Asssembled Stories FAQ

Are your books unabridged?

What is the Listeners Club?

Can you record my favourite book?

Will you be making your titles available for download?

How long does it take to download an audio book?

Why are samples and downloads in different audio formats?

What happens if I delete my download links or downloads and need them again?

Do you pass on my details to any other companies?

Assembled Stories now maintains a policy only to produce unabridged titles. There are two exceptions to this:

• Trilby by George Du Maurier - lightly abridged
• Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana - heavily abridged

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All audio books in Assembled Stories collections have a removable gilt medallion on the front cover. These medallions identify the Collection to which the audio book belongs (Victorian, Edwardian etc.) and are for the benefit of customers who do not have access to our catalogue and who purchase our books in shops or stores around the world. However, their primary purpose is that they are the 'currency' of our "Listener's Club".

If you are an avid listener to our books you will be able to collect the medallions. When you have ten, if you return them to us, together with your name and address, you will become a member of the Listener's Club. As a member you will receive a complimentary copy of a title of your choice from our catalogue and in addition, you are entitled to receive a 5% discount on all your future purchases.

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We are delighted to hear your suggestions and have indeed acted on one of them. Should we record a title suggested by a member of the public they will receive a complimentary copy of that book and in addition a complimentary title of their choice from our catalogue as a token of our appreciation.

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Yes we hope to have titles available for download early in 2007. The default format will be Windows Media Audio (.wmf) but we intend to add additional formats (mp3, aac etc) as requested by listener's to make downloading and playing on all common devices as quick and simple as possible.

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In the default Windows Media Audio (.wma) format, a single audio book CD averages around 10MB. The following table illustrates theoretical download times of various size audio books for the most common internet connection bandwidths. Although the simplified table does not account for overheads, in practice download times have actually been less than indicated.

An indication of download times for individual titles can be seen by hovering the mouse pointer over the download icons on the audio book page.

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Audio book samples are currently in Mpeg 1 Layer III (.mp3) fomat whilst the default format for download purchases is Windows Media Audio v9 (.wma). This apparent discrepancy makes sense in that listeners accesing the website will do so from a pc. Although not optimised for voice and largely superceeded by new formats mp3 is still the most widely supported format and for on-line listening of short samples mp3 meets the current needs. However for downloads our tests have shown the wma voice codec to be far superior in compression and quality. This means audio files are smaller and download faster without sacrificing the high recording quality. Most new media devices are now wma compatible but for older devices or listeners that simply prefer more flexibility, we intend to make our downloads available in mp3 and other alternative formats as requested.

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Please contact us quoting your purchase reference and we'll do our best to forward the links again. Note that the request must be within a reasonable timescale of the purchase and that resending links may be restricted to the original user, email address and IP address range. In order to protect your purchases we recommend you make a back up of your audio books, especially before converting between audio formats.

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We want people who visit our web site to be able to take part fully in the activities and offers we provide. We also want to make sure that when we collect information from you we do so in a way that does not infringe your right to privacy. Our Privacy Policy is designed to give you useful information about your rights and the way we collect and use personal information.

We do not ask you to disclose any more information than is reasonably necessary to enable you to participate in an activity on our web site and to improve the web site.

We do not generally disclose personal information we have collected from you through this web site to third parties. We may do so sometimes, in which case we will say so when the information is collected and you will be able to inform us that you do not want us to do this. This will not stop you enjoying the site, you can simply tell us that you are happy for us to have the information so you can take part in the activities we offer, but that you do not want us to pass that information on.

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