Saturday, June 20, 2009

Podiobooks: What a remarkable concept

I was listening to This Week in Media a few days ago, and they had as a guest Scott Sigler, a well-known horror author. He mentioned that he had just written a Sci-fi book called The Rookie, and it was available for free on his website.

So I, being the geek that I am, went to check it out, and discovered that it was available as an audiobook via iTunes, and were being put out through a company called Podiobooks.

Wow. What a great idea. I have only started listening to The Rookie, and haven't checked out any other books, but just from a conceptual point of view, I'm sold already.

While Scott's a good reader, he isn't on par with the readers from audible, but that's okay, it's still a great idea.

I'll give you more feedback once I've explored a little more, but at first glance, I'm so all over this.

2 comments:

Abigail Hilton said...

Hello!

My Google alert for Podiobooks pinged this, and I thought I'd add a little. Podiobooks.com is not a company or a producer. It's a clearing house and a community - a place where authors can release their books as podcasts and listeners can easily find them. Podiobooks has some really basic technical requirements, but they don't screen content. Most of the books are being produced by the authors in their closets or living rooms or basements. Some are published authors and some aren't. Quality runs the gammet, but it's all free. It's not quite fair to compare podiobooks to audible, although they cater to the same groups of listeners. This also means that if you find one book you don't like, just try another. These books are all being produced by different people in different circumstances, and you can probably find something else that you do like. :)

Evo Terra said...

I'm glad you discovered us, Mac. Scott's style of narration will grow on you. And while I agree that he's certainly no Scott Brick, he and plenty of authors you'll find on Podiobooks.com do an admirable job of narrating their own books. In fact, I'd hold many of them up against some books with professional narrators.

But of course, much of this is highly objective and your mileage may vary. But bounce around and see what you like. We've got 324 more books on the site and more added each week, so I'm sure you'll find plenty to keep you entertained.

Thanks for the post!