Audio Books have a huge market to explore. They’re what is known as the talking book, or let's define them as a recording of a text that is being read. They were first sought after as help for the blind when they came out. But within a short period of time, they became so important that the publishing industry began to produce them on a massive scale. Everybody wanted to read or should I say listen to them, especially due to the fact that they preserve the oral tradition of storytelling. They had a way of getting to you, making you want to come back for more, and as they began to spread to libraries and gain popularity with commuters and travelers, more and more people wanted to listen to them. They were more now than just the conservation of oral storytelling. They were actually a tool for learning and very effective they were in impressing the listener.
The talking book was now a part of history and would only get bigger as it became known to book lovers around the globe. The idea of listening to a book was a good way to get people to listen to and enjoy a story and with the impact of the voice on the recording, it seemed as if a lot more people would come closer in contact with a book now. The talking book would actually make more people read, everybody began to think.
Caedmon and Nightingale Conant were among the first to see the potentiality of this market because of the impact the books caused on the public, anyone who dared listen to them. They began to use them to help people make things happen in their lives. They had, and still do, this power to make you do what they say. Audio books took a liking from the public in a real way, for what they are. As they grew, more companies got together to promote them and turn them into the talking-book industry. There was nothing to stop them now from triumphing.
This industry which depended on cassettes and discs began to grow even bigger with the advent of the famous Internet. Broadband technologies, compressed formats and portable media players brought out the best of audio books as narrators with enticing voices get together to record them. The Internet has introduced innovative means of delivering them and thousands of titles can now be easily downloaded on tablets, ipads, iphones and personal computers. Audio books are a big business in the online world. They have gone far beyond radio programs and oral histories not only because they’re available on CDs, tapes, digital formats, MP3, WMA and AAC but due to their effective adaptation in audio drama. Recently, computer-voiced reading has had an enormous impact on the industry because it has practically substituted human voice. This substitution has been extremely successful and although it is automation, it carries out the job faster and more reliable and can synthesize speech more effectively.
There's a whole new world here that will eventually expand into innovative fields as synthesizing speech unfolds itself before our very eyes. This will take audio books to another realm in not such a distant future.
Audio books have helped children, the blind, and have turned the learning curve around for many people. They have helped us learn new words, build our vocabulary, and are currently being used in learning a new language. At Wade Hilton from Jamaica we want to promote reading around the world and it seems as if audio books can help us reach our goal for they have come to seduce a lot of people due to the fact that you can listen to them while making use of your time doing something else. Many people have confessed that they didn’t realize how much of their language they were just skimming over until they got involved with audio books.
This is going to play an important role in the expansion of audio books. You can walk your dog while listening to one of them. They can help you relax just before falling asleep at night. You can sweep the yard, wash the dishes or car, and even paint the house while enjoying one of them. They'll only get bigger because of the facility they bring about in reading. Several libraries have released figures showing their growth is on the rise. More and more book clubs are acquiring them for their hybrid listener-readers, and their popularity among children is booming as sales surge to over $40 million dollars.
There are a lot of arguments now on whether reading a book is better than listening to one. We at Wade Hilton from Jamaica will leave the choice up to you, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you think. These books, as an art form, will always be with us for there are sectors who identify themselves with them and will thus go out of their way to preserve them. That's one argument we know for a fact. What else is there to support their well-being? Go ahead and reveal it.
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