An Intro to Audio- What Did We Learn?
As part of our ongoing initiative at Tandem to give audiobooks the same recognition and opportunities as their paperback relatives, we recently ran a “New to Audio” listenalong, inviting 10 members of the community who had never tried an audiobook before to join us for a group listenalong.
Our audio ambassadors, who are unsurprisingly big into their audiobooks already, also joined us for the listenalong and shepherded the audio newbies as they popped their collective audio cherry. The audiobook we listened to as a group was Three Sisters, the final book in the stunning Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy by Heather Morris and narrated by Finty Williams (Judi Dench’s daughter for those of you who aren’t already familiar).
We listened to the audiobook across a ten day timeframe rather than the usual week-long schedule that is more typical for a group readalong of a physical book. This was following valuable feedback from the Tandem community that audiobooks generally require a bit more time to complete than a physical book. The story of Three Sisters as expected is emotive, dramatic and completely compelling, but through the experience of listening to it rather than reading it, we discovered some interesting key learnings:
1.The Narrator can make or break the experience
As discussed in another Tandem blog post, this listenalong experiment proved that connecting with the audiobook narrator is crucial for a positive listening experience. While the majority of the group did find Finty the perfect voice to narrate the Three Sisters story, she frequently impersonates the younger sisters in child-like voices, which some of the listening group said they found off-putting, even irritating. Feedback like this highlights the importance of connecting with the audiobook narrator so that you don’t feel it’s at all taxing to listen to.
2.Hearing adds another dimension to the experience
For the members of the listenalong who hadn’t ever listened to an audiobook before, the majority commented that listening to the book heightened the experience for them and they found that the characters came to life more and the story had more of an impact. With this being a particularly emotive title, listeners found that the emotion of the story really shone through in a way that it wouldn’t in a physical book.
3.Flexibilty with Audio is preferable
Many of our newbies to audio were pleasantly surprised at how easily they could listen while going about their day and completing other tasks such as driving or cooking, feeling that bonus of “gifted reading time” that existing audio fans know and love. A couple of people did notice themselves getting distracted while listening and felt they lost focus on the story, but these were the same participants who struggled to connect with the narrator so there’s undoubtedly a correlation between the two factors. The fact that most people listen to audiobooks while on the go or completing other activities means enjoying both the plot and the narrator are crucial for a good experience. We asked the Three Sisters group listeners if they would subscribe to an audiobook platform such as Scribd or Audible, but most people said the commitment to another monthly cost would deter them, and that they would like to have the option to dip in and out of audio freely rather than being tied to a direct debit and worrying that they wouldn’t make use of it. This for me is a key takeaway in terms of how we make audiobooks more accessible to a new audience, there should be the option to easily listen to them as and when, the same way that we can with picking up physical books.
4.Some Genres lend themselves to audio better than others
While the overall feedback from this listenalong was very positive, the audio ambassadors made a valid point that the heavy subject matter and emotional impact of Three Sisters could make it quite a hard listen for those who are completely new to audio as a format. While everyone answered either “definitely” or “very likely” when we asked how likely they are to take part in another Tandem listenalong, we thought choosing a romance or a comedy title would be a great way to keep building on our newcomers’ introduction to audio so that they can experience a wide range of titles and genres, allowing them to embrace audiobooks with open arms (and ears).
Given that this was purely an experimental project to test what the response to audio is from newcomers, we’re delighted that so many participants have said they are on their way to becoming audio converts and want to continue listening to books as well as reading them. There’s definitely a time and a space for audiobooks if you give them a chance, and that’s what we at Tandem hope to keep showing.
Thanks to all our Audio Ambassadors for their support with the listenalong and to @rumpledpages for the photo