Beyond Print: Week 11 Prompt Response

At my library, there is a substantial collection of audiobooks.  Noblesville and Fishers (where our two branches are located) are full of commuters and people who travel frequently, and many of those who use the library love to stock up on audiobooks for their long drives each week.  These are voracious readers who don’t have the time to sit down with a physical book, so they improvise in this way.  The library has copies of many of the most popular and new audiobook titles, both fiction and nonfiction, and there is something for fans of nearly every genre.  What is great about this is that these busy people, who are constantly on the move, can still fit in reading time and they still get to read new and popular books.  They, like many audiobook connoisseurs, also “choose audiobook titles that [they] are unlikely to read in print form…titles that [they’ve] always wanted to read but have never gotten around to” (Mediatore, 2003, p. 318-19).  The offering of so many audiobooks to these patrons—or those with visual impairments or any other reason for wanting to consume books aurally—meets the library’s mission to reach diverse readers, which is a wonderful thing. 

However, this great intention is somewhat nullified when the quality of audiobooks is not the best.  Patrons tell us all the time about how they didn’t like this audiobook or couldn’t get through that audiobook because the narration was terrible.  With a sigh of disappointment that they could not read yet another title because of less-than-stellar narration, they too often return audiobooks unfinished.  Our collection of these books is meant to cater to their reading needs, but the poor quality of some of the books prevents them from actually getting to consume them.  This is because the problem of poor quality goes beyond patrons simply being annoyed by a narrator’s voice—the narration affects several other appeal factors that can make or break a story.  The characterization is affected through the voices the narrator may, or may not, use for each character, thereby infusing a bit of personality into the characters and sometimes affecting the reader’s relationship with them.  Pacing and tone are very much influenced by the narrator’s speed and tone of voice.  I listened to part of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in audiobook format, and what I thought would be a compelling thriller ended up feeling like a boring, drawn-out story with too many details.  This was thanks to the narrator’s slow pace in speaking and flat tone of voice.  A book that I had anticipated loving because of the reviews of other readers became, because of the narrator, a book I really did not enjoy at all.

eBooks are a similar animal.  They are very much like physical books in that the reader’s imagination provides his or her own voices for the characters, and there is no external narrator influencing the story at all for the reader.  The eBook format does come with its own changes to appeal, though.  Dunneback and Trott (2011) argue that, because readers can change font size, line spacing, and even colors on eReaders, they “will need to rely entirely on narrative drive to feel the pace of the story” because “the larger the text, the less there is to indicate how quickly the story is moving” (p. 328).  This can, in turn, influence tone: “When you see large blocks of texts on the page, this can indicate a description rich story... Short paragraphs with lots of dialogue can mean snappy or quick-witted characters.  If the visual cues are not there, will the reader tire of the story more quickly?” (Dunneback & Trott, 2011, p. 328).  These influences on appeal can make reader’s advisory difficult—what might read as a fast-paced story to one person could read as a slower, more leisurely read to another, all because of the adaptability of the screen to the reader’s preferences.  How, then, do we recommend titles to patrons?  Do we base our recommendations off of the print versions of titles, or do we inform patrons that reading a book on a Kindle might ultimately change the way the story comes across to them?  There are many factors to consider with both eBooks and audiobooks when doing reader’s advisory with them, but I think that having to take these changes to appeal into consideration will only make us more knowledgeable about the titles and genres we are recommending.

References

Dunneback, K., & Trott, B. (2011). E-books and readers' advisory. Reference & User Services

Quarterly, 50(4), 325-9.

Mediatore, K. (2003). Reading with your ears: Readers' advisory and audio books. Reference &

User Services Quarterly, 42(4), 318-23.