Can the audiobook experience be improved?
Using AudioBook Builder to create an enhanced audiobook
Background
Audiobooks are great. One of the best things about audiobooks is the ability to listen while doing other things. Despite the popularity of audiobooks often the experience doesn’t get the focus it deserves. The book cover is often scaled down to fit the dimensions of an audiobook. Audiobooks are usually designed as an extension of the book, not focused on as its own experience
My goal is to go through the process of creating an audiobook and see if I can make the experience a little more immersive. I will be creating the audiobook in Audiobook Builder for Mac. Audiobook Builder is a cool app that allows you to combine multiple mp3 files into a single M4B file. Apple m4b files are a great way to listen to audiobooks. These files are bookmarkable so place in the book is saved when the app is quit. I will be creating an audiobook for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Cover Design and Chapter Art
Previous covers of The Great Gatsby have been well designed, but none have really focused on the Art Deco style and glamour of the 20s. This is more of the feel I wanted to go for with my cover. I wanted to create a simple cover designed for the square dimensions of an audiobook.
Audiobook Builder lets you upload individual art for each chapter of the book. This is a good way to go above and beyond to create a more immersive experience. I tried to take advantage of this by including a little progress bar underneath each chapter number. So by looking at the chapter art, you can know what chapter you are on, but also visualize progress through the book.
Creating the Audiobook
Getting into Audiobook Builder
I started by placing all my mp3 files into a folder and importing them into audiobook builder.
After the files were imported, I arranged them into the right chapter order. After the chapters are in, you can edit the chapters name and import your chapter art. It is cool because even though the final result is one M4B file on your device it still displays each individual chapter as you go through the book.
Next, we move onto the build options. The Great Gatsby has nine chapters and is only a little over five hours. I choose to create one larger M4B files opposed to smaller broken up files. I think the one larger file is easier to use and looks a lot cleaner. Once you have finished with the different build options you can create your audiobook and have it import directly into iTunes.
Overall Audiobook Builder was a great app for this project. However, one problem I did have was with the cover and chapter art image quality. No matter what type of high-quality image file I tried the output was always a low-quality image. I couldn’t find any fixes and hope this is addressed in future updates of the app.
Metadata
Metadata may not be the most exciting but it is a very important part of any digital project. I edited the metadata for my audiobook in iTunes.
I had some trouble figuring out where to put the narrator’s name in the metadata. It seemed weird to include his name in the author field. I decided to put it in the title since it isn’t too long of a title and shows who wrote it vs who narrated it. I decided to include a quote from the book in the comments. iTunes also allows you to enter a description of the audiobook. The trick is that there is a 255 characters limit. This seemed like a lot when I looked it up but it was hard to condense a summary of the book to that many characters.
Testing
iPhone
I tested my audiobook on three different devices to see how the metadata was presented on different platforms. I started by testing the audiobook on my iPhone. The M4b file transferred easily into the iBooks app.
The interesting thing to me was that while listening the title listed in the metadata isn’t shown. The information that actually is displayed is listed under the chapter field in the iTunes metadata. But besides that things are displayed as you would expect.
Apple Watch
Next I wanted to test on Apple Watch to see if the information is displayed any differently.
The metadata is displayed pretty much the same. The only difference is how the chapter and author fields are displayed. On Apple Watch they are swapped so the author is listed first and the chapter field is listed second.
Android
Since m4b is mainly an apple format I wanted to test it on android to see how an Android device would handle it. I found that Android devices can’t natively play m4b files so I had to download an audiobook app to play it. I did some research and found Voice Audiobook Player.
It was able to play the file but most of the metadata wasn't shown. It only showed the chapter number but it didn’t include the chapter and author metadata fields. It also didn’t include my chapter art.
Conclusion
Through this process, I learned the essentials of creating an audiobook. And the importance of putting thought into designing an immersive experience. By putting in more time and focusing on the Audiobook experience you can create a unique and immersive experience
Spencer Wright is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. This article relates to the audiobook project in the DGM 2260 (Immersive Authoring) course and representative of the skills learned.
