“‘Crowdsourced’ Audiobook Production!”

Tom Angleberger, author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (“a delightful first [sic] novel” —New York Times Book Review), clued me into this Random House Audio announcement about the upcoming ALA conference:

This June, Random House Audio and OverDrive are partnering to ask you to Lend Your Voice—to our audiobook production of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wizard of Oz.

We'll be setting up an on-site recording studio inside OverDrive's Digitalbookmobile during the American Library Association's annual conference in Washington, DC June 25-27. Anyone interested in recording a section of the audiobook can come by to participate, and once we've completed the book, we'll edit all the voices together into one "crowdsourced" audiobook production!

The finished audiobook will be posted online for all the narrators to listen to and share with family and friends.

If you'd like to be a part of the recording, the Digitalbookmobile studio will be located near the Washington Convention Center, across the street from the Renaissance Hotel (999 9th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20001) at the corner of 9th St NW and New York Ave NW. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road to find us!

We'll be recording Friday afternoon and all day Saturday and Sunday, and can't wait to hear all your voices for Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Wicked Witch!

The picture above is a detail of the Wizard’s laboratory as drawn by John R. Neill in The Wonder City of Oz. It approximates my brief experience of reading books in a recording booth.