‘I’m sorry, Scott, we did hear a little more stomach. . . . Can we try that again?” says audiobook director Paula Parker to author Scott Turow, sitting a few feet away in a soundproof booth that does not soundproof his growling midriff.
“No problem,” he says and, after a short pause, continues reading “Ultimate Punishment,” (Audio Renaissance, $22.95) his non-fiction treatise on the death penalty. Before breaking for a much-needed lunch in Studio 300, a small recording studio on Lake Shore Drive, Turow is already halfway through reading the book’s 164 pages.
“He’s never done this before, and he’s doing wonderfully,” says Parker, veteran director of audiobooks such as “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger and “She Is Me” by Cathleen Schine.
A few minutes later, Turow emerges from the booth.
“People say listening to an audiobook is a whole different experience than reading the book,” Turow says. “But what it’s doing is returning you to the way you first experienced stories — having them read aloud to you.”
Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that the highest selling audio series of all time are the Harry Potter books, read by Tony and Grammy Award-winner Jim Dale. The Random House Listening Library’s audio edition of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” sold more than 665,000 copies this year, the fastest-selling audiobook to date.
“Certainly, I think that the Harry Potter audiobooks have brought a vast number of new people to the audiobooks experience, old and young alike,” says Mary Beth Roche, president of the Audio Publishers Association and publisher of Audio Renaissance. “From what we’ve heard, anecdotally, is that people love this, and . . . they’ll choose new audiobooks to listen to after Harry Potter.”
According to the Association of American Publishers, the audiobook market has grown an average of 11.5 percent annually since 1997, while consumer book sales grew 2.7 percent annually in the same time frame.
“The really exciting thing is we went over the tipping point three or four years ago,” says Maja Thomas, vice president and publisher of Time-Warner AudioBooks. “It went from, `Oh, yeah, my blind grandmother listens to them’ to `I got hooked when I heard David Sedaris on `This American Life’ and went on to get all his books on tape.”
In other words, these aren’t your grandmother’s audiobooks. Publishing companies have become increasingly sophisticated about how they choose performers, market titles and select formats for audiobooks. As books on tape become books on CD, the MP3 format has also risen in popularity, Roche says.
Unabridged popular
Audiobook enthusiasts want unabridged works, and they tend to not only follow authors, but the reader/performers too. Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave and Edward Herrmann have their fans not only among consumers, but authors as well, Thomas says.
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“More authors are fans of the format themselves, so I think more authors are interested in reading their own audiobooks,” Roche says. “The question is always, Who is going to do the best job?”
Authors often weigh in on who will voice their book — and often, whether they themselves will read their works.
“Some [authors] read their own books well, and some don’t add much,” says Robin F. Whitten, founder and publisher of AudioFile, an audiobook magazine. “They are oftentimes smart enough to know the work might be better in the hands of an actor trained in narration.”
Other writers stay out of it.
Mystery novelist P.D. James said she has heard only snippets of the audio versions of her books.
There was no such thing as an audiobook in 1962, when James’ first novel, “Cover Her Face,” was published. But the 83-year-old James says she’s glad for the audience the format brings to her books.
“On the whole, I’m for it,” she said during a stop in Chicago promoting her latest book, “The Murder Room” (Knopf, 411 pages, $25.95). “People in many countries spend an awful lot of time on the road or in planes. This is a way they can experience the book when they’ve got the free time. It brings the book to many other people who wouldn’t encounter it.”
Nonetheless, she said, “The book, to me — the book on the shelf — is still the most important.”
That’s why she has little truck with e-books. “I hate the idea of reading printing off the screen,” she said. “It’s very repugnant to me.”
Yet, in a sense, audio is built into James’ stories, she said.
“Reading a book aloud is part of my creative process,” she said. “I write by hand. When my secretary comes in, I dictate to her what I’ve done. So I am listening to the book myself. That’s very valuable for the dialogue. I can feel the subtle flow of the English. I can change it if it isn’t flowing.”
Historian David Herbert Donald also reads his books aloud as part of his writing process.
He noted that recently he and his wife were making some improvements to their home in Lincoln, Mass., and, during one break in the work, he overhead a conversation between two of the workers.
“Do you think he’s all right?” one of them asked, referring to Donald. “He just sits there at that desk all day. And he talks to himself!”
Donald explained, “I formulate my words verbally, orally, and then I put them down. I think this comes from teaching so long. When you care about teaching, you have to be sure what you’re saying reaches the students.”
He was pleased with the abridged four-tape version of his best-selling 1995 biography of Abraham Lincoln, read by Tony Award-winning actor James Naughton and published by Simon & Schuster Audio.
A Harvard University professor emeritus, Donald said he was consulted about the abridgment for the audiobook of “Lincoln.” The end product “was a very good condensed biography of Lincoln,” he said.
A key source
Naughton also used Donald as a key source, the author recalled. “It was amusing. I kept getting calls, like, `How do you pronounce A-n-t-i-e-t-a-m [the site of a major Civil War battle]?’ I got dozens of calls with words like that.”
The four-tape audiobook has been much more successful than Donald expected. “This audiotape has sold and sold and sold. And I couldn’t figure out why,” he said. “It turns out the book is a requirement for lots of college and high school courses. Lots of students these days drive into school, so many were listening to the book.”
Donald, who was in Chicago recently to promote his latest work, “`We Are Lincoln Men’: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends” (Simon & Schuster, 269 pages, $25), said, “I hope the new book will be put on tape.”
Top rentals for talking books
Many local libraries carry audiobooks in cassette tape and CD formats. A number of companies offer titles for sale or rent through Internet Web sites, and at least one, Audio Adventures, has built its business on renting tapes to truckers and other travelers along major interstate highways.
Here are the titles three companies report as their top rentals:
BLACKSTONE AUDIOBOOKS
www.blackstoneaudio.com
Non-fiction (the label as published for the books in this group has been corrected in this text). – “Charlie Wilson’s War,” by George Crile
– “Mexifornia,” by Victor Davis Hanson
– “Defying Hitler,” by Sebastian Haffner
Fiction
– “Justice,” by Dan Mahoney
– “Divine Comedy,” by Dante Alighieri
BOOKS ON TAPE
www.booksontape.com
Fiction
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– “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown
– “Blow Fly,” by Patricia Cornwell
– “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” by Mitch Albom
– “Split Second,” by David Baldacci
– “Bleachers,” by John Grisham
Non-fiction
– “Dude, Where’s My Country?” by Michael Moore
– “Who’s Looking Out for You?” by Bill O’Reilly
– “Every Second Counts” by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins
– “Bushwhacked” by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
– “Living History” by Hillary Rodham Clinton
AUDIO ADVENTURES
www.audioadventures.com
Fiction
– “Treasure Mountain” by Louis L’Amour
– “The Lonely Men” by Louis L’Amour
– “Lonely on the Mountain” by Louis L’Amour
– “King of Torts” by John Grisham
– “Valor of the Mountain Man” by William W. Johnstone