Ebooks and Audiobooks (Prompt Response)

Ebooks

My reading friends and colleagues often agree that the convenience of ebooks sometimes wins out over a physical book. Say it's a Sunday afternoon and you really need something to read, but the library isn't open? No worries, you can check for an ebook you might like on Libby. This is the solution for the occasional reader who doesn't have a book laying around for a free day. I suppose this is less of a problem for the constant readers with stacks of books always checked out. These are the readers who often let library staff know that they still prefer holding a real book and don't like "those ebooks."

For me, there are few differences between reading an ebook and reading a physical book. A real book lends itself to curling up in the corner of the couch with a mug of tea and a blanket. I don't feel quite the same level of cozy with an ebook. However, changing the font size, page color, and text doesn't change my experience of the pacing. Although, I have noticed that when I'm reading on a deadline I prefer to see my progress marked in percentages on an ebook rather than seeing how many pages are left, which often makes me focus on how many are left instead of how much I've already gotten through. 

I am interested to see if and when publishers start playing more with ebook format and changing it from the traditional book, as mentioned in the New Yorker article we read this week. I know I've read about a few experiments with format in the past, but nothing that I can remember the details of. Certainly, no friends or patrons have told me about any changes to the traditional that they found interesting. 

Additionally, I thought the New Yorker article's point about our expectation being shifted to access rather than owning is interesting. While part of me thinks this shift is a bit dangerous, I personally recognize belongings as coming with responsibility for care and upkeep for each item. I am working to stop myself from accumulating more items unnecessarily.

Audiobooks

When it comes to audiobooks, there is definitely are new appeal factors to take into consideration. I LOVE an audiobook that has extra sound elements and is performed like a radio theater piece with different voice actors. The Illuminae Files Series audio version is a favorite of mine and an example of this done well. However, I have a coworker who exclusively listens to audiobooks over reading and she finds this style distracting and hard to follow. Of course, I then discovered that she listens to audiobooks at 2x speed, which I do NOT like the sound of, and realized that the extra music and sound effects are not going to give the same experience for her!

I was excited to recently discover that Novelist now has a separate listing for audiobook versions of books. Even with reviews and audiobook awards, I find it difficult to know if an audiobook will be a good fit. Being able to search audiobooks by appeal in Novelist and read if there are any AudioFile reviews will be helpful. I also noticed for the first time that AudioFile does let you search reviews by genre. They appear to be improving their discovery tools, but I still have not seen any that let you search for this radio theater style. Maybe I'm just overlooking it.