LibriVox Forum

I'd like to BC a Group project to read "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries" by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Here's a link to the text:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34853

Looks interesting! I'll probably pick up a section or two if you start it.

mightyfelix wrote:Looks interesting! I'll probably pick up a section or two if you start it.

Thank you, MightyFelix! I think it looks interesting too. It's good to know that there are others like you who might be interested in recording a section or two.

Ealswythe,

There is a buncha prep work needed here before you could launch a project to offer this book. You won't be able to just use the chapters as in the book now for sections - for example the 200 page Chapter 2 will need to be broken into pieces that readers can handle; maybe some of the other sections need to be cut up too - I didn't look in detail. I usually set up a table of sections in excel and keep track of where exactly I want to put all the section breaks to get sections that average between 3000-6000 words - that means 30-60 sections for the entire 175,000 word book. (I copied the text into Word to see how big it was - there are other aids that will do the word counting via the web but I don't have any of them.) And you will have to figure out how you will name all the sections so it will all come out right in the catalog and recorded intros - "Section 22", or "Chapter 2 Part 5", or whatever. Later on you can cut and paste the info from the table into the MW once that has been set up.

Once you are complete with the prep work, then you fill out the online template in the launch pad forum and post there to get an MC to set up the blank MW for you to copy your data into.

I'll be glad to answer questions as you go through the process.

Thanks, Todd

ToddHW wrote:Ealswythe,

There is a buncha prep work needed here before you could launch a project to offer this book. You won't be able to just use the chapters as in the book now for sections - for example the 200 page Chapter 2 will need to be broken into pieces that readers can handle; maybe some of the other sections need to be cut up too - I didn't look in detail. I usually set up a table of sections in excel and keep track of where exactly I want to put all the section breaks to get sections that average between 3000-6000 words - that means 30-60 sections for the entire 175,000 word book. (I copied the text into Word to see how big it was - there are other aids that will do the word counting via the web but I don't have any of them.) And you will have to figure out how you will name all the sections so it will all come out right in the catalog and recorded intros - "Section 22", or "Chapter 2 Part 5", or whatever. Later on you can cut and paste the info from the table into the MW once that has been set up.

Once you are complete with the prep work, then you fill out the online template in the launch pad forum and post there to get an MC to set up the blank MW for you to copy your data into.

I'll be glad to answer questions as you go through the process.

Thanks, Todd

Wow! Thank you, Todd! this sounds like it would be a bit too complicated for now. I have a lot of other projects I'm working on, but if and when I do decide to take this one on, I will pm you for some help! Thank you so much!

Don't PM - do it here in the forum. This process may interest many folks and should be shared.

For example, here is part of the table I made for the book Abe and Mawruss that is currently underway (see my signature link for the real MW). You will see that I had to split chapters 3 and 5 into two parts to keep the reading length reasonable, and then I searched for a good paragraph in the chapter at which to make the break, indicating the "read until" and the "read from" for each side of the break:

Section____Chapter____Title_________________Words___Note________________________________________
___1________1_____Sympathy_______________6700
___2________2_____The Judgement of Paris____7300
___3________3_____Dead Men's Shoes, Part 1__4900___Read until "You come with me and we'll sell this house to a feller I know."
___4________3_____Dead Men's Shoes, Part 1__5900___Read from "When Max Gershon entered the salesroom"
___5________4_____The Raincoat King________7400
___6________5_____A Return to Arcady, Part 1_5500___Read until "I need a vacation and I'm going to have it too."
___7________5_____A Return to Arcady, Part 1_3600___Read from "When Morris returned to his place of business"
(more)

Not hard, just takes a bit of time to make sure that you are actually ready for readers of your chosen book before you open the project up for them.

Thanks, Todd

Thank you, Todd! I'm familiar with that format, because I read a section for "Haunted London," where they specify, in the MW, "Read from...... until......." As you say, it takes some preparation beforehand, to get the word count to a reasonable amount for readers. I don't have excel, but in Pages on my MacBook, I'm sure I would be able to figure out the word count of each chapter, then separate them accordingly. This is definitely I will do, when I decide to get started on this project. I'll post here, as you said.
Thank you!