Audiobook Samples

Garth & Brady

Rationale

• Audiobook buyers want to hear a snippet of audiobook content before making purchase a decision
• Publishers desire some control over length and content of audiobook samples
• Publishers sometime create bespoke samples for audiobooks (not simply a contiguous extract of the full audio)
• Metadata should be standardized to address these needs

First Thought

• Audio-book specific metadata
• sample-duration [seconds] or [percent]
• sample-start-position [seconds offset] or [temporal resource link]
• bespoke-sample [resource link]
• If sample-start-position is not present (and sample-duration is), the Reading System chooses a start position, likely the start of the default reading order (“0” seconds)
• If sample-start-position is a resource link, it MUST be in the primary reading order
• A bespoke-sample resource may in the primary reading order but is likely an auxiliary resource
• If both sample-duration and bespoke-sample are present, a reading/retailing system SHOULD prefer the bespoke-sample

Second Thought

• WP generic metadata
• sample-size [seconds for audio] or [percent]
• sample-start [seconds offset for audio] or [resource link]
• sample-end [seconds offset for audio] or [resource link]
• bespoke-sample [resource link]
• sample-start, if not present, defaults start of primary read order content
• sample-size or sample-end may be provided, but not both
• sample-end (without start) is allowed
• sample-start and sample-end resource links must be references into the primary reading order
• A bespoke-sample resource may in the primary reading order but is likely an auxiliary resource
• If both sample-* and bespoke-sample are present, a reading/retailing system SHOULD prefer the bespoke-sample