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"Alone Together" Kindle and Audiobook Editions

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Audio book thumbnail YouTube.jpg

The audiobook version of "Alone Together: Sailing Solo to Hawaii and Beyond" is now available on Amazon books and through other sources.

Here's the sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDUKoeHpD-c

I did the recording myself in my home studio, and found it a hill to climb.

ACX, the company that handles the tech aspects, has high marks to hit regarding RMS levels, noise gates, compression and so on. The ratio of performance to post-production is 5:1, meaning that for every ten minutes of reading you face an hour or so of editing the waveform and balancing all the variables that ACX's algorithms, and human QC staff, insist must be right.

The reason given is that the final files, which are mp3s, are further massaged for various applications. They have to work with headphones, on computer speakers, and on a car radio at 70 mph.

Audible sets the sales price, depending on hos long the book is (this one is a little more than 11 hours).

Professional narrators offer to narrate titles for 50 percent of the take, and an author can audition them from samples they provide. There's a whole world of people out there doing this in home studios, although I don't know how many of them make a living at it.

All in all, it was an interesting foray into audio engineering--and left me with respect for the field.

And hoarse for a week, which my wife found made the house much quieter.
 
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Tomwine

Member II
Just downloaded from Audible

attachment.php


The audiobook version of "Alone Together: Sailing Solo to Hawaii and Beyond" is now available on Amazon books and through other sources.

Here's the sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDUKoeHpD-c

I did the recording myself in my home studio, and found it a hill to climb.

ACX, the company that handles the tech aspects, has high marks to hit regarding RMS levels, noise gates, compression and so on. The ratio of performance to post-production is 5:1, meaning that for every ten minutes of reading you face an hour or so of editing the waveform and balancing all the variables that ACX's algorithms, and human QC staff, insist must be right.

The reason given is that the final files, which are mp3s, are further massaged for various applications. They have to work with headphones, on computer speakers, and on a car radio at 70 mph.

Audible sets the sales price, depending on hos long the book is (this one is a little more than 11 hours).

Professional narrators offer to narrate titles for 50 percent of the take, and an author can audition them from samples they provide. There's a whole world of people out there doing this in home studios, although I don't know how many of them make a living at it.

All in all, it was an interesting foray into audio engineering--and left me with respect for the field.

And hoarse for a week, which my wife found made the house much quieter.

The Kindle edition should be out Sept. 1.

Should be a great one to listen to. Thanks
 

Lucky Dog

Member III
Had to pull over in a wayside, but needed to finish your audio book before finishing my road trip.
Wow... What great story teller. I had trouble following the paper version, I'm not a great reader. The audio version was a fun trip with you. Some of the happenings I too have experienced, other make want to follow your wake.
Thanks for going to the effort of doing the audio version. And as I type this I am listening to my most recently down load...Thelonious Monk. Someday perhaps we can share a cookie, cup of coffee, a sail and story or two.

mark
 

bgary

Advanced Beginner
Blogs Author
Just about to load my iPad for the next trip... any hints when Amazon might publish the Kindle version?
 

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Thanks for asking, Bruce.

The Kindle edition is a week or two away--technical problems and I keep sending it back for revision. Very hard for the team to get the fonts working across so many platforms, apparently a common ebook conversion issue.

No complaints (so far) about the audio book, but I am also having that re-engineered. If you hear a problem with pops and clicks let me know.

Mark--glad you liked it. I am still hoarse.
 
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Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Thanks, Bruce. You saw it before I did. I am relieved to say it turned out well in the end.

https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Together-Sailing-Hawaii-Beyond/dp/099725310X

Ebooks turn out to be complicated creations, and this one took months for my team to figure out.

Most books today are published in the final form of PDF. But it turns out that PDFs do not easily translate into ebooks, which have special needs.

And it is remarkable what they do. This version is readable on more than ten separate platforms, from a computer screen to iPad, iPhone, Kindle readers and all the competition.

That means fonts must be recognized, type size be changeable, tables handled, and photo layouts bent or hammered into shape in all orientations or choices.

I rejected three versions because they failed on one or another device.

The one element not solvable was pagination, for which the answer is a table of contents.

I have not been a big fan of ebooks myself in the past, but nowadays I find myself reading on my iPhone 6, which has a screen just big enough to make a book work--if you're in a bus station and it is snowing.

Still, I am rarely in bus stations much anymore, and for snow I have to drive five hours.

Anyhow, we to live in the present world. The past is a dusty place full of typewriters and correction fluid.
 

bolbmw

Member III
Well done Christian!

Today I found myself flying from the west coast of Vancouver Island to Florida and realized I had nothing new to read! Getting a copy of 'Alone Together' made the long days flights go by quickly, I couldn't put it down. Great read, even after reading your blog posts here and seeing your YouTube videos. I can see myself doing the same at some point and I found it inspirational.

My only ponderings now are what is 'Beyond' and your plans with that E38... ;)
 

Grizz

Grizz
A memorable halicination...

Although not the result of sailing solo, sleep deprivation on a fully crewed boat 50+ hours into a race with little-to-no sleep was still in effect @ 2300 CDT as the storm built wind & waves from the NW, culminating in 75 knot wind and 10'+ waves, illuminated only when lightning lit and blinded us, reverting quickly to pitch black darkness.

This is the hallucination that convinced it was time to give up the helm. There was no 3-drawer chest to starboard, lurking with the top 1/3 peeking above the surface.

A crew member, who is a graphic artist, recreated what the mind's eye witnessed and remembered, producing a shudder months removed when opened and viewed for the 1st time, recreating the exact feeling of that moment.

Hallucinations, a part of sailing...
 

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Grizz

Grizz
Unfortunate imagery...

The imagery of Queequeg's coffin is painfully too appropriate in this instance, as 2 sailors died in the same storm @ 8 nm WSW of us about the same time the 'dresser' was witnessed (or not!). The crew of that boat did everything right: aware that the storm was immanent, went to 'bare poles', had the entire crew on deck and secured. Unfortunately, the boat ('Wing Nuts') was built with port/starboard apertures (wings) that are presumed to have caught the wind just wrong, inducing a violent capsize, sending the entire crew into the lake. The 2 deaths were from head trauma, not drowning.

These 2 deaths were the 1st in this race, held over a span of 104 years (2011). Our boat survived this storm, and the race, with essentially an 'All Rookie Crew', my 1st as 'Person in Charge', the other 5 as their 1st Chicago to Mackinac. We probably wouldn't have been allowed to race the following year with the same level of experience, as the rules tightened appreciably, including many additional safety regulations and use of a Stability Index value, excluding several boat designs.

Before we were aware of the capsize and deaths, as the hallucination was being revealed, the correlation of coffin to dresser was made: the drawer pulls were initially thought to be coffin handles...until the middle drawer was 'seen'.

The mind does play tricks!
 

fool

Member III
Latitude 38 book review

In every December issue, Latitude 38 lists 10 or so book reviews that might make good holiday gifts. This year Alone Together made the list as recommended reading. It was delightful and pleasing to see the review, especially as I suspect Santa is going to drop a copy into my stocking (which has been hung by the keel stepped mast with care.)

I'll risk an abbreviated paraphrase in lieu of quoting the entire review. (My copy of the Latitude is now recycled reading in the marina facilities.) The gist of the two or three paragraphs is "in a sea of mediocre wannabes this one sticks to your ribs."

Job well done sir! Here's to sticky ribs...
 

Jeff Asbury

Principal Partner
Thank you!

View attachment 19878

The audiobook version of "Alone Together: Sailing Solo to Hawaii and Beyond" is now available on Amazon books and through other sources.


Thank you Christian, I have just now got around to listening to you on Amazon Audible. Listening on my daily commutes. Really enjoying your writing and narration. Planing on acquiring a new vessel this year and casting off for parts unknown within the next two years. Your book is proving to be as valuable as Sir Francis Charles Chichester's Alone Across the Atlantic but brings the experience challenges up to date. :egrin:
 
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