Audiobook Project: A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. Children have become the soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

-Ishmael Beah

My Choice in Audiobook

I was given the assignment to make an audiobook from a book of our choice. The book that I picked was, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. I first read this book for my freshman orientation at Utah State University in 2008. As a part of the orientation, we were required to read the book and would be having, Ishmael Beah as a guest speaker at the end of the orientation. I really loved the book and was happy to purchase the audio files for this project.

The Project

I was assigned to build an audiobook and remake the cover art to something more modern. The project requirements were:

▪One AudioBook with a minimum of 5 bookmarks/chapters with corresponding images.

▪Images “must” have a consistent design and properly added to the file as metadata.

▪Metadata i.e., titling, author, etc., “must” be properly planned, organized, and successfully implemented for the a player and device environment.

▪Properly encode, test and document AudioBook design on at least 1 device.

▪Project must be fully documented paper of your entire process in a Medium article (medium.com).

Tools Used

For this project I used Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Audiobook Builder, and iTunes.

The Process

I first uploaded the image that I wanted in to Photoshop to size the image, while keeping the best quality that I could get. Once the image was sized to 2400 pt x 2400 pt, I transferred the image to Illustrator to add the title of the book to the cover art.

I also make individual layouts for each chapter. I used the same picture, colors and font to maintain a consistent feel to the cover art.

Making the Audiobook

To make the audiobook, I used Audiobook Builder. It was a frustrating program to use. I quickly found out that I needed to purchase a license for the program, because the trial program would not allow me to have multiple chapters. The price for Audiobook Builder was around $4.99, so I was willing to pay for all the features the program had to offer.

With Audiobook Builder, I was able to add all the meta data needed for the audiobook. It allowed me to add my cover art and chapter art. I was able to title individual chapters and what information was presented to the user.

The Final

After hours of teaching myself how to use Audiobook Builder, the project went really smoothly. The programs worked well together and allowed me to make a completed audiobook using images from the internet and audio files. The audiobook works on both my computer and iPad Pro. The meta data that I added to the audiobook showed. In the end, it looked and acted like an audiobook that I would purchase online.