Posted by Jami Schwarzwalder
Producers
Bruce Colville was turned on to audio books when he too a two month trip with his teen.
He learned:
1 Audio books are a great way to share a story
2 Pride and Prejudice is engaging when traveling through Kansas
How they handle adult content
“Try to reflect the real world”
Would a parent and teen be comfortable listening to the content together?
Would an intelligent adult and mature teen consider it family friendly?
To signal parents about adult issues they will put Adult fiction on the description of the material that may contain situations that are adult.
Not going to but ratings on audio books until they put ratings on books. That is a strength of the library, because parents can go up and ask is something is appropriate for their child’s age.
Still asking themselves How do you handle that 12-14 age range?
Casting
First thing is can we cast the book
Longer books are impossible to release an audio book with the book with a full cast
Biggest challenge is to find the perfect voice for that first person narrative
Sometimes they trade off easy production with a trained actor, to have a believable narration with a narrator that brings the story to life.
Each company has a unique sound.
Format
Cassette in of a life support system
They will still have cassettes for libraries
People don’t buy cassettes in the store
Whatever the technology the production is important
No matter what format it is in the story has to be narrated well, because the sound generally will be the same.
A new format is on a chip you can put in a phone or a Palm pilot. That plays like an I-pod
Playaway is another new format.
Tamora Pierce
We come from long history of story tellers
Talent
Its fun recording books
The key is to shape the book
It fills out a story and makes it broader.
Multicultural Books
Hear the rhythm, follow the sentence, hear a story the words could not convey
An audiobook that is well done can transport us to a different world
Spending time somewhere helps you know their culture. Even if it’s a week long vacation
Don’t be intimidated by foreign words
It’s important to be authentic (so it rings true with a broad range of listeners) but quality comes first.
A good audio book allows you to close your eyes and imagine someone for the specific culture telling the story.
Audio books Reviews
It is hard to fit the review in just a few hundred words.
Have to listen to the entire audio book to get a fell
Review the audio book experience
They don’t cover the plot, which is hard as a reviewer to write.
Already reviewed the plot when reviewing the book.
Covering the audio book experience is unique for each reviewer and that is what makes it interesting.
Since snippets of reviews make it on the back covers reviewers have to think about writing for both librarians and
Is a teenager going to enjoy this?
New review they are doing is podcast reviews. Some librarians have put these on websites, and are getting positive results.
Listen to many different audio books on commute, but it helps with reader’s advisory.
Listen to a book while cleaning the house.
No galleys for audio books, because the recorders use ARCs to make recordings.
Will look at book to compare visualizations, but generally just review the audio.
Bartemous trilogy did an excellent job with making text and footnotes seamless.
Look for a book that listens well.
MARKETING
When you do book talking play an audio books/include audio book. The beginning makes you want to keep going.
Hungry Minds Listening Club. Half our before school feed donought and have them listen to the audio books.
Allow students to check out cd and cassette players
Do displays with cassette tape holders.
Encourage audio books to count for summer reading.
Download audio books onto ipod shuffles and circulate, as well as allow downloading to personal ipods.
Audible books integrated with iTunes.
Overdrive has a list of YALSA’s recommend audio books.