Me and My Kindle

Amazon Books shared a surprising announcement this week. On Facebook, they’re publicizing the “5th Annual Tournament of Audiobooks!” It’s a head-to-head competition to determine which audiobook is the most popular — as determined by an online vote. The tournament will be conducted by Audible.com — the audiobook service that Amazon purchased in 2008 — and they’ve structured the competition like the “March madness” playoffs…complete with brackets!

You can check out all the action at audible.com/tournament — but Audible also shared a very interesting announcement about the 32 audiobooks. You can download their first chapters for free!

You can listen to the audiobooks or their sample chapters on any Kindle (except the newest $79 Kindle) — and it’s quite a selection. Audible’s selected the “contending” audiobooks from four different categories — including “customer favorites”, best-sellers, the “critically acclaimed” audiobooks, and their editors’ picks. You can also listen to the audiobooks (or their sample chapters) on Audible apps, which are available for the Android devices, the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Blackberry devices. Here’s a complete list of the 32 audibooks that are competing this year to become “the Champion of Audiobooks.”

Best-Sellers
Bossypants by Tina Fey (narrated by Tina Fey)
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (narrated by Dylan Baker)
11-22-63 by Stephen King (Narrated by Craig Wasson)
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (narrated by Peter Giles)
The Litigators by John Grisham (narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris)
Against All Enemies by Tom Clancy (narrated by Steven Weber)
A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five by George R. R. Martin (narrated by Roy Dotrice)

Dead Reckoning: Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery #11 by Charlaine Harris (narrated by Johanna Parker)

Customer Favorites
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (narrated by Wil Wheaton)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (narrated by Jim Dale)
The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (narrated by Davina Porter)
Relic: Pendergast, Book 1 by Douglas Preston (narrated by David Colacci)
How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper (narrated by Amanda Ronconi)

Helter Skelter: the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry (narrated by Scott Brick)

The Wise man’s Fear: Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2 by Patrick Rothfuss (narrated by Nick Podehl)

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (narrated by Jennifer Ikeda)

Editor’s Picks
Just Kids by Patti Smith (narrated by Patti Smith)
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (narrated by Hope Davis)
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (narrated by Rebecca Lowman)
My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley (narrated by Ralph Cosham)
Delirium by Lauren Oliver (narrated by Sarah Drew)

Solaris: the Definitive Edition by Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnson (narrated by Alessandro Juliani)

The Psychopath Test: a Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson (narrated by Jon Ronson)

The Informationist: A Thriller by Taylor Stevens (narrated by Hillary Huber)

Critically Acclaimed
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (narrated by David Pittu)
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (narrated by Richard Morant)
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (narrated by Holter Graham)

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva (narrated by Jeff Woodman, Bruce DeSilva)

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (narrated by Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett)

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (narrated by Stephen Greenblatt)

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool (narrated by Jenna Larmia, Cassandar Campbell, Kirby Heyborne)

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (narrated by Susan Duerden, Robin Sachs)


And the first round of voting has already begun! Audible created a special web page for the tournament (at audible.com/tournament ) for casting votes, warning participants that the first-round votes must be received by next Monday, March 26th. And to pump up the excitement, they’ve even filmed some funny videos about the online competition. (Watch the videos online at tinyurl.com/AudiobookBrackets

I have to admit, it looks like everyone’s having a lot of fun. Like a real sportscast, it’s got its own flashy intro music with synthesized drums, seguing into the roar of a cheering crowd and two faux sportscasters covering all the action. “This is the Stanley Cup of digital audiobooks,” barks announcer Jake Jacobson. “Every week for the next five weeks, the top audiobooks will face off in single-elimination match-ups, right here at audible.com/tournament…

“And with eight seeds in each region, you can expect non-stop, run-and-gun action.”

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…”

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!”