Lydbøker/Audiobooks: Hvordan levere lydfiler/How to submit audiobook files

Publishers that have a distribution agreement with Bokbasen must send audio files to Bokbasen following certain standards and conventions. This page describes the process for sending audio files to Bokbasen after you have signed the agreement with Bokbasen and given username/passord to Mentor. We recommend that you use Mentor for publishing files but upload trough FTP is an alternative.

Prerequisites

Before you can send files to Bokbasen, the metadata on the book must be submitted and processed. Either manually using Mentor, or through the Onix Import APIs. Any attempt to submit files before Metadata is registered will cause the processing of the file to fail. We also recommend that you have submitted cover image for the book before sending the file as these are embedded into the files during processing. Cover images are submitted to Bokbasen using Object Import Service or Mentor (as for all books).

File formats

Audio files can be submitted as MP3 or Wav files (wav is recommended for optimal quality when we convert to distribution formats). If submitting MP3 you must make sure that the quality is as high as possible and that bitrates and settings are the same of all the files within the same book. Audio files can be submitted in both mono and stereo and Bokbasen will distribute the file in the same mono/stereo setting as given to us, however all files in the book must have the same mono/stereo setting otherwise the processing will fail. To ensure quick and automated processing of the file, it is important the the rules for naming and zipping of the files are followed. They are as follows:

1. The zip file must be named: "isbn.zip" with no other characters in the filename
   1. Example 9788242136817.zip
2. The zip file must only contain audio files and they must be placed directly inside the zip file (not in a sub folder)
3. Each audio file must start with a track number given with consistent number of digits. 
   1. Example: 001, 002, 003 
   2. The rest of the file name can be whatever, so all of these are valid file names: "001 Hurra - title 1.wav", "001.wav", "001 Tittel på boka.wav"
4. The track numbers must not have gaps
5. Filenames cannot contain æøå or other special characters 

For guides on how to create a valid zip file, see Create Zip-file.

Upload process

Bokbasen Søk (replaced Mentor in spring 2024)

Login to Bokbasen Meta and find the book in "Mine utgivelser. Choose "Filer og bilder" from the menu on the left. Here you can upload the file and check publishing status. Processing time after upload depends on file size and number of items to be processed and can be anything from a few minutes to a few hours.

It is also possible to use SFTP
Login to our SFTP server using the hostname and credentials given to you from Bokbasen. Upload the zip file into the folder named "audio". Bokbasen's systems will automatically pickup the file and send it for processing. Processing time depends on file size and number of items to be processed and can be anything from a few minutes to a few hours.

Error handling (SFTP)

Files that does not pass validation are put in a separate folder in your FTP account so it is easy to follow up if Bokbasen has been able to read the file you sent us. When you log into the FTP account you will have a file called "errors", any Audio book that you uploaded that did not pass validation is put there. The filename will be ISBN-timestamp.zip (the timestamp is added to avoid overwriting files if you have uploaded several versions of the same ISBN).  In additional there will be a file ISBN-timestamp.log that has details on why the file was not accepted for processing. The log-file is in XML format so that they are machine readable, but you can open the file in any text editor and read it yourself.

In general we recommend you to check the errors folder after you have uploaded a file. In normal circumstances if there is no file in the errors folder after 5 minutes, the file has passed validation. However, if the upload process has downtime due to e.g. maintenance this window might be longer. 

Upload folders instead of zip (only FTP)
Bokbasen recommend using the above process for delivering files so that each book is delivered as one file, but if for some reason you cannot deliver zip-files we support a process where you upload a folder instead. Rules for file naming of the wav/mp3 files are the same as above.

1. 1. Have the audio files in a folder named something else than the ISBN (e.g 9788202399290-uploading), make sure you only have audio files in the folder. 
   2. Upload the folder to /audio
   3. When upload is complete, rename the folder to only the ISBN (e.g 9788202399290)
   4. Then wait, if you are looking at the folder after this you might see some other temporary files showing up. Just ignore these and do not attempt to download or change them.
   5. Check back after 20 minutes and the file should be gone, check in the /errors folder to see if any files have been added there. If the folder is empty there are no validation errors and the file is being processed.