But Then Again Theres Always Audiobooks Right

Audiobooks: The ascension and ascent of the books y'all don't read

Audiobooks are having a moment. As they soar in popularity, they are becoming increasingly creative – is the volume you listen to now an artform in its own correct, asks Clare Thorp.

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Back in 1878, before long after he had invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison hit upon an idea. Leaning over his new auto one twenty-four hour period he recited the words: "Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow." As he created the showtime ever audio of the spoken word, Edison dreamed that the applied science might 1 day permit a whole novel to be recorded. Fast forward nearly 150 years, and he'd be pretty impressed to find more than 400,000 audiobooks available to download direct into his pocket.

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Audiobooks are in the midst of a boom, with Deloitte predicting that the global market will grow by 25 per cent in 2022 to US$3.5 billion (£two.6 billion). Compared with physical book sales, sound is the baby of the publishing world, but it is growing upwardly fast. Gone are the days of dusty cassette box-sets and stuffily-read versions of the classics. Now audiobooks describe A-listing talent – call back Elisabeth Moss reading The Handmaid's Tale, Meryl Streep narrating Charlotte'southward Web or Michelle Obama reading all 19 hours of her own memoir, Becoming. At that place are hugely aggressive productions using ensemble casts (the audio of George Saunders' Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo features 166 dissimilar narrators), peculiarly created soundscapes and technological advances such equally surround-sound 3D audio. Some authors are even skipping print and writing exclusive audio content.

Audiobooks are alluring A-listing stars such as Elisabeth Moss (Credit: Getty Images)

For the publishing manufacture, which has faced its fair share of gloomy news stories over the past ii decades, the boom in audio is widely regarded as skillful news. "Information technology's the blue-eyed male child of publishing at the moment," explains Fionnuala Barrett, editorial managing director of Audio at Harper Collins. "Nobody is running scared from it, in comparison to the similar moment for ebooks where there was that fear that they were cannibalising other formats in the volume earth. With audiobooks, at that place'southward a feeling that it's an additive."

While audiobook sales are upwards and physical volume sales down, information technology's not a given that the two things are related. In fact, sound is pulling in new audiences – whether that's listeners who don't commonly buy books, or readers listening to genres in sound format that they wouldn't selection up in print.

Research by Nielsen Volume found downloads of audiobooks in the UK were particularly high among urban-domicile males aged 25 to 44. Laurence Howell, content director at Aural – the Amazon-owned audiobook platform – says they've also seen big growth in the eighteen-to-24 age group. "This is non an age grouping that is traditionally a stiff book-buying grouping." A study by The Publisher's Association establish 54 per cent of Uk audiobook buyers listen to them for their convenience, while 41 per cent choose the format because it allows them to consume books when reading print isn't possible.

All ears

There is much fence near whether listening to a book is the same as reading it, but perhaps that misses the point. "Often audio is not competing with fourth dimension spent with books," says Richard Lennon, publisher at Penguin Audio. "It's people who are either plumbing fixtures books and authors into their twenty-four hour period in new ways, and so people who might be existing readers simply have institute that during their commute or exercising or cooking dinner, in that location's an opportunity to listen. Or it's an alternative to Telly for people who are conscious of their screen time. The really exciting audience for me is people for whom reading and books are non fundamentally function of their lives."

The booming popularity of audiobooks coincides with the rise of podcasts, and shows an increasing thirst for audio content, which has led to publishers ploughing resources into the format, building dedicated teams and creating in-business firm studios in order to produce increasingly creative and ambitious listening experiences. "We've invested a lot in audio over the final few years," says Lennon. "There's a real enthusiasm around the opportunity to do exciting, creative things, and broaden the audience for books. Our approach to it has been to think well-nigh how we tin can continue pushing the listening feel further and further."

Illustrated poetry collection The Lost Words was brought to audio in the class of recordings made in the British countryside (Credit: Penguin)

Lennon says at that place are at present books beingness recorded that would never have been considered as audiobooks 10 years agone. He points to Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris's volume The Lost Words, a beautifully illustrated collection of poems based on words that have disappeared from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Such a visual work wasn't an obvious choice to transfer to audiobook, merely Penguin commissioned sound recordist Chris Watson, who has worked with David Attenborough. "We captured original wild track recordings out in the British countryside, and built a soundscape that goes nether each poem. When Benjamin Zephaniah reads a poem called Blue Bong, the recording under that is a bluebell wood in Thorpeness in the heart of a rainstorm."

The end production won a Gilded Honor at the New York Festivals Radio Awards. "To me, it speaks to the level of creativity going into audiobooks at the moment," says Lennon. "And we're non the simply people doing it. There are loads of vivid people doing really creative audio publishing."

In their own words

While some audio versions of books present challenges, others offering obvious advantages. The recent audiobook version of The Only Plane in The Sky, Garrett Graff'southward all-encompassing oral history of 9/11, involved a cast of 45, including many of the existent people featured in the book, forth with raw sound footage from the day itself. The audiobook of Malcolm Gladwell's contempo release, Talking To Strangers – which Gladwell says is outselling the print version by two to one – as well used original archival interviews, blurring the line between podcast and book. Gladwell's success in sound fits with a wider tendency of non-fiction doing specially well in an audio format.

Fifty-fifty the densest of subjects are finding audio success – sometimes given a helping hand past a well-known narrator. Benedict Cumberbatch'southward reading of Carlo Rovelli'due south The Order of Time no dubiety attracted a few listeners who might non normally opt for a book almost quantum physics. "Not that long agone, a book on theoretical physics would probable not have been released in audio at all," says Lennon. "It certainly wouldn't have been read by somebody of that sort of level of fame."

Benedict Cumberbatch read a 4-hour audiobook of The Guild of Time, a book most quantum physics (Credit: Getty Images)

The increased profile of audiobooks also means that more A-listing talent is willing to be involved. Earlier this year, Penguin released 30 of their classics in audiobook format, narrated by well-known names including Andrew Scott reading The Dubliners and Natalie Dormer voicing A Room of One'southward Ain. Meanwhile, Audible has had match-ups including Rosamund Pike reading Pride and Prejudice and Thandie Newton narrating Jane Eyre. A huge seller for them has been Stephen Fry'southward 72-60 minutes-long reading of Arthur Conan Doyle'southward Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Drove.

Classic titles have proved popular in audible format, perhaps considering listening to the dulcet tones of a familiar vox is an appealing style to piece of work our manner through those books we've e'er meant to get around to, merely oasis't. BBC Sounds recently added unabridged versions of xx classic novels, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels. "Classics are also a prissy entry level for people who perchance aren't sure of audio," says Howell.

For those simply discovering the format, their commencement experience can be a crucial 1. "For people who are relatively new to audio, the voice is absolutely make or intermission, so getting the casting right is a huge responsibility," says Fionnuala Barrett. She recently secured father-and-son actors Timothy and Samuel West to read the audio edition of a new JRR Tolkien book, Fall of Gondolin, edited by Tolkien'due south son Christopher. "They flip it so Timothy Due west reads the parts of Christopher, who is now in his 90s, but you can hear that they're related in their voices and there is something very moving about that. It'south a really skilful example of what audio can bring to a project."

The Fall of Gondolin was JRR Tolkien'due south first Middle Earth story; he began writing it in 1917 on the dorsum of a canvas of military marching music (Credit: Alamy)

While looking for A-list talent to narrate a book is ever tempting, large names only work if they accept a genuine connection with the material, she says. "For me, I would much rather get somebody who isn't a household name simply is absolutely bang on. When you've got the right voice on a particular text, it's just magic to listen to." Narrators themselves often accrue fans, who follow them from book to book.

Authors themselves are besides getting much more than involved in the casting process. "In that location seems to exist a much greater embrace of audio right from the start now with authors, which is really exciting because information technology turns it into a collaborative casting process," says Barrett. Some are even writing with the sound version in mind. Ben Aaronovitch, author of the Rivers of London fantasy series, has admitted that he now has actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's version of his characters in his head when he writes.

Others are writing audio-simply content. Michael Lewis, Adam Kay, Jon Ronson, Joanne Harris and Phillip Pullman take all written original works for Aural. "For them, I remember it's an exciting opportunity to try artistic writing but in a different format, thinking most audio and how your story will resonate to the listener," says Howell. Original content is now a major focus for the platform, which is also working with playwrights to create new dramas. "Admission to theatre can still be fairly limited, and I think a lot of playwrights are excited well-nigh the opportunity to reach out to new audiences through audio."

For Richard Lennon, in that location is equally much excitement to be plant in raiding the catalogue, and creating audiobooks for authors and texts who have never been on tape earlier. "You have the kid-in-the-sweetness-shop moment of beingness able to create recordings of some of these really wonderfully iconic things that accept never been washed."

Then what of the futurity? Barrett thinks we're only just beginning to see the potential of sound as an artform. "We've reached that tipping point where information technology's getting to be fairly mainstream, but the artistry element is still all to play for. We're in the kind of 'planting the flag in the sand' stage when information technology comes to ambitious productions." And what of the people who still think they're not 'proper' books? "The people that are sniffy about them are the people who will be sniffy about anything. I'm not overly perturbed past that."

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200104-audiobooks-the-rise-and-rise-of-the-books-you-dont-read

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