The history of audiobooks—a book recorded in the form of a spoken word recording- must begin with the earliest practices of reading aloud to an audience. Long before books were recorded, print volumes were seen as an opportunity for a public reading (Raven 42). Many forms of writing were read aloud, among them verse, fiction and non-fiction in the form of newspaper articles.
Reading aloud was a shared experience that had existed since the middle ages. There is record of Froissart and his lady love reading aloud to each other, (Joyce 111) which provides an rather intimate example (Joyce 111). There are also examples of reading aloud done for public entertainment, such as Froissart reading an episodic tale of romance in the court of Gaston de Foix (Joyce 112). Such readings could span several evenings, rather like a serial television program.
Reading was a more diffused skill in the seventeenth century then it had been preciously, though the majority of people in large cities such as London could not read ( Altick 35). Instead lower class workers would gather together at a public alehouse or inn and have a paper read aloud to them by those among them who were literate (Altick 324). This practice became so popular that newspaper sales were in danger and their owners threatened the licenses of the (Altick 325). A skill newspaper reader was an important part of the social network in an urban neighbourhood (Lyons 162).
In rural areas an uneducated farmer might have children who were able to read well enough to perform this task for the family (Altick 39). Such young readers could be found reading to craftsmen while they worked, such as a baker busy rolling dough or those sewing in a tailor’s shop (Altick 250). There are accounts of factory workers in France gathering together so that the literate labourers could read aloud to their fellow workers (Lyons 113).
A woman was permitted to read aloud to their family if she was a skilled reader, but it was considered better to have a father, husband or brother reading aloud to the family while the women of a house were occupied with domestic work (Flint 109). Such light reading provided relaxation for a busy wife, entertained the whole family, and some households included the servants (Flint 116). Reading aloud was more than a form of entertainment for families in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it forged a familial bond (Flint 194). Domestic libraries often had spaces in them arranged specifically for oral readings (Raven 199). Many who experienced this form of communal reading attempted to revive the practice long after individual silent reading became the normative experience (Flint 157).
The culture of reading aloud meant that part of an author’s career was devote d to public readings and writers tended to live in highly populated towns or cities to have access to the largest possible audience (Raven 132). Reading a new work aloud was a source of publicity and helped expand the market for a newly printed work (Raven 200). This interaction with a listening public added an aspect of performance to public readings, and different audiences drew different performances from an author (Rave 132). Charles Dickens is particularly famous for dramatic readings of his works and the crowds that came to hear him read (Rubery 61).
Audiences have remained enthralled by the spoken word over the centuries. When phonograph technology was developed by Thomas Edison he immediately considered applying the logical new medium to the practice of oral reading by making recordings (Rubery 62). The Victorians were enthusiastic about this emerging technology and the possibility of listening to recordings of the human voice (Rubery 70). It had more lighthearted uses as entertainment as well and even could even be improved by adding ear tubes- the Victorian precursor to headphones (Rubery 72).
In the 1920 the British Royal Institute for the Blind began recording books for soldiers who had been blinded while serving in World War One, which evolved into the Talking Book Service by 1935 (Rubery, 62). The original “talking books” were recorded on long-playing gramophone records, and were only available at special needs libraries (Hoy, 165). Later they were targeted at children who could not yet read, with the Listening Library offering anthologies of recorded children’s stories (Shokoff, 5).
In 1973 a business owner named Duval Hecht established a company called Books on Tape, which provided rental audiobooks aimed at commuters (Whitten 3). The recordings were so popular that users reported lengthening their journeys a little in order to complete a chapter of whatever audiobook they were listening to (Whitten 3-4). Other recordings included archival pieces, such as old radio broadcasts, and spoken poetry (Whitten 3-4). Three hour abridged versions of best-sellers were some of the most popular audiobooks available (Whitten 4-5). Simply Audiobooks is another company followed the rising interest in audiobooks by renting them in CD format (Rubery 64).
In the 1980s audiobook publishing was on the rise, but not closely related to print publishing (Shokoff 171). Today all major print publishers have an audiobook department (Shokoff 171), some of which are Haper Collins with their Digital Media Café, and Spoken Network which publishes BBC affiliated audiobooks (Rubery 65). Only in 1986 was the Audio Publishers Association created, as an organization promoting both the trade and marketing aspects of audiobook production (Shokoff 5-6). It was the APA that coined the term “audiobook” in 1994 (Shokoff 6) and initiated both “Audiobook month,” consisting of conferences, promotional projects and the Audie awards, which recognize exceptional recording in 26 different categories (Shokoff 6). Today audiobook can also win Grammy awards, though they do not receive much public attention when they do (Shokoff 172).
While the visually impaired still make up a large portion of audiobooks audiences, both technologically savvy baby-boomers and younger mp3 users also use audiobooks (Hoy 164). In a 2002 survey, of audiobook listeners the car was listed as the favourite venue for listening (Shokoff 7). Audiobooks provide entertainment or information during a long car commute and allow listeners to multitask (Furini 2). Vacationers who drive to their holiday destinations also enjoy listening to audiobooks making a solid connection between audiobooks and leisure time (Hoy 79).
Producers of audiobooks faced problems that changed with every shift in technology. Tape cassettes replaced record-based audiobooks due to their comparative convenience and cheaper price (Hoy 165). However, both these formats required that a listener had to begin at the beginning and could not easily search for specific passages in the book, (Hoy 165) a problem that anyone who is familiar with cassettes will understand. Even the fast-forward feature that was a part of cassette listening was not very convenient, and the damage that occurred as a tape was rewound made them a very fragile medium for audiobooks recordings (Hoy 165). The rise of broadband networks resulted in an industry wide shift from the CD format to digital audiobooks (Furini 2). CD formatting proved to be more durable, though not as compact as tapes, and an entire book spanned over several disks, making the experience of the book choppy. Digital audiobooks in Wave, Daisy or mp3 format allowed for easy portability and access to the various chapters of the book, along with better sound quality then their predecessors (Hoy 166). However, not all computer-based technologies have not benefited the audio book industry, for example Audio House uses a text-to-speech software that has been described as “robotic” (Rubery 65). More elaborately produced works feature well-established actors as the readers, such as James Mason in a recording of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (Rubery 65). Because so many audiobooks are produced in the UK, many of the readers in such recordings have British accents, which may seem strange to North American listeners, but has not diminished their popularity (Hoy 171-172).
Recently Podcast technology has made it very easy for an amateur to record an audiobook of their own, and this is credited as being the beginning of Libri Voix (Rubery, 66). This website is proclaimed as an “acoustic liberation” (Rubery, 66) of public domain works that are then made freely available to listeners by DIY recordings done by volunteer readers. It takes most of its scripts from Project Gutenberg, the website that makes public domain works available in text form (Rubery, 67).
Digitally formatted audio books has increased audiobook usage in the UK, where 71.4 million pounds were spent on them as of 2002 (Rubery 63). Meanwhile in the US audiobook sales increased by 11.5% while print sales increase only 53% from 1996 to 2000 in the US (Shokoff 7). Yet despite this rise in popularity, and the APA’s initiatives, audiobooks are still under-reviewed in most literary magazines or even booksellers periodicals, with only one publication devoted to them in 2002: Audiofile (Shokof 6-7). Likewise, bookstores still tend to under stock audiobooks, leaving them on the fringe of visible reading culture (Shokoff 7). Audiobooks still tend to be cheaper on online stores like iTunes or Audible (Furini 2).
The passive nature of enjoying audiobooks is often disparaged by critics (Rubery 74). This has lead to some questioning the nature of audiobooks and whether they could be improved upon by adding an interactive element (Furini 2). Literary reviewers often discount audiobooks because they don’t allow readers to have either a physical experience of seeing the text on the page or have their own ideas of what the dialogue might sound like (Shokoff 172-173). Other critics and scholars posit then listening to audio books is a skill separate from visual or writing literacy, and some scholars and educators maintain that using audiobooks builds on the reader’s close listening skills (Rubery, 59). This makes them an important tool to those who teach using the theory of multiple intelligences or who wish to cater to a variety of learning styles (Hoy 80). It has been noted that audiobooks have resulted in an increase of general literacy in the UK (Rubery 63) and listening is considered one of many literacies that make up media literacy in contemporary society (Hoy 80-81). Scholars also argue that audiobooks as a literary form can draw our attention to the way in which an author creates characterization through dialogue, using of dialect, syntax and idiom (Rubery, 74).
Today there is much debate over what status audiobooks have in both public and academic libraries. There are currently many public libraries that lend audiobooks, (Rubery 64) for example the Toronto Public Library. These libraries tend to stock CD audiobooks, though the Daisy player format is also considered convenient (Hoy 178) as are Playaway devices (Stern 77-780). Audiobooks can of course come in many languages. Libraries that are targeted at ESL groups, or college libraries of institutions that teach English, take advantage of this when purchasing audiobooks for their collection (Hoy 79). The libraries that refuse to add audiobooks to their collections do not consider audiobooks to fit with their raison d’etre, or claim that budgetary restrictions make purchasing audiobooks impossible, while others only acquire audiobooks based on patron request (Hoy 82-83). Many academic libraries also refuse to include audiobooks due to the assumption that such books are only used for leisure reading, and therefore do not have educational purposes (Hoy 83-84).This may be because audiobooks tend to blur the line between book recording and performance, though they stick much closer to the original text than radio plays or even movies (Rubery 67). Their rising popularity is a sign that they are fast becoming a part of mainstream culture. Academic institutions are beginning to accept them too, as the academic database EBSCO recognizes audiobooks as a legitimate search term (Hoy, 87).
Works Cited
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Coleman, Joyce. Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print.
Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader 1837-1914.Oxford: Claredon Press, 1993. Print.
Furini, Marco. Digital Audiobook: From Passive to Active Pursuit. Multimedia Tools Applied. 40 (2007) 29-39. JSTOR. Web. January 18 2012.
Goldhil, Simon. “Learning History without Literature: Reading Practices in the Ancient World.” Substance.28.1 (1999) 57-89. JSTOR January 27 2012.
Hoy, Susan. “What Talking Books Have to Say.” Aplis. 22. 4 (2009) 164-180. JSTOR January 19 2012.
Lyons, Martin. Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France. Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 2008. Print.
Raven, Small and Naomi Tadmoor. The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1996. Print.
Rubery, Matthew. “Play it Again Sam Weller: New Digital and Old Ways of Reading. Journal of Victorian Culture.13.1 (2008) 58-79. JSTOR. Web. Januray 18 2012.
Stern, Catherine. “The Role of Audiobooks in Academic Libraries.” College and University Libraries.18 (2011) 77-91. U of T Libraries January 18 2012.
Shokoff, James. “What is an Audiobook?” Journal of Popular Culture. 34. 4 (2004) 171-181. U of T Libraries January 18 2012.
Whitten, Robin. “Growth of the Audiobook Publishing Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly. 18. 3 (2002) 1-10. U of T Libraries January 18 2012.