[in hand]1001 Verses project - I need somebody to hold my hand!

[Ananisapta]

Good morning! I'm a retired MD with a sideline in vocal arts, including classical singing, radio hosting, and audio-book recording. I found Librivox by web search as a potential outlet for some of my work.

The immediate stimulus was a surprise phone call from a fan in France who had tracked me to my home in western NC to tell me, again, how much one of my recordings had meant to him. He was referring to an incomplete recording of The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night (Mardrus/Mathers translation). I had posted this on a website I was then managing but have since abandoned. My caller was wishing access to more material if it could be made available.

I don't know if I will ever get around to finishing that mammoth project, which would amount to nearly 100 CDs. I have about a third of it finished now. I haven't looked to see if you already have a copy. The subject material has its objectionable aspects, as slavery and sexual subjugation are routine themes. But...

I think some of the poetry is marvelous and might be more accessible to modern listeners. While taking a break from the main work, I manged to complete a collection of all the poems in the eight volumes. Each volume has two books, so this project amounts to sixteen folders totaling around 650 short poems, all as mp3 files (I also have all the texts that I transcribed from the books).

I tried e-mailing Librivox to see if anybody would be interested but haven't had a response after a week, so I decided to try this door. Obviously it's an active forum, so I'm hoping some considerate soul will take me under his wing -- recognizing that I've already put substantial time into this project -- and ease my way to publication.

[TriciaG]

Hmmm. Here are the steps I see to start on this project:

(1) provide a link or access to the texts so we can ensure they are out of copyright (must be published in 1924 or earlier. We accept scans of texts. If it's rendered into html, it must have a clear statement of the edition used in the transcription, or be from gutenberg.org. See HERE for our text policy)

(2) submit a sample (1 minute or less) of your audio file as a tech test to be sure the settings are all correct:
Bit rate: 128 kbps constant
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Mono
Volume: about 86-92 dB (I think about -18 LUFS)

Before actually submitting the files, you'll have to add on the LibriVox intro/outro to your recordings, FYI.

(Just to be sure: you realize these recordings will be released into the public domain, such that you will hold no rights to them, correct? Some professional audiobook narrators don't want to see their recordings sold/resold, used for profit, etc. - which is all 100% legal when they're released as LV recordings.)

[annise]

Sorry about the delay answering the email - the inbox has been overflowing but I'm happy to help you here it is simpler,
for us to be able to add them - and we would like to, it's just it does require some work from you - we do have format requirements that we need to use - both from a technical and legal side.
but, as Tricia says
step 1 is to check your source.

Anne

[Ananisapta]

Thanks for your responses!

(1) All volumes show 1923 as the date of publication. I can provide a scan of the copyright page from the 16th and final volume, if that will suffice. I know of no electronic source for this edition. How would I submit a jpg file?

(2) Most of these poems are under a minute long, some as short as 10 seconds. It would not be practical to "add on the LibriVox intro/outro" to all 650 short poems, and it would ruin the poetic nature of the project. I attached a sample mp3 both to my initial e-mail and to my follow-up that got me admitted to this forum. If you need me to send this another way, please tell me the steps.

I hope my work is "professional" but I'm mainly looking for a publisher, not income. Perhaps LibriVox is not the best publisher for this sort of material? If so, I'd be grateful for suggestions as to where I might look for further assistance.

[annise]

the source seems OK - and not only would it sound bad to use the disclaimer every poem., it would be impractical, as Archive is able to handle a maximum of 255 files per project . Without seeing the text it's impossible to tell you exactly how to split up the poems,
If they come grouped you could use that, or just pick a number and say
poems 11-40 or some other number
poems 41-80 etc
Could you give as the title of the book - we have some really good detectives here who may be able to find it somewhere.
So if you do the test or submit maximum 1 minute of something that conforms to our requirements, then together we can go about getting it set up. Post the test in Listeners and editors wanted (it's not an audition, it's just to get the bitrate etc right for us.
I know you have read them, I wonder if Archives Wayback Machine would have your old site somewhere?

Anne

[annise]

I've just reread your first post and realised you were talking about verses from the 1001 nights, sorry - I was a bit slow on the uptake. But it doesn't make any difference.

Anne

[ChristopherW]

Here's a digital copy from HathiTrust.

[annise]

Thank you,

[Ananisapta]

Thanks for all the input, but I'm unsure if we're approaching a solution.

I presume we're OK on copyright issues now, thanks to ChristopherW's investigation; the source he cited shows the same information that's on the title pages of the edition I own. This set was in our home when I was a boy, and came to me upon the death of my father.

What I now have is a little over 600 individual MP3 files, one for each short poem. I grouped them into sixteen folders according to which book they came from. There are fewer than a hundred per folder. Each folder also contains an HTML index file for that folder and a ZLINKS text file to assist formatting. Each folder also contains a sub-folder with the text of each poem in its own TXT file. Here's a typical looking index link: http://theinfosite.org/cgi-bin/autoplay.cgi/?poem=A%20Watcher&book=01 (which won't work today, of course, because the site's down).

If you're proposing that all the sound files in a folder be combined into a single MP3 file with the boilerplate at the beginning and end, that would be a job of work. It would also make it much harder for listeners to revisit a specific poem. Adding the boilerplate to the contents page as separate MP3 files would certainly be more satisfactory. Obviously this layout is intended for web access and might not work so well in other media.

So does anybody see a reasonable solution or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[annise]

I'm glad we found a text - that's great.

I think whichever way you go will take some work from you.
Each file we catalogue needs to have a release into PD - that is the legal advice we had originally when LV was begun.

I'll try and find some examples in the catalogue so you know what I mean.

Anne

[annise]

for example https://librivox.org/sing-song-a-nursery-rhyme-book-by-christina-rossetti/
This was a project done by a mother and young child of nursery rhymes. Many of which are quite small.
It has been done separately because they took turns and Mum did all the nonreading book
So yes each has a release and all the text under chapter for each file was entered by hand by the reader. 100 plus times.

but if say you joined the poems into story groups you'd need 1 release per group
and you would need to have say 6 sections and enter
Poems from <bookname> 6 times.

Do you have any sort of editing software ? . Before we go any further I think we need to know whether we can use them as they are. or what format changes you would need to make.Could you upload 1 and post the link the uploader gives ?

But if all this turns out too difficult - uploading them to Archive yourself would mean they are available and they do handle a greater variety there. But I've not given up yet

[MichaelMaggs]

Combining multiple MP3 files together into a few longer ones shouldn't be too difficult, as there are several free programs that will do that automatically. There's even a website that offers the service (https://audio-joiner.com/help/how_to_merge_mp3) though I don't know whether it would handle large numbers of files. Assuming that you don't have any intro/outro already on each, all you'd need to do then would be to record one intro/outro for each consolidated file. File format/volume etc could be easily adjusted at that stage if needed to fit with Librivox's requirements.

[schrm]

Just my two cents:
+ we have the short intro for these reasons. It's doable with cut and paste, even.

In my projects with short sections, i always thought:
+ i prefer the possibility of finding a text again.
+ In two cases, the book had one fable/poem per page - they decided to print it that way and ignored costs. I don't have costs when realising many short recordings.
+ And last but not least: Today, we don't use walkmans anymore, fiddling with the tape, fast forwarding etc. some apps have an automatic intro cutter, even.
To make long duration audio files would lead to people having to fast forward and searching, listening, is that before or after the part i want to find,....

...as written above: just my two cents

[Ananisapta]

Thanks for the clarifications and particularly the example of how I would need to reformat my project before it could be used by LibriVox. I think I'll spend some time looking at alternatives before going forward.