Week Eleven Prompt Response - Appeal Factors: Audiobooks and eBooks

Audiobooks

I am a big lover of audiobooks - especially when I'm at work doing a task that does not require a whole lot of brain power. I've discovered that I do excellent at listening to audiobooks of books I have already read, when I'm doing things that may require me to think a little bit more because I already know what is going to happen. Cahill and Moore (2017) mention a quote from Neil Gaiman where he describes the power of listening to a book in a way the author meant it, creating a more intimate experience for the reader. I have experienced this in so many ways. Libba Bray's Beauty Queens is a YA audiobook that is read by the author, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Bray is able to read the story in such a way that captivates the listener in precisely the way she intended when she wrote the book - the tone, the characterization, the pacing, the storyline, etc. are all affected by the way she read the book. The way she reads the story makes it infinitely more hilarious and captivating (it's kind of Lord of the Flies meets Miss Congeniality meets Lost meets every television teen soap opera drama from the mid- to late-2000s. It is absolutely amazing, please listen to it). 

There's even been companies that have capitalized on the ability to affect appeal factors through audiobooks - Graphic Audio. The company produces audiobooks with full casts, background sound effects, and music, creating a "movie in your mind" (their tagline at the beginning of each production). I've recently listened to the entirety of Graphic Audio's A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J Maas audiobooks and the way they affect the appeal of the books is outstanding. The music and background effects bring the listener directly into the story, providing an enhanced tone of the story and really allowing for the listener to dig deeper into how the characters are developed and created. These kinds of audiobooks even affect the pacing of the story (if listened to at the initial speed), with the voices able to talk faster or more slowly, depending on the scene, and provide inflections to their words in ways that might not be picked up when when reading it, bringing the listener directly into the action of the story. 

"A narrator's decisions about tone, voice, and emphasis can be the determining factor in a listener becoming engrossed in or disengaged from the listening experience" (Cahill & Moore, 2017, p. 24). Again, another audiobook I've listened to demonstrates this perfectly. Last year, I read Belladonna by Adalyn Grace. I enjoyed the novel, but did not feel as invested in the story as other books I've read. I decided to listen to the audiobook based on my sister's recommendation that it greatly improved the book for her, and boy was she right. The narrator, Kristin Atherton, does an amazing job at voicing the characters and narrating the story in way that allowed me as the listener to be engrossed in the story, far more than when I read the book. 

eBooks

On the other end of things, you have e-books. Again, I am an avid e-book reader, more than physical books lately. I honestly use more e-books than physical because of the ease with which I can borrow and read books, the ease of reading in bed after my wife has fallen asleep, and the capabilities to highlight passages that I want to save for later (which stay on my Kindle even after the borrowed library book goes back to my library). Dunneback & Trott (2011) mentions many ways that e-books can affect the appeal of a book. One of the negative effects on appeal can be the ability to change font types and sizing. This ability can make it harder for readers to grasp how long they have left in a book, despite device abilities to display how much length or time is left in the book, which can affect the engagement of the reader. If there's seemingly no end in sight, the book can begin to feel overwhelming or daunting, and can detract away from that feeling of "oh I only have 30 pages left I don't care if it's 2 a.m., I'm just going to read it" when you can physically feel and see the pages in your hand. Personally, I'm actually a big fan of this and I like how changing my font can change these limitations. My Kindle will learn my reading speed and is able to tell me if I have 30 minutes left in the book or will tell me how long left in a chapter, stimulating the same effect (one I am often a victim of, even if I have to be awake in five hours...oh I only have one hour left?? I can do it, let's do it, who needs sleep (I probably shouldn't do it, but I do)).

Dunneback & Trott (2011) also discusses the inability to flip back and forth between parts of a book. This is something that I can agree with. Sometimes, when I'm reading something and I forget a certain part, it can definitely be a pain to go back and find the part I forgot about. The Kindle search ability aids this, but if I don't remember what I'm trying to search for, how much does it really help? The ability to highlight passages in the e-books also helps because they are kept track of, so that is another way to mitigate the way a reader can be brought out of the story when they're trying to reference something else. And this might be a specific thing that will cause many to choose not to read e-books if they can choose not to.

Another benefit to appeal that ebooks provide are in ways like e-readers that have e-ink technology that mimics the ink on real pages (Dunneback & Trott, 2011). This technology can make it seem as though ink is imprinted on the next page, and will eventually fade - my own Kindle does this. The search functions can also improve the appeal. If there's something a reader does or doesn't want to encounter in a book (sexual content, vulgar language, violence, etc.), they can choose to search the whole book for common words or phrases and choose to read or not to read. This can prevent the reader from reading something they would have no interest in and allows them to specifically search for the kind of appeal in books they prefer. One example of this is something I've seen on social media a few times of readers immediately searching for common words used in "spicy" books so they can decide if they want to read it or not (I'll let you decide if whether or not the reader wanted the "spicy" scenes). Further, you know when you're reading something and a major event is happening then your eyes accidentally glance to the next page and you spoil yourself? This doesn't happen as often with e-books! Because of the limited screen, it's much harder to accidentally read ahead and spoil the story, especially if you fiddle with the font sizes in specific ways.

Audiobooks and eBooks are definitely here to stay and they're not going anywhere. So it's very important we learn in what ways these things can appeal to the readers we're advising and I'd say these are just some of the few ways to explore. 

References

Cahill, M. & Moore, J. (2017). A sound history. Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children, 15(1), 22-29. https://doi.org/10.5860/cal.15n1.22 

Dunneback, K. & Trott, B. (2011). E-books and readers' advisory. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 50(4), 325-329.