RE: chapter metadata in audiobooks

Hello Avneesh,

To clarify, what we as a retailer get from publishers distributing audiobooks are MP3’s and sometimes a list of chapter titles and timestamps where those chapters start. There’s no standard that’s being widely used for reading systems to populate a TOC menu with. It would improve our processes greatly if there were an adopted standard we could ingest to populate a TOC as opposed to out having to create chapter metadata from a variety of inputs.

That might go beyond the scope of Web Publications but perhaps a standard that works for audio web publications could be useful in the realm of audiobooks as well.

Thanks,
Ben Dugas,

Manager, Content Display Quality and Production

Toronto, Canada (GMT-5)

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From: Avneesh Singh [mailto:avneesh.sg@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 11:47 PM
To: Dugas, Ben <ben.dugas@rakuten.com>; W3C Publishing Working Group <public-publ-wg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: chapter metadata in audiobooks

HI Ben,

Good to see that there are such requirements from audio book publishers.
It would be great if you can specify in more detail what information do you want to place in Chapter metadata.


With regards
Avneesh
From: Dugas, Ben
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 00:10
To: W3C Publishing Working Group
Subject: chapter metadata in audiobooks

Hello all,

The following caught my attention. As you may or not know Kobo recently launched audiobooks and I’m sure we’d benefit as much as anyone in the long run from better standards for audio products particularly with regards to chapter metadata (Jeff and I share the same dream). I’m all ears if there’s a role for a retailer like Kobo to play here be it suggestions, review or testing.


George Kerscher: “Reading through the minutes - I didn’t see any mention of audio publishers in the discussion. Generally the audio publishers are some of the less technical people. They are great with the audio products, and very talented, but from a tech perspective they need help. Perhaps we could engage the audio publishers that are already part of W3C publishing group. hachette, random house audio, etc…

Jeff Printy: I am interested in this aspect, my dearest wish is for Audible books to have chapter metadata

George Kerscher: I could take an action item to get in touch with a key person in each of those houses.

Luc Audrain: +1

Tzviya Siegman: That would be great.

Lillian Sullam: I’d be happy to help also (from PRH side)

Luc Audrain: I can be the contact for hachette livre. and I can find a contact for the group in NY.
Cheers,
Ben Dugas,

Manager, Content Display Quality and Production

Toronto, Canada (GMT-5)

[cid:image009.png@01D33784.79FD98F0]<http://www.kobo.com/>

[cid:image010.png@01D33784.79FD98F0]<http://www.facebook.com/Kobo>

[cid:image011.png@01D33784.79FD98F0]<http://www.instagram.com/kobobooks>

[cid:image012.png@01D33784.79FD98F0]<http://twitter.com/kobo>

www.kobo.com<http://www.kobo.com/>