Blind Nerdfighter in need of assistance

[Jessica :)]

Hi all!

I've been a nerdfigher for about four years now and counting, I've followed John and Hank through the 2.0 journey, but since the year I began watching and earlier, some tragic things have happened to my eyesight.  I was diagnosed with a rare eye condition that causes my retina to detach and it is very hard to fix, which since then, I have lost the vision in my left eye and have had it removed (the eye, that is) and now wear a fake one.  Recently (December 2009), I lost fifty percent of the eyesight in my right eye, and now I am legally blind.  I have had five surgeries total on both of my eyes, and now I can see relatively alright through my right eye while using a computer.  I am at University at the moment pursuing an undergraduate degree in English, but you can see (pun definitely intended) the problems that I have with reading the books for classes.  I get by with audio books and helpful equipment.

 

I've emailed John numerous times, posted on their twitters and facebooks, however, I know they're busy guys, and really this isn't that important.  Well, it is to me, because since this eye condition I have not been able to read any of John's new books...  I've read Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns.  My best friend read me Let It Snow, and I read Hank's ecogeek everyday.  I was just wondering if anyone knew anything about the books being on audio or downloadable or anything so that I can read them again, and maybe eventually read Will Greyson Will Greyson, since I haven't been able to find it on audio book yet, I have yet to read it...  I am usually a very avid reader, but after losing most of my sight I have lost the love of it...

 

If anyone can help, that'd be great.  I love nerdfighers, I will never forget the first time I went into my local bookstore, opened up Paper Towns, and saw a note with an email of another nerdighter, and I put my own note in, and have continued to talk to this nerdfighter for some time. 

 

DFTBA, fellow defeaters of world suck!

[Luke Purswell]

Give me a month, and I could make you an audiobook.

[Luke Purswell]

Of course, that might be breaking copyright laws.  Does anyone know the rules for this kind of thing?

[Alaya Jaymeri]

You'd need John's permission.

[Gianna]

We all know how awesome John is. I bet if you got his attention towards this he would definitely help her in any way possible. I am 100% sure of that.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

even without johns permission i'm pretty sure he won't sue a nerd fighter for helping someone read his books

[Emma Connell]

I'm sure if you got in touch with John he'd be happy to give you permission

[Frida Backman]

Audible.com. Yup, it's that obvious of a name. Regular price is 19 dollars. Just search for John Green.

[Niti N. (DobbyYoda)]

use the code 'muggle' to get a 10% discount on audible.com-selected books only, not sure if john's books are one of them (merrits of listening to mugglecast!)

[Primrose or Sen or Pruechelan]

You can also use GG (merrits of listening to Grammar Girl)

[Kenny]

Get a Kindle.  It has a text-to-speech function and can read any book to you.  It sounds like a robot of course, but it's something.

[Terry]

I don't have a kindle, but my experience with PCs is that the text to speech is SO very bad that it becomes hard to follow.  The acrobat reader even has TTS built in for several releases now.

I don't have a medical need, I just thought it would be cool if I could convert books to mp3.  The results are very disappointing.  But compared to "nothing", it is probably pretty good.  Anyhow, there's lots of options for doing this stuff.  I got a program called Text Aloud.  You can buy different voices for it.  Just don't set your expectations too high.

 

Audible of course is completely different.  Those are books read by professionals and are very very good.  Do be careful not to buy the abridged version though (unless of course that's what you want)

[Adrian Heng]

Yes, the inbuilt Windows text to speech sucks, but there are other alternatives. Text to Speech (http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/) is pretty good (even if there's still a slight uncanny valley edge to it) and there are other TTS software out there that are probably halfway decent. If you can dig up an ebook version of a book, or mail it to a dedicated friend who can type it out, you could potentially just use these speech softwares to create your own audio books. They might not be as high quality as commercial ones, but they'll make do, at the very least.