Fast Company - March 2012

SONG READS
The era of crotchety old
ladies yelling “Turn down
your book!!” draws nigh.

When the addition of sound turned movies into talkies, late-1920s audiences were so astounded and confused that many people walked out of theaters. (Things worked out fine for the film industry.) More than

85 years later, Booktrack, a company founded in New Zealand that adds custom soundtracks to e-books, is confident readers won’t respond in similar fashion.

“Music brings emotion to a story,” says cofounder Paul Cameron. “We’ve created an experience in which text and music are synchronized through a whole book.” At the heart of the process is an ear for intricate sound design that rivals Hollywoodian efforts. In the Salman Rushdie short story, “In the South,” readers hear ambient street noise—food sellers, cars, and distant music—that corresponds to the environment of the protagonists. The cues then fade as the story unfolds and a bed of traditional Indian music begins. There are no words, just melody, with individual sound effects that are pegged to specific actions.

Booktrack isn’t the first outfit to give reading a multimedia flavor: “Enhanced” e-books have been around since 2008, offering a multimedia reading experience with links, video, and suggested playlists.

What sets Booktrack apart is the precise
alignment of the text and score. To keep
things synced, Booktrack’s technology uses
the rate of page turns to gauge a reader’s
speed and adjusts the pace of the score
accordingly. And, should the sound ele-
ments become more grating than great,
they can be silenced. Admits Cameron:
“For people who aren’t used to reading with
sound, it can take getting used to.”
That’s what people said about e-book
reading itself earlier this decade. The
concern is gone. According to the Associa-
tion of American Publishers, e-book
revenue grew 620% between 2008 and

2010. Net revenue for e-books in 2010 was

“FOR PEOPLE WHO AREN’T USED TO READING WITH SOUND, IT CAN TAKE GET TING USED TO.”
—Paul Cameron,
Booktrack cofounder

$441.3 million. Booktrack—which prices short stories at $0.99 and novels at $2

to $4 above the standard e-book sticker— is angling to get a seat on that comet, with A-list writers like Jay McInerney and Sam Lipsyte expressing interest in joining the ride. Though Cameron tapped the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Park Road Post Production (sound designers for Peter Jackson’s films) for Rushdie’s story, he hopes Booktrack will become a platform for up-and-coming sound designers. To that end, the company will be releasing its creator software for free so independent sound designers and authors can collaborate, with Booktrack selling the final product for a cut. Hard to imagine anyone not liking the sound of that.

Tallying a Score

Books aren’t soundtracked in a day. Here’s what it took to produce the Booktrack for “In the South.”

;;Composer John Psathas scored the short story over a two-month period.

;;Sixty-six performers from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra recorded the music in one day.

;;The Booktrack is made of 25 musical pieces, 13 sound effects, and 13 ambient-audio files. A novel-length Booktrack consists of 30 musical pieces, 200 sound effects, and 75 ambient-audio files.