beautifulsounds is a division of Beautiful Books Ltd, a London publishing house established in 2005. But as the pace of technological change accelerated almost exponentially, it became clear to the directors that books, though Beautiful, are just one of a number of ways people can now get their cultural fix.
Publishing is not traditionally one of the most dynamic industries, and, on the whole has been slow to react to these new means of consumption. Some publishers have launched audiobook labels to provide abridged and sometimes unabridged audio versions of their top sellers. And they have traditionally relied on the trusty cassette and CD for their distribution. In keeping with the 'wait-and-see' ethos of the industry, titles are often released months, or sometimes years, after their paper equivalents, and are given little in the way of marketing. Within publishing organizations, the audio division is often treated as a 'bolt-on' extra, very much the Cinderella of the family.
In a 2007 survey, the Audiobook Publishers' Association found that the majority of the UK public thought that audiobooks were aimed primarily at the elderly and the visually impaired, or were used to put young children to sleep. It's no wonder, it concluded, that the industry as a whole is “underperforming”. Some of the more optimistic referred to audio as “the sleeping giant“ of publishing.
beautifulsounds (est. 2008) has been created to boot it up the backside and rouse it from its slumbers. And of course, being a bunch of people hell-bent of overturning accepted practices, we had to construct a manifesto, an 8-point plan we're going to share with you:
Books and Audios are equal partners
They're released on the same date
We don't do cassettes and CD's – just audio downloads you can play on your PC or portable media player – or burn for transfer onto your hi-fi. And you'll soon be able to get our products straight to your mobile phone!
beautifulsounds is not exclusively tied to releasing titles that appear under the Beautiful Books imprint
beautifusounds does loads of other stuff apart from books: drama, interviews, live performance, debates – in fact anything aural – is all part of our brief. If it's interesting, and you can listen to it, we'll consider it.
We don't use Digital Rights Management in our downloads – if you've bought something from us, we think you own it
We want to make audio that our customers can seamlessly incorporate into their lives. So we do long stuff for when you can make time to listen; and short stuff if you can only listen on your commute or lunch hour or the school run or whenever! We even help you to select stuff to suit your mood!
We produce audio to the highest standards, both artistically and technically
Of course, all this doesn't just happen overnight. The site is still in its infancy, and we're adding new titles month by month. But in the near future, we'll be offering not just all the above, but also fully searchable poetry and short story libraries. And a load of stuff we can't tell you about yet! Keep coming back to beautifulsounds.co.uk and see what we've been up to!
