To begin with, we conceived books as paper books in print. There was a graduation towards e-books later. And now comes the audio books. Printed books are read, e-books are read from a computer or smartphone or other devices. Audio books are listened to . Thus readers have become listeners. This keeps pace with the changing life style of urban population. As they spend time in the commute to work, they have an opportunity to listen to an audio book.
An audio book formerly was put on casettes. Then it was burnt on CDs. These days it is available in digitally compressed format that hardly occupies 25-30 MB of storage space. It can be downloaded from the publisher’s webside or other e-commerce sites. They are available at popular physical book stores such as Landmark.The smart phones with Android and iOS have an application for this. The book downloaded is with you for life time. It can be shared on five digital devices. The average price of a book ranges from Rs. 200 to Rs. 400. Here the challenge is that if the print book and audio book cost the same, the buyer is likely to opt for the print version. It is, therefore, necessary to bring down the cost by reducing the cost of production.
The publishers issue subsidiary rights of their titles to audio book manufacturers. It enables the latter to convert the print book into audio format. They have to engage narrators, directors, sound artists, engineers and quality control people while making this conversion. They can rope in celebrities to read out the a book. However, that increases the cost. In India, they set up small recording studios at the residences of the narrators on their panel who can do the reading and recording in their free time. That saves the hire charges of a professional studio, and the cost of taking the narrator to such a studio.
The genres amenable to audio version are best selling novels, self help books, spiritual books, religious books, classics, Indian language books, comics, biographies, children books and so on.
In India, Reado.com operates in this field. Audible.com is an Amazon owned audio book retailer. We have Charkha Audiobooks.