The Rise of Audiobooks

I sadly have never been the kind of person who could pick up a non-fiction book and read it in one sitting. While I love learning about science and history, the act of reading an eight-hundred-page biography of a revolutionary or a four-hundred-page narrative about genome mapping has always scared me. Despite having around eighty non-fiction books on my to-be-read list, no matter how much I wanted to read them, I could never seem to get myself to get past the tenth page.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that audiobooks are the cure to my phobia of non-fiction. Entering as a freshman this fall I learned that the Northeastern library is absent of any auditory stories but with the help of the Boston Public Library I have been able to get my daily dose of all kinds of voice narrated novels. Growing up I was heavily opposed to audiobooks, for some reason it felt like cheating. I felt that if I did not actually read what was on the page I was somehow getting less out of the story; now I can not get enough. 

I am currently listening to a book called The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor which not only explains who the Amazons were but also sheds light on why even today people seem to have misconceptions about this group of legendary women. I listen to around twenty minutes each night before I go to sleep and so far I love it. What is most interesting to me is that I have owned a physical copy of this book for around a year and have not once picked it up since the day of purchase. This 544-page piece has stared at me from my shelf for twelve months and now I have suddenly been given the courage to delve into the story but only as an audiobook. 

This specific encounter with The Amazons has led me to a few questions about the role and connection between audiobooks and publishing. First, with only 649 ratings on Goodreads, how did such a long book get chosen to be produced in an auditory format? What factors determine which works get turned into audiobooks? What is the role of the publisher in creating this new format of the text? Do the rights get sold the same way that movie rights get sold? What is the author’s profit from audiobooks amount to? How does profit differ from physical copies sold? Why are audiobooks generally more expensive? How has audible affected the popularity of audiobooks?

As a new and now avid consumer of audiobooks, I am curious as to how such a new form of selling literature is completed. While the shift into ebooks may be more noteworthy I think it would definitely be beneficial to consider what sets this style of reading a story apart.