Oral Literature.com
In a market that has little time to read but is
hungry to be read out to, the audiobook is gaining traction. Plug into the
story of books in audio format
Simran Kapoor spends three hours driving from
home to work and back everyday . She does not mind the commute. She has books
with her -in audio format.
“The best part about reading a book is that it
lets you create a world of your own as you read, especially the faces and names
that you put to characters. The gap an audiobook fills is sound,“ she says. “It
is not an easy experience to begin with, because it shatters the way you are
used to processing the written word. It forces your brain to reorganise and
re-learn the idea of `reading'.“
As staring at screens -computer and mobile
phones -becomes an unavoidable part of life, reading seems to have taken a
backseat. Which doesn't mean listening has to.
While the `graduation' from books to eBooks is
yet to really take off in the country, audio-bookmakers and booksellers hope
that the shortage of time will convert some readers into listeners.Especially
for those who could do with some `multi-tasking' while exercising, commuting or
cooking.
“The change in lifestyle of an urban reader has
led to an increased popularity of audiobooks in the country . An urban Indian
spends a lot more time on the commute. That is when most get hooked on to
listening to audiobooks,“ says Sumit Suneja, CEO, Reado.com, manufacturer and
retailer of audio books in India. In the last one year, the company has
experienced a growth of 20% in the number of downloads month on month.
International players such as Audible.com, the
Amazon-owned audiobook retailer, have also seen an increase in demand. “We
continue to see consistently growing demand for audiobooks among our millions
of members around the world, including our customers in India,“ says Audible
EVP International Operations Will Lopes. “In 2014, Audible members downloaded
an average of more than 17 books during the year, the equivalent of 1.2 billion
listening hours.“
The growing smartphone market is adding to the
rise in popularity of audiobooks. With 117 million smartphone users in India
and the audiobook witnessing a 45% growth in the number of subscribers year on
year, it has become easier to download and access audiobooks.
Books in the business and self-help category ,
children's books and other bestsellers have been converted to audio format and
been received well. Frontrunners include Rashmi Bansal's Stay Hungry Stay
Foolish, Sidin Vadukut's Dork, Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes
series, Rudyward Kipling's The Jungle Book and Alan Axelrod's Gandhi CEO.
Books in Indian languages are also increasingly
becoming popular. These include translations of popular national and
international titles such as APJ Abdul Kalam's Wings of Fire and Napolean
Hill's Think and Grow Rich.
“Our recent release, Sochiye aur Ameer Baniye'
(Think and Grow Rich) has seen tremendous numbers since its release a little
over a month ago. It has been downloaded over 40,000 times till now,“
Reado.com's Suneja says.
Amish Tripathi, author of the bestselling Shiva
trilogy -The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas, and The Oath of
Vayuputras -is one of the bestsellers in the audio format. “Out of the 2.2
million copies of the series that were sold, 1% was in audio format,“ says
Tripathi.
Former police officer and BJP member Kiran Bedi
chose to narrate one of her own books, As I See. “I value communication, and
reading out your book yourself is a more direct form of communication. It helps
in connecting with the listener directly ,“ says Bedi, an avid listener of
audiobooks on her iPod. She plans to read out the Bhagvat Gita to children
next.
The early audiobooks were mostly recordings of
children's books on cassettes which could be heard on stereo systems. However,
technology has changed the face of audiobooks. After cassettes, came CDs, which
required laptops or desktops and then flash drives. Now audiobooks are
available in compressed, digital formats that can be stored in smartphones and
tablets taking up as little as 25-30 MB of storage space.
STAKEHOLDERS IN THE ECOSYSTEM
The major stakeholders in the ecosystem are
authors, publishers, producers of audiobooks and retailers. Major publishers
across the country such as Westland, Hachette India, Rupa and Penguin Random
House issue subsidiary rights to audiobook manufacturers for converting their relevant
titles to audio format. The manufacturers of the audiobooks, in turn, get
directors, narrators, sound artists, engineers and quality control teams to
convert a bestselling title to audio format.
“Publishers like us get a royalty on the sale of
audiobooks,“ says Paulomi Chatterjee, managing editor, Hachette India, which
has converted some of its bestsellers in the business and selfhelp categories
to audio format.
Karadi Tales from the Amar Chitra Katha family
was one of the first com panies to recognise the poten tial of audiobooks. It
started with offering audio cas settes to readers in the late-90s. Karadi Tales
spe cialises in children's book and has also roped in celebrities such as
Naseeruddin Shah and Javed Jaffrey to read out books.
However, the cost of getting a celebrity on
board to read out a book increases the price of the audio ook, which can be a
deterrent for buyers, says Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO, Westland, publisher of the
Shiva Trilogy , and whose Charkha Audiobooks publishes for young adults. “We
have published autobiographies of Gandhi (Experiments with Truth), JRD Tata
(Beyond the Last Blue Mountain), APJ Abdul Kalam (Wings of Fire) and, most
recently , of the Dalai Lama (A Sacred Life),“ says Narayan Parasuram, creative
director, Karadi Tales.
Audiobooks are currently available online on
almost all the major ecommerce sites, in popular bookstores such as Landmark.
They can also be downloaded from audiobook sites.
TECHNOLOGY PUSH
While CDs have been the most popular form of
audiobooks till now, digital formats are gaining more acceptance. Reado.com,
the company which started off by producing audiobooks in CD format, is about to
launch a smartphone app which will help listeners download books on their
phones. “The app will be available for all Android and iOS platform. The books
will be in compressed form and can be stored on one phone. The user can listen
to them while on the go,“ Reado.com's Suneja explains.
The company will allow the sharing of a
downloaded book on five digital devices. “This will help a reader in sharing a
book with her family members. Once bought, a listener will have access to that
book for life,“ he says. The price of a book on this app will range from `200
to `400 for most titles.
Reado.com has also entered into an agreement
with Amazon's Audible.com to bring its content to India. It plans to sell
10,000 titles by the end of 2015.
A challenge posed by audiobooks is that if the
cost is close to a physical book, buyers tend to choose the latter over the
audio version. “In order to bring the production costs down, we have installed
small recording studios in the houses of some of our empanelled narrators, so
that they can read during their free time. It also saves the cost of hiring a
studio or bringing the narrator to the studio,“ Suneja says.
One of the recent releases by Reado.com is a
series by Osho. The soothing background score and the baritone of Osho himself,
the audio-bookmakers and publishers hope, can transcend the listeners to the
world of spirituality .
Shambhavi Anand ET30MAY15
No comments:
Post a Comment