For a over a year, I’ve been wanting to produce audio versions of my own stories and encourage other writers to make some, so that we could sell the results. I vowed that I would read a couple of my flash pieces into a PC and make them available this weekend. I did not do this. I brought my little voice recorder with me today, and I will go out to the truck at lunch and see what happens.
On the plus side, I bought 40 tiny microphones for PCs on eBay. I will make these available packaged with a copy of Audacity audio editing software for the cost of a box and postage on one of my websites. I hope this will encourage authors to produce audio copies of their stories.
There’s another issue here. I intended to do all of this using the URL AudioCD.com that Phil Chadeayne and I bought more than 10 years ago. I’ve done little or nothing with the site in many years. At first I made a store for CD and Tapes sales like half.com. This was before half.com and I did not have any way to promote it so it never took off. Then I made it an MP3 message board where you could trade MP3 files. That took off in the wrong direction and became a pirate board so I took it down. I then made it a search engine for music powered by affiliate links and it has paid its way since then.
Recently, I took the affiliate links down and started writing the audio exchange software to create custom stores for people who want to sell MP3 files. That has been stalled for a year by the lack of any MP3 files to sell.
This weekend I received an offer from someone to buy the domain name. I may be able to sell the web site. This would be one less domain to worry about, but I’d have to use another domain to sell the audio files.
I have WapFiction.com, Strangetales.net, AstoundMe.com, and PaperTheTown.com that I could use. WapFiction refers to WAP protocol used in cell phones. PaperTheTown was a resume site that tried to write, but gave up on (there’s no money in it). AstoundMe is the site that I use for my media related projects so I might use it. I also could use CThreePO.com, but I’d like to sell that, too.
This project does not seem like it will ever come together.