Earlier this evening, on a trip to the local Half Price Bookstore, I picked up a new audiobook to listen to on my daily commute. I prefer unabridged versions of stories, which tend to be lengthier audio recordings. My new one, David Morrell’s The League of Night and Fog, is no exception, weighing in at 10 CDs.
Each CD has between 97 and 99 tracks, with each track lasting between 30 and 60 seconds. I was a bit mystified as to why they would break the narration up into so many little pieces. When I remarked on this to Sibylle she immediately said that way you could find your place faster.
Shortly thereafter, while waiting for one of the CDs to finish importing to iTunes, I read all the text on the box. Including this bit on one end of the box:
Before pausing or stopping your audiobook, note the track number displayed on your CD player. While many newer CD players “bookmark” your position, some players return to the first track at the beginning instead. By knowing the track number of where you stopped listening, you can manually adjust your player to that point (track) in the story to continue listening. There are 97-99 tracks on each CD, each track is 30-60 seconds long - allowing you to find your place without “relistening” to long portions of the story. Ingenious.
I like that Sibylle immediately thought of that as the reason as it hadn’t occurred to me.
NB: The list price on the Amazon link above is outrageous. The box I have gives the price as $29.95, and I paid $14.98 for it. Amazon wants $102.50 for the same title and media.