About

About The Audiobook Enthusiast

In simple words, an audiobook is a book read to you by a person or computer. A good definition of the word can be found in Wikipedia. After a while, I tried to understand the impact of audiobooks in my life. I created a parallel between books, audiobooks and movies to effective communication skills learned during professional development. What is taught in courses is simple: communication in its written form is responsible for 10% of the overall communication; sound (voice on phone calls) is responsible for 25%; and a face to face meeting, with its visual content, is responsible for 65% of the message delivered.

Back to books, when a movie is released based on a written story, a lot of information is delivered through the motion picture. On the other hand, the story needs to be compressed into a 2 hour session and more often than none we hear the usual comments on movies lacking the details of the book.

Moving forward to my hobby and the reason for being audiobook enthusiast, audiobooks are usually either abridged or unabridged. While the first is a reduced or condensed version of the original, the latter brings you full content of the the book. My personal choice is the unabridged version with a human reader given the amount of information transferred even thru the slight change in tone of voice.

With all the above, it seems natural to think an audiobook should be richer than the original book. Not so fast there cowboy. As with everything, there is no one size fits all. People react differently to the various media and with topics that are likely more difficult to be absorbed. I just imagine the terror in my face while trying to understand the message from a quantum physics audiobook (yes, they exist!).

Moving on to the availability topic, the evolution of mobility and more powerful devices created an opportunity for dissemination. Moreover, audiobooks are now at stores, libraries and websites given almost no excuse for not using it. The doors to a wider audience is there.

Before I finish this initial post, I have one final comment: reading more frequently was always included in my new year’s resolution list. I think I can now say with confidence the goal has been accomplished.

Throughout the posts and discussions, I will cover a variety of topics that will touch on availability and dissemination of audiobooks. I hope you will enjoy it.

Author's reasons

I have to admit I have never paid much attention to audiobooks. It was in early 2012 when that changed and has become a real hobby. You can call me an avid listener or Audiobook Enthusiastic.

As with any new hobby, I started to talk to people at different gatherings. As I shared my experiences I realized the vast majority of people didn't know much about it or how accessible it actually is. From other enthusiasts, ideas were always shared on how to improve the experience. And that was the seed to this blog.

Marcelo