I’ve poked fun at the idea of Booktrack before. Creating a music-and-sound-effects soundtrack to play along while reading an e-book just seemed so silly and unnecessary. But a blog post on The Creative Penn has me possibly rethinking that a little now.
Joanna Penn points out that she often sees people reading with earphones plugged in on the London Tube—they’re using the music to block out ambient noises that might interfere with their reading experience. So if they can just use any old music to block out distractions, she reasons, why shouldn’t they be able to use Booktracks to enhance the reading experience instead?
Penn is testing the waters with one of her books, but in the latter part of the blog post she features guest blogger AD Starrling giving some how-to tips on how to create a Booktrack of your own using Booktrack’s authoring tools. Starrling writes:
A lot of people who thought this would be an intrusive way of reading changed their minds after seeing what the platform can do and have been eagerly awaiting this release. So, don’t rule it out before you’ve had a read and a listen.
Fair enough. If I can find a book-and-Booktrack combo that looks interesting to me, I might just give it a shot. Maybe I’ll be a convert, too. Meanwhile, it’s interesting to see Starrling’s tips on making the music work with the reading instead of distracting from it. Part of her explanation requires some understanding of Booktrack’s editing tools, but it mostly makes sense even without it. From the description, soundtracking a book seems not too different from soundtracking a video production.
So, who knows? Maybe it’s not a foolish idea after all.
My rule of thumb:
If it were a great idea, Amazon would be doing it.