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The Wealth of LibriVox
Classic texts, amateur audiobooks, and the grand future of online peer production
In the dim, humid basement of his Maryland home, Michael Scherer, a tall 38-year-old with the long, square beard of a mandolin player or a monk, leans toward a rebuilt Russian tube microphone, desperate for silence so he can begin recording a 200-year-old essay by an American founding father. Even in the makeshift studio he has constructed, with thick blankets hanging from nails in the joists and the basement windows plugged with fiberglass, the sounds of lawnmowers, car alarms, birds, air conditioners, and children kicking balls in the street still intrude. “I have to hold on a minute here—there’s a, there’s a truck,” he says. A few seconds later, the truck passes, and he reads in his deep, resonant voice, “The Federalist.” He stops, clears his throat, and begins again. “The Federalist, No. 19.”
Scherer posts some of his recordings to LibriVox, an online community of several thousand people all over the world who read and record public domain books, then post them as podcasts that can be downloaded for free. Some LibriVoxers read; others proof, tag, and catalog the sound files, greet newbies, or manage ongoing book projects. After about a year and a half, LibriVox’s catalog contains more than 400 completed works, including novels, poems, histories, travel books, and plays, making it one of the largest audiobook publishers. The goal? To record every book in the public domain, which means everything published before 1923.
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Libraries - a new source of free audiobooks
With the development of portable cassette recorders audiotapes had become very popular and by the late 1960s libraries became a source of free audio books on cassettes. Instructional and educational recordings came first followed by self-help tapes, and then by literature and fiction. In 1970 Books on Tape Corporation started rental plans for audio books distribution. The company expanded their services selling their products to libraries. Audio books gained more and more popularity. By the middle of 1980s the audio publishing business grew to several billion dollars a year. The new companies, Recorded Books and Chivers Audio Books, were the first to develop integrated production teams and to work with professional actors. And since libraries made up the largest segment of their market space, Chivers Audio Books established close connections with them from the very beginning of the company's existence.
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