I have just received the audiobook of an e-book I’m reading in German, to use both with LingQ.
The producer is Argon Verlag. You can check their website and buy their several audiobooks here: www.argon-verlag.de.
Their audiobooks come in a normal CD-box or in a DAISY-Version (Digital Accessible Information System) that allows you to listen to the CD at a different speed using the free reader that’s inside the CD.
They have a very comprehensive catalogue and I think LingQ should approach them to ask for the permission to sale these audiobooks on the LingQ Store.
Unfortunately, I cannot find anything similar for Spanish, and very little for Portuguese. It seems that audiobooks aren’t popular in Southern Europe, yet.
The problem that I see is that there are different licenses for the audiobook and the ebook. So if we could make an agreement with the audiobook publisher you also would have to come to an agreement with the ebook publisher of the same book. And you have to pay for both. I’ve thought a lot about this before, and I’m thinking about making contact.
Probably it is easier to get in contact to publishers of learning material who offers books coming with a CD. I’ve prepared an email, as I promised recently, and I hope it’ll take some effect. I’ll add Argon to my contact list.
By the way, I know some of the Audiobooks of German publishers and usually the quality of all off them is quite good.
Another problem is that the digital version has often a DRM and I don’t know how this will work with LingQ.
Thanks, Vera. I hadn’t thought about licenses… that’s your field!
I think that LingQ could get the permission to sell a non-DRM version of the e-book or to remove DRM.
Anyway, you are right: this audiobook is really high-quality.
