I’ve been investigating and educating myself on the audio-book side of the business. Audible.com, of course, is the big player in the market, being a subsidiary of Amazon. I never realized how big the audio-book market actually is. It’s still small, of course, in comparison to ebooks and print books, but it’s growing in leaps in bounds.
Just to give you a snapshot of audio-book growth, according to the Audio Publishers Association, 3,073 new titles were released in 2007. In 2010, 6,200 new titles were released. In the past 5 years, downloading has grown by 300% of total dollar volume for a total of about 1 billion dollars between libraries and individual consumers. CDs are still the majority of the market at 58% of revenue, but they’re slowly declining.
As far as my venture, I recently decided to investigate doing an audio version of The Tormay Trilogy. After some due diligence in listening to scores of narration samples and figuring out the ins and outs of ACX and Audible.com, I’m delighted to announce that The Hawk and His Boy should be available in audio format by the end of the year. Wayne Farrell has agreed to do the trilogy. Wayne is a fantastic narrator with a superb style and voice that fits perfectly with how I’ve imagined the story should be read. There are some books on Audible.com that he’s narrated if you’re curious about his work: Andrew Biss’ The End of the World, C. J. Martin’s Two Tocks Before Midnight.
Anyway, I’m extremely pleased about this development. The theatrical possibilities and interpretation of the audio format fits perfectly with the drama of Tormay.
HOW EXCITING! I have actually listened to The Hawk and His Boy with the audio on my older Kindle. Obviously, NO comparison to a dramatized version, but I was thinking how wonderful it would be if it was available in that format! Looking forward to it. Now, I really will have to break down and get the audible.com app.
Yeah, I’m super excited. Road trips and long commutes…
Cool! I’m not a big audiobook fan, but my daughter takes in practically all her “reading” that way (usually while doing something else at the same time, like processing 60 lbs of peaches for canning, or doing her computer science homework).
Out of curiosity: why aren’t you doing the narration yourself?
Narrating and all that is totally not my thing. I’m a terrible actor. 60 lbs of peaches? Wow. Hey, does she/you have a great pickle recipe? I’d really love to try my hand at pickling cucumbers, but it sort of intimidates me.
bear with me, will your books be available on cds, as well?
That’s a good question. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’ll try to find out. I’m still kind of hazy about how Audible works with their files, but perhaps there’s a way they port to cds? At any rate, The Hawk should be done by early December if all goes well. I’ll try to dig up an answer beforehand…
Audible does have an option to burn files to CD.
I can’t wait for this! I do a lot of my “re-reading” via audiobooks. They’re perfect for workouts, housecleaning, and baking binges.