Sunday Spotlight: The Rise Of Audiobooks

Audiobooks are a true phenomenon of today's book consumption. The ability to multitask everyday chores or a workout routine with experiencing a great book has allowed each individual the ability to be exposed to thousands of more books in their lifetime, which translates to trillions more books being consumed.

For science fiction, this means more customers, more books, and more authors. Entire careers have been built on audiobook publications alone! It has also radicalized the way in which books are written. No longer are today's books esoteric or philosophical meanderings meant to be read carefully and savored, like the books of Samuel R. Delany, James Joyce or Marcel Proust. Today's books are often geared toward narration and easy listening. Authors who used to try to grab readers' attention by withholding details and revealing those details later, end up befuddling and confusing an audio listening audience instead of enthralling them.

The entire literary world, including sci fi, has not only widely expanded, but tectonically shifted.

Audiobooks were becoming a thing even as early as the 80's. Cassette tapes allowed people to consume books on the go, and for people with a tape-playing car stereo, or a new device called a Walkman, one could also listen to books as well as music. (I even had the entire New Testament, read by Gregory Peck!) But in the years that followed, this wasn't improved upon by much. Even as CD's emerged in the late 80's, quality CD players which didn't jump and skip at the slightest bump had yet to come along, and so audiobooks remained largely cassette-driven. One could get audio on tape from the Book of the Month Club, the local library, or any of a number of other providers.

One day in 1995, a businessman named Don Katz was jogging through central park in Manhattan, trying to listen to an audiobook on his Walkman-style cassette player, and reasoned that there simply had to be a better way. That's when he reasoned that a computer-driven audio format, with a digital media player, might be able to play audiobooks anywhere, without the problems of changing tapes or having their media player skip during bumps. By 1997, audible.com was an official business, and it had its first media player. It only held two hours worth of audio, but that was vastly superior to what a cassette tape could provide. Within a few years, they were a publicly traded company. They shifted their focus to subscription-based services. That meant that instead of making their own digital players, they focused solely on content, letting other companies such as Apple or Samsung make newer and better digital media players. By the time iPods became all the rage, the cassette was doomed for audio literature. 2002 was the last year cassette tapes dominated the audiobook market.

For science fiction, certain writers rose to fame as audiobooks became more popular. Other writers had their older works revitalized and made popular again. A bellweather date was the 2003 Audie Awards. The Audies had been handing out awards since 1996, but 2003 was the first year in which science fiction was its own category. The first winner awarded both a new and old science fiction franchise: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, narrated by Scott Brick. Fantasy was not offered as a second category until 2012, and so the second Audie went to Monstrous Regiment (Discworld #31) by Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs.

Audible.com eventually began to award its own "best of" in each category in 2016 as a marketing strategy. Although not an official award, the technique worked. The first ever "best of" for science fiction was We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor. Overnight, already brisk sales shot up for Dennis E. Taylor's novel, and he was catapulted into sci fi fame (deservedly so). Seldom has a single author's career hinged so closely upon audiobooks alone.

Audiobooks will go on shaping science fiction. How much and how far will depend on whatever technology comes next.

Eric

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