Listen And Learn: Observations On Audiobooks

Extrapolating Podcast Data Into Audiobook Promise

While I wait for the publishing world to catch the tide of audio textbooks, I wait patiently for solid numbers that prove this market will boom. But this genre has barely launched, and bankable numbers just do not exist yet. Short of persuading a research university to produce an unbiased and statistically reliable study--hey, I'm working on it--I'm left to extrapolate from other data that students are ready to embrace audio-based learning.

Consider these podcast numbers, including the fact that the audience for audio podcasts grew 38 percent last year. Podcasts, quite frankly, are a bit of a hassle. You install feed readers, you subscribe, you connect devices, you sync devices, and finally you can listen to what you grab. And then do it all over again. Admittedly, an MP3 player audiobook requires the same waltz, but just once. If people are willing to consume information in a format that requires frequently repeatable data download action, they ought to be even more amenable to material you need load only once.

The Podcasting News article focuses chiefly on advertising, which has seemingly little to do with an audiobook audience. Except for this: "Podcast users are far more likely to have attained at least a college degree, and are also more likely to live in households earning in excess of $75,000 per year, than Americans who have not consumed podcasts."

To summarize, the chief audience for audio textbooks--collegians--are the audience most friendly to consuming information through earbuds.  Oh yeah, and these people make decent money. Publishers, start your initiatives!

Paper, Scissors, iPod

Glatfelter is a paper company that provides paper stock for book publishers. Given this, I'm not sure that their motto of "Beyond Paper" is the best they could have come up with, but that's a whole 'nother post.  What brought the company to my attention is a recent ad that it ran in Publisher's Weekly (click the picture to see it in more detail).

If you just read the words, your tactile book-loving senses would go crazy. You know ... where you enjoy the feel of the book in your hand ... you can pause without hitting a button ... you can reread that baffling sentence six or seven times until you finally figure it out. That sort of thing. The ad makes a case for "the value of the printed word," and more specifically, for printing on "free-sheet trade book paper."

Book publishers, presumably, will know what this is. For those of us who buy books only one at a time, it's a high quality paper free of noticeable wood pulp.

The text takes up about 40 percent of the ad space. A Mark Twainesque photograph consumes the rest, complete with a riverboat, a boy with a bucket of whitewash, and a second boy in patched blue jeans listening to his iPod. So what's wrong with this picture?

From my perspective, nothing at all. But how odd that in an ad about book paper, there's no book and no paper. But there is an MP3 player. Try as ad designers might, even they can't beat the zeitgeist. Yes, a boy reading while leaning against a fence might be inartistically obvious and humdrum, but it would at least be on message. The message here is that if a book IS anywhere in the picture, it's that the boy on the barrel is consuming it in A New Millennium Manner--in audio on his portable player.

Hey, I love the feel of a book in my hands too, but I love books just as much when mainlined straight to my ears. Hey, I'm just relating what a full page ad shows me: publishers that react to the power of audio will soon have those that don't over a barrel.

Gas Prices Highlight Big Audiobook Benefits: Greener And Cheaper

A recent Publisher's Weekly article suggests that the high cost of fuel is hitting book publishers too. PW's Jim Milliot quotes one publisher estimating that production costs have jumped 10 to 40 percent this year, depending upon how much paper stock you may have had inventoried. Apparently, the higher cost of energy has triggered three different paper price hikes this year.

If e-books are ever going to make a big move, it seems now might be a good time. They don't require paper, and they require less fuel (electricity yes, transportation no). Audiobooks provide exactly the same benefit, and listeners can enjoy them on devices they're accustomed to using. This isn't to say that an iPod doesn't have a learning curve, but a whole lot more people don't leave home without one than are carrying around Kindles.

For all of these reasons, textbooks seem especially well-suited to digital formats. We don't call them "weighty tomes" just because they harbor brilliant insights--500 pages make for darned heavy books. They use more of that increasingly expensive paper, and the added weight sucks up more of the liquid gold we call "diesel."

It's shameless self-promotion, but it's also quite true: it's a good time to try audio textbooks.

Publishing Textbooks As Audiobooks

For the past few years I have run a boutique audiobook business, in which I taught myself the audiobook craft at the same time I provided a genuinely needed service. The most frequent inquiry I received in those years concerned books used in school. Teachers could save prep time by listening to the material they'd be teaching, and today's stretched-way-too-thin student population could cram even more activities into their already overtaxed schedules. Study while driving or walking, for instance.

Admittedly it's a small snapshot of national consumer demand, but I also advised students at The University of Iowa for ten years, and their stories fall directly in line. If audiobook textbooks were available, students would be delighted to use them. Pay for them, too.

Now I'll see if I'm right. My business partner Kathy Snow and I have just launched Texts In Audio, an audiobook production company specializing in textbook conversion. We're starting small, and with a very modest rate schedule compared to other audiobook houses. We've decided to make it reasonable not just because we're new--though that's part of it--but also because I perceive this as an opportunity to jump-start a product line that desperately needs to exist. If you want to see my reasoning, check out the TextsInAudio.com website, which makes the case for consumer demand among the student population, and for monetization opportunities for publishers.

The students will buy ... of that I have no doubt. Now comes the dual challenge of persuading the publishers that these reasons make sense and that Texts In Audio is the company to help fill that need. At last ... those 72 semester hours of graduate school put to direct use!

Audible Looks To Hook Kids On Audiobooks

It looks like Audible, the online audiobook download giant, is up to something good. Its Audible Kids site looks pretty good. Lots of audiobooks listed, and even better, lots of samples.

Doubtless there are a few scolds out there who will find fault with this plan, claiming that "hooking" the kids with an audio clip--and inspiring them to want to buy the whole thing--is subjecting little Billy to the iron boot of the mass media or something. But hook away, I say. It's not like the site has embedded a few clips of "Joe Camel and the Seven Taste Buds." If it is seeking to cause any addiction, at least it's an addiction I would wish upon anyone. Even my own kids.

Admittedly, such views are self-serving, because if kids acquire the audiobook habit early, they're more likely to hang on to it later ... good for anyone of us in Audiobook Land. But it seems to me that opening up kids' minds to imagination and learning is equally good for them and (dare I say it?) society as a whole. Hey, all the kiddos are lost in their ear buds anyway. They might just as well groove to something thought-provoking and wholesome.