I know there is a program that takes the pages and reads them to people...

I think this is a really good idea. I listen to a lot of audio content downloaded from Audible.com and iTunes, and it's a great way to get through some types of books. Most of my college textbooks were dense with equations and diagrams and would have been totally useless in an audio format, but it would be really good for certain topics.

One issue is that many of the big textbook publishers are both quite greedy and quite tight about intellectual property. Maybe "greedy" is a loaded word; they would say that their margins are slim on high-quality textbooks with small distributions and they need to maximize profit. In any case, it might be a hard sell to get them to produce an audio version (no small task if they use good voice talent and sound editing) without dramatically increasing price. In addition, many of them have been very reluctant to move to electronic versions, though a few are now supporting various e-book formats. I think they'd be afraid of the digital rights management issues they'd have with an MP3 version.

In any case, any plan like this would have to go through the textbook publishers themselves to get content, so I'm not sure how much an independent company could do.

Gods_Light: I know there is a program that takes the pages and reads them to people...

There are a number of systems like that, but most of them require a scan, OCR and then text-to-speech. Both OCR and text-to-speech technologies are getting better, but they're still a long way from the quality of a real voice talent reading the book. These kinds of systems are being used to create audio versions of all the public-domain texts in Project Gutenberg (which don't need OCR because the text has already been cleaned up by humans).

Hi,

I can really identify with this solution as I'm going through my MBA at the moment, while I'm working, and I would love to get my textbooks in an audio format, like you I have to carry a bunch of text books around when I'm travelling for work

This would work, expecially well on books that cover subject like marketing.

I subscribe to http://www.summary.com and get summarised versions of the business books - that would be a real bonus add-on - if you could provide condensed versions.

Cheers - Steve

bring it on - if it can be done cheaper than textbooks, you will have a winner.

It would also be good for those types of people who remember things better when they are spoken to them.

I would buy it.

Good Luck.

It could also be bundled with a .pdf version for those who would later want to quote sections of the text in a paper.

haha cool. podcast textbooks.. should be interesting. but i dont think you can make any money out of it.

I think the students would like this.

But I wonder if they would rely on it too much. I don't think it could replace books.

They are already working on somthing like this in Holland...

What about a PDF of the book??? or an ebook?

This would be much faster and simpler to take notes.
It's hard to bookmark an MP3 file...

]V[oogy

I think you might have real copyright issues with this idea...

Great Idea!

Keep going!

They have this all ready called audiobooks. There is also a special scanner that will read any book.

This has been done before.

people generally don't read a whole textbook. they browse or skim it, or at best read only the assigned chapters. plus this would be totally useless for math, science, engineering etc where there are lots of diagrams, equations or photos.

they are there in market!

Workout and get muscular arms.
Tommy

Hmmm, to me this has both of its benefits and its down falls. As does any idea. i say go for it!

meh

not so much!

What makes your product different from the other MP3 textbooks?

ooops i think i wrong posted a comment intended for this.... let me digg it!