most are classics - Dracula, Anne of Green Gables,
works by Shakespeare - but there are also
educational items available as virtual textbooks for subjects like history
or geography.

When it comes to downloading for free, quality becomes an issue. Some
sampled free books were read by a computerized voice,
making Anne of Green Gables sound as if she was being portrayed by a Speak
and Spell.

George Hay isn't too worried about copyright infringement when it comes to
AV Books. He notes that young people are often the
biggest culprits of illegal downloading, but not usually of educational or
lengthy material. He said publishers can opt to
disable the text-copying feature of an AV Book as an additional measure.

"The publishing world needs something desperately to compete with (other)
multimedia," said Hay. "A lot of people say 'I
don't think I'd read on a computer.' Well, you don't because there's nothing
to read on a computer."

But Weiler isn't sure that revolutionizing the book industry is so simple.
"I don't know if there's really much you can
tinker with in terms of the way people actually read," he said.

Things might be different in the future, Weiler added, "when the actual
reading online experience might be so advanced to the
point where it is just as comfortable as reading a real book."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2004/09/08/pf-620641.html

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