Tag: audiobooks

Amazon Gives Away Free Stuff for Halloween

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Batman Li'l Gotham Halloween coverFor Halloween, Amazon’s Kindle Store is offering a funny free comic book that looks at Batman when he was a child — as part of D.C. Comics special series, Li’l Gotham. It’s one of two stories in D.C.’s “Halloween Comic Fest 2013”, a 22-page holiday give-away that’s a nice way to celebrate. “Every once you in a while you just want to see the citizens of Gotham in a new light,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “and that’s exactly what this book is all about.” And of course, they added that the artwork of the superheroes as trick-or-treating children “looked like fun to draw!”

And for Halloween night, you might also want to download the free audiobook version of Dracula by Bram Stoker. It’s read by a long list of narrators that includes Tim Curry — who played the lurking evil in the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and of course also starred as the crazed libertine scientist in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Why is Amazon doing this? To show off their special feature they’re making available for audiobooks, “Whispersync for Voice”. Now if you’re reading the text of an ebook on any Kindle, you can instantly switch over to its audiobook version on your Kindle tablet (or in a Kindle app). And the audiobook’s narrator will continue reading right where you left off!

“Most people I know believe that if they only had more time to read, they would be more imaginative, more interesting, and more successful,” the founder of Audible.com once said in an excited press release. “Whispersync for Voice directly addresses that need. The ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between reading text on any Kindle and listening to the same title in audio on your smartphone [or on your Kindle Fire tablet] — and always pick up where you left off — means that the story can continue during those times of the day when you cannot look at a screen.” It’s a feature that’s exclusively available on the Kindle, with specially-enabled ebooks that are sold through Amazon’s Kindle Store.

And it seems like Halloween is the perfect time for a ghost story that’s delivered by a whisper!

Amazon Gives Away Free Audiobooks!

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Commuting woman in Amazon Audible audiobook ad showing WhisperSync for voice

This is pretty exciting. Amazon’s giving away free audiobook versions of 20 different books. There’s an Agatha Christie mystery, the original Dracula (and Frankenstein), plus audiobook versions of 17 more classic books. You can find links to the audiobooks when you browse their free ebook versions at tinyurl.com/FreeKindleAudiobooks

And the readers for these books aren’t just professional audiobook narrators. Some of them are actually Hollywood movie actors! For example, the audiobook version of Heart of Darkness is performed by Kenneth Branagh, who’s been nominated for an Academy Award five different times. And there’s also an audiobook version of Agatha Christie’s first novel with her character Hercule Poirot — narrated by David Suchet, the actor who actually played Hercule Perot on public television’s Mystery Theatre!

Amazon’s even giving away a free version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz read by Anne Hathaway, an actress who’s appeared in everything from The Princess Diaries to The Devil Wears Prada. There’s also a free audiobook version of Gulliver’s Travels read by David Hyde Pierce, who’s won four Emmys for his performance as Niles Crane on the TV show Frasier. With Halloween coming up, you might also want to download the free audiobook version of Dracula by Bram Stoker. It’s read by a long list of narrators that includes Tim Curry — who played the lurking evil in the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and starred as the crazed libertine scientist in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Why is Amazon doing this? To show off a brand new feature they’re making available for audiobooks that’s called “Whispersync for Voice”. Now if you’re reading the text of an ebook on any Kindle, you can instantly switch over to its audiobook version on your Kindle tablet (or in a Kindle app). And the audiobook’s narrator will continue reading right where you left off!

“Most people I know believe that if they only had more time to read, they would be more imaginative, more interesting, and more successful,” the founder of Audible.com said in a press release. “Whispersync for Voice directly addresses that need. The ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between reading text on any Kindle and listening to the same title in audio on your smartphone [or on your Kindle Fire tablet]– and always pick up where you left off — means that the story can continue during those times of the day when you cannot look at a screen.” It’s a feature that’s exclusively available on the Kindle, with specially-enabled ebooks that are sold through Amazon’s Kindle Store.

On the Audible web site, there’s a video showing a young woman enjoying The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and then continuing to listen to it on her headphones as she commutes in to work. (You can watch the video at audible.com/wsv, which also includes a demonstration of the technology using The Hunger Games.) This new Whispersync for Voice feature is now already available for nearly 15,000 different Kindle ebook/audiobook combinations on Amazon.com, according to their press release, and Audible’s founder drove home the point that it’ll make life easier for Kindle owners. “We think that Whispersync for Voice can help us all enjoy more books, which is good news indeed.”

And Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s own founder and CEO, added “Anyone who wants more time to read, or never wants to put a great book down because it’s time to drive to work or exercise, will love Whispersync for Voice – it offers our customers the profound gift of more time to read.”

 Below is a list of the 20 ebook/audiobook combinations which Amazon’s giving away for free “for a limited time.” Only 18 of them are listed at tinyurl.com/FreeKindleAudiobooks. The other two free combinations are The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (narrated by Simon Prebble) and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (which T.S. Eliot described as “the first and greatest of English detective novels”).

But the 18 ebooks below are all also available for free (with free narration) at tinyurl.com/FreeKindleAudiobooks

Dracula by Bram Stoker with a list of narrators that includes Tim Curry (As well as Alan Cumming, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Susan Duerden, John Lee, Graeme Malcolm, Steven Crossley, and James Adams)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (narrated by David Suchet, who played Hercule Perot on public television’s Mystery Theatre)

The Sign of the Four, a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (narrated by Patrick Tull)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (narrated by Anne Hathaway)
Gulliver’s Travels (narrated by David Hyde Pierce)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (narrated by Kenneth Branagh)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (narrated by Simon Vance)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (narrated by Frank Muller)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (narrated by John Lee)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (narrated by Elijah Wood)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (narrated by Simon Vance)
David Copperfield (narrated by Simon Vance)
The Wind in the Willows (narrated by Shelly Frasier
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (narrated by Nathaniel Parker)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (narrated by John Lee)
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (narrated by Wanda McCaddon)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (narrated by Davina Porter)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (narrated by Scott Brick)
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (narrated by James Langton)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (narrated by Simon Prebble)

Maurice Sendak on Your Kindle?

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I was sad to hear that Maurice Sendak died on Tuesday. He wrote “Where the Wild Things Are,” and also wrote or illustrated several dozen more books — all just as original, and just as exciting. So it’s surprising that there aren’t any Kindle ebooks available by Maurice Sendak. But there is one way to get Maurice Sendak’s works onto your Kindle — by listening to an audiobook!

And amazingly, there’s also a full-length novel adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are that was written by Dave Eggers!

The audiobook is narrated by Peter Schickele, who is better known as the classical music humorist, P.D.Q. Bach. Schickele also composed a lively musical score for the story, which plays in the background as he reads the book’s short dialogue. (Sendak’s story famously has only 10 sentences in it — just 338 words — but with the additional music, the audiobook version is six minutes long.) “Schickele narrates with infectious enthusiasm,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “bringing life to the words, sounding as if he’s telling his favorite story…”

It’s also available as a DVD with animated versions of Sendak’s original pictures — along with adaptations of more Sendak stories. The DVD includes versions of the four short poems in “The Nutshell Library” — Pierre, One Was Johnny, Alligators All Around, and Chicken Soup With Rice — sung and set to music by Carol King.) Just point your web browser to tinyurl.com/SendakCartoons. And that collection concludes with Schikele’s version of Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen.”

Audible.com is also selling an audiobook which contains a 25-minute interview with Sendak on the PBS radio show, Fresh Air. (Sendak was one of two guests on the show, which also includes another 25-minute interview with actress Patricia Clarkson.) It was recorded in 2003, when 75-year-old Sendak had just released a new book called Brundibar that was based on a dramatic Czechoslovakian opera. The audiobook offers a fun to hear Maurice Sendak’s voice coming out of your Kindle!

Finally, “Where the Wild Things Are” was adapted into a live-action movie in 2009, with a screenplay that was co-written by the award-winning novelist Dave Eggers (who was once also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). I’ve been a fan of Eggers since he wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and along with the movie’s screenplay, he also wrote a full-length novel version of Sendak’s story. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “funny and touching novelization of Maurice Sendak’s picture book,” saying that Eggers was “brilliant at portraying the exuberance and chaos of a young boy’s mind and heart.” And it’s available as a Kindle ebook. (Just sail your web browser away to tinyurl.com/SendakNovel )

I’m a big fan of Sendak. One year before he wrote Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak even drew the illustrations for a dark little children’s story by Robert Graves (the 67-year-old author of I, Claudius). People are remembering their favorite Sendak stories today, all around the web.

And it’s nice to know there’s also ways to remember Sendak with your Kindle!

Free Audiobooks for your Kindle!

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Free Audiobooks for your Kindle

I just discovered a fascinating new web site that’s offering thousands of free audiobooks for your Kindle! It’s called LibriVox, and it’s offering over 4,200 different Kindle-ready audiobooks. And they’re adding hundreds and hundreds more every year…

In fact, they claim to be one of the world’s most prolific audiobook publisher, since every month they release up to 100 new audiobooks. The books are available in 33 different languages, and if you tried to listen to them all, one by one, it would take you a full 2 years and 251 days. “Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet,” they explain on their web site. And they’ve already recruited a community of thousands of talented volunteers who are working to make it happen.

“We love reading, love books, love literature…” explains one page, and it adds that they “think the public domain should be defended and enriched, we like free stuff, we like to hear people read to us, and we like reading to other people.” Even though there’s already millions of free e-books available in the public domain, the site’s creators firmly believe that there should also be a free audiobook version for every single one of those e-books. And it’s an inspiring vision which makes me want to wish them all luck.

“It’s fun, it’s a great community, it’s a rewarding public service to the world. And ‘nothing’ is in it for us, except the satisfaction of participating in a wonderful project.”

I’m not the only one who’s a fan of the site. One of the top free apps in Amazon’s new app store (for Android smartphones and tablets) is an audiobook apps from travelingclassics.com. And it gives you easy access to all of the LibriVox audiobooks, plus specially-edited versions of the audiobooks as well as professionally narrated and recorded titles. If you don’t feel like listening to audiobooks on your Kindle, you can also try installing them on your smartphone.

I enjoyed reading the app’s web page, just to read comments from other fans of the audiobook files. There was someone who was already on chapter 44 of a novel by Charles Dickens — and another who was listening to a reading of the original horror book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I’ve been reading the literary children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows, and I was delighted to discover that there were three different versions! I’ve enjoyed using the text-to-speech option on my Kindle — but this offers a nice twist. Now I’m actually hearing the same books being read by a live narrator!

Of course, it’s also possible to download audio versions of the current best-sellers from Amazon’s audiobook store, Audible.com. (I’ve been intrigued by the chance to hear authors reading their own works.) But I think
the Librivox site offers another way to experience the joy of words — by letting you hear them in the voice of someone else who loves the book just as much as you do. I wonder if I could take a long car trip someday,
and leave my Kindle in the passenger seat to read to me. And at least one blogger hints that it makes you feel like you’re part of an invisible community.

“Literature fans looking for something beyond Oprah Winfrey’s book club are discovering a new kind of club on the Internet…”

Amazon adds Audio Books to the Kindle Store!

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A few minutes ago, Amazon made a big announcement. If you point your Kindle 3 to Amazon’s Kindle store, you’ll now see a new link at the top of the page — “Audible Audiobooks”. Amazon will now wirelessly deliver audio books — read by a human voice — directly to your Kindle 3 over a Wi-Fi connection! You can now purchase these audiobooks right there on your Kindle, including 3,747 mystery/thriller books, 5,255 children’s books, and 14,449 works of fiction.

“We’re very excited to announce that more than 50,000 Audible Audiobooks are now available for purchase or download on the latest Kindle via Wi-Fi delivery,” Amazon posted in the Kindle’s discussion forum at Amazon.com. And they’ll give you two free audio books — the digital version of a “book on tape” — if you sign up for a 30-day free trial! It’s always been an intriguing way to use your Kindle, and Amazon’s new policy should make it much easier to enjoy a new audio book. Prior to today, “you had to transfer it,” an Audible representative told me this morning. You’d use your web browser to download the audio book to your computer’s hard drive — and then you’d have to connect your USB cable to your Kindle, and manually upload the audio book.

“Now you can do either way,” she explained. Using your Kindle 3’s ability to make a WI-Fi connection to your computer, you can transmit the audio books directly into your Kindle…

Of course, you don’t have to listen to the audio book on a Kindle. You can also listen to the same file on your iPod, iPhone, or Blackberry, or even on an mp3 player. What they’re selling is the convenience of enjoying a book with your ears. “Now you can catch up on books even when you can’t read,” boasts Amazon’s web page, “during your commute, while working out, anytime and anywhere.”

I was surprised by the selection of audio books that are now available. There’s even an audio version of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and several books which are actually read to you by their author, including two by Jon Stewart and Donald Rumsfeld’s “Known and Unknown.” For the next three months, they’ll let new customers explore Audible’s service at a lower monthly subscription price — just $7.49 a month. (After three months, the cost of the subscription increases to $14.95.) These subscribers get one free audio book each month, plus a 30% discount on any subsequent audiobook purchase. And they’re even throwing in a free daily subscription to audio versions of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

But what’s also interesting is the way Amazon announced this change. They didn’t issue a press release. Instead they quietly slipped the news into Amazon’s Kindle discussion forum at Amazon.com. There was also a post on the official Twitter feed of the Amazon Kindle team. (“The latest Kindle now offers wireless delivery of more than 50,000 Audible Audiobooks via Wi-Fi.”) And of course, Amazon also snuck an announcement onto the Kindle’s official page on Facebook (at Facebook.com/Kindle)

The news created a small frenzy of excitement. (Within an hour more than 250 people had clicked the announcement’s “Like” icon.) And it’s been really fun to read the real-time reactions from Kindle owners. “isn’t the term ‘audible audiobook’ redundant?” someone asked — before being reminded that Audible is the name of the web site! But another user posted enthusiastically that “That is awesome I have been waiting for this option.

“I will be downloading audio tonight!”