And I can’ t help observing that I am consistently asked by The New Yorker, when I’ m reading an article from the current issue on my phone, whether I’ d like the audio version of that.
This causes a certain degree of cognitive dissonance in an old“ words-to-beread” person like me who is actually annoyed when the link I click leads to audio or video rather than something more to read. My default for my computer is“ mute”, and, anyway, the bluetooth for my hearing aids connects to my phone, not my computer, so“ listening” through any other device is a nuisance. I doubt I’ m particularly unusual in that way.
So while we have been recently living through an era where audio pioneers like Don Katz of Audible have had to make the case( and offer the tools) to enable creation of good audio content that was originally intended as“ words-to-be-read”, that may be about to flip. More and more, we’ re going to find that extra effort is required to make content accessible to the word-reading population, who otherwise will not be able to enjoy a variety of fiction and non-fiction content that will only be professionally rendered to be seen and heard..
Of course, just as there is automation that enables text-to-voice and text-tospeech, there is automation that transcribes words-to-be-heard into words-tobe-read. As any of us who has read the transcription of a phone message knows, we’ ll just have to hope that there is some investment in cleaning up what the machine thinks it heard before we’ re asked to read it.
And this is yet another reason for book publishers to be concerned about their future. As powerful as Amazon is in the distribution of print and ebooks, Amazon’ s Audible operation is ever so much more dominant for audio content. If the ground shifts so that“ words-to-be-heard” frequently engages more consumers than“ words-to-be-read”, it simply adds to any content creator’ s dependence on Amazon and increases the challenge for any other“ middle” player to generate enough value to justify their participation.
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Reprinted with Permission
WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
PAGE 33
SUMMER 2018