Books for Ears
Back in January, I was on the phone with my friend Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, fabulous archives student extraordinaire, and she told me about a project idea she had for an audiobook review site. Not just your average plot-character-opinion reviews, but reviews specific to the audio aspects, like the readers, the chapter organization, the general overall usability of the recording, etc.
She ran a few potential names for the site by me, and my favorite, hands-down, was “Books for Ears,” because, well, that’s what audiobooks are, right? And, well, it sounds fun, cool, and unstuffy. Jeanne, a woman of action, registered the domain while we were still on the phone. That month, the Books for Ears site was officially launched.
It’s about 2 months later, and the site is still going strong (the most recent review is from March 5). The reviews are wonderfully practical and human, not dry and academic. The layout of the site is simple yet robust, even including a section of “Upcoming Reviews,” RSS feeds for specific categories, a list of top-rated reviews, and the ability to have reviews emailed instead of news-fed.
If you’re looking for audiobook reviews, give this site a whirl. It’s got lots of potential, and I commend Jeanne for seeing a concept, seeing a market, thinking it was fun enough to do something about it, and acting on it with great execution. Jeanne, I’m proud of you. 
Tags: audiobooks, BooksforEars, reviews
Cool! I had started up a similar review site for free books, but I had never heard of Books for Ears. I’ll check them out
Seth: That’s awesome. Actually, I’m doing a class on free portable books later this spring at my library, highlighting the likes of Podiobooks.com, LibriVox, BooksInMyPhone.com, Playaways (available at our library), and the Boston Public Library Overdrive service (since anyone in the state can get a card online, all state residents can download stuff from them). Can you tell us more about where you get your free, people-read books?
You should also look at http://www.audiopod.ca - absolutely amazing audiobook technology. Drag-and-Drop Audiobooks, Global MP3 Bookmarks, eMail Ready Bookmarks and so much more. This is really cool stuff and it is the future of audiobooks.