An audiobook is a recording that is primarily spoken word. It is often based on a recording of commercial printed material. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book.
Spoken audio was available in school and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops. It was not until the 1980s that there began a concerted effort to attract book retailers. As publishers entered the field of spoken-word publishing, the transition to book r...
more
An audiobook is a recording that is primarily spoken word. It is often based on a recording of commercial printed material. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book.
Spoken audio was available in school and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops. It was not until the 1980s that there began a concerted effort to attract book retailers. As publishers entered the field of spoken-word publishing, the transition to book retailers carrying audiobooks became commonplace on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.
Audiobooks are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), and Audible (.aa)) and in digital formats.
In 2005 cassette-tape sales were 16% of the audiobook market, with CD sales accounting for 74% of the market and downloadable audio books accounting for approximately 9%. In the United States, a sales survey (performed by the Audio Publishers' Association in the summer of 2006 for...
less
