The Biz

Monday evenings, I typically grab an hour to listen to my favorite podcast, This Week in Tech (TWiT) hosted by Leo Laporte, with frequent guests John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton and others who analyze the weekly news in from the world of technology.

Seeing as Audible is their major sponsor, I knew the time would come when they discussed recording audiobooks, the time required and how much narrators get paid.

Well, I've got some answers for you.

Audiobook Market

Pat Fraley reports on Vox Daily that:

According to my friend and president of Blackstone Audio, Craig Black, this figure will balloon to 24,000 over the next four years. Why? Because of the success of downloadable audiobooks on the Internet.

Industry news source Voice Over Times reports:

Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Audible, the audiobook website for a transaction value of approximately $300 million.

In short, the audiobook industry is red hot!

Audiobook Narrators

Audiobook publishers need all sorts of talents and sounds. If you have struggled because you sound like you’re 16, or 60, guess what? There are audiobook projects out there that need your sound. It is just a matter of finding the door where the welcome mat is ready and waiting.

Do You Need an Agent?

In the Billion $ Read, Pat Fraley explains that there is no need to go through an agent. Audiobook publishers deal directly with the voice talent. That's you Leo.

Time Required

As an estimate, it requires 4-5 times as long to produce a finished minute of a recorded voice over as it does to simply read the script.

Here's an example:

- 1 hour to read a short story.
- 2 hours for editing (removing breaths, pops, clicks,
- 1 hour for mixing (equalization, compression, limiting)
- 1 hour for mastering (saving the file to disk, converting to other formats, burning a hard copy for archive)
Total = 5 hours

Freelance Voice Over Rates

While the narration of audiobooks are often priced on a per word basis, somewhere between $0.10 and $0.25, rates for other types of voice over recordings can be found by viewing this voice over rate sheet [PDF].

Don't Let Just Anyone do the Movie Trailer

Should the book you record ever get made into a movie, don't let just anybody, including Calacanis, voice the movie trailer.

The "In a World..." imitation that Jason Calacanis tried to do is of Don LaFontaine. Don invented the movie trailer voice and even wrote the copy. There are many people who strive to be the "Voice of God", the select who nail it, but oftentimes many fall short.

TWiT Fans, Would You Buy an Audiobook by Leo Laporte?

Leave your comments below.

There's been some discussion regarding software developers exploring new ways to bridge the gap between desktop and web applications.

Development tools such as Adobe AIR and Mozilla Prism are the two most notable players. To get a feel for what can been done, Adobe had published a nice gallery of applications.

Let's face it, the only reason desktop applications are still relevant is because of bandwidth and security.

Bandwidth

It was less than 5 years ago that the majority of Internet users were still on either dial-up connection or a by today's standards, a "low-speed" version of the Web as we've come to know it.

New technologies such as Verizon's FIOS, a 100% digital, fiber-optic cable connected straight to your home and speeds as high as 20 Mbps, practically eliminate the need for greater speed.

I believe that if we had the choice, we'd be running our entire businesses online, and even doing processor-intensive tasks such as editing audio and video if it was equal to the desktop experience.

Once we're over the bandwidth issue the Internet economy will only be dealing with security issues.

Security

When companies like Salesforce.com and even Intuit with their online version of Quickbooks, end corporate users are showing little resistance in trusting their most private data ( customer data and financial data ) to web services.

Wrap Up

In 5 years time, will we really be still relying on desktop applications or will the vast majority of our business applications be readily available from any computer, accessible with our username and password?

Sitemaps have been around since the advent of the Web and used primarily as a way to list all the pages on a particular website.

Nowadays, sitemaps have other purposes such as organizing web content by topic, showing the search engines which pages you have created and developing a linking structure that emphasizes specific areas of your website over others.

But just how do you make a sitemap? And, how do you get that sitemap into Google, Yahoo! and MSN? That's today's topic and for the webmasters and entrepreneurs out there, I think this article will be quite refreshing.

TWO FLAVORS OF SITEMAPS

Just as we build web pages with both people and search engines in mind, we should have a similar mind set when building our sitemaps. In short, it's a best practice to create one for people, and another for the search engines.

HTML SITEMAP

First, let's focus on your visitors who will be existing customers, prospective customers, vendors, partners and employees.

Your sitemap provides links to all the most important pages on your website and is organized in a logical manner that makes viewing the sitemap a pleasurable experience.

As a best practice, consider the following when creating your HTML sitemap:

- The file name should be sitemap.html
- Organize your pages by topic or category
- Group all your Registration items together such as links to Sign Up pages, Upgrade pages, Feature & Benefit Comparison charts, Order Forms (PDF) and Purchase pages.
- Group all your Help pages together including your FAQs, Create a Support Ticket, Report a Bug and Feature Requests forms
- Group all your Company pages together such as your About Us page, Contact Us page, Legal and Privacy statements
- Limit the number of categories to 10
- Limit the total number of links of your sitemap to 100
- Include an area for blogs, podcasts and videos
- Link to RSS and XML feeds
- Link to your XML sitemap too

XML SITEMAP

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.

In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can crawl the site more intelligently.

Sitemaps.org has established the protocol for how to create an XML sitemap that is compliant with Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Here are some short cuts for creating your own XML sitemap.

Google's Sitemap Generator Program

The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.

ONLINE SITEMAP GENERATORS

These online sitemap generators create your sitemap free and and produce both plain text and xml versions of your site.

Sitemapspal
PortalApp Generator
Peterz.de (German)
Autositemap
Tarrant.it Sitemap Generator
XML-Sitemaps Generator
Hockeygods Online Sitemap Generator
Nuah Online Generator
Pingoat Sitemap Creator
Node Map Sitemap XML Creation Service
Neuroticweb.com Sitemap Generator
AudiMyPc.com Sitemap Generator
Web-design-pros.ca Sitemap.xml.gz Generator (Java Webstart Application)
Free Sitemap Generator
phpSitemapsNG
ScriptSocket Sitemap Generator
Google Sitemaps XML Validator
Google Sitemaps Information Center
AutoMapIt
Safe Area

SUBMITTING YOUR SITEMAP TO SEARCH ENGINES

Once you've created your sitemap, submit it to Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN's Live Search Webmaster Center.

HIGHLIGHTS

Remember to create two sitemaps; one for your visitors and the other for the search engines. Keep the HTML version simple and organize the information as succinctly as possible. For the XML version use a sitemap generator to streamline the work then submit it to Google, Yahoo! and MSN so they get updates as soon as you refresh your website with new content.

MORE TIPS?

If you have a tip of your own, add it below by leaving a comment.

An article in the New York Times explains how the barrier between man and machine is fading away.

For decades, we've been stuck with the mouse, icons and drop-down menus, originally invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s and made popular by Apple and Microsoft in the next decade.

How far have we come?

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) introduced a new, more familiar form of data input - the pen. These devices were popular with busy corporate types and health care professional but never caught on in the mainstream as a simple way of creating, editing and managing information on small devices.

Only in the last two years have two gadgets truly introduced something revolutionary in terms of data input.

The first is the Nintendo Wii, a gaming console the differs from its competitors by allowing for hand movements to control actions on the screen. Punching into the air will perform give upper-jab to your opponent on screen.

Named the product of the year in 2007, Apple's iPhone delivers a touch-screen interface, something never before experienced on a mobile phone.

And now, Multi-touch technology is being added to Apple laptops giving users the ability to scroll through documents, rotate pictures and open files by moving your fingers on the laptops trackpad.

Aside from gadgets, there are trends taking hold that will further simplify how we work and play in a world of computers.

The most obvious being the same way in which we communicate with each other; our voice.

John Markoff of the New York Times suggests that:

Voice, too, is finally beginning to play a significant role as an interface tool in a new generation of consumer-oriented wireless handsets. Many technologists now believe that hunting and pecking on the tiny keyboards of cellphones and P.D.A.’s will quickly give way to voice commands that will return map, text and other data displayed visually on small screens.

“We’re on the verge of creating something as compelling as touch, except with voice,” said Mike McCue, general manager of the Tellme subsidiary of Microsoft.

With more hardware and software utilizing speech technologies, the need for pre-programmed voice prompts will continue to create demand for professional voice talent who give the human touch.

And if history is any indication, the winning technologies are those that make the technical details invisible to the user and reassure that we, as humans, are still in control.

If there's one thing I've learned in business it's that the world doesn't wait for anyone.

In this business, while some are slow to change and adopt new technologies and services, others have fully embraced new paradigms such as software as a service, a category that Voices.com would fall into.

The promise of software as a service (SaaS) companies is that they'll be available anytime, anywhere, something that I believe we've delivered on.

In the future, the voice over industry will continue to benefit from embracing this new paradigm with the integration of new services, technologies and web applications designed to improve business performance.

SERVICES

Software as a service will be embraced by not only the community of voice over talents at Voices.com, but also extend to voice coaches, talent agents and radio and television stations, streamlining their business operations making sourcing voice talent, script writers and audio producers easier than ever.

New services will be introduced to enable easier communication, project management, file delivery and payments.

Third-party applications and other partners looking to tap into this thriving area of the Internet will develop new products that tie-in directly to the activities at Voices.com.

MARKETING

As the industry continues to transition from the traditional model, to the online model, creating a strong, positive brand is of utmost importance. "Branding" includes the entire customer experience from how a first-time visitors first impressions through to the perceived value and an organizations ability to deliver on a promise.

Measuring performance will come to the forefront of all parties that participate in the voice over industry. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it are the responsibilities of each business person.

Key performance indicators such number of visitors to a website, or number of new business contacts are vital to evaluating marketing initiatives.

A cost/benefit analysis, in the form of listing the pros and cons often reveal the effectiveness of pursuing particular internet marketing activities, and an exercise that should be repeated when a new opportunity presents itself.

HELP & TRAINING

Graduates from broadcasting schools and new media programs offered by local colleges will be looking for ways to transfer their newly found skills and passion into a career.

To help support this emerging group of individuals, podcasts such as Voice Over Experts will be the first stop for those looking to get educated about voice-overs. Blogs offer fresh ideas and build community as well as point to other online training and offline workshops.

TECHNOLOGY

Advancements in software and online applications has allowed for small and mid-sized business to compete with their larger counterparts. In today's environment, freelance voice talent offer the same quality of product as those recordings produced in multi-million dollar facilities.

Applications such as SourceConnect will become the preferred means of connecting ProTools studios, ultimately replacing ISDN.

MP3, WAV and AIF will prevail as the three standard file formats and more project will require full-quality, uncompressed 24-bit WAV or AIF files for high-definition audio/video projects.

MOBILE

As mobile phones reach true 3G status in North America, online services will introduce mobile alerts, complimenting email alerts for everything from job postings, payments and feedback on completed project.

MAPS

While relationships start online, some people will perform work on-site in the clients recording studio, or connect with clients for in-person meetings.

Location-based tools will help make connections between clients and talent looking to form new business relationships over a cup of coffee.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Over the past four years, we've listened to your feedback and applied hundreds of suggestions, recommendations and new ideas. Part of our commitment to continuous improvement, will be a new area of Voices.com dedicated to the development and conversation surrounding new ideas.

To help shape the future of Voices.com, share your opinion today.

How to get involved

Take a moment to complete the Website Usability Survey.