ABSTRACT
For the past five years, audiobooks have been the fastest-growing area of general publishing, yet until the late twentieth century they were seen almost exclusively as ‘books for the blind’. This chapter argues that the concept of audiobooks being primarily for the general consumer is much older than appreciated, going back to within months of Thomas Edison inventing the phonograph in 1878. The First World War raised awareness of the need for access to books for those blinded, and the National Institute of the Blind (forerunner of the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB)) in Britain and the American Foundation for the Blind took the initiative to bring about the technological developments needed to make ‘talking books’ a reality. However, the association with disability meant that for the next 80 years or so audiobooks were seen as a ’substitute’ for printed books, and not a medium in their own right. Audiobooks intended primarily for sighted listeners appeared from the mid-1950s onwards, first with Caedmon recordings of Dylan Thomas and other poets, and with children’s stories, and then for a more general market with the start-up of Books on Tape for American commuters in 1975, the release of BBC programmes as ‘The Radio Collection’ in the UK from 1988, and unabridged recordings for public libraries. The advent of the internet and in particular smart phones then enabled audiobooks to break free of the constraints of physical media like cassettes and CDs, and the development of ‘on demand’ media such as podcasts and catch-up radio introduced a much wider mainstream audience to the pleasures of being read to by skilled readers. The chapter also reviews factors affecting the possible future of the industry: changes in publishing company structure, the attitude of literary agents to audiobook rights, and the economics of audiobook production.
