Book Not Ready for Print? You Can Whip Up an Audiobook for a Podcast for Now
Mignon Fogarty put together an audiobook in just a few days of a book that will appear next year.
When you are a budding author and you appear on television, it is sure to enhance book sales.
But what do you do if your book is not even written, never mind in stores?
For Mignon Fogarty, who is host of a popular podcast called Grammar Girl, the answer is to scramble to record a short audiobook in just a few days between the time the show tapes and is shown.
Ms. Fogarty signed a contract a few months ago with Henry Holt & Company, the publisher, but her book is not scheduled to appear until next year. Meanwhile, her audiobook climbed to the top of iTunes’ best-selling books list after she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Ms. Fogarty’s feat comes at a time when Henry Holt and other presses are rethinking their audiobook divisions, which have negligible marketing budgets and typically ride on the coattails of the hardcovers. Because audiobooks are so fast, inexpensive and easy to record, the dynamic seems to be changing, with publishers looking to the audio format to fuel interest in paper books that aren’t quite ready for the printing press.
And with the ubiquity of iPods, that interest can be generated quickly: recordings need not be pressed onto CDs and packaged, but can quickly be uploaded to iTunes. Sometimes these recordings will be made with well-known authors whose next release isn’t quite ready for bookstores, and other times with newcomers like Ms. Fogarty whose work has gained a following another way.
Ms. Fogarty said that when she was first contacted by Ms. Winfrey’s show, she thought, “I’m going on ‘Oprah.’ Gosh, I wish my book were done.”
Unlike most authors, Ms. Fogarty owns a mixing board for recording her podcasts, which allowed her to gin up a quickie audio version of the book she plans to write. The effort was spearheaded by Mary Beth Roche, publisher of Audio Renaissance, the audiobook division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, which also publishes Henry Holt.
About 100,000 people a week download her free podcasts, which consist of five minutes of grammar tips, from grammar.qdnow.com and iTunes. She produces them on about $600 worth of equipment in her home in Gilbert, Ariz., she said. (When the phone or doorbell rings, or the central air-conditioner kicks on, she stops and re-records.)
“I was working on the book on the airplane on the way home” from Chicago after recording the “Oprah” segment, Ms. Fogarty said. That was March 21, a Wednesday. By that Friday, she had finished the recording, and it was sent electronically to Audible.com, which provides audiobooks through Apple’s iTunes and on its own Web site.
On March 26, the day the show was broadcast, iTunes’ home page highlighted “Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing,” an hourlong audiobook that could be downloaded for $4.95. By the end of that week, Ms. Fogarty’s presentation had bumped “The Secret,” the advice book that espouses positive thinking which also had been promoted by Ms. Winfrey, from the top spot.
“ ‘The Secret,’ is the phenom of the moment, and here we are basically improvising, creating a digital audiobook in a matter of days, and out of nowhere we’re No. 1 on iTunes,” said John Sterling, the president and publisher of Henry Holt.
He placed the number of sales in the thousands, but would not specify; Ms. Fogarty’s audiobook remains among the top 10 sellers on iTunes.
“We didn’t break out Champagne because we weren’t selling tens of thousands, but we certainly broke out the sparkling water,” Mr. Sterling said. “We are accustomed to working with product cycles one measures in months, but in this case we were working with a product cycle of days and even hours.”
An audiobook would normally appear after — or simultaneously with — a published book, not before. “Traditionally, we would see the audiobook as the tail on the dog, and here the tail is wagging the dog,” Mr. Sterling said.
Other publishers also are experimenting with such changes, including Hachette Audio (formerly Time Warner Audiobooks), which in 2005 released the audio version of Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” on Audible and iTunes several weeks before the book.
“Publishers always want to hit the best-seller list at No. 1, and there had been some concern that releasing an audio version first would drain away sales from the hardcover,” said Beth Anderson, senior vice president of Audible, which, along with iTunes, had brisk download sales before Mr. Stewart’s book and a CD-format audiobook were simultaneously released. “But the publisher told us releasing the audio helped to sell the print version, because having the audio out there really helped to build the buzz for the book.”
Publishers also increasingly are releasing recordings that may never materialize in book form. Simon & Schuster Audio, for example, will put out Jimmy Carter’s “Measuring our Success: Sunday Mornings in Plains,” the second of three collections of the former president teaching adult Bible classes, on May 15.
On May 22, Simon & Schuster will release “You: On a Walk,” an original audiobook by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz, authors of “You: On a Diet.” (The authors speak during half-hour walks that are integral to the diet.) Simon & Schuster has also released audio-only versions of Stephen King reading his stories.
Ms. Anderson of Audible called the alternative format “a great way to bring a new audience in” for popular works. “It helps to have a steady stream of product from major authors so we have something to sell between their big books,” she said.
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本地大學指考放榜， 7.69分擠進大學「窄門」不是新聞；最新的教育部調查，驚見從國小到高中職學生，無法正確用標點符號，作文「一逗到底」，最後加個句號了事。國家未來主人翁的基本能力讓人嘖嘖稱奇、頭皮發麻，難怪一加考作文，滿街作文補習班家教班私塾班擠破頭。 好消息是，台灣人國語文能力爛，美國人的「英文力」也糟透了。別以為美國人說寫母語不出錯，新近美國書市就冒出一本跌破英文老師眼鏡的紙本書《文法妹英文 作文大賤招》（Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing），同時發行有聲版，引發話題。作者蜜儂‧佛卡提（Mignon Fogarty）一年前在網路架設「文法妹大賤招」網站，自製個人廣播「播客」（podcast）解說常見文法疑問，聽眾下載踴躍，快速破七百萬人次。 「光聽不容易學會，最好有文字可讀」，網站特別提供文字內容，最近編輯精華出書，向粉絲的荷包進攻。 大學英文系畢業，還有史丹福生物碩士頭銜的佛卡提，以「文法妹」之名網路爆紅，不但獲選2007年全美最佳播客網站，更成功搶進家喻戶曉的歐普拉脫口秀，主流媒體如《紐約時報》、《華爾街日報》爭相報導。 佛卡提標榜「無痛」學習法主張：「讓人頭痛的不是文法，而是用法，如何挑選正確的單字和片語。」她擅用輕鬆幽默的舉例，讓聽／讀者更容易理解箇中竅門，像 nauseous和nauseated的差別，although及while、lay和lie如何分，who和whom各用在什麼場合，affect和 effect哪裡不同。既然談作文，她也沒漏掉標點符號，還提供商用書信、電子郵件不同文體的實務技巧，連字型和段落間距也有建議。 惱人的文法規則百百種，佛卡提不吝分享她的記憶巧技。「我的記憶力特差」，總要想出最簡單的牢記法則；她舉例：different後該接from而非 than，因為different有兩個f，而from就以f開頭，「沒什麼大創意，就是好記」。光聽／讀不練沒用，佛卡提奉送一句老生常談：熟能生巧。 「就我的經驗，實際練習最重要。我會再三查索文法規則，都是因為記不住；但只要照文法寫個短句就忘不了。」 書中舉的例子看得出「文法妹」的另類，像cannot和can not兩種拼法都行，但cannot較常見。快速記憶大賤招是想像一個魔術師用紅蘿蔔逗弄兔子，邊說：「You cannot have the carrot.」，把carrot（紅蘿蔔）兩個r往下寫到底，瞧，carrot變成了cannot。 再說between／among之分：between 用在兩樣東西、among是兩樣以上。大賤招要你記住：Steve dreaded choosing between the bees（蜜蜂）and the tweens（少年）.。但有例外，如果分指個別不同的東西，即使兩個以上也用between，如She chose between Harvard, Brown, and Yale.，因為三所大學各自獨立；若是集體統稱，就是She chose among the Ivy League schools.。 I feel bad about that.和I feel badly about that.差別何在？「文法妹」也細說分明：feel bad表達情緒、feel badly暗示觸覺出了問題；因為副詞badly修飾動詞，feel意指「觸碰」。「聽人說I feel badly，我會想到他是身在黑暗的房間中，麻木的手指沒辦法摸索到出路。」 |
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