Darla G. Denton | Author Platform Coach

There are two types of readers.

1. Those that need silence while reading.
2. Those that need music to drown out distractions in order to read.

Which one are you?

I prefer silence while reading.

Listening to music and reading a book at the same time never even occurred to me. Sure, I use music while I write but I never thought to use it to help concentrate.

The idea of reading a book while listening to a tailor made soundtrack for said book sounds intriguing.

It’s almost like watching a movie without the disappointment of bad casting.

Booktrack is a platform for e-books that does just that. They embed multimedia such as music, sound effects and ambient sounds within the e-book so that it has it’s own soundtrack as you read along.

There are over 20 categories listed in the Bookstore:

1. Adventure
2. Biography/Memoir
3. Crime
4. Drama
5. Fan Fiction/Pop Fiction
6. Fantasy
7. Historical/Period
8. Holiday
9. Horror
10. Humor & Comedy
11. Mystery/Thriller
12. Non-Fiction
13. Other
14. Religious/Spiritual
15. Romance
16. Scary Stories
17. Science Fiction
18. Sports
19. Young Adult/Teen
20. Young Readers

The Romance section alone has 30 pages of e-books to choose from and you can read short stories or full length novels.

The prices range from Free to $13.00 and up.

E-books that cost money offer a free sample so that you can decide if you really are interested or not before buying it.

There aren’t just stories to read on BookTrack. You can choose from blog posts set to soundtracks, Education material, essays, plays/screenplays, poetry, and school paper/reports.

Once you’ve selected a Booktrack e-book you can read it on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. Here is the link to download the free app on Google Play Store.

It’s recommended that you listen to the Booktrack e-book with your headphones for optimum sound quality and I agree. It sounds flat or cartoonish on my computer speakers.

So far the only downside I can see is that it will take a few pages to figure out your reading speed. On the internet you can manually speed up the soundtrack, slow it down or pause it so that it doesn’t speed ahead of you when something calls your attention away.

On the app you can do the same things, however, on the far right side there is a see- through arrow that shows you what line in the text the soundtrack is currently on which I find incredibly helpful.

On both the internet and app you can follow your favorite authors or BookTrack creators and will even be alerted when they publish a new BookTrack. You can also rate and comment on each book along with sharing what book you are reading by posting on social media sites.

To all my writer/author friends:

Did you know that BookTrack isn’t just for readers? 

You, as a writer/author, can create your own BookTrack for any piece of work you wrote as long as you own the rights to it by using BookTrack Studio.

If you want to learn more about creating a BookTrack check out:

• BookTrack Studio Facts
• BookTrack Video Tutorials
• An article from The Creative Penn called Soundtracks for Books: How One Author is Using BookTrack For Her Novels
• Another article from BookTrack on How To Create an Amazing Sounding BookTrack

All in all, it seems to be a fun way to read an e-book.

I’m definitely going to give it a shot.

How about you?

Friday @ 9am ” Depression and What It’s Like For Those Who Love You”

Monday @ 9am “2016 Competitions, Conferences & Conventions for Writers”

• What kind of reader are you? All silence or background noise for concentration?
  
• Have you used BookTrack before? If so, what is your opinion of it?
• What would be the ideal type of soundtrack for a book? One with only instrumental music in the background or one that also included the ambient sounds mentioned in the book (like a door slamming, walking, birds chirping, etc…)