Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Read Happy Birthday! The Walkman Turns 30 and see this quote from Martyn Williams on the PCWorld website:
Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player thirty years ago this week, kicking off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry by changing the way people enjoy music.
I’d add audiobooks to the revolution, and believe that the combination [...]

Industry leaders react to APA sales survey results in Spoken-Word Audio Market Holds On, a Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot. Thoughtful comments on changes due to the economy, the library & bookstore markets, shifts from CD to downloads, DRM, and the increase in sales of pre-loaded Playway audiobooks.

Hate ripping titles using iTunes? A free download from Apple can help those with Apple computers: Audiobook Builder. Here’s more from the Apple website:
How do you move Audiobooks to your iPod or iPhone? Do you rip to iTunes, then move every imported track to a special playlist before syncing? That means hundreds of confusing track [...]

Audies award-winning author & narrator Davis Sedaris signs iPods & more for digital readers. Here’s a quote from Andrew Adam Newman’s New York Times article Kindle Joins a Literary Ritual: Authors Can Autograph It:
Mr. Sedaris wrote in a recent e-mail message that he has actually signed “at least five” Kindles, and “a fair number of [...]

This terrific look inside Full Cast Audio’s production of Eyes like Stars by Lisa Mantchev includes comments from actors, Full Cast founder Bruce Coville, artistic director Daniel Bostick, and more. I love seeing how the cast rehearses, how the script pages are marked, and to see & hear readers morph from actor to character. Lots [...]

Now this is awesome! Random House UK’s Book and Beyond offers added content to each eBook purchased and downloaded, from video clips to games & quizzes. Check out the terrific plus when The Book Thief is purchased – the reader chooses either to read the eBook or listen to the audiobook at the beginning of [...]

The power of the human voice is the foundation of the One Media Player per Teacher project. With the goal of breaking the bonds of poverty for those who live in areas where electricity and internet access are impossibilities, the OMPT project has developed amazing low-cost solar & hand-cranked audio and video players. Learn more [...]

Publishing times, they are a-changin’
Whether it’s a novel published by cell phone, as a podiobook, via Twitter, or a poem from Booker Prize winner Ben Okri tweeted line-by-line, literature has made the jump from printed page to computer cloud. Alexander McCall Smith, author of the marvelous No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, offers his newest book [...]

Publishing company Thomas Nelson wins my Audiobooker “Publisher-with-the-Right-Idea” award. Today’s Publisher Weekly carried a story by Lynn Andriani on NelsonFree, where we learn:
Once readers purchase a book with the NelsonFree logo, they are directed to a Web site where they register and answer a security question. They then can download an audio MP3 file and several [...]

Well, it looks as though Amazon has thought twice about the text-to-speech Kindle 2 capabilities. Here is an update from Business Wire where Amazon says:
Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or [...]