Episode 18: Robin Whitten on Audiobook Demographics and Quality

In this episode, Robin Whitten, editor & founder of AudioFile Magazine, joins us to discuss audiobook listener demographics and performance quality. Audiobook sales have grown significantly in a short amount of time. With that growth, we have also seen an increase in the number of available audiobooks and a revolution in audiobook production.

Robin expounds on some of the major advances in the audiobook world, how the demographics of audiobook listeners are changing, and the genres that are the most popular. She also talks about how important the sound design and narration are to the success of an audiobook, and explains how AudioFile Magazine does its reviews.

Be sure to Check out part two of the NetGalley Listener Survey, which focuses on audiobook reviewers and their listening habits: http://insights.netgalley.com/2021-netgalley-member-survey-part-ii/

Getting started (from the APA): https://www.audiopub.org/industry/getting-started

AudioFile Magazine: https://audiofilemagazine.com

Audiobook Break Podcast: https://audiofilemagazine.com/audiobook-break/

Behind the Mic Podcast: https://audiofilemagazine.com/podcast/

Transcript

Joshua Tallent 

On this episode of the book smarts podcast, I’m happy to have Robin Whitten from AudioFile Magazine. She is the founder and editor of AudioFile Magazine. Robin, thanks for joining me on the show.

Robin Whitten 

Oh, I’m so glad to be here, Joshua. Thank you.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, this is really good. We haven’t talked a lot about audiobooks so far on the podcast. So I’m really glad that you reached out in the we can chat a little bit about about audiobooks. I think there’s—obviously there’s a very large growth in the industry for audiobooks. There’s a lot of people that are starting to listen more to audiobooks. I’m one of those people; I listen to a ton of them. So let’s talk a little bit about the listenership and the demographics of listeners for audiobooks, and how that’s been changing over the last couple of years.

Robin Whitten 

Well, interesting, certainly, there’s been a tremendous amount of growth in the number of listeners, at the same time that there has been this huge growth in the number of audiobooks available for them to listen to. And one of the things I should say that, that I started audio file almost 30 years ago, so I have really seen a huge change in—I mean, a tremendous change—in that period. And but really, in the most recent couple of years, the growth of the industry, in terms of business has been tremendous, with double digit growth for, you know, a number of years. And so—but listeners are also changing a little bit in some interesting ways, that I think are important to publishers, particularly a couple of the demographic things, which is that in the last survey that the Audio Publishers [Association] did, with Edison Research, that the frequent audiobook listeners, the majority of them are under 45.

Joshua Tallent 

Really? Okay.

Robin Whitten 

Yeah. So that is, that was a surprise, it has been more than 50% for a couple years. But that number continues to grow. So what that means to me is that we are succeeding in growing listeners younger, and expanding that base, with a really important segment of the population. It’s not just older people or it’s not, you know, that is a key factor under 45, for listeners.

Joshua Tallent 

And there’s a connection between the demographics of that group and also podcast listeners as well. So audio content seems to be very heavily weighted towards I guess, younger people.

Robin Whitten 

Well, that—that’s great. There’s no sort of phobia about media in that group. We don’t have to explain or apologize or any of those things to the younger audiences, that, you know, audiobooks are cool, it’s a great way to get information, to hear stories. And, you know, and it, I think it has a lot to do with also we’re growing another generation because parents and families are a very active component in listening. So young parents think it’s great, audiobooks are a nice alternative to other kinds—to screen time. And so that, you know, we continue to grow in the best possible way grow the audience. And, you know, I think in the last 18 months, the way listeners have accessed their audiobooks has also changed because initially a few years ago, we would, you know, say that the majority of listeners were commuters or, you know, listened in their vehicles. Well, since commuting stopped for the majority of us in the last year, so has the the change of where people listened, but in actual fact, people listened at home, they listened more at home, obviously, then making use of you know, smart speakers for listening to audiobooks, not listening in the car or in transit as much, but that the amount of listening has gone up. And I think—I’m you know—we’ll have to see when people are actually going back into offices and commuting again. But I don’t think that number is going to go down. Because listeners, audiobook listeners have discovered that they like listening at home. And then they may listen in transit again, as they did before, but they’re still going to, you know, put on a headset when they’re doing chores, or walking the dog or cooking or whatever it is, or just taking a break from screentime.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, it fits my personal life too, because when I’m doing dishes or something else around the house, that’s the kind of thing that I’m doing is listening to podcasts, listening to audiobooks, and engaging with that in various ways. So yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And the other interesting demographic changes or interesting listener changes over the last couple of years you’ve seen?

Robin Whitten

I’m not sure that there are changes, there are some things that are fairly consistent in that the most popular subjects continue to be mystery and thrillers, history and biography/memoirs. Of course, those particularly memoirs, are particularly interesting and unique as audio books. And of course, science fiction and fantasy, you know, those are the sort of three top categories, groups. I mean, I think that’s stayed the same. You know, I guess we’re all we’re consistent—listeners are fairly consistent in their, in their, you know, what they’re interested in reading, and consuming. And, but I think that one of the exciting things about audio books, and the—what’s been published in audiobooks in the last couple of years, where the publishers are releasing over 70,000, audiobooks—they did in 2020. So, you know, that’s a lot, lots of choices, and that’s great. From the audience side, there are so many more choices. You know, there are—it’s not just a section of bestsellers that everybody knows about, but, you know, deeper into the list of more variety, and a lot of differences in styles of audiobooks, as well.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. I’ve never thought about this before, but you know, as you were talking, you know, all of these different genres that it’s very focused on story, it’s story driven. It’s, it’s, you know, people’s stories and made up stories—fictional stories. What’s really interesting is that it’s almost like we’re returning as a as a people back to an oral tradition, in a sense, back to the passing on of story in oral ways that otherwise we may kind of have lost in our in our culture. So that’s an interesting, I don’t know, I may have to dig into that a little bit more myself at some point.

Robin Whitten

Oh, I think you’re absolutely right. I think it does, it resonates with us, as—you know, to hear stories about other lives, other people, other times, you know, contemporary contemplations of situations, dealing with a lot of nonfiction titles. And, you know, that’s the expansion of podcasts, the same kind of thing. I think people are more and more consuming this information through their ears, and also they want their entertainment that way, as well.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And there’s the obvious connection to multitasking and things like that. But when it comes to how—what we want to engage with, how we want to engage with things, I think that, you know, using audio content as a way of engaging is, is definitely something that helps us in different ways than using a book. Right? There’s there’s different ways to engage with content from your—when you’re listening to it. And I listened recently to the audiobook for Dune because I was preparing to watch the movie and very excited about that. And they did such an amazing job on the quality of that performance. It brought you into the story in a way that you couldn’t as a reader of the book, and some of that was just little things like how do you pronounce that word? Right? There’s, you know, there’s words in another language, basically. And so how do I how do I, how I would pronounce that in my head. And you know, we all do this as kids, we make up pronunciations of things when we’re reading a book as a child, you know, but it’s a—Yeah, I think that’s a really great way of engaging with something. So the quality of the performance is part of that engagement. And that’s very important to listeners. So let’s talk a little bit about that as well. How do you—what do you think about the listening experience in the quality of performances?

Robin Whitten

Well, you know, because AudioFile reviews the perfect performance of audiobooks, that’s our main mission to talk about the performance—it’s very important. And I think, I mean, you’ve given a great example of the the Dune audiobook. And I think, isn’t there a whole, like a dictionary of terms and words that were invented in the beginning of the series and continue and, you know, so the the narrators had to figure out how they were going to pronounce those words, because they didn’t exist, there was no reference, you couldn’t call up your reference library and say, Hey, how do you how do you pronounce this. So they had to decide and then they have to stay consistent. And I think one of the things as a reader, in print, when you come to a word, whether it’s a word that you’ve never seen before, or a word you don’t know how to pronounce, it stops you, it stops you while you try to figure that out. And so it stops the flow of the story, essentially. So in an audiobook, the narrator’s got to do that hard work, they’ve got to figure it out, they’ve got to and they—but they do. And they keep that flow in the performance so that it’s completely natural in the way that the author would have put it down—I mean, the author didn’t stop and say, Well, how does somebody when they do an audiobook going to or read how are they going to pronounce this—they didn’t worry about that. It was it was there. So the performance part, the the narrator’s do a lot of the heavy lifting, when there’s a high quality performance, like the whole Dune series, there’s a ton of research that goes into it. The the narrators have to make stylistic decisions, they, I think, essentially work with their engineers and directors to work it all out. And, you know, then it has to be consistent. And then the engineers and you know, have to keep the quality consistent, so that after four or five hours, you know, the voice level, the way something is pronounced, all of that has to be consistent. And there’s a ton of work that goes into that.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And there’s, there’s sound design that goes into that as well. Like, again, back to the Dune audiobook, there’s a lot of music that was created as a result of that production, you know, that that takes you from—it’s music and background noise that’s kind of taking you and putting you into the mindset of what’s happening. When you’re hearing the Harkonnen’s talk about—I’m sorry to get in—for those of you who haven’t read Dune or listened to Dune, you should go do it. But when you have certain people talking, or certain things happening, you might have a deeper like, kind of, you know, kind of angsty kind of feel, and when you have snippets read by the Princess [Irulan], you know, those, those have this lighter kind of airy music that’s being played with that. That kind of sound design, that kind of approach and thought process and really thinking through, How will the experience of the listener be affected by all those things? I think that’s really amazing.

Robin Whitten

Yes, it’s very interesting. I think it’s often called a soundscape that is going you know, that the, the whole concept has been worked out where certain kinds of music or sound comes up underneath the the narration, but I think also it to, to come back to the narrators, and what they have to do is they are also changing their emotional tone. So that—not only character voices, but the emotional content of what they’re saying. And that’s sometimes a little hard to get your head around how they would do it, but they are actors. And there’s—you know, they can do it at, you know, a very high and effective level. Or they can sometimes miss and, you know, miss the connection, you know, phone it in kind of and then that’s that lends itself to a performance that sort of perhaps leaves a little bit leaves the listener, a little flat, a little disconnected. And of course, the author intended you to be connected to that story every minute, and anything that takes the listener out of the story is, you know, not optimum.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, definitely. So there’s a lot that goes into this process and high quality, audiobook production is not something to take on lightly. A lot of publishers are in the process now of figuring out what to do about their audiobook library and how to engage that. Some are just saying, Look, we can’t do it ourselves. We know we can’t, we’re gonna license that out and have someone who else who can do that who’s professional do that process for us. Others, though, are taking that on. So let’s talk a little bit about some practical advice. You’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks and reviewing them for a very long time and really engaging this this area. So what are some practical advice and tips that you have for publishers to make a better audio book? What what are the reviewers calling out? What are you guys actually doing? And how can you how can publishers take a better approach with that?

Robin Whitten

Well, I think what’s really important is to recognize that this is a highly professional industry, a sophisticated industry, and taking a book and just finding somebody who has a nice voice to read it for you is not going to cut it. You know you—it is sophisticated, there are people there are professionals who do a wonderful job, they support the publishers, and they walk you through as a publisher through the whole process and come out with an excellent product. I mean, that’s what you really need to do. And then, you know, from a from a content point of view, you know, you’ve got a good book, you need to, I think, get professional help to make that into a great audio book. And one of the things that—a great resource is the Audio Publishers Association, makes sense to trade association for publishers. And they have a ton of resources on the website, which I think we’re going to put in the show notes, the link under getting started. And there are tips specifically, for publishers about distribution options, production options, and a number of white papers just about why it’s important—the things that are important for publishers. So there’s a lot of information there.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And as as publishers are going through that process, and they’re setting things up, let’s talk a little bit about AudioFile Magazine, and what you guys do and where you fit in that approach to, you know. We’re taking I’m taking a new approach to audiobooks internally, what do I do with AudioFile Magazine?

Robin Whitten

Well, AudioFile, basically is a review and recommendation source. And we do—so that’s what we do. We don’t sell anything. We just talk about audio books, and we talk about it all the time, across a number of platforms. And so our website, we’re—we’re publishing about 50 reviews a week, Joshua. So that’s quite a lot coming from reviewers, professional reviewers all across the country with different interests. So there’s a range of opinions. And so our reviews are focused on the performance aspects, what makes it—the audio listening experience worth someone’s time. We keep that focus as much as possible, because of course, the book is being reviewed for its content somewhere else probably. But we do you know, we get review copies from all the major publishers, and we will accept review copies for any audiobook to take a look at and consider for review. I did just do some reports for the year-to-date. And it looks like about almost 15% of our audiobook reviews are coming from independent publishers and authors who are submitting directly to us, not through a bigger organization. And we try—we do keep a really good eye on the independent publishers and small publishers who may be just starting an audiobook program, because I think one of the things that’s important to AudioFile is to help our audience discover things that they wouldn’t otherwise find out about. I think the discovery part of audiobooks is challenging for listeners. There are you know, retailers who are marketing audiobooks to people. But you know, we really want to help people discover things. I love it when one of our reviewers finds like a hidden gem something that we give our Earphones Award to, which is our, you know, exceptional audio audio experience award. Something that, you know, it’s from an independent publisher. I wouldn’t know, you know, you have no, I have no other information about where that title would be available, but came to us, we reviewed it, we’re excited, and we love to pass that on to our audience of listeners.

Joshua Tallent 

That’s great. That’s great. Thank you, Robin, I appreciate all of the time that you spent with me on talking about this. This is a again, I think audiobooks are really important, they’re growing in importance, they’re growing in sales, and as publishers engage that having good advice from people like you who know what they’re talking about is really helpful. So where can people learn more about what you do at AudioFile?

Robin Whitten

Well, audiofilemagazine.com is our website, pretty much everything is available from there. We also—for any podcast listeners, we presume that’s who we’re speaking to right now—we do two different podcasts “Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine,” which is a recommendation podcast—a daily, one title we talk about, and recommend it. And “Audiobook Break” is the other podcast, which is a chapter-a-day serialized audiobook. So the idea—if you’re a podcast listener, and you think, oh, audiobooks are so long, I can’t commit to all that time. We’ve taken them chapter by chapter, and you can you can listen to an episode, a couple episodes a week and get through an audio book that way and see how you like it.

Joshua Tallent 

That’s great! Awesome. I’ll put links in the show notes to those locations and the podcasts as well. And thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate the conversation.

Robin Whitten 

Thank you, Joshua. It’s great.

Joshua Tallent 

So that’s it for this episode of the BookSmarts Podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please leave a review and rating for us in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. And please don’t forget to fill out that listener survey at https://booksmartspodcast.com/survey. Thanks for joining us and for getting smarter about your books!