The New Explosion in Audio Books
From The Wall Street Journal:
Cory Wilbur, a 25-year-old software engineer in Boston, never used to read much. He barely cracked a book in college and would read one or two a year on vacation, at most.
But in the past year, he’s finished 10 books, including Dan Brown’s “Inferno,” Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire.” He listens to audio books in snippets throughout the day on his iPhone during his morning workout, on his 20-minute commute to work, and while he’s cooking dinner or cleaning up. Before he falls asleep, he switches to an e-book of the same story on his Kindle, and starts reading right where the narrator left off.
“I fly through a lot more books than I used to,” Mr. Wilbur said.
The digital revolution may have dealt a heavy blow to print, but it is boosting literacy in other unexpected ways by fueling the explosive growth of audio books.
Once a static niche for aficionados renting clunky cassettes or CDs for their commutes, audio books have gone mass-market. Sales have jumped by double digits in recent years. Shifts in digital technology have broadened the pool of potential listeners to include anyone with a smartphone.
At the same time, publishers are investing six-figure sums in splashy productions with dozens of narrators.
. . . .
Digital innovation isn’t just changing the way audio books are created, packaged and sold. It’s starting to reshape the way readers consume literature, creating a new breed of literary omnivores who see narrated books and text as interchangeable. Last year, the audio book producer and retailer Audible unveiled a long-awaited syncing feature that allows book lovers to switch seamlessly between an e-book and a digital audio book, picking up the story at precisely the same sentence.
So far, Audible, which is owned by Amazon, has paired some 26,000 ebooks with professional narrations. The company is adding more than 1,000 titles a month and aims to eventually bring the number to close to 100,000.
. . . .
“Everybody has an audio book player in their pocket at this point,” says Anthony Goff, vice president of Hachette Audio, where sales have jumped by 31% this spring over last. “It makes that much easier for the masses to try it.” Downloadable books made up some 60% of total audio unit sales in 2011, dwarfing CDs.
Audio book producers have been dramatically increasing their output. 13,255 titles came out in 2012, up from 4,602 in 2009, according to the Audio Publishers Association.
Audio books are no longer viewed as just an ancillary product to print. Some audio publishers are now attempting to rebrand narrated books as a distinct medium from print, labeling them as “audio entertainment.”
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
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I’m a huge believer in audio books, specially when I’m doing other things, which don’t require concentration, like driving (must do that) or doing idle things. It does not replace reading, but when my eyes are occupied with something else, my ears can listen, to a book.
“At the same time, publishers are investing six-figure sums in splashy productions with dozens of narrators.”
P.G.
All of which are very swiftly available for harsh discount six months after appearing.
Many voices simply don’t work in audio-book-reading.
Same thing when a multi faceted actor takes over. It takes the attention away from the material to the voice. Just a bad thing.
It “can,” work. The, “Wake/Watch/Wonder,” trilogy by Robert Sawyer. Rare.
The best narrator is a cool, understated mezzo. Small drop in timbre to represent the male voices, the rest a cool concentration on the words. Laurel Lefkow, reading unabridged, “Contact,” for instance.
brendan
1300 audible books so far:)
I do agree with you, Brendan. But it also worries me that so many writers now think they can do it themselves, reading their own books for audio. Thirty years of radio writing (and reading my own short stories on BBC radio) taught me how difficult this is. ‘The best narrator is a cool, understated mezzo’ – this, absolutely.
The best narrators make something quite tricky look so easy! Even among trained actors, you only have to work in radio for a little while to realize that some are better at it than others while some feel the need to ‘act’ everything out too much. Audio is a subtle medium. Caroline Bonnyman who read my novel The Curiosity Cabinet for the audio version is a good example of exactly how it should be done and she could do the Gaelic too!
“Audio is a subtle medium. Caroline Bonnyman who read my novel The Curiosity Cabinet for the audio version is a good example of exactly how it should be done and she could do the Gaelic too!”
Caroline,
Oh, yes. Bonnyman is excellent. A lovely voice, beautiful enunciation.
Scots isn’t always so easy to understand or lyrical. Bonnyman was both.
brendan
I actually think that audio may one day replace ebooks as a delivery system. People are always looking for an easier way to do things, and listening is easier than reading.
I think the shift will take place once the technology allows a listener to choose from a wide selection of virtual narrators.
Such technology can’t be too far off, I believe, and once perfected, once you can listen to any book read in any voice, timbre, accent, or even language, well that’s the day that digital books will follow paper into the abyss.
One problem is avid readers can read faster than good narrators speak.
What Felix said, and also…
Some people find it easier to read than to listen.
Like Kyra below, I’m not an aural learner. I’ve had my hearing tested and discovered I have better hearing than most people, but my audio comprehension isn’t so great. (Possibly because I’m hearing a lot of nuances that most people don’t.)
I agree with Carradee and Felix and Kyra. Although I’ve never tried an audio book, in general, I prefer to READ material than to watch/listen. Reading is quicker and more efficient for me, and my retention is much, much better. My mind tends to wander when listening.
“Such technology can’t be too far off, I believe”
Donald,
Really?
Without wishing to appear snotty, do you have any evidence of that?
I know GPS and various other things are going machine, but I’ve never heard an audio book by a robot.
Maybe…
brendan
Never – audio and video suffer from a huge major flaw: you can’t skim them.
They will never replace text for that reason. And I mean never.
It drives me crazy when people post things, and I realize I will lose 5 min. or more – just to see what they’re talking about.
Ditto all the news services that want to show you little clips with ads, idiot anchorpeople, and the rest of the junk that comes before the pitifully tiny bit of content.
Don’t get me wrong – video and audio are priceless for the right circumstances – but they are LINEAR and require attention. This is increasingly less available. I scan the news services, then scan the articles – and get in 5 min. the same content as an hours of network TV. Audio is great for car trips – and ironing (for those who participate in that medieval torture). TV has its place (and I can do yoga and play with the chinchilla at the same time I watch).
But replace text – ain’t gonna happen.
The similarity between the “Listening to a book will never replace reading a book” people, and the “Ebooks will never replace paper books” People, is fascinating to me.
Preferences at work in both cases.
But economics and human factors are different.
Different part of the brain involved, too.
There’s no similarity.
Reading is reading, whether you’re reading pixels or ink. (I’ve come to strongly prefer pixels myself.) However, reading and listening are two entirely different mental processes, and some of us have minds that are wired to comprehend, retain, and use the written word much more effectively than the spoken word.
“However, reading and listening are two entirely different mental processes.”
Kyra,
I consume both written and audible, but I find it very difficult to do something else while I’m listening or reading.
Can’t hardly fix electrical-stuff while I’m bawling me eyes out.
brendan
I, too, prefer to just read when I’m reading. (though I like listening to music when I’m reading.) When I’m doing something else is when I’m mentally working on my own stories. (and listening to music. I guess it would be hard to listen to music and an audiobook at the same time.)
I can completely understand the appeal of audio books and why some people love them. It’s just that my brain doesn’t work that way.
Like Kyra and Felix said, listening and reading are different mental processes. And different people prefer different types of absorbing information.
Reading on a screen and on paper are much closer to each other and even there there are differences. For example, I prefer paper and find it easier to retain something I read on paper. I always edit on paper, too, because it’s too easy to skim, while reading on a screen.
If you like audio books, good for you. But plenty of people don’t. And that’s why books should be available in as many formats as possible, e-book, print, audio, so everyone can get the format they prefer.
+1 to ABE’s comment.
Also, this article is part of the reason Apple’s failed miserably in the ebook market. They could have done a better job linking their ebook and audio years ago. But they don’t even have an ebook reader I can use on my laptop, which is like being stuck in the stone age compared to using the Kindle platform across devices.
No, not for me. I have trouble retaining information imparted only verbally. To follow along I either have to write it down, draw it out, or at the very least imagine the words and numbers in my head in text form. This typically makes me lag behind a bit.
I have listened to a few audiobooks and I found myself missing what would result to several paragraphs in a row as I pictured what was going on (so I could make sense of it) and found myself “left behind”.
It also takes “forever”. In general, I can read much faster than a story can be read to me and I’ll remember more of it.
Granted – a lot of people would find audiobooks superior to ebooks/print books. But that’s because their brains are wired differently.
I’ve never been interested in audio books. I’m not an aural learner – words go in one ear and out the other, even when I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m hearing. I retain almost nothing that comes in through my ears (speech, I mean; music is an entirely different matter), and even while I’m listening, none of it hangs together. It’s like in the old Charlie Brown cartoons, where the adult voices are “mwa-wah-wah” (muted trumpet sound). I don’t watch videos of speeches or anything like that; I’d much rather read a transcript, and I retain a lot more when I read instead of listening. This is also why I’ve given up listening to podcasts. When it comes to books, I’d rather read print/pixels, at my own pace, using voices in my own mind that fit with the story, plus I like to listen to music while I read.
But audio books do seem to be pretty big right now, and I’ve wondered if I should look into jumping on the bandwagon sometime with audio versions of my own books.
I’m very similar to you. Audio books, audio dramas, podcasts, etc… don’t work well for me, because they tend to turn into blah, blah, blah, which I tune out. While driving I even tune out the radio news, even though I want to listen at least to the traffic report at the end. But when the music starts playing again, I often realise that I haven’t retained a single word of the news and still don’t know whether there is a traffic jam on my route. As a kid I literally didn’t know why they had people talking on the radio and didn’t just play music, cause that’s what radio was for, wasn’t it? And I score abominably on aural learning.
The few times I tried to listen to an audio drama, I had to sit down in a totally dark room, so nothing could distract me. And still it was so exhausting that I couldn’t imagine people doing that for fun.
But everyone is different and so it’s great that there are audio books available for those who want them.
I’m not surprised the market is growing. E-books make books so much more accessible – people are reading more, and new readers are coming in.
There won’t be a need for another type of visual medium, like print, but audio makes alot of sense. If you love a book, why not listen to it on the way to work? Or, if you are now hooked on reading because of the convenience of e-books, why not also audio read in your car? Or listen to a quiet voice as you go to sleep?
The whole book market will be growing, audio included.
“Or, if you are now hooked on reading because of the convenience of e-books, why not also audio read in your car?”
Mira,
All the time.
About half what I buy on Audible or Downpour, I buy the text version of it too.
Quite a few Kindle books are around where you buy the audio narration as an addition for a special, lower price.
brendan
@ Brendan – yes, and I bet it goes the opposite way too! Not much need to own both the paperback and e-book – but audio and visual, now that makes sense!
“One problem is avid readers can read faster than good narrators speak”
Yes, this is true, but to read, they must have the book before their eyes. I’ve listen to hours and hours of audio books while doing other tasks.
While audio books do demand your attention like other books, they also free you to do other things, like driving, cooking, doing dishes, sewing, running, etc.
With an audio book, you rarely need to pause your “reading”.
“Without wishing to appear snotty, do you have any evidence of that?
I know GPS and various other things are going machine, but I’ve never heard an audio book by a robot.”
All I have to base my opinion on is the last twenty years of technological advances.
A device such as an ipad would have been deemed sorcery or science fiction in the eighties.
The development of a machine that can duplicate human speech in many of its various forms, cadence, accent, language, seems like a logical progression to me.
But then, as always, time will tell.
I once painted an entire basement – walls and floor – while listening to an audio book about our Civil War. Really a boon. My companion in painting had to leave after an afternoon painting, and it would have been so boring and lonely painting on into the night by myself.
(We were prepping a rental house for a co-op pre-school. The upstairs was fine, but the basement needed a lot of work. We wanted it for a cool hideaway in summer and for a rumpus room – padded walls and mattress-covered floor where the kids could literally throw themselves around without getting hurt. They loved it once we had it all ready!
)
Oh, the tech is coming but not soon.
Not for fiction: good narrators are doing performances. A good reading isn’t just about diction; contextual cues and nuances feed into the tone and won’t be easy to automate.
I don’t doubt that a narrative markup language will be developed to help machine narration but that will take time.
And then again, not everyone can do something else while listening to an audio book. Like I said to Kyra above, I wouldn’t retain a single word, if I tried to listen to an audio book while driving or cooking.
I’ll buy an audiobook just because it’s read by a favorite narrator. I’m intensely loyal to certain performers and other performers will send me to the text version. There’s a couple of older narrators who read some British crime authors that I would be happy to never listen to again. And I really enjoy British crime novels in the general way.
I’m also very dubious about authors who read their own books, but I think Stuart MacBride pulled it off.
The audiobooks I really cherish are the ones that combine good writing and a good narrator, and this includes nonfiction as well.
I’m like this guy! This is totally how I read, too.