Traveling Classics

Server issues resolved.

David — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:04:58 +0000

Dear Customers,
We are sorry about yesterday’s (November 16) server problems. We upgraded our servers to enhance our performance and generally improve stability. During this problem we introduced an issue that caused the Download Edition to stop downloading books. As soon as this was brought to our attention we began working on the issue. As of 8am (EST) all known issues have been resolved. If you continue to have issues downloading your books please contact us at contact@travelingclassics.com.

Thank you for your understanding.

Regards,
David Smith (Owner, Traveling Classics)

Audiobooks updated.

David — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:49:34 +0000

We are happy to announce the first of a series of updates to Audiobooks and Audiobooks Lite. Now that we have AudioBookShelf out the door we turned our attention back to Audiobooks. In addition to a variety of tweaks and bug fixes, we are responding to the overwhelming number of requests and adding a Sleep Timer. This is available as a free update to everyone already using either apps.

Check it out in the App Store.

Interview with the Pragmatic Studio

David — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:17:57 +0000

We recently got asked to talk about how we developed AudioBookShelf.

Here is the result:
http://blog.pragmaticstudio.com/2009/11/audiobookshelf-interview.html

Introducing AudioBookShelf.

David — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:30:09 +0000

Today we are pleased to announce our latest app, AudioBookShelf. We have tried to raise the bar on the audiobook experience. We have created an immersive, engaging environment in which to listen to your favorite classic audiobooks.

Features:

Beautifully crafted books and bookshelf – You’ll wish you had this shelf of books in your home!
Intuitive, landscape layout – Browse your bookshelf the way you would in real life!
Listen offline – Books will be downloaded to your device, so you can listen without worrying about a network connection.
Playback control – Includes play, pause, rewind, fast forward, play 2x faster, navigate to any point in chapter, chapter browser, and a sleep timer.
Automatic Bookmarking – AudioBookShelf will bookmark the books you are listening to and start right where you left off last time.

Initial Books:

Anne of Green Gables
The Art of War
A Christmas Carol
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Gulliver’s Travel
The Invisible Man
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Sleepy Hollow
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
Treasure Island
Wuthering Heights

Quick Numbers

David — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:00:09 +0000

Just wanted to drop a quick line about howAudiobooks is doing. We have been frantically working on a new project that we think will really be a hit, but in the meantime Audiobooks is rollin’ along nicely.

6,292,484 total book downloads
371,976 total users
Most Popular Book: Dracula with 327,697 downloads (almost everyone has gotten it!)
Least Popular Book: The Road Builders with 44.

We’re Back!

David — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:22:52 +0000

We are back in action. After a couple of months of hanging in limbo, we are back to creating awesome audiobook apps for the iPhone. We have two major announcements to make.

Firstly, we are very pleased to announce that download is back in Audiobooks. We have been allowed to reintroduce downloading of audiobook content for offline playback as a paid app. This is called Audiobooks (Download Edition) and is available now.

We have also been working on a LOT of updates to these apps, which will be coming online over the coming weeks. These include all the great feedback you have been sending us for what you want your audiobook experience to be like. If you have an idea and haven’t let us know please email us at info@travelingclassics.com.

We really appreciate all your patience with us as we strive to deliver the best possible audiobook experience on the iPhone or iPod Touch!

Here is a free copy for the first person to use this promo code: LRNP77TKHX77 .

Secondly, we are really excited to start offering premium audiobooks in the App Store. Our first partner in this is Christian Audio. The premier publisher of christian audiobook content. We have begun a partnership that will provide their professionally recorded titles as individual apps. For more information about these checkout Christian Audio

Our first titles are:

Update – not dead but waiting.

David — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:07:19 +0000

As you may have noticed things have been a bit quiet here at the Traveling Classics desk. Not because of lack of activity, but because of lack of progress. It appears that all audiobook related apps are currently on hold with Apple. So while we have created a variety of exciting new apps (including some great new professionally recorded audiobooks), they are stuck in limbo for now. We have assurances that this will be sorted out soon, but until then I wanted to give a few updates on the phenomenal success of audiobooks. Even after its utility was greatly diminished by the whole streaming fiasco (link) it still is growing by leaps and bounds.

Here is a graph of daily usage of Audiobooks:

As you can see it is growing quite nicely each day and interestingly shows an oscillation based on the day of the week (Wednesdays being the most popular day).

Here is a graph of total users of Audiobooks:

So while the number of new users per day has shrunk a lot since we had to use streaming it has stabilized at a very consistent daily growth.

Last but not least to-date Audiobooks has been used to listen to 3,937,077 books. All that in about 3 months. It is hard to judge exactly, but accordingly to the Association of American Publishers around $9.5 million worth of audiobooks are sold each month. So at an average price of $10 a book, we are actually doing better than the entire audiobook market of the USA. Not bad, eh?

Our feelings about Audiobooks 2.0

Lauren — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:54:54 +0000

We just wanted to share a little bit about our perspective on the recently released Audiobooks update that changes the app from downloading the content to streaming it. We hate it. We KNOW that it makes it a much less useful app, and that lots of people are annoyed by this. We’re very sorry, but we received unilateral word that if we didn’t make this change, it would be pulled from the app store. Permanently. So what choice did we have?

As a reminder, we’re literally a mom and pop shop – we’re not a big company, we’re just trying to make great apps that you all love, that will allow us to make ends meet. We feel like we got punched in the gut when we got the call that our all-time most successful app was being pulled from the store. But don’t turn around and kick us because the app isn’t as useful anymore. We’re trying here, people.

On a more positive note, we really want to thank all of our customers who have sympathized with us during this situation – we really appreciate all of your support. Ultimately, the reason we created this app is to get great works of literature out there for you all to enjoy, and we’re so so glad that we’ve succeeded. Thanks for the encouragement; you all make it worthwhile!

224,381.

David — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:55:08 +0000

Over the weekend, as a break from the feverish work to get Audiobooks ready to go back into the store, I ran the numbers to see how many users we had ended up with before it was removed.

224,381 total downloads
From 73 different countries
With 1,044,354 books downloaded from within the app.

Truly astonishing.

Audiobooks Temporarily Unavailable.

David — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:14:13 +0000

Dear Customers,

We regret to inform you that our Audiobooks app will be temporarily unavailable for download. Late this afternoon we were notified that it can no longer be offered in its current form. It will be re-designed to stream the audio content rather than storing it on your device.

Understandably, we were as dismayed as you are (I’m sure) at this news, but we are working around the clock on an update to get it back in the App Store and hope that it will be back early next week. If you already have the app, it should continue working as before. In the mean time you can still access the content of the app yourself at www.librivox.org.

The good news is that we were already planning to release an update to add some additional functionality (search by genre/narrator, volume control, reviews of books, etc) and make sure that it is compatible with the new OS. The bad news is now we have to redesign it first. So rest assured that those updates are coming, but not as soon as we had hoped.

Regards,
David