A Farewell to Tape

Galleycat has a picture and piece on the Hachette Book Group audiobooks team throwing a goodbye
party for books on tape after the release of James Patterson's Sail, their final title to be offered on cassettes. Henceforth, they will issue audiobooks only on CDs and as digital downloads. The article went on to point out that while the Association of American Publishers reports that sales of all audiobooks were up 1.7 percent in the month of April, they're still down 13 percent for the first four months of 2008, one of the most sharply declining categories in publishing.

And speaking of downloads, the New York Times recently took at look at e-Books ("The e-Book Test: Do Electronic Versions Deter Piracy?"). Although it's geared towards nonfiction, it has interesting  repercussion for fiction books, as well. Galleycat weighed in on that one, too, noting that when St. Martin's provided new subscribers to its mystery newsletter with PDF downloads of the first two novels in Spencer-Fleming's series on the eve of the publication of her sixth, I Shall Not Want, thousands of readers took the downloads, and that the first week sales for I Shall Not Want were double that of her previous hardcover, last year's All Mortal Flesh.

A couple of media notes: Variety reported that Mandalay Independent Pictures has acquired screen rights to Salvation Boulevard, the upcoming mystery novel by Larry Beinhart (George Ratliff will write the script and direct).

And Smoke and Mirrors Magazine reported that criminal lawyer turned crime writer Chris Nyst (who, as the article says has been "dubbed Australia’s answer to John Grisham") has scripted and will direct a new crime film called Crooked Business to be released in September of this year.

Comments

[Mike Tooney]

B. V.:

Your title ("A Farewell to Tape") and the fact that
just about everything is going digital reminds me
of the terminological difficulty I experienced the
other day when I tried to tell my wife that I had
just finished "taping" a program. Being a good
wife, she unhesitatingly corrected me: I had just
completed "recording" something on DVR; no
tape was involved (adding "nyah!" for emphasis).

I guess I'm showing my age when I talk about
"taping" things. Mine was the "Star Trek: The
Original Series" generation; watch reruns of
that show and you'll constantly see and hear
references to "tape decks" and the like.

I faintly remember reading that recording media
from the '50s and '60s will have longer lifetimes
than those currently in use: movie film, vinyl
records, wire recordings, etc., will still be around
long after CDs and DVDs have deteriorated. I
hope that's not true!

Best regards,
Mike Tooney

[BV]

I asked the hubster, who is an audio engineer, about the shelf life of various media, and he said it all comes down to the manufacturing process and how things are stored and maintained. Even digital media like CDs and DVDs, which are only laminated layers of plastic, can break down if made cheaply and abused. Yes, vinyl and wax cylinders from the 20th century can go on for quite some time, if stored properly. A laser turntable like the hubster has access to can help in reading some of those older items, too.

He could give you the long and very technical explanation of how all this works, if you'd like; it had my eyes glazing over a bit...