Audiobooks vs Printed Books: a debate as a reader and an author
The giveaway is WellRead's June fiction title: Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton
On Monday morning this week I started a dot point list of notes I wanted to hit in this week’s bad review, then I looked up and it was lunchtime and I was 1200 words into something much, much bigger.
It was going to be about the first few chapters of the audiobook of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I had stopped listening after about an hour but when I spoke about to a couple of friends about the book they replied that they had loved reading it and I trusted them enough to gave it another go. After pushing through my frustrations, the Tomorrow world opened up to me, I loved it, and it got me thinking about audiobooks. I have some opinions and feelings. But my opinions and feelings turned out to be different depending on whether I had my Bri-as-reader hat on, or my Bri-as-writer hat.
This isn’t about whether or not listening to an audiobook is ‘real’ reading (it is) or whether it ‘counts’ (it does). I appreciate the valid arguments about ableist attitudes towards the audiobook form. I also know many readers and listeners like hearing an author’s own voice reading a work when it’s first-person non-fiction because a) they’ve told me so, and b) I love it too. But that got me thinking about the horrific experiences I had recording my own audiobooks. And that made me think about my own first novel coming out next year, and what I’m both nervous and excited about if that gets made into an audiobook. I’m thinking about authorship and the influence of a narrator as a third-party source of creativity and interpretation that gets between the artist>art>recipient pipeline.
As you can see, it’s an essay. Precisely the kind of personal and profession rumination that I wouldn’t be able to get published anywhere else. Which is one of the reasons I started doing this Substack in the first place. I sort of forgot that the essay I wrote a whole year ago, ‘What’s the Minimum Standard for Men?’ has sat in the ‘most popular’ tab of News & Reviews solidly for 12 months since. There’s always essay-type writing in the special editions, but maybe it gets lost sometimes? This one about audiobooks arose organically and I’ve decided to go with it.
A fortnight ago I employed a brilliant business strategy friend of mine to go through the results of the reader surveys hundreds of you answered, and also to trawl through the feedback and reasons people gave when they dropped out of paying for subscriptions. It turns out people want to hear more from me, directly, speaking to them. About what? Everything: life; creativity and writing; and my opinions on things. That’s the kind of feedback I needed data and analysis to confirm, otherwise I’d just feel like a colossally egotistical dickhead, right? It doesn’t come naturally to produce a ‘Me Me Me’ show uncriticially. Anyways, I’m working on it. Whereas before I might have ignored or cut down the essay that rather miraculously materialised in my mind this week, I’ve decided to just publish it.
Before we blaze on in, a couple of things I’d like to draw your attention to:
A podcast called You Have Been Told a Lie is launching on June 10 and it’s about the Nadesalingam family from Biloela. ‘This series will explore the social fabric of Sri Lanka forcing Tamils to flee, the geopolitical and national forces at play when it comes to Australia’s immigration policy, the groundswell movement from their local community and beyond, the treatment and processing of asylum seekers in Australia, along with the lies we’ve been told along the way. Who does the family need to be in order to stay?’ The trailer is here. I’ll be listening!
There are six places left for fiction on Sunday 2 July and bookings will close on Friday 16 June. I’m not your accountant, but if you do creative work you can almost certainly claim this type of conference/workshop expense as professional development. June is tax time!
If you’re already a paying subscriber (or considering it) I’m having a lot of fun in the ‘Not Another BrandCuck’ chat. I dump links and screenshots in there most days. Today there was news about a new nation-wide initiative to revolutionise the waste in the Australian garment manufacturing industry. Sometimes it’s more about what ‘ulgy-chic’ means, or stuff I’ve bought… highbrow lowbrow allbrow.
Audiobooks vs. Printed Books: a debate with myself as a reader and an author
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