Week 11 Prompt

Audiobooks have always had an impact on my life, which I suppose somewhat shows my age. I grew up listening to them as well as reading them and would often listen to the same ones over and over again (I’m looking at you, Harry Potter with Jim Dale’s narration). I quit listening to them for quite a few years before picking them back up about a year and a half ago, when I was required to review different formats for my materials for youth class. Since then, I usually have an audiobook downloaded through overdrive at any given time. I’ll listen to about anything, though I do generally focus on middle grade and young adult fiction, as well as general nonfiction (I wouldn’t get through the nonfiction otherwise).

With Overdrive, I appreciate that you can speed up the narration if you want to. I typically listen at 1.25x so I pay more attention to what’s happening in the track. If not for this ability, there would be more narrators I wouldn’t enjoy listening too, simply for pacing. There are still narrators I avoid, but I’m more likely to find a narrator I love. The narrator’s style can have a big affect on appeal - what usually impacts me the most is tone, as Saricks describes (2015). Narrators can make the tone better or worse, depending.

Additionally, the number of narrators can also have an impact. Some people don’t like multiple narrators, and there’s definitely more risk when choosing an audiobook with more than one narrator that one of them won’t be stellar. Music can also be added, and I wish it was noted more beforehand: there are instances where it works beautifully (I’m thinking of Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan), and others that are off putting. Knowing if an audiobook contains music and the use of multiple narrators and their impact on appeal should be taken into consideration.

I avoided ebooks until I was in graduate school, when I realized reading fiction was far easier to read electronically than a textbook and that having a kindle meant I could bring whatever book I wanted with me, and no one would know what I was reading. Since then, it’s my generally preferred method of reading and I read more now than I did before using an ereader. I don’t feel as if appeal factors change as much with ebooks, at least in terms of the novel’s content. Other aspects, like font or length can be mitigated if using ebooks. If someone prefers a particular font, or size they can read a larger variety of books electronically as they would have control over those aspects.

I will say that I learned about Amazon’s Kindle in Motion format this past week, and it does affect the appeal factors. I’m currently reading Hell’s Princess by Harold Schechter (one of Amazon’s First Reads this month, it’s about Belle Gunness, a female serial killer active in La Porte, Indiana from 1902 to 1908), and it’s my first experience with the format. Amazon released the format in 2016 and for those unfamiliar, Kindle in Motion more or less allows for the addition of photos, illustrations and small animations throughout the book.

an example of one of the illustrations

In the case of Hell’s Princess, there’s a lot of newspaper clippings and photos, and the background ‘pages’ are yellowed. There have also been a few illustrations and animations, which is an interesting experience. For those who might be bored by nonfiction I could see it as being a way to keep the reader drawn in, as the format impacts the pacing and style of the book. I know I’m certainly reading this book faster than I normally would if it was just blocks of text on my paperwhite and it feels more interactive. I’m going to have to keep an eye out for a novel that utilizes the format, to see if it’s equally appealing.






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Saricks, J. (2015). At Leisure with Joyce Saricks: Listening for the Appeal of Audiobooks. Booklist, 111(19/20), 131. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.