What is An Audio-Book?

By Walfajri

An audio-book is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine. An audio-book is a voice recording of written material. Many retailers did not see the need for these audio books, but the books gained popularity quickly. Now there are many websites dedicated to providing free audio-book downloads to everyone. There is really no limit to the genres available to you through free audio-books downloads.

Several children's books and even the Bible are also available on a free audio-book. There are even audio-books that teach reading skills. Virtually everyone can benefit from these free audio-books. There are a number of places to find free audio-book downloads.

The History of An Audio-book

In 1931, Congress established the talking-book program, which was intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print. This program was called "Books for the Adult Blind Project." By 1935, after Congress approved free mailings of audio books to blind citizens, Books for the Adult Blind Project was in full operation. In 1992 the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Challenged (NLS) network circulated millions of recorded books to more than 700,000 Physically challenged listeners. Thereafter, consumers and authors slowly accepted the medium.

With the development of portable cassette recorders, audiotapes had become very popular and by the late 1960s libraries became a source of free audio-books, primarily on vinyl records but also on cassettes. In 1996 the Audio Publishers Association established the Audio Awards for audio-books, which is equivalent to the Oscar for the talking books industry. With the advent of the Internet, broadband technologies, new compressed audio formats and portable media players, the popularity of audio-books has increased significantly.

Producing An Audio-book

Producing an audio-book consists of a narrator sitting in a recording booth reading the text, while a studio engineer and a director record and direct the performance. If a mistake is made the recording is stopped and the narrator reads it again.

Formats of An Audio-book

Audio-books are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, MP3-formatted audio CDs (MP3CDs), downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), Advanced Audio Coding (.aac)) and preloaded digital in which the audio content is preloaded and sold together with a hardware device.

The Use of An Audio-book

Audio-books have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. Library download programs are currently experiencing rapid growth (more than 5,000 public libraries offer free downloadable audio books). Libraries are also popular places to check out audio books in the CD format.