Story time

A road trip I once did with a good mate almost proved the end of the road for our friendship. We couldn’t agree on what music to play in the car and gritted our teeth and grumbled all the way through each other’s choices. 

The next time we went away, she had a novel compromise – we’d listen to an audio book instead. It was much easier to agree on which one too, this time. We plumped for The Happiest Man, the late Eddie Jaku’s story of surviving the concentration camps of the Holocaust and then coming over to thrive in Australia.

An astonishingly tragic and deliriously joyful read, we laughed together, wept together and, by the time it finished, we actually both felt closer than ever before. And, even better, with my Audi’s excellent Bang & Olufsen sound system, it was delivered with absolute clarity and it made the hours in the car absolutely flash by.

That’s one of the reasons that sales of audio books – the voice-recorded versions of print books by either the authors or professional actors – have been enjoying double-digit growth for the past 10 years. 

“We’re all doing a lot more driving holidays now than we ever did before, and that’s when people are listening to audiobooks,” says Rebecca Herrmann, the founder of Bolinda Audio Books in Australia, the largest online audio bookstore in the southern hemisphere. “It’s something the whole family can do together, too. 

“They can all listen to the same book, or some parents like to give their children headphones and kids’ books to listen to as they drive. As well, people are still commuting to work and often driving in from much further distances away from the CBD post-COVID. Audiobooks can solve a number of problems!”

The popularity of audio books was rising steadily before COVID arrived but the pandemic really supercharged their growth. Even in lockdown it was easy to buy the books – either via a subscription service that gives you a number of titles a week or a direct download of your choice – and we all spent a lot more time rediscovering the pleasure of time alone with good stories to entertain us. 

They’re fantastic for multi-tasking, too. When doing the jobs around the house, who better to have a laugh with than comedian Kitty Flanagan and her More Rules for Life? Going for a walk, a jog or a run is much easier in the company of Pip Williams and her heart-wrenching novel The Bookbinder of Jericho.  

As a result, the global audio books market is predicted to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.3 per cent a year from 2023, according to the Audio Publishers Association, and by 2030 to hit over US$35 billion. 

That’s been helped too by digital audio books now being made available to all libraries for people to borrow and have a listen, with Bolinda’s BorrowBox app making it easy to browse and borrow library e-audio books from absolutely anywhere. 

Fiction is the most popular genre of the 75,000-odd titles published a year around the world, accounting for around 65 percent of all revenue. Meanwhile, children are developing much more of a taste, with their market segment rising by almost 30 percent a year.  

As an author myself, I was always a little suspicious of audio books. Pre- that life-changing road trip, they always felt something of a lazy option and I preferred to hear a book in my own head in my own voice rather than in someone else’s. But then all my print books were also made into audio books and I realised that everyone has different ways of enjoying the same thing.

I was once asked to narrate one of my own books, a personal journey around Australia Welcome To The Outback, and realised how hard it is to do that well. The professional actors who usually read the books are incredibly skilled in imbuing the words with a great range of emotions and in putting on distinct voices for each of the different characters.

“It can be quite challenging, but it’s also very rewarding,” says actor Eveline Benedict, who was given the task of narrating my first historical fiction novel, the best-selling Elizabeth & Elizabeth, in her beautiful Scottish accent with much of the book written in the first person of West-Highlands-born Elizabeth Macquarie, wife of the governor Lachlan Macquarie. “I absolutely loved doing it.”

For its follow-up That Bligh Girl, about Mary Bligh, daughter of the previous doomed governor William Bligh – of mutiny on the Bounty infamy – Melbourne voice actor and award-winning podcaster Cecilia Ramsdale was chosen. “I’ve always had an ear for voices and sounds and characters,” she says. “I grew up imitating people which was a good start for this kind of career!”

With such accomplished people narrating audio books, it’s little wonder that they’re catching on so quickly. 

“There’s been such a big shift happening in the way people consume books,” says Rebecca Herrmann. “Being able to listen on the go, so being entertained, or educated, in such a relaxing way as you maybe drive away on holiday or to work is a wonderful thing. 

“We hear so many reports of people being spotted sitting in their cars on their driveways or in car parks near where they work as they can’t bear to get out and miss the end of the chapter. People are just getting more adventurous in how they want to read books …They’re even forecasting that one day, audio books will be bigger than the print book industry!”