Audiobooks have begun to outsell print

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Atunah

When I am told a story by someone else, it keeps me apart from the story. It just isn't as immersive to me as reading. And some stuff sounds really weird out loud. It doesn't feel that weird reading. Feelings, I think that is what I am missing when listening. I don't feel.

But I wish I could make it work, I really do.

I'm the same, can't get into audio books at all, I'm starting to quite like audio plays though.

[din155]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I feel just the opposite. I don't read self-help, so I'll give you that one, but for most biographies or memoirs, I hate missing out on the photographs (though I have seen Audible offering an extra pdf download of photos with some books). And for histories, I bemoan the absence of bibliography and footnotes. Plus if I want to retain information, seeing is better than hearing.

For fiction, though, I find audiobooks can't be beat.

I agree with the fiction part, although I can't gather courage to listen to anything more than 12-13 hours long. Lately I have realised that I can listen everything including history books. Technical books that have graphs and pictures and footnotes is not possible at the moment but I am sure audible supported pdfs will make it easier eventually. My only problem is it takes so long to finish. Sometimes I simply have to buy the e-book as well if I am too impatient or the book is too long to listen through

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by din155

I agree with the fiction part, although I can't gather courage to listen to anything more than 12-13 hours long. Lately I have realised that I can listen everything including history books. Technical books that have graphs and pictures and footnotes is not possible at the moment but I am sure audible supported pdfs will make it easier eventually. My only problem is it takes so long to finish. Sometimes I simply have to buy the e-book as well if I am too impatient or the book is too long to listen through

It takes a longer time to listen than to read, but it's dead time when I couldn't be reading. I just listened to Gone Girl--19 hours--over the weekend. I did grocery shopping, went to the post office, did laundry, cleaned the house. Even if I could have read the book in, say, half the time, I didn't have 10 free hours to devote to reading. And I think my enjoyment of the book was enhanced by the narrators, too.

[din155]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It takes a longer time to listen than to read, but it's dead time when I couldn't be reading. I just listened to Gone Girl--19 hours--over the weekend. I did grocery shopping, went to the post office, did laundry, cleaned the house. Even if I could have read the book in, say, half the time, I didn't have 10 free hours to devote to reading. And I think my enjoyment of the book was enhanced by the narrators, too.

Oh yes! Like you I read audiobooks when doing travelling or running or doing any of the chores you mentioned. But on a few occasions I want to know the end sooner and that is when audiobooks feel a little slow

The biggest advantage of audiobooks for me is that I would have missed many amazing books had it not been for audible with with excellent narrators. Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami comes to my mind.

[rdfry]

I love audio books, I can listen to a book while I work and listen to books I wouldn't read. It seems to make some books more palatable to me.

[danskmacabre]

I quite like listening to audio books these days when walking to work mostly.
However I also like to listen to recorded discussions/lectures as well.

I still prefer to read books (whether in electronic format or a pbook) when I get a chance.
It's more relaxing for me to read a book than listen to one.

[taosaur]

There are books that I can't follow on audio: most science fiction, anything that jumps around in time much, or any non-straightforward prose style, for instance. Some books I've started on audio and had to pick up the ebook and at least get a couple chapters under my belt before I could start switching back and forth.

It works best for lighter fare that would probably never drift to the top of my TBR pile for text, but do well as told stories.

[Ranny]

I will admit I'm becoming a bit of an audio book addict.
With regards to cost, especially with new releases, for me it's actually cheaper to purchase the audio version.
I have the 24 book subscription and in the UK pay £109.99, which I can renew at any time, that works out at £4.58 a credit. That's cheaper than many bigger name ebooks and considerably cheaper than most new releases.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by soulfuldog

The fact they "found examples of books in every imaginable genre that sell better as spoken than written words" just means they found one book in each genre though doesn't it? They mention that sales of audiobooks reached $1.5 billion last year, but a weren't sales of ebooks around $6 billion?

I agree. They appear to be saying that some audiobooks outsell their print equivalents, not that the audiobook market as a whole is larger than the print book market.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by taosaur

There are books that I can't follow on audio: most science fiction, anything that jumps around in time much, or any non-straightforward prose style, for instance. Some books I've started on audio and had to pick up the ebook and at least get a couple chapters under my belt before I could start switching back and forth.

It may depend on the performers. It seems that many of the suspense/thriller-type books I've been reading these days are fond of the technique of jumping around from past to present and/or offering multiple first-person accounts. One that I listened to recently did both, and because of the several different performers with distinct voices, I always knew very clearly where I was in the story and which character was speaking. I suspect that if I had been reading the text, I would have been checking the chapter names to verify the who and where.

[tomsem]

I'm still waiting for 'X-Ray' to show up in the Audible apps. Amazon already has the required data, and it would greatly enhance the listening experience if you could easily jump to mentions of a particular character or place to review.

[Tarana]

Audiobooks have increasing popularity ALSO because everybody has Smartphones. Easy to download or rip an audiobook and listen on the thing you already have with you 24 hours a day (well, lots of people do- I don't have a smart phone).

I agree, I think they mean SOME books will be outsold in audio vs. print, certainly not the whole. Out of my extended family, I'm the only one who regularly listens to audiobooks - although I provide access to my Audible account to a group of seniors. I have over 500 audiobooks (those whispersync sales for $1.99 are gold!).

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It may depend on the performers. It seems that many of the suspense/thriller-type books I've been reading these days are fond of the technique of jumping around from past to present and/or offering multiple first-person accounts. One that I listened to recently did both, and because of the several different performers with distinct voices, I always knew very clearly where I was in the story and which character was speaking. I suspect that if I had been reading the text, I would have been checking the chapter names to verify the who and where.

My most recent experience having to set aside an audiobook and go back and re-read was Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks. The most obvious timeshifts in this book are that forward-moving chapters in the 'present' alternate with backward-counting sub-chapters, relating earlier and earlier episodes in the life of a certain character. Additionally, there are flashbacks within the sub-chapters, jumping around a bit but more or less advancing forward while the sub-chapters proceed backward. And it wasn't helping that all of the characters have multi-syllabic, quite made up names.

[BearMountainBooks]

The articles I've read say audio is a GROWING market as opposed to print, which is flat to trending down. That's a far cry from outselling print. It's easy to believe it's a growing market for a lot of the reasons sited in this thread, including multitasking, libraries carrying more audio books and audible making them more available/cheaper in some cases.

The talk on indie threads is much the same--audio is worth investing in because you can reach some of the same readers, but also a different group of readers. The problem, of course, is that it is very expensive or time consuming to do audio. My husband and I did 3 of my short stories and the opening to Dragons of Wendal (it was originally a stand along short story). The total is one hour of finished audio. The actual HOURS spent on recording and engineering was double that in recording time and triple in engineering. Of course, there was a learning curve and if we decided to do a book, we'd be faster, but if I remember correctly even the industry standard is about 3 times the work (3 hours for every finished hour).

I think it's a great thing to be able to produce audio and offer it and lots of indies are doing it. We did the one hour of stories, but I didn't even try to sell it because it's one hour and it's short stories. I put it up on the blog for free. I've looked for other avenues that would allow me to have audio books, but it's exceedingly expensive (Amazon has the most reasonable plan where you negotiate with the performers. Kobo has a completely pro plan where they essentially partnered with a known outfit that does recording work for other industry publishers--but it's prohibitively expensive.) So it's definitely a growing industry and there is opportunity there. That could mean that prices will come down and that will help growth.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

The talk on indie threads is much the same--audio is worth investing in because you can reach some of the same readers, but also a different group of readers. The problem, of course, is that it is very expensive or time consuming to do audio. My husband and I did 3 of my short stories and the opening to Dragons of Wendal (it was originally a stand along short story). The total is one hour of finished audio. The actual HOURS spent on recording and engineering was double that in recording time and triple in engineering. Of course, there was a learning curve and if we decided to do a book, we'd be faster, but if I remember correctly even the industry standard is about 3 times the work (3 hours for every finished hour).

I'd be very surprised if it's as little as 3h work per 1h of recorded output - I'd expect something more like double that. You need to:

1. Do your initial recording.
2. Listen to it, and mark any errors.
3. Get your voice artist back into the studio to re-record the sentences with errors in them.
4. Edit the re-recorded sections into the book at the correct points.
5. Listen to it again to make sure it's OK.
5. Do any digital processing required (noise reduction, digital marking of chapter breaks, etc.)

Given that at least three of those processes are "real time", it's got to take more than a 3:1 ratio.