Friday, February 02, 2007
Why Audio Books?
I wrote this brief post last August and for some reason never published it.
I mentioned that when I went to BookExpo Canada in June, that many publishers had not even considered audio versions of their lists. Some were quite surprised, even puzzled, that I asked. So I decided to do a little research on the matter and found three articles online that talk about the advantages of audio books.
Some of the advantages I found range from opening up books to an entirely new demographic to the new catchphrase in the world of business "the long tail" coined in a 2004 article in Wired magazine.
In a world where people aren't content to be doing just one thing at a time, author Jonathan Lowe in ChristianityToday states that "Only audiobooks afford the ability to multitask".
Kate Mackenzie of the Financial Times mentions that downloadable books are only 1% of print sales; however "digital downloads more than doubled to 6 per cent of the $800m audio book market in 2004. Audible says its own sales have grown by more than 80 per cent since then."
Links to the articles:
Financial Times - Audio books open a new chapter in digital age by Kate Mackenzie
Christianity Today - Heard Any Good Books Lately by Jonathan Lowe
Time Magazine - Long Tail's Tribe by Jeffrey Ressner
Labels: audiobooks, downloadable books, long tail
