Over the last few years, I have dabbled in a number of business ventures. It keeps my brain alive to do so. And a little extra money never goes amiss in a household with children.
One type of business venture that has intrigued me is repackaging books that have come into the public domain. Being in the pubic domain means that the copyright has expired and anyone can reuse the materials. You can copyright a new version of the material but the original material remains open to anyone to use.
One excellent source of public domain materials is Project Gutenberg. Recently I was browsing the new materials posted there when I came across Peter the Great by Jacob Abbott, one of the Makers of History series published in the mid to late 1800s. I was immediately intrigued. This material reminded me of one of our favorite history resources; historical fiction by G. A. Henty written in the same time period and recently reprinted.
Could this be a project for me? I started researching and the more I read, the more I liked. Jacob Abbott was a prolific author and his writing was geared mainly to a younger audience with dozens of historical narratives as well as other stories such as the Rollo books. His work is continuing to come into the public domain giving me plenty of source materials for years to come.
I also discovered that his work is already being reprinted for the homeschool community. Far from being a discouragement, this verified my own feeling that his material would be attractive to that market.
Finding his work on a Living Books list published by Valerie's Living Books again simply reinforced what I was thinking.
Since my husband has long encouraged me to venture into audio books, and I had just learned how to do this and acquired the necessary equipment during another project last year, the idea of making an audio recording of this material was not long in materializing in my brain. Of course, I also found that this, too, had been done for some of JA's work. However, mine would include additional resources that would be very helpful to homeschoolers wanting to use this works in their history studies.
And so my history project began to take shape...
Friday, August 3, 2007
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3 comments:
Good audio books are becoming increasingly popular. I think that bringing older works into an audio format will be wonderful! I grew up reading old fiction and biographies, and they shape a different sort of mind than newer works. I wish you all the best as you work on this project!
(And thanks for stopping by to comment on my blog!)
Blessings,
www.Janice-Campbell.com
What type of equipment did you get to record the audio books? I think what you are doing is wonderful.
It is amazingly easy and inexpensive to do. There is a free program called Audacity (should be able to google it) that works on both macs and pcs. The other piece of equipment is a Logitech USB Headset 350. I think I picked mine up for less than $50 at Reforger.com.
I can't believe how good it sounds. I mean, it isn't like a recording studio with all the fancy equipment but it works. I have to have relative quiet but not a complete absence of sound which is good cause that doesn't happen very often in MY house!
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