Inspired by the success of LibriVox, a project in which collaborators record free audiobooks, Hugh McGuire has embarked on a commercial project: BookOven. In this conversation he tells host Jon Udell about how the new venture enables writers, editors, and proofreaders to work on long-form texts that can be published in traditional or new ways.
Hugh McGuire is the co-founder of BookOven.com, a cloud-based book/ebook publishing tool for small presses and independent writers, editors, proofreaders and designers.
He is the founder of LibriVox.org, a maker of free volunteer-read public domain audiobooks, and once called “perhaps the most interesting collaborative cultural project this side of Wikipedia.” LibriVox is one of the world’s most prolific audiobook publishers, with a catalog of some 2,500+ works in 29 languages, and runs on a budget of $0.
He writes about books, publishing, open content, and the power the digital medium has put into the hands of creators for Huffington Post and the Book Oven Blog. He is a former engineer and developer of environmental financial products, a Montrealer, an Advisor to SpokenWord.org , past-president of the Board of the Atwater Library and Computer Centre, the last remaining Mechanics Institute in Canada.
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This free podcast is from our Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators series.
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Photo: Marko Kulik