Look around you next time you’re on a train and count the number of your fellow passengers with headphones in their ears.
The chances are that the ones over 30 are listening, not to music, but to audiobooks.
The book trade traditionally refers to buyers of its products as readers, but nowadays the term listeners fits just as well.
All the signs are that the cosy world of audiobooks is poised to enter a period of unprecedented change and expansion.
Who are the customers?
It’s not the impecunious Napster generation but the time-poor, cash-rich generation between 30 and 50 who are going to be the new customers.
Listening is fundamentally a background experience. Your eyes are busy but your mind is free, so you can listen while you’re out walking or weeding the garden.
It’s clear that this is the key advantage of the audiobook over the much-hyped electronic book or e-book, downloaded in text form to a portable reader.
Don’t be surprised if the e-book turns into a damp squib while the downloaded audiobook, becomes, as the marketing people say, the Next Big Thing.
Listening habits
Remember that you don’t have to own an MP3 player to enjoy a downloaded audiobook. After downloading, you can just as easily burn a CD to listen to at home on a hifi or in the car.
Those who spend most of their time travelling will obviously opt for an MP3 player as their first option. The holiday traveller will no longer have to squeeze cassettes or books into the suitcase, just a device the size of a cigarette packet
containing half a dozen novels. For many people, such a device will soon come for free as an office perk as part of an upmarket mobile phone.
For the technically challenged who don’t or can’t manage a download, there is even a new device in the US called a Playaway, which is a small MP3 device sold pre-loaded with a single book. All that’s needed is a battery and set of headphones.
Besides of the above mentioned benefits there is a variety of reasons why people prefer listening to an audiobook over reading a book.
- driving in their cars
- listening in the middle of the night when suffering from insomnia
- dyslexic children unable to read novels
- foreigners learning English
- stressed-out office workers whose eyes are simply too tired to read a book on the train home after eight or more hours staring at a computer screen
- waiting on an airport
- lying in a hospital
- and so on
The information on this item is a recapitulation of the article written by John Morrison investigating the market for audiobooks that first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Autumn 2006).
John Morrison is a member of the Guild’s Editorial and Communications Committee. His novel, Anthony Blair Captain of School, is published by Black Pig Books.
0 comments:
Post a Comment