I guess I should unplug the mike...

JenniferLBE · Post by **JenniferLBE** » July 3rd, 2021, 4:44 pm

...seeing as how I have to unplug the mike to plug in the keyboard.

My name is Jennifer, clearly my username game is not on the creative side. I currently live in the northern Midwest, but I'm Marine brat so I lived in California when I was young, and a few other states over the years. I'm the oldest of 12 although I was an only until high school, and 6 or 7 of my siblings are young enough to be my kids because my folks became foster parents when I was in high school. I also homeschool one of my sisters. And I have cats (one of whom is glaring at me over the top of the keyboard because she has very definite ideas of what I should be doing at this time of day and sitting at the desk is not one of them :p

I hated being read to as kid, because it was sooo slooowww and I read so fast the other kids made fun of the way my eyes bounced from one side of the page to the other. But 2 or 3 years ago I got two books (Redwall and The BFG) from an Audible trial and my sister, who has reading disabilities, finally learned why I like books so much. (As an aside, I now have somewhere around 100 and they're not all just for her!) I used to think about what it might take to become an audio book narrator, but never with the drive to actually research it.

I discovered LibriVox from an Understood article about audio and text to speech reading options and when I saw that the readers are volunteers thought I'd see what's the lay of the land, saw that a nice mike was on sale on Amazon, and apparently I'm jumping into the deep end with both feet this weekend. When I told my sister what I bought the microphone for she asked if I can read books for her to listen to at night, because she "adores not abhors" Judy Moody, but she "abhors not adores" one of the two narrators so she's only listened to the books narrated by her adored reader.

So here's a question - if I record a book for only my sister to listen to, am I breaking copyright?

Another question (which I know I may stumble across as I read the FAQs but I have 8 tabs open and it seems like every article links to half a dozen more

) If a book is available in archive.org does that mean it's in public domain? When I was playing with the microphone last night before reading the actual instructions I used a book that is in public domain, and I got to thinking it would be amazing to record it if it's not already recorded (which I think it isn't) but "Forgotten Books" scanned and published they copy I have and they've marked it copyright 2012.

I'm off now to learn how to clean noise from a recording, it's nice to meet you.

Post by **TriciaG** » July 3rd, 2021, 5:55 pm

Welcome!

Technically, I do think it's breaking copyright to record just for your sister. But if you don't tell, who is going to know?

And no - Archive has copyrighted works also, so you can't assume their stuff is PD. Rule of thumb (there are exceptions, but this is a good starting point): works published more than 95 years ago are out of copyright. So this year we can work on books published in 1925.

Gutenberg.org mostly has stuff that's PD, and some newer stuff - mostly science fiction - that's newer than 1925 and PD. (It's PD due to not having had its copyright renewed.) Check the book information at Gutenberg; there's a line where it gives the copyright status. If it says "PD in the USA", then you're good.

What book are you looking at on Archive? We can see if it's PD or not.

JenniferLBE · Post by **JenniferLBE** » July 3rd, 2021, 6:10 pm

Thank you! The book title is "Father William Doyle" and the author is O'Rahilly or Alfred O'Rahilly. My book copy just has his last name, but some have his whole name.

There are 3 copies; it can be downloaded 15 different ways if I'm understanding it correctly, and it was published in 1922 originally, it's my paperback copy that says copyright 2012 or I would have assumed it was PD.

https://archive.org/details/fatherwilliamdoy00orahuoft
https://archive.org/details/MN5163ucmf_2/page/n11/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/FatherWilliamDoyleSJ

Post by **TriciaG** » July 3rd, 2021, 6:17 pm

Okay! Any of those 3 links would work OK for us. The hard copy version you have, they may have edited it such that it now has a new copyright. Or maybe there's an introduction that's new, and that's what's copyrighted.

It's safest to go with these 1922 scans.

JenniferLBE · Post by **JenniferLBE** » July 3rd, 2021, 6:30 pm

Huzzah!

Mind you, I may be jumping in the deep end of the pool, but I'm not diving into the ocean yet, so it will just be there in my mind until I have the lay of the land and the experience to tackle it.

Fun tangent; I perused the "why this isn't actually in PD" post and saw Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of Ingleside and it explains why those two books aren't in any of the Audible Anne compilations, nor have the same narrator as any of the other sets of Anne books!

Post by **TriciaG** » July 3rd, 2021, 6:31 pm

You're a wise lady.

Baby steps!

HandmadePSK · Post by **HandmadePSK** » October 19th, 2021, 8:46 am

JenniferLBE wrote: ↑July 3rd, 2021, 6:30 pm Mind you, I may be jumping in the deep end of the pool, but I'm not diving into the ocean yet, so it will just be there in my mind until I have the lay of the land and the experience to tackle it.

From little things, big things grow) (yes, that`s Etsy`s motto)

It`s so curious to read your post and I`m sure you have many other stories to tell!

Thank you for coming, Jennifer!

I believe this experience will bring a lot of joy to you, your dears, and various people all around the globe. For many, many years.

The warmest welcome and all the best wishes!