The audiobook version of With a Little Help feature readings by Neil Gaiman, Mur Lafferty, Wil Wheaton, Leo Laporte, Emily Hurson, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Hugh AD Spencer, Mary Robinette Kowal, JC Hutchins, Roy Trumbull, Jonathan Coulton, Spider Robinson, Jesse Brown, and Russell Galen, mastered by John Taylor Williams of Wryneck Studios.
The DRM-free audiobooks below are provided on a name-your-price basis. You can pay any time — before or after you download.
As a guide, the average donation to date is $11.75; the smallest was $0.50, and the largest was $200.
Here are links to the audio-files of the audiobook in five editions: a high-bitrate MP3, a high-bitrate Ogg, a lower-bitrate MP3 with a podcast bumper (especially for inclusion in your podcast, which I heartily encourage you to do!), losslessly compressed Ogg Speex files, and enormous, uncompressed WAVs. These were all mastered by John Taylor Williams, who also wrote the original music. John runs Wryneck Studios, an independent sound engineering firm in Washington, DC.
Podcasters are also invited to use this great 60-second promo that Scott Sigler made (thanks, Scott!).
- Podcast of all MP3 files
- Download all MP3s in one ZIP file
- Download all OGGs in one ZIP file
- Download all files as OGG Speex in one ZIP file (Thanks, Stephen Paul Weber!)
- Download all podcast-ready MP3s in one ZIP file
- Download all WAVs in one ZIP file
- Download all stories as one big M4B file, suitable for iOS devices (thanks, J Devitt!)
- Introduction by Jonathan Coulton:
MP3 | Ogg | WAV - The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away
(read by Hugh AD Spencer)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - The Right Book
(read by Neil Gaiman)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Other Peoples’ Money
(read by Mur Lafferty)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Scroogled
(read by Wil Wheaton)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Human Readable
(read by Spider Robinson)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Liberation Spectrum
(read by Leo Laporte)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Power Punctuation!
(read by Patrick Nielsen Hayden)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Visit the Sins
(read by Roy Trumbull)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Constitutional Crisis
(read by JC Hutchins)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Pester Power
(read by Mary Robinette Kowal)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Chicken Little
(read by Emily Hurson)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - Epoch
(read by Jesse Brown)
MP3 | Ogg | Podcast-ready MP3 | WAV - I’m Only In It for the Money
(read by Russell Galen
MP3 | Ogg | WAV
I know you normally accept different formats for the eBooks. Are the audiobooks fair game for this too? If I send you speex files, would you be willing to add them as an option?
The WAV link on the introduction is broken: it currently points to the WAV for “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away”
Sure, but with the caveat that my upload speeds are currently awful and I’m having a hard time just getting the official files all up!
Grabbed the .pdf, now gonna wait for the podcasts. That .xml should work on itunes, right?
It should!
There’s no ogg file for story 2.
I know — I’m still uploading a bunch of files — it’s slower going than I’d reckoned, but I figured better to ship now.
sorry – I’ve listened to the intro. and scroogled. Really top notch stuff. Thanks!
For sure. Looks like just two left on the WAVs :)
If it helps, I could probably upload to archive.org directly as well, and let you just put in links. Or I can email them to you. Whichever :)
How about people drop the zips into their torrent programs? P2P works for things like ubuntu after all? (And I like being able to say that I’m using this software that everyone knows that only pirates use for something legit.)
That’d make me very happy indeed! But of course, first I have to get the zips off my hard-drive and onto the Internet Archive, which is taking forever. My BT connections at home and office just keep on falling over on these big transfers. But I did get the podcaster zip up overnight — filling in the missing WAVs today, then I’ll do the big Ogg zip and have a run at the WAV zip.
Podcast version: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6020758
Working on MP3. Have all pieces for ogg and wav that are uploaded so far as well.
MP3 Version: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6020766/Cory_Doctorow_-_With_a_Little_Help_-_MP3_Ed._-_CC
Cool! Thanks!
You’re welcome :)
Looks like all the WAVs are up now, except the introduction. Cool.
Awesome! I’ll torrentize them when I get home too.
Very many thanks for these – they’ll make a perfect Sunday treat for surviving week one of five weeks of December/January work madness!
Speex files done and uploaded to http://www.archive.org/details/WithALittleHelpSpeex
Those who want a ZIP file of the WAVs (or, at least, the ones in the main archive.org collection, a few are missing) can use http://www.archive.org/compress/WithALittleHelpWavs
Thanks!
D’oh! Fixed.
the Podcast of all MP3 files
http://craphound.com/walh_podcast.xml
file contains invalid XML and is rejected by iTunes
Hi Cory. As I believe strongly in Democratic Patronage, I would like to pay you for the audio files, but don’t wish them encapsulated on a sliver of plastic. What are my options?
Here you go, Nick!
http://craphound.com/walh/contribute/donate-to-cory
Hey, Robert! Just fixed some little XML problems in the file and it should work in iTunes now!
Cory, under what license are these audio files released so those of us planning to drop them into out podcast feeds can make sure we observe the right conditions? Is it the same as the ebooks, nc-sa?
That’s right — but if you’d like to distribute under a different license, just ask.
Excellent. I donated. A pity the conduit was Evil Paypal, but needs must, I guess ;-) I look forward to listening to this book on my flight this Saturday. No doubt it’ll beat the hell out of whatever’s on the in-flight entertainment system.
The WAV file for story 9, “Visit The Sins,” is missing its last 14 minutes. The file if 48 minutes long, but goes mute mid-word at the 34 minute mark.
You’re right! The master file I have is only 34 mins long too — I’ve asked John, the sound editor, to resend and I’ll repost the file as soon as he does. Thanks, Brad!
OK, just re-uploaded the WAV; should be fine now. I’ve asked the folks at the Internet Archive to re-generate the WAV ZIP file too. Thanks!
Thanks! I’ve downsampled all the WAV files to mono and encoded them as iTunes audiobook files. Is that a file type people here would be interested in?
Thank you for showing us that there are more ways to accomplish things than what we have been trained to believe.
I am placing your podcast files in my feed, they will all be live by the end of January. I hope this helps.
Good luck with your surgery.
Thank you.
The Ogg Speex files are a *huge* improvement over the Ogg Vorbis files: no detectable difference in quality, yet a roughly 10:1 improvement in size.
Can you please make the Ogg Speex archive prominent in the list above?
Done!
I’ve put the Ogg Vorbis version into a torrent. You can download it from any of these places:
https://btjunkie.org/torrent/audiobook-audio-book-creative-commons-cory-doctorow/44763789fd6b566bb717a7129ca014dbe519e269626c
http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/10444/Cory-Doctorow-With-a-Little-Help-Ogg-Ed-CC
http://www.seedpeer.com/details/3293063/Cory-Doctorow-With-a-Little-Help-Ogg-Ed-CC.html