Comments

Tom,

I purchased The Little Big Things from iTunes. Two things:

1) As you said "Thomas J Peters" finds it, and "Tom Peters" brings up all you other books but not your new one. It's easy to blame "search" but Apple iTunes search is works on a model of accurate search and I think rightly assumes that Joan Jett is not likely to change her name to Joan M Larkin any time soon.

2) It's in two volumes so when you burn it to a CD for listening in the car your stuffed when you wife removes it and puts in Metallica for example - you can never find you spot again. No audio chapters is a bad idea and sloppy audio production from you outsourced audio guys.

I like what I have heard so far, but I am going to have to spend 20 minutes on the CD audio advance button tomorrow to pick up where I left off at 1.5 hours in.

Posted by Jason Bresnehan at March 16, 2010 3:47 AM

jason, i was under the impression that the audiobook did have chapters. i'll check with the audio folks to see what happened.
-erik

Posted by erik hansen at March 16, 2010 12:26 PM

brian, i emailed with the audio guy who says the audio is divided up into chapters but that certain vendors such as iTunes and Audible combine it all into one chunk, figuring that the consumer is going to listen to the product on an iPod or similar type of device that has its own tracking system. so burning it on to a CD will leave you with one or two long segments. (as you've already discovered.)

Posted by erik hansen at March 16, 2010 2:20 PM

Thanks Erik.

Old Apple forcing hardware habits again! I think they have made a big mistake not putting a USB port on the iPad. This means in Australia for example that you cant get a portable wireless connection because these are provided by the telcos as a USB device.

You will have to check whether they were allowed to do the combination as part of their distribution agreement. I have bought a lot of other audio books from iTunes with numerous chapters. The Long Tail comes to mind as an example of this.

I certainly would be getting the "Author" search details changed to "Tom Peters" as a lot of potential sales could be lost if people cant find it.

Posted by Jason Bresnehan at March 16, 2010 4:22 PM

jason, interesting to know about the wireless connection issues in Australia. didn't know that. as for what iTunes has done, i'll look into that, though our audio guy seemed to think that that was S.O.P. at iTunes. and yes, we'll look into changing search, but as you can imageine, it's not easy. we have no direct relationship with iTunes and trying to get these things corrected is, well, tough. but we'll give it a whirl.

Posted by erik hansen at March 17, 2010 9:18 AM