Audiobooks

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT AUDIOBOOKS, BEFORE WE GET DOWN TO CASES…

What a long way audiobooks have come!

I’m not sure when I first became aware of the medium, but it was probably close to half a century ago. My Aunt Nettie’s eyesight had deteriorated to the point where reading for pleasure was no longer possible; a lifelong reader, she discovered that she could obtain what were called Talking Books—recordings available, as I recall, from a division of the Library of Congress. The program was free, but you had to be disabled to qualify for it.

Well, of course you did. If you could sit down and read a book, why would you want to listen to it?

Over time, of course, reading with one’s ears has emerged as an option even for people with perfect vision. To be sure, almost all of us started out as listeners; we were read to before we learned to read on our own. But it took a while for the audiobook to become an item for consumers—and, ultimately, a key component of the book publishing industry.

My Aunt Nettie died in 1982, and it was around a dozen years after that when I first recorded an audiobook. It was Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the first Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery, just reissued by Dutton; Penguin’s audio division was to publish the audiobook version, and I got the opportunity to narrate it. A short book to begin with,it was severely abridged for audio, and I got through it in a single day-long session in a one-man studio in the West Sixties. Nothing to it, I thought, and I was home by four that afternoon, and I lay down on the bed and slept for fifteen hours without stirring.

Back then, no one quite knew what to do with audiobooks. Truck stops provided much of the distribution, as the first substantial audience consisted of long-haul truckers, many of whom found listening to a story a welcome alternative to radio. Other drivers found audiobooks could shorten a long daily commute, or enliven a long road trip.

A friend of mine with lifelong dyslexia had never read anything for pleasure; when she listened to a book on a cross-country flight, a whole new world opened to her. People with reading difficulties became a natural audience for audiobooks, but you didn’t have to be dyslexic to absorb information more effectively and with less effort through your ears than through your eyes.

Well, you get the point. Technology greased the skids, with cassettes yielding to CDs, and with downloadable audio eventually holding down first place. Abridgements, once almost all of the business, pretty much disappeared. (For my views on the subject, have a look at “Abridge This!” in Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails.) And the audio market has kept growing, and shows no signs of slowing down.

MY OWN ADVENTURES WITH AUDIO

I’ve been enthusiastic about audio ever since my first experience as a narrator, and my respect for the medium has grown apace. (A confession, or admission, all in the name of full disclosure—I don’t listen to audiobooks myself. When I’m in a car I find them an unwelcome distraction; when I’m at home my mind wanders, and I find myself reaching for a printed book. I don’t know that I suffer from an auditory equivalent of dyslexia, but it’s clear that I don’t acquire information effectively by listening to it.)

But I’ve enjoyed participating in the growth of audio—as a narrator, as a licensor of source material, and most recently as a publisher.

I’ve narrated quite a few of my books. Early on most of these were abridgements, and I’ve been pleased to see them all but two of them replaced by unabridged recordings with other narrators.

A few years ago I realized that I’d aged out of the role of narrator. My voice would fall apart toward the end of a lengthy recording session, and the process, one I’d always found enjoyable, had become taxing. My last effort, a genuine labor of love, was the Scudder novella, A Time to Scatter Stones. I really wanted to voice that book myself, and I’m pleased with the way it turned out, but I’m afraid I won’t be doing any more.

That’s been offset by a very gratifying role I’ve found in audiobook self-publishing. In 2014 a voice artist’s enthusiasm for a reissued early novel of mine led to our teaming up to produce and publish the book via ACX, a division of Audible. Since then I’ve had the great good fortune to work with such splendid voice artists as Emily Beresford, Michael Bonner, Mike Dennis, Theo Holland, Dolores McDougal, P J Morgan, Richard Neer, Dana Roth, Alan Sklar, Don Sobczak, Barbara Nevins Taylor, and Bill Weeden. You can see what they’ve done so far for LB Productions—and what’s coming soon.

MATTHEW SCUDDER