Archive for category Book News

Today we are pleased to announce our latest app, AudioBookShelf. We have tried to raise the bar on the audiobook experience. We have created an immersive, engaging environment in which to listen to your favorite classic audiobooks.

Features:

• Beautifully crafted books and bookshelf – You’ll wish you had this shelf of books in your home!
• Intuitive, landscape layout – Browse your bookshelf the way you would in real life!
• Listen offline – Books will be downloaded to your device, so you can listen without worrying about a network connection.
• Playback control – Includes play, pause, rewind, fast forward, play 2x faster, navigate to any point in chapter, chapter browser, and a sleep timer.
• Automatic Bookmarking – AudioBookShelf will bookmark the books you are listening to and start right where you left off last time.

Initial Books:

• Anne of Green Gables
• The Art of War
• A Christmas Carol
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Gulliver’s Travel
• The Invisible Man
• Jane Eyre
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sleepy Hollow
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
• Treasure Island
• Wuthering Heights

Just wanted to drop a quick line about howAudiobooks is doing. We have been frantically working on a new project that we think will really be a hit, but in the meantime Audiobooks is rollin’ along nicely.

• 6,292,484 total book downloads
• 371,976 total users
• Most Popular Book: Dracula with 327,697 downloads (almost everyone has gotten it!)
• Least Popular Book: The Road Builders with 44.

We are back in action. After a couple of months of hanging in limbo, we are back to creating awesome audiobook apps for the iPhone. We have two major announcements to make.

Firstly, we are very pleased to announce that download is back in Audiobooks. We have been allowed to reintroduce downloading of audiobook content for offline playback as a paid app. This is called Audiobooks (Download Edition) and is available now.

We have also been working on a LOT of updates to these apps, which will be coming online over the coming weeks. These include all the great feedback you have been sending us for what you want your audiobook experience to be like. If you have an idea and haven’t let us know please email us at info@travelingclassics.com.

We really appreciate all your patience with us as we strive to deliver the best possible audiobook experience on the iPhone or iPod Touch!

Here is a free copy for the first person to use this promo code: LRNP77TKHX77 .

Secondly, we are really excited to start offering premium audiobooks in the App Store. Our first partner in this is Christian Audio. The premier publisher of christian audiobook content. We have begun a partnership that will provide their professionally recorded titles as individual apps. For more information about these checkout Christian Audio

Our first titles are:

• All Of Grace
• Cloud of Unknowing
• Dark Night of the Soul
• Pilgrim’s Progress
• Practice of the Presence of God

Here is our Audiobooks download report for Day Six.

• Total Downloads: 41,111 (+7,326)
• Individual Book Downloads: 149,119 (+26,525)
• Total Audio data: 2.7 Terabytes (around 19 years of playtime)

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Updated advertising numbers on Advertising Page.

Here is our Audiobooks download report for Day Five.

• Total Downloads: 33,785 (+9,161)
• Individual Book Downloads: 122,594 (+31,244)
• Total Audio data: 2.1 Terabytes (almost 15 years of playtime)

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Updated advertising numbers on Advertising Page.

We are now completely blown away by the runaway success of Audiobooks. As of around 2:40pm (Eastern) we are now the #1 book app in the store. Surpassing Amazon’s Kindle app.

We are genuinely humbled by the response we have received from users of this app. It started out as a side project that we thought a few people might enjoy. Now we find ourselves enjoying our 15-minutes of fame. All we can say is a heart-felt Thank You!

gob·smacked: Brit informal : very surprised or shocked
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Here is our Audiobooks download report for Day Four.

• Total Downloads: 24,624 (+8,371)
• Individual Book Downloads: 91,350 (+24,341)
• Total Audio data: 1.5 Terabytes (almost 11 years of playtime)

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Updated advertising numbers on Advertising Page.

Audiobooks continues to grow in popularity by leaps and bounds.

• We have now had 63,009 books downloaded
• By 16,253 users
• Nearly 1 Terabyte of audio content

We are currently ranked #1 or #2 for Book Apps in 30 countries worldwide. Including, the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico.

Audiobooks has been in the store for a little over two days now and so far we have received 104 reviews. The funny thing about them is that while almost every review with text is extremely positive we have lots of 1 star reviews.

Some of our Reviews:

5 stars, “Awesome!!”, by Soo young, on 23-May-2009
I downloaded this app expecting a crappy free app that I’ll delete in less than five seconds but oh wow. I am literally shocked at how amazing this app is!! There are so many books to choose from, and the narration voice is excellent

5 stars, “Awesome App”, by App-etizer, on May 24, 2009
This is the audiobook equivalent of Wattpad with the major content difference being all the audiobooks are from the public domain. What they have in common are, both are totally free and rely on user submissions. It is a great audiobook app and costs nothing. Start enjoying it now.

5 stars, “Amazing!!!!!”, by Wordgyrl, on May 24, 2009
Wow for FREE?!?!?!?! This a terrific app, it’s super easy to use and you can search by title or author. The surprise me tab is great also, it has introduced me to titles I would never have found. The only thing I can think if that I would like to see is the ability to move the books around in my library instead of them being in the order I downloaded them. Everything else is perfect, keep up the great work! A+A+A+

What are we to make of this? I think that this has a lot to do with the way that the iPhone presents the user with the option to rank the app if they delete it. This makes it a trivial exercise to add a review, but only if you don’t like it. Whereas, to review an app you purchased and loved you have to jump back into itunes, find it, and then add your thoughts. This is especially challenging for Free Apps when people can try and discard apps without any hassle.

An Appeal: If you like Audiobooks please add a review.