So, I’m reading a little known book that really, I think, changed a lot of my Marxist-Leninist outlook in a positive way. I definitely think that it’s worth everyone’s attention and I want to essentially “bring it to the masses,” so to speak. I’m starting a YouTube channel and I’m completely willing to record my voice and narrate the whole book, maybe with Closed Captions in the video to help people understand what I’m saying lol (I sometimes talk too fast). That being said: is that all there is to it?
I know that Dessalines does great audiobooks and I was inspired by that. If all goes to plan, I’ll be doing my own. But I’m wondering if I should ask the publisher or not? Is that what normally happens? Or maybe I’m being silly with this question? It almost seems too easy.
Anyways, I’m pretty much ready to begin soon, but I’d like the input of Dessalines or any other person in Lemmygrad that’s familiar with the topic.
Just go ahead! Worst case scenario someone who owns the rights will tell you to take the video down. It’s also difficult to determine who owns the rights to the manuscript exactly. Publishers buy the right to publish, but they don’t necessarily own the copyright on the manuscript. If you do public domain books you would legally have to read from a public domain manuscript, but tbh who is gonna know which edition you read from.
Remember to read slowly – take your time (it feels strange at first but your audience will prefer it), enunciate clearly, and take appropriate pauses when reading.
Thank you! I’ll wait for Dessalines’ input on this, but I definitely think you have the right of it.
Some things:
- You’ll need to learn audacity. No matter where you’re recording (I record on my phone with a headset), you’ll need to import your recordings to audacity to do all the mastering / cleaning up. Watch all the youtube tutorials on audacity recording / mastering you can, and read all the guides like this on the audacity wiki.
- Read slow, do lots of pauses. People can always speed it up on their readers or through youtube, but there’s nothing worse than someone who reads so fast that you can’t follow. If you make the mistake of reading too fast, no one will want to read your book.
- Learn how to id3 tag your mp3s (with the correct track numbers especially) and add cover images, I use
eyed3
for this. - Create a torrent of your audiobook, upload it to a torrent site. If you don’t do this, your content is at the whim of youtube / wherever you upload it.
- Learn how to convert mp3 files videos, and upload them to youtube, if you want.
I don’t ask the publishers, but that’s because when I first recorded state and revolution, I tried to get it uploaded to librivox, but the admins refused to allow it because it wasn’t copyrighted in the US. Now I just read them and will comply with any takedown requests later, but since I’m mainly recording old books in the public domain, or those by commie authors, they don’t care. I’ve had two authors thank me for doing this, so I don’t think its too big a deal.
Just finished reading your post.
Awesome! Thanks for this. I’m just getting started with my YouTube channel and I’ll probably have my first video by early September. I’ll also try to promote Lemmygrad since that’s what I’m partly making this YouTube channel for.
No probs :thumbs up:
I’ve had two authors thank me for doing this
Which ones if you don’t mind?
Paul Cockshott and Ward Wilson.
Based. That must have felt good.