How to read more
Sound is increasingly entering the media diet of readers of books, newspapers and periodicals. Audiobooks, podcasts and books with soundtracks are no longer the extravaganzas of some shotgun, but phenomena that are emerging from a niche to become mainstream.
Alexandra Alter, who covers the world of books for the NYTimes after covering the Wall Street Journal, is one of the industry's brightest insiders. Every week on the New York Times Book Review podcast, she gives an interview with host Pamela Paul about the state of the industry. In one of these stimulating conversations, Paul, rather amazed by the preparation of the journalist, asked her: "how do you read all the books you talk about?". Alter replied without thinking too much that since her Kindle and iPhone have existed, her reading ability has grown dramatically.
He can read anywhere with his Kindle, especially on his commute to work or for work, and when he can't read by force majeure, he listens to audiobooks and podcasts on his iPhone. An activity that she also carries out while ironing her children's blouses and aprons. Thanks to these gadgets, reading time has grown a lot, allowing her to do her job better, among other things.
Reading and the phenomenology of reading
Can there be a better commercial for the Kindle and iPhone than Alter? Other than the smell of the book, the pleasure of leafing through the rustling pages and so on of these Proustian sensations to which the deacons of paper attach themselves. Here we are talking about concretely tripling one's reading capacity thanks to a hybrid, wise and non-religious approach to the content which consists in exchanging the reading medium according to the circumstances as our Giolitti exchanged socialists and Catholics as needed.
How much nonsense is heard and read about whether the ebook or the book is better, when the real point of everything is to read more and above all to be able to find the time to read more. The Marquis de Sade wrote in very minute handwriting on very small sheets of paper which were limited to him, his problem was not the medium of writing, but the writing. In many debates on books versus ebooks, the substance of reading is confused with its phenomenology. If together the book, the ebook, the audiobook or whatever can make us read more, why reject them? That's why Amazon plans to open 400 bookstores. Hell, he's doing it to broaden the market, which is in everyone's interest.
Towards meta-consumption
In that regard, those geniuses at Amazon have had a couple of Oscar-winning thoughts. The first, a program called Kindle MatchBook, is this: for the cost of a book, or for one euro more, you can also download the ebook, so you can read both in relay race. Unfortunately, very few publishers have joined this program, because those foxy publishers want to sell us the same stuff over and over again. But as the late David Carr put it: "Holy shit, how many times do we have to see the same content?" But publishers aren't the only ones who want us to buy the same content as if its value resided solely in the material or non-material medium in which it is consumed. We saw Taxi Driver in theaters, then we bought it on VHS, then on DVD, then on Blue Ray and finally we pay for it on streaming services. We have bought the same content five times.
The second thing is even bolder because it also involves Audible, the largest audiobook producer on the planet. It's called Whyspersinc for Voice and consists of synchronizing the reading point reached on the Kindle Fire or its apps with the audio track of the audiobook so as to switch from one to the other in absolute continuity between reading and listening and between listening and reading. Seeing is believing. You start reading on the couch and continue listening as you drive to the supermarket and fill your cart with produce. When you get home, pick up your Kindle on the couch where you left off when you finished listening.
If reading can have a future, that future is this, conquering downtime. Those who have the passion and desire for it can truly consume content regardless of the circumstance and medium. We are truly in the age of metaconsumption.
The audiobooks
Stephen King said that to entice his three children to read books, he gave them $20 if they handed them a tape recording of a novel read aloud. The writer listened to the tapes recorded by the boys on his Walkman while he was on the move. In 1999 on one of these walks he was hit by a pickup truck which left him in rather bad shape, as the great writer recounts in his book On Writing. With a small investment, King was able to achieve a dual purpose: to make his children read more and to keep up with publishing news. No one has ever doubted the brilliance of this unsurpassed storyteller. On the NYTimes he said that in arranging the cellar of his home in Maine he found an impressive number of tapes recorded by his children.
The evolution of those primitive cassettes are audiobooks that can be downloaded from online libraries, first of all Audible, and can be listened to on any mobile device, even with Jurassic technology. What Stephen King did in magnificent solitude is now done by millions of people: put on headphones and press the "play" button and let yourself go listening to the reading, usually of excellent quality. It's a bit like the concept of the personal assistant that is starting to appear in the cultural industry.
Today audiobooks and book listeners are growing at a "Chinese" rate which was once those of ebooks, which have now entered negative territory, at least for those published by traditional publishers. The ebooks of a new generation of writers and publishers, which nobody detects, however continue to grow at a good pace, according to what Amazon makes us understand. Just as Kremlinology once existed, which tried to decode mysterious signals coming from the parades on Red Square, today there is Amazonology which tries to decipher the signals that come from the Seattle giant.
On the "New York Times" of December 23, 2015, in an article entitled Looking Back at 2015 in Book Publishing, Alexandra Alter wrote "Audiobooks are the new e-books". In the first eight months of 2015, the so-called downloaded books (not to confuse them with those on CD) reached the remarkable number of 26 titles and grew by 38% compared to 2014 against an 11% drop in the sale of ebooks from part of the 1000 publishers who join the Association of American Publishers.
Some observers go so far as to think that some readers are switching from digital reading to digital listening. Anyone with a smartphone (around 2 billion people) has the ability to become a digital listener. The audio format, which is not affected by the dumping of ebook prices, is liked by the big publishers who are pumping it a lot, while they are thrashing the ebook.
Podcast
Podcasting is another astounding phenomenon. Born about ten years ago, without too many ambitions, with the aim of distributing sound content of any kind in streaming or download, it looks a lot like a delayed radio program. Sponsored primarily by Apple, which came to pre-install a specific non-deletable application (Podcast) on their devices, it has spread like the audiobook and today 50 million Americans download and listen to podcast content. It works in a very simple way: a reader subscribes to a podcast and receives, depending on its frequency, a note on his device notifying him that new content is available. At that point it is listenable. And now the podcast is making its breakthrough in the business world as one of the most interesting niches for advertising investors as well. A phenomenon that has also been noticed and commented on by “The Economist”.
One of the most followed podcasts is precisely that of the liberal London magazine. By subscription and also à la carte, the London periodical offers all the articles in each issue, read aloud by professionals. The head of this service said that a particularly visionary subscriber listened to the podcast or an article while swimming in the pool. Before he had to choose whether to do one thing or the other, now he can do them simultaneously. This marriage of swimming and reading is truly a manifestation of our times! Perhaps the essence of technology is just this: to allow people to do what they want regardless of external constraints.
Soundtrack books
And we have arrived at the latest crazy novelty in publishing. Soundtracked and ambient books are taking their place in the crowded ebook landscape, enticing readers with their interactive features. Nor can it be said that these products can suffer the competition of the book which crushes them with its millennial weight. No, absolutely not, books cannot be made this way. It is a specific terrain of digital publishing and as such can finally lead this sector of the media market towards a substantial remedy which is the only process that can free it from subordination to the classic book form.
The journalist Alex Lawson, of the English newspaper "The Independent", tells us something about this eccentric (but not so much) phenomenon. We offer our readers these reflections by him, Are soundtracked books a stunt or the future of ebooks ?, in the Italian translation by Ilaria Amurri. Happy reading, because we still can't say "Happy listening". At least for now.
From the antipodes the Booktrack app
The rustle of paper and the ancient smell of layered pages is key to the allure of picking up a paper book instead of a digital one for many readers, but perhaps in the UK they've found an equally sensual solution.
Soundtracked books, i.e. eBooks with sound effects, have been appearing on online store shelves for the past four years, but focused research by industry leader Booktrack has revealed that Britain is the second most enthusiastic country, after the United States, to open wide its eyes and ears to this newly rediscovered vehicle. The study shows that the total number of people who read this type of eBook has increased 13 times since last July and reveals that 2 million users worldwide use the Booktrack application.
However, these new eBooks have not been enthusiastically received by all. Predictably, traditionalists have insisted that sounds distract from the written word and interfere with the reader's imagination. “Readers want to immerse themselves and let their imagination run wild without being bombarded by interference,” says an insider, interviewed by the “Independent”.
Reading with sound helps understanding
But industry professionals have the evidence in hand: A New York University study titled "Reading with Sound" found that concentration levels benefit from this type of experience. Paul Cameron, founder of New Zealand's Booktrack and the man dedicated to changing the way we read, says: “We created a new medium of entertainment that hasn't been seen before, simply because the iPad didn't exist. The book is the only technology that does not have synchronized sound, but this greatly enriches reading”.
On first listen the experience comes as a series of sound effects glued together. Reading Dracula, for example, the neighing of horses, the shots and the cries of terror reach the ears. I had a rehearsal with Cameron in a busy London café, where the background sounds were played through headphones, and it was like trying to focus on a point in the distance while the Rio Carnival rages all around.
In a quieter environment, however, the experience is completely different. While Sherlock Holmes (one of Booktrack's most profitable articles) chats with Doctor Watson by the hearth, the crackling of the flames seems to transmit its heat through the cold luminescence of the iPad. Likewise, Toto's howl and the whirling wind that carries Dorothy to Oz in L. Frank Baum's classic add atmosphere to a now-familiar story as I read it on a speeding train through rugged Cumbria. In much of the prose the choice falls on classical music and on the same devices used in the cinema (high strings for moments of tension, full-bodied basses for long journeys through epic landscapes). What's more, the application measures reading speed to understand when to reproduce the effects.
Peter Jackson's special effects in the books
The novelty benefited self-publishing, which rose to prominence as eBooks burst into the publishing market. Fan-fiction is one of the largest categories among Booktrack's 16.000 titles, and users are encouraged to experiment with a range of sound effects (recorded by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings team) to "illustrate" their work, but they can also create their own. Furthermore, Cameron plans to add real songs in the future: “My dream is to use Lorde's voice as an accompaniment to The Hunger Games or Taylor Swift's in some young novel“, he confesses, adding that many fans have begun have long been listening to music while reading (personally, I think the incongruous mix of Daphne du Maurier and the Boards of Canada electronic kit is a perfect marriage).
As for publishers, sound books can generate a substantial and entirely new revenue stream, as well as the opportunity to make a better profit from pre-existing catalogues. The prices are slightly higher than regular eBooks, which have taken a hit in general. Nielsen consumer surveys report that the share of eBooks in the UK market jumped from 21% in 2012 to 32% in 2014, but fell to 29% in 2015. Indeed they have been hampered by the exceptional circulation of coloring for adults and the scarcity of hits for children, which induces adults to read books aimed at a younger audience (such as John Green's The Fault in Our Stars). Erotic fiction, with the primacy of Fifty Shades of Gray by EL James, continues to have great success in digital format, guaranteeing anonymity to those who read this genre in public.
From ebook to audio?
In the study "Who's Afraid of the ebook Plateau" Nielsen found that readers changed their views and habits within a few years, in fact the decline in sales of Kindles is demonstrating the current decline of the tablet market and eReaders. In the UK, Waterstones CEO James Daunt raised a fuss when, after calling Amazon a "ruthless devil" in 2011, he begrudgingly ended up in bed with said Satan a year later, in order to sell his devices. This year, however, Daunt has had to admit that sales have been "pitiful" and has pulled the Kindles from stores. "We have gone as far as we could with the means we had", explains Jo Henry of Nielsen, "those who buy a lot of books want to take them with them on vacation and on the subway, the point is that you have to give them more than what a normal book offers".
The question is, if the popularity of eBooks has started to wane, how did sound books capture this growing market? It seems that their growth goes hand in hand with the resurgence of audiobooks and podcasts, both brought about by iTunes and by epochal bestsellers that have become classics such as Harry Potter, read by Stephen Fry, or the podcast series entitled “Serial“, a famous audio-documentary about a real murder case. Ultimately, we still seem to be drawn to long, detailed stories, only that we want them in a form that's new to print, and 10% of Nielsen survey respondents say they're willing to pay more for features latest and most interactive eBooks.
One of the categories that has launched itself more quickly into the new market is that of teachers. Booktrack, backed by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, has more than 12.000 school members and claims that pupils who use it read 30% more and that their comprehension test scores exceed the average by 17%.
Are books without sound destined to become as archaic as silent films? Probably not, but the rise of sound books speaks volumes about how we want to be informed and entertained in an increasingly digitized world.
