Rebecca Rego Barry November 16, 2016

Is Audio Really the Future of the Book?

The Library of Congress launched the first talking books program.

For many years, audiobooksalso known as talking books and, later, books on
tapestruggled for literary legitimacy. As the scholar Matthew Rubery reports in
his new book, The Untold Story of the Talking Book (Harvard University Press),
audiobooks have been cast as the Rodney Dangerfield of literaturethey get no
respect! The essence of the dispute concerns whether listening really counts as
reading.
Ruberys book examines how the production and distribution of audiobooks has
shaped their reception, which is especially interesting now that the format is finally
booming. In the past six months, audiobooks became the fastest-growing format
in the book business, the Wall Street Journal reported. The New York Times
reported that although publishing revenue was down in the first quarter of 2016,
sales of digital audio rose by 35.3 percent. And the number of audiobook titles
increased by nearly 400 percent between 2011 and 2015. E-books, by comparison,
are down in 2016, as are adult hardcovers (i.e., printed books from commercial
publishers, not including religious or university press titles). Which prompts the
question: Do these statistics herald audio as the preferred reading format of the
future?
In 1934, the Library of
Congress
launched
the first talking books
program
after

Critics charged that listening was a

lazy mans way of reading.

Congress approved funding through the Books for the Adult Blind Project. There
was opposition from the beginningfrom groups who felt the money would be
better used to publish more books in braille, even though fewer than 20 percent of
visually impaired people could read braille; from critics who charged that listening
was a lazy mans way of reading; and even, startlingly, from authors like Willa
Cather who refused to allow her books to be reproduced in audio, calling it very
distasteful. Title selection was another fraught topic, as was the best way for a
narrator to read aloud. Some listeners preferred books to be read straight, absent
any hint of drama or interpretation, while others enjoyed hearing the elocution a
professional could provide.
It was evident, however, that a new medium of reading had arrived, as Edward M.
Peterson, chairman of the American Library Association Committee on Work with
the Blind, put it in a 1934 article on The Talking Book. He was optimistic. Through
careful study, librarians will develop ways and means of widely extending the use
of talking books as aid to inkprint literature, in their work of bringing knowledge,
study, culture, and pleasure to any individual who seeks them, he wrote.
At first, recorded books were not widely available, largely due to the cost of
producing records and players, but also because copyright concerns limited their
distribution to the sightless exclusively, which had the unintentional consequence
of stigmatizing the new medium. The U.K. established a program similar to the
Library of Congresss, also geared toward the blind and partially sighted, with
particular emphasis on veterans whose vision had been damaged during World
War I. It wasnt until 1952, when Caedmon Audio released its LP of Dylan Thomas
reading A Childs Christmas in Wales that any attempt was made to broaden the
market. Caedmons record sought to restyle spoken-word recordings as a form of
entertainment suitable for all.
While Caedmon had some success
with this rebranding effort, the real Scholars have found that
shift toward mainstream acceptance
of the audio format began in 1975 audiobooks teach critical
with books on tape. Appealing listening, improve vocabulary,
primarily to commuters, books on
tape spun the whole lazy mans and increase comprehension of
way of reading claim by suggesting the written word.
that its consumers were so busy,
they had to multitask to make time for reading. As the scholar Helen Aron found in
her 1992 survey, those who enjoyed listening to books on cassette skewed male,
middle-aged, highly educated, above average income, with long commutes. They
also enjoyed reading printed books, using audio only as an adjunct to reading.
Aron concluded that [b]ooks on audiocassette are not contributing to the dumbing
down of America. And despite the profound cultural anxiety about non-book
books, some librarians and educators were beginning to recognize the perks of this
burgeoning medium.

When the education scholar Gene Wolfson revisited audiobook use in the classroom
in 2008, he observed that audiobooks teach critical listening, improve vocabulary,
and increase comprehension and appreciation of the written word, especially for
reluctant readers, students for whom English is a second language, and those
with visual impairments. Wolfson cited a study on incorporating audiobooks into the
literacy program at two middle schools, where the results showed improved
reading scores for four successive years.
Further, the scholar Jessica E. Moyer analyzed audiobooks and adolescents,
finding that teens arent necessarily reading less than they did in the past. Instead,
they are choosing to read in different formats. The fact that those who track this
information have not historically considered audiobooks or e-books real reading is part
of the problem. [E]ducators, policymakers, and governmental agencies need to
move beyond traditional genres like the NEA categories of fiction, biographies,
drama, and poetry and modernize their definitions of reading to account for the
emergence of multimodal hybrid formats, she writes.
From this vantage point, it looks as if audiobooks have been held back by a
persistent pro-print agenda. Even as evidence mounts that consuming books in
audio is highly beneficial to students, the shame remains. It is a feeling shared by
philosophy professor William Irwin, who wrote in 2009, I hide my audio habit
because most of my colleagues, and even some of my snobbier students, regard
audiobooks as a sign of an impending dark age of mass illiteracy.
The upsurge in audiobooks and podcasts illustrates our heightened interest, perhaps
even our preference, for digital storytelling. There are many reasons to support this
partiality. Listening to authors read their own memoirs introduces an intimacy that cannot
be achieved without the audio, writes Amy Harmon.
Ruberys book acknowledges what he missed as a print-only reader: Only in
retrospect have I realized how much was missing from my first encounters with
great literature. A few examples: the Yorkshire dialect in Wuthering Heights came
across as gibberish to me, the French in Vanity Fair was opaque, and I had no idea
what the Mozart aria hummed by Leopold Bloom throughout Ulysses actually
sounded like. In addition, skillful performances, whether by a celebrity or a
professional reader, can be uplifting. In an audio interview with WNYC, awardwinning narrator Barbara Rosenblat said: A gifted audio book recording artist can
elevate less-than-stellar writing to someplace very new. (In fact, publishers are
placing more emphasis on performance in their marketing pitches.) Audiobooks are
also metamorphosing into an independent art form, with full or multi-cast
productions, music, and sound effectsenhancements that, for some readers, can
bring a text to life in a way that the silent consumption of print cannot.
Its a pattern in media history to fault a new medium for unseating its predecessor,
and the printed book has long enjoyed a privileged standing, Rubery writes. The
printed book, however, was once blamed for the demise of manuscript culture,
which was itself accused of obliterating oral literacy. In this sense, it is tempting to
think of the rise of audio as a full-circle moment in the history of literature. As Irwin

(the philosopher) noted: The best, most authentic way to experience the Odyssey
and Beowulf, for example, might be to have them sung in the original languages
with lyre accompaniment. But second best might be listening to them on audio.

JSTOR Citations
The Talking Book
BY: EDWARD M. PETERSON

Bulletin of the American Library Association, Vol. 28, No. 5 (1934), pp. 243-244
American Library Association

Bookworms Become Tapeworms: A Profile of Listeners to Books on

Audiocassette
BY: HELEN ARON

Journal of Reading, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1992), pp. 208-212

Wiley

Using Audiobooks to Meet the Needs of Adolescent Readers

BY: GENE WOLFSON

American Secondary Education, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2008), pp. 105-114

Dwight Schar College of Education, Ashland University

What Does It Really Mean to "Read" a Text?

BY: JESSICA E. MOYER

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 55, No. 3 (2011), pp. 253-256
Wiley