10 ms·

Audiobooks vs. Printed Books: a debate as a reader and an author

32 points by zeristor 2y ago

zeristor 2y ago
I’m curious as to what people think about Audiobooks? They just seem so expensive to me, and the concept still feels like cheating to me.
- petepete 2y ago
  After a day of staring at a screen being able to listen with my eyes closed is nice. I don't mind reading either, it's not like one is better than the other.
- azangru 2y ago
  I've switched completely to audiobooks for any kind of books (fiction primarily, but also non-fiction) that do not have code in them, or any other material that requires visual consumption. I made the switch more than 10 years ago. I am doubtful I'll ever be able to consume heavy prose requiring concentration and re-reading of the same or previous paragraphs via audiobooks; or poetry; so probably no Gravity Rainbow, or Infinite Jest, or the Bible for me; but for light reading, it's perfect.
- cellis 2y ago
  Audiobooks are just a far superior experience to me. It's like reading someone's blog vs their podcast. I probably won't read the Huberman blog.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  I find audiobook performances are usually quite bad or cheesy. Even the ones that people rave about. I also find radio plays, or podcasts with full scripts, the same way. I also find them simply boring to listen to, even the ones of books I love. It feels very passive and I'm always slightly annoyed that I can read significantly faster than the wpm of an audiobook (speeding up an audiobook ruins the performances).
  - senectus1 2y ago
    the cheesyness really depends on the narrator. Personally I have a fondness of a few select narrators. One guy who is increadibly talented is Jeff Hayes. He's almost ruined audiobooks that aren't narated by him for me...
    - tstrimple 2y ago
      Completely agreed re. Jeff Hayes. I've enjoyed to some terrible books more than I should have because he narrated them. He definitely leans more towards performance than just narration though and he does an excellent job of it. I stumbled across a cold read of his for DCC book 5 and the way such different voices flow smoothly out of the same face messes with my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ54CpkUoaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ54CpkUoaM
- matsemann 2y ago
  They're only "cheating" if you consider it some kind of virtue or competition to read books. So I'd start with reconsidering that viewpoint.
- hennell 2y ago
  This is a fascinating view to me. What exactly do you think it's cheating? The physical experience is different maybe, but take a 100 people reading and they'll have a different physical experience in the process of reading. Are some of them cheating? If you consider a book as an information delivery system or "experience" delivery system, the information and experience is delivered in both formats? What are you ranking a book on that audiobooks "cheat"? (This is a genuine question, this topic fascinates me and I'm interested in people's views on it. I've been an audiobook reader a long time, but find the idea that "audiobooks are the same as reading" just as weird as the idea "audiobooks are a lesser / invalid reading".)
- cladopa 2y ago
  As someone who has read thousands of books in his life, and always asks about the books on the shelves on the houses I visit, I would say that there is a so much people that do not read books with intrinsic and genuine interest. They buy books as a status, intellectual symbol, but they couldn't care less about its content. It's an ornament, like a flowers' vase. I like audiobooks too. It can only be cheating if you believe there is a proper way to experience a book. I enjoy specially some books narrated by their authors, because it adds the nuances of what they consider important, emphasis and information that is lost on paper.
  - cyberpunk 2y ago
    I’ve never actually seen that in the wild. Plenty of houses with no books at all, which always makes me feel rather sad for the people who live there, but I’ve never seen one of these “status” bookcases. What do they even fill it up with? How is it status when they don’t even know the contents?
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  For non fiction it's I think audiobooks are a no-brainer. For fiction, having a narrator's voice brings a social context and coloration that might not be appreciated, but when the choice is between not finishing a book (= not buying any sequel any other book after that) or getting a slightly different experience, I'd take the latter, and I think the market is better for it.
- lucumo 2y ago
  > They just seem so expensive to me Unlimited services like Storytel are pretty cheap. Not library-cheap, but similar to Spotify. > and the concept still feels like cheating to me. Nah. It'd only be cheating if you somehow need the practice in physical reading. Like school kids or something. I'm confident in my abilities to parse the written word. I "read" books to absorb the ideas in them and using spoken books allows me to do that while driving or cleaning.
reify 2y ago
Its not cheating, some books can only be read, while others are improved with audio. I prefer reading books, there is something special about holding a book in your hands, insering a book mark or jotting down something illegible in the margins. I have read a massive amount of books in my time as a psychotherapist for 25 years. For me, it is far better to read books to fully understand and examine the theories, concepts and methods illustrated by the authors. Marginalia comes to its fore. However, I do listen to my fair share of audiobook. My main gripe with audiobooks is the readers voice. I cannot stand the squeeky, high pitched, robotic, nasally, sounds like AI, might well be AI, especially american female voices. Being British, just one paragraph and I am immediately put off and turn them off. I have recently tried to listen to "Into the Into the Deep Wood 01, The Witch by Polina Volkova". I had to stop listening after a few paragraphs. If only the reader had a british voice. I find switching back and forth between pages to find something you remember reading a few days ago is too difficult with an audiobook. No marginalia with audiobooks. Do authors select who reads their books. maybe they do not. They should have readers from different countries and different languages. My favourite audiobook reader is David Thorpe. I have the entire series of Mark Dawson's; John Milton, Beatrix Rose, Isabella Rose, Group 15, plus the novellas and more recently the Charlie cooper series. I do not experience the same excitement reading those books.
- SubGenius 2y ago
  I like David Thorpe too. George Guidall and John Lee are probably my favorite narrators. Jonathan Cecil narrating the Jeeves books is wonderful. So is Stephen Fry, but he's pretty much amazing in anything.
- voidUpdate 2y ago
  I have issues with voices too sometimes. My favourite audiobooks are the Doctor Who audiobooks that are actually read by David Tennant, because then you get the proper Doctor voice, a nice scottish "narrator" voice, and he does reasonably good impressions of everyone else too. I got The Stone Rose, The Resurrection Casket and The Feast of the Drowned as freebies with the Radio Times when I was very young, and I listened to them so much. I recently found them again on youtube, as well as some others I'd not heard before, and it was a fun experience since I can apparently recite a lot of them from memory now
pimlottc 2y ago
The full essay appears to behind a subscription paywall, anyone have a link?
yuvadam 2y ago
For me, the difference is being able to listen to - and finish - an audiobook, versus having dead tree sitting on the shelf and never even starting to read it.
- matsemann 2y ago
  For me it's both. Listening to an audiobook while I otherwise do a mundane task (cleaning, commuting) it makes it possible to get through books in situations where I normally would not. But some books I need (or want) to concentrate on to get the full experience. And then I don't want to spoil it by half-listening while doing something else. At the same time, I'm not really able to just sit in the couch doing nothing but listen. So then I prefer a book to actually read, otherwise I end up never getting through it.
isaacremuant 2y ago
I don't understand what's the debate unless you're assigning some higher value to the written form, like people who think reading makes you more disciplined or a better person than others in some way. If you remove that and realize reading is a form of communication then it doesn't matter how you make it happen. There was a time when stories and knowledge was mostly shared verbally so it's not like reading is "the truest form". Do what you like/works for you.
4ndrewl 2y ago
They're two different things, that employ different senses and are neurologically demonstrated to provided different experiences. We don't need them to battle it out unless for the clicks.
- rapsey 2y ago
  They are different pathways to an equivalent experience.
  - thrill 2y ago
    They are most definitely not equivalent experiences.
numpad0 2y ago
I prefer to read books literally multithreaded. Different parts of my brain gets the pages through the bus or through different paths and do each their things. I can't be alone. I get that being able to finish a book anyhow is nice, but isn't that also like leaving half a steak cut on the plate?
zeristor 2y ago
Amazon is trying hard with Audiobooks, but they seem to be extremely expensive to me, maybe that’s their way of making a lot more money than kindle format. I spend my listening time just trying to catch up with podcasts. What audio book formats are there, and services. Dare I say it are there any open source ones? There are many podcast players, are the many audiobook players? Is there anything really useful in an audiobook player? I guess going through chapters, maybe linking into the actual text.
- xupybd 2y ago
  With a subscription I basically have more access to audiobooks than I can consume
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  Free as in paid by our taxes - my local public library system in Santa Clara County has a decent selection via the Libby and Hoopla apps. I'm not sure why they have two apps, but maybe it's to give us more selection - there are differences in what is available in each (more older books, and current TV shows/movies in Hoopla, magazines and new releases in Libby), From what I've read, the library system pays a fee for each item borrowed via Hoopla, and there is very little overlap so I assume there is some exclusive licensing for some reason. VLC can go to chapters in book format audio files and lets you make bookmarks and change playback speed and lets you transfer files from your PC to mobile device pretty easily.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >Is there anything really useful in an audiobook player? Over a regular music player, absolutely. Most podcast players treat a podcast as a single file. Audiobooks aren't single file and they become almost unusable without a dedicated player.
  - cyberpunk 2y ago
    I can’t believe (well; okay I actually can) than in 2025 I still can’t save a bookmark in apples “books” app when listening to an audiobook… You fall asleep with it on? Better hope you remember the timestamp…
grokgrok 2y ago
Well narrated audio contains an interpretation, a layer of sublexical meaning that transmits value judgement, emphasis and often the narrator's imagination as to the nature of the character's voices. Often desirable, but sometimes we want our own interpretation, unique and uninfluenced by the narrator's biases.
scary-size 2y ago
I really liked John Green's take on audiobooks [1]. > ...the point of reading is to ingest someone's words and ideas in the most transparent way possible... For some that's reading, for others that's listening. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SCl6n0TEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SCl6n0TEo
wintermutestwin 2y ago
Why is there no Spotify for audiobooks? Audible’s pricing model is stupid. I guess the bean counters know better than I, but I imagine there are a lot of people like me who just shrug and listen to what I can get for free through my library’s Libby access. I would gladly pay 15$ a month for unlimited.
- _glass 2y ago
  They do though: https://www.spotify.com/us/audiobooks https://www.spotify.com/us/audiobooks 15h per month at least.
  - fnordian_slip 2y ago
    15h per month? Even without heavy listening, this sounds really low, doesn't it? And if you want to listen to a series if books, like Malazan book of the Fallen at 388h, you wouldn't know anything about the start by the time you are finished, as it's been two years. I would expect that most casual listeners who only listen to half an hour of content a day instead listen mainly to podcasts? At least that's what I do when I don't have the time for audiobooks. But maybe I shouldn't generalize from my own experience, as everyone is different. For me, audible + the occasional torrent works quite well, and I wouldn't like to use the Spotify interface for audiobooks anyway, considering how bad it is for that use case.
    - rigrassm 2y ago
      Immediately had the same reaction, 15h is less than most of my books runtimes. I checked out the FAQs on that page and apparently the 15 hours is just included with the Spotify premium subscription and that let's you listen to 15 hours of anything in their catalog. Separate from that, you can also purchase books outright and it seems listening to those purchased books won't count towards that 15 Hours. In that context, those 15 hours are actually kinda appealing to me since it would let you listen to more than the 5 min sample of a book you get on Audible before deciding to outright buy it or you could use that time to listen to a couple shorter books every month without having to purchase it. Think I might have just convinced myself to look into it a bit more lol (I'm curious how good their catalogue is compared to Audibles)
silves89 2y ago
Can I read a physical book when I'm running? Can I read a physical book when I'm doing house work? Or throwing pots in my studio? Or knitting? Or cooking? Or driving? Can I stay focused if I'm just sitting and listening instead of reading? Absolutely not. There's no 'vs' here. They occupy different spaces. All hail text, whatever form it takes.
- tigrezno 2y ago
  and books occupy physical space, something I can't afford on my tiny apartment
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    I have hundreds of books in the size of paperback. E-readers are great for reading, I wouldn't want to go back.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  Exactly. Reading and listening are different experiences and the books I read are very different from the books I listen to.
- chistev 2y ago
  How do you listen to audio books when you're engaged in other activities? You'll be distracted and won't get everything. That's important to me.
  - silves89 2y ago
    That's a great question! It comes up for me a lot. I can walk through my local woods and listen very carefully but I don't think I could read a recipe book and pay attention to an audiobook! So for me and I guess for most people it depends on the intensity of the activity and on the nature of the book. I have gradually found where the balance is for me and I've learned to hit the pause button or rewind 30 seconds. I also pick different types of books to read and to listen to. I _love_ having an engrossing story as an audiobook. And popular science is a great listen, e.g. I loved the audiobook of Stolen Focus. But with physical books I tend to choose more involved or complex novels (e.g. Deep Wheel Orcadia), poetry, and for non-fiction books that are more specific to my interests (psychotherapy, ceramics).
deleted 2y ago
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makeitdouble 2y ago
I feel we're in the golden age where the format matters so much less. Taking "99% invisible" for instance, the content in the podcast, on the web or in a book are fundamentally the same level of quality and interest. Then light novels are pushing the boundaries of what novel literature should look like and we get hundred page books formated as SMS conversations or with ASCII art like layout without much issues. And on the other end interview and reporting shows are becoming way more researched than the bog standard columns in printed magazines. Patreon is behind a lot of this change, allowing money to flow to creators whatever their medium, and I'm all for it.
alok-g 2y ago
As such, both print and audio have worked well for me. Lately, font sizes for printed books has become an issue. I getting old and cannot read with small font sizes. Meanwhile, publishers seem optimizing for lower prices (less paper) and younger people it seems. Someone recently told me that hardcover editions tend to have larger font sizes.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
shelled 2y ago
You don’t "read" audiobooks. You listen to them. Big difference - not better or worse, just not the same. When it comes to listening, I Love podcasts - esp. with multiple hosts/guests. Solo ones work too, if they feel like conversations and not recitals. Audiobooks are not for me. I’ve tried. Reading hits different. But sure, for self-help, productivity, coding and shit you need to use them, so you use them. Interestingly, the biggest audiobook junkies I know are also heavy readers. They know the difference—and they don’t mix the two.
- huxley 2y ago
  Counterpoint: You don’t read print books you just look at them For me reading is not something I do with either my eyes or ears but my mind.
pnutjam 2y ago
I don't see anyone else saying this, but I don't like audiobooks because of the voices and over production. If I want to listen to a book, I use TTS, it's gotten very good. I can pick the voice and I just hear the story. I can also switch back to reading without trying to figure out where I am since the Text to speech is using the same epub I'm reading.
- nlnn 2y ago
  I've found it really varies by audiobook. Same as you, I found some I absolutely hated, especially where they added background music, sound effects, etc. - I just want the book, not a production. Others I found that a good narrator really added to the experience, especially when they were good at changing voices/accents for different characters speaking. I found that made it a lot easier to track what was going on or who was speaking, especially in books with a large number of characters.
dwighttk 2y ago
The experience is different but the Venn Diagram is not two separate circles.
dhosek 2y ago
46 comments at this point and nobody clicked the link where the author’s thoughts are behind the paywall and instead argue a point that she explicitly says she’s not going to address!
maxglute 2y ago
Why cling on the book label? It's 2025, it's visual content vs audio content. I'd like listening to my content. Rather I like doing both, listening at 3x speed robot voice while reading text, be it a book or transcript. I'll adjust playback speed and attention if the content pleases me.
timonoko 2y ago
There should be better text-to-speech readers by now. Human readers are now little bit better, but when AI recognizes characters and narrators, the came is over. Worst thing on text-to-speech readers is when you fall asleep and dreams and text get weirdly mixed and you have search afterwards where you dropped off and started dreaming. AI might help on this also because smartwatch recognizes sleep stage quite well.
cafard 2y ago
A while back, our neighborhood book club read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. One of the members said that she couldn't stand the jumping around in the narrative sequence of the book. It hadn't bothered me, and it was only later that I remembered that she habitually listens to books. Listening was how most of humanity consumed literature for most of history. But the written word has its advantages as well.

32 points by zeristor 2y ago

I’m curious as to what people think about Audiobooks? They just seem so expensive to me, and the concept still feels like cheating to me.

petepete 2y ago
After a day of staring at a screen being able to listen with my eyes closed is nice. I don't mind reading either, it's not like one is better than the other.
azangru 2y ago
I've switched completely to audiobooks for any kind of books (fiction primarily, but also non-fiction) that do not have code in them, or any other material that requires visual consumption. I made the switch more than 10 years ago. I am doubtful I'll ever be able to consume heavy prose requiring concentration and re-reading of the same or previous paragraphs via audiobooks; or poetry; so probably no Gravity Rainbow, or Infinite Jest, or the Bible for me; but for light reading, it's perfect.
cellis 2y ago
Audiobooks are just a far superior experience to me. It's like reading someone's blog vs their podcast. I probably won't read the Huberman blog.
beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
I find audiobook performances are usually quite bad or cheesy. Even the ones that people rave about. I also find radio plays, or podcasts with full scripts, the same way. I also find them simply boring to listen to, even the ones of books I love. It feels very passive and I'm always slightly annoyed that I can read significantly faster than the wpm of an audiobook (speeding up an audiobook ruins the performances).
- senectus1 2y ago
  the cheesyness really depends on the narrator. Personally I have a fondness of a few select narrators. One guy who is increadibly talented is Jeff Hayes. He's almost ruined audiobooks that aren't narated by him for me...
  - tstrimple 2y ago
    Completely agreed re. Jeff Hayes. I've enjoyed to some terrible books more than I should have because he narrated them. He definitely leans more towards performance than just narration though and he does an excellent job of it. I stumbled across a cold read of his for DCC book 5 and the way such different voices flow smoothly out of the same face messes with my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ54CpkUoaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ54CpkUoaM
matsemann 2y ago
They're only "cheating" if you consider it some kind of virtue or competition to read books. So I'd start with reconsidering that viewpoint.
hennell 2y ago
This is a fascinating view to me. What exactly do you think it's cheating? The physical experience is different maybe, but take a 100 people reading and they'll have a different physical experience in the process of reading. Are some of them cheating? If you consider a book as an information delivery system or "experience" delivery system, the information and experience is delivered in both formats? What are you ranking a book on that audiobooks "cheat"? (This is a genuine question, this topic fascinates me and I'm interested in people's views on it. I've been an audiobook reader a long time, but find the idea that "audiobooks are the same as reading" just as weird as the idea "audiobooks are a lesser / invalid reading".)
cladopa 2y ago
As someone who has read thousands of books in his life, and always asks about the books on the shelves on the houses I visit, I would say that there is a so much people that do not read books with intrinsic and genuine interest. They buy books as a status, intellectual symbol, but they couldn't care less about its content. It's an ornament, like a flowers' vase. I like audiobooks too. It can only be cheating if you believe there is a proper way to experience a book. I enjoy specially some books narrated by their authors, because it adds the nuances of what they consider important, emphasis and information that is lost on paper.
- cyberpunk 2y ago
  I’ve never actually seen that in the wild. Plenty of houses with no books at all, which always makes me feel rather sad for the people who live there, but I’ve never seen one of these “status” bookcases. What do they even fill it up with? How is it status when they don’t even know the contents?
makeitdouble 2y ago
For non fiction it's I think audiobooks are a no-brainer. For fiction, having a narrator's voice brings a social context and coloration that might not be appreciated, but when the choice is between not finishing a book (= not buying any sequel any other book after that) or getting a slightly different experience, I'd take the latter, and I think the market is better for it.
lucumo 2y ago
> They just seem so expensive to me Unlimited services like Storytel are pretty cheap. Not library-cheap, but similar to Spotify. > and the concept still feels like cheating to me. Nah. It'd only be cheating if you somehow need the practice in physical reading. Like school kids or something. I'm confident in my abilities to parse the written word. I "read" books to absorb the ideas in them and using spoken books allows me to do that while driving or cleaning.

reify 2y ago

Its not cheating, some books can only be read, while others are improved with audio. I prefer reading books, there is something special about holding a book in your hands, insering a book mark or jotting down something illegible in the margins. I have read a massive amount of books in my time as a psychotherapist for 25 years. For me, it is far better to read books to fully understand and examine the theories, concepts and methods illustrated by the authors. Marginalia comes to its fore. However, I do listen to my fair share of audiobook. My main gripe with audiobooks is the readers voice. I cannot stand the squeeky, high pitched, robotic, nasally, sounds like AI, might well be AI, especially american female voices. Being British, just one paragraph and I am immediately put off and turn them off. I have recently tried to listen to "Into the Into the Deep Wood 01, The Witch by Polina Volkova". I had to stop listening after a few paragraphs. If only the reader had a british voice. I find switching back and forth between pages to find something you remember reading a few days ago is too difficult with an audiobook. No marginalia with audiobooks. Do authors select who reads their books. maybe they do not. They should have readers from different countries and different languages. My favourite audiobook reader is David Thorpe. I have the entire series of Mark Dawson's; John Milton, Beatrix Rose, Isabella Rose, Group 15, plus the novellas and more recently the Charlie cooper series. I do not experience the same excitement reading those books.

SubGenius 2y ago
I like David Thorpe too. George Guidall and John Lee are probably my favorite narrators. Jonathan Cecil narrating the Jeeves books is wonderful. So is Stephen Fry, but he's pretty much amazing in anything.
voidUpdate 2y ago
I have issues with voices too sometimes. My favourite audiobooks are the Doctor Who audiobooks that are actually read by David Tennant, because then you get the proper Doctor voice, a nice scottish "narrator" voice, and he does reasonably good impressions of everyone else too. I got The Stone Rose, The Resurrection Casket and The Feast of the Drowned as freebies with the Radio Times when I was very young, and I listened to them so much. I recently found them again on youtube, as well as some others I'd not heard before, and it was a fun experience since I can apparently recite a lot of them from memory now

pimlottc 2y ago

The full essay appears to behind a subscription paywall, anyone have a link?

yuvadam 2y ago

For me, the difference is being able to listen to - and finish - an audiobook, versus having dead tree sitting on the shelf and never even starting to read it.

matsemann 2y ago
For me it's both. Listening to an audiobook while I otherwise do a mundane task (cleaning, commuting) it makes it possible to get through books in situations where I normally would not. But some books I need (or want) to concentrate on to get the full experience. And then I don't want to spoil it by half-listening while doing something else. At the same time, I'm not really able to just sit in the couch doing nothing but listen. So then I prefer a book to actually read, otherwise I end up never getting through it.

isaacremuant 2y ago

I don't understand what's the debate unless you're assigning some higher value to the written form, like people who think reading makes you more disciplined or a better person than others in some way. If you remove that and realize reading is a form of communication then it doesn't matter how you make it happen. There was a time when stories and knowledge was mostly shared verbally so it's not like reading is "the truest form". Do what you like/works for you.

4ndrewl 2y ago

They're two different things, that employ different senses and are neurologically demonstrated to provided different experiences. We don't need them to battle it out unless for the clicks.

rapsey 2y ago
They are different pathways to an equivalent experience.
- thrill 2y ago
  They are most definitely not equivalent experiences.

numpad0 2y ago

I prefer to read books literally multithreaded. Different parts of my brain gets the pages through the bus or through different paths and do each their things. I can't be alone. I get that being able to finish a book anyhow is nice, but isn't that also like leaving half a steak cut on the plate?

zeristor 2y ago

Amazon is trying hard with Audiobooks, but they seem to be extremely expensive to me, maybe that’s their way of making a lot more money than kindle format. I spend my listening time just trying to catch up with podcasts. What audio book formats are there, and services. Dare I say it are there any open source ones? There are many podcast players, are the many audiobook players? Is there anything really useful in an audiobook player? I guess going through chapters, maybe linking into the actual text.

xupybd 2y ago
With a subscription I basically have more access to audiobooks than I can consume
stevenwoo 2y ago
Free as in paid by our taxes - my local public library system in Santa Clara County has a decent selection via the Libby and Hoopla apps. I'm not sure why they have two apps, but maybe it's to give us more selection - there are differences in what is available in each (more older books, and current TV shows/movies in Hoopla, magazines and new releases in Libby), From what I've read, the library system pays a fee for each item borrowed via Hoopla, and there is very little overlap so I assume there is some exclusive licensing for some reason. VLC can go to chapters in book format audio files and lets you make bookmarks and change playback speed and lets you transfer files from your PC to mobile device pretty easily.
constantcrying 2y ago
>Is there anything really useful in an audiobook player? Over a regular music player, absolutely. Most podcast players treat a podcast as a single file. Audiobooks aren't single file and they become almost unusable without a dedicated player.
- cyberpunk 2y ago
  I can’t believe (well; okay I actually can) than in 2025 I still can’t save a bookmark in apples “books” app when listening to an audiobook… You fall asleep with it on? Better hope you remember the timestamp…

grokgrok 2y ago

Well narrated audio contains an interpretation, a layer of sublexical meaning that transmits value judgement, emphasis and often the narrator's imagination as to the nature of the character's voices. Often desirable, but sometimes we want our own interpretation, unique and uninfluenced by the narrator's biases.

scary-size 2y ago

I really liked John Green's take on audiobooks [1]. > ...the point of reading is to ingest someone's words and ideas in the most transparent way possible... For some that's reading, for others that's listening. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SCl6n0TEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SCl6n0TEo

wintermutestwin 2y ago

Why is there no Spotify for audiobooks? Audible’s pricing model is stupid. I guess the bean counters know better than I, but I imagine there are a lot of people like me who just shrug and listen to what I can get for free through my library’s Libby access. I would gladly pay 15$ a month for unlimited.

_glass 2y ago
They do though: https://www.spotify.com/us/audiobooks https://www.spotify.com/us/audiobooks 15h per month at least.
- fnordian_slip 2y ago
  15h per month? Even without heavy listening, this sounds really low, doesn't it? And if you want to listen to a series if books, like Malazan book of the Fallen at 388h, you wouldn't know anything about the start by the time you are finished, as it's been two years. I would expect that most casual listeners who only listen to half an hour of content a day instead listen mainly to podcasts? At least that's what I do when I don't have the time for audiobooks. But maybe I shouldn't generalize from my own experience, as everyone is different. For me, audible + the occasional torrent works quite well, and I wouldn't like to use the Spotify interface for audiobooks anyway, considering how bad it is for that use case.
  - rigrassm 2y ago
    Immediately had the same reaction, 15h is less than most of my books runtimes. I checked out the FAQs on that page and apparently the 15 hours is just included with the Spotify premium subscription and that let's you listen to 15 hours of anything in their catalog. Separate from that, you can also purchase books outright and it seems listening to those purchased books won't count towards that 15 Hours. In that context, those 15 hours are actually kinda appealing to me since it would let you listen to more than the 5 min sample of a book you get on Audible before deciding to outright buy it or you could use that time to listen to a couple shorter books every month without having to purchase it. Think I might have just convinced myself to look into it a bit more lol (I'm curious how good their catalogue is compared to Audibles)

silves89 2y ago

Can I read a physical book when I'm running? Can I read a physical book when I'm doing house work? Or throwing pots in my studio? Or knitting? Or cooking? Or driving? Can I stay focused if I'm just sitting and listening instead of reading? Absolutely not. There's no 'vs' here. They occupy different spaces. All hail text, whatever form it takes.

tigrezno 2y ago
and books occupy physical space, something I can't afford on my tiny apartment
- constantcrying 2y ago
  I have hundreds of books in the size of paperback. E-readers are great for reading, I wouldn't want to go back.
constantcrying 2y ago
Exactly. Reading and listening are different experiences and the books I read are very different from the books I listen to.
chistev 2y ago
How do you listen to audio books when you're engaged in other activities? You'll be distracted and won't get everything. That's important to me.
- silves89 2y ago
  That's a great question! It comes up for me a lot. I can walk through my local woods and listen very carefully but I don't think I could read a recipe book and pay attention to an audiobook! So for me and I guess for most people it depends on the intensity of the activity and on the nature of the book. I have gradually found where the balance is for me and I've learned to hit the pause button or rewind 30 seconds. I also pick different types of books to read and to listen to. I _love_ having an engrossing story as an audiobook. And popular science is a great listen, e.g. I loved the audiobook of Stolen Focus. But with physical books I tend to choose more involved or complex novels (e.g. Deep Wheel Orcadia), poetry, and for non-fiction books that are more specific to my interests (psychotherapy, ceramics).

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makeitdouble 2y ago

I feel we're in the golden age where the format matters so much less. Taking "99% invisible" for instance, the content in the podcast, on the web or in a book are fundamentally the same level of quality and interest. Then light novels are pushing the boundaries of what novel literature should look like and we get hundred page books formated as SMS conversations or with ASCII art like layout without much issues. And on the other end interview and reporting shows are becoming way more researched than the bog standard columns in printed magazines. Patreon is behind a lot of this change, allowing money to flow to creators whatever their medium, and I'm all for it.

alok-g 2y ago

As such, both print and audio have worked well for me. Lately, font sizes for printed books has become an issue. I getting old and cannot read with small font sizes. Meanwhile, publishers seem optimizing for lower prices (less paper) and younger people it seems. Someone recently told me that hardcover editions tend to have larger font sizes.

aaron695 2y ago

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shelled 2y ago

You don’t "read" audiobooks. You listen to them. Big difference - not better or worse, just not the same. When it comes to listening, I Love podcasts - esp. with multiple hosts/guests. Solo ones work too, if they feel like conversations and not recitals. Audiobooks are not for me. I’ve tried. Reading hits different. But sure, for self-help, productivity, coding and shit you need to use them, so you use them. Interestingly, the biggest audiobook junkies I know are also heavy readers. They know the difference—and they don’t mix the two.

huxley 2y ago
Counterpoint: You don’t read print books you just look at them For me reading is not something I do with either my eyes or ears but my mind.

pnutjam 2y ago

I don't see anyone else saying this, but I don't like audiobooks because of the voices and over production. If I want to listen to a book, I use TTS, it's gotten very good. I can pick the voice and I just hear the story. I can also switch back to reading without trying to figure out where I am since the Text to speech is using the same epub I'm reading.

nlnn 2y ago
I've found it really varies by audiobook. Same as you, I found some I absolutely hated, especially where they added background music, sound effects, etc. - I just want the book, not a production. Others I found that a good narrator really added to the experience, especially when they were good at changing voices/accents for different characters speaking. I found that made it a lot easier to track what was going on or who was speaking, especially in books with a large number of characters.

dwighttk 2y ago

The experience is different but the Venn Diagram is not two separate circles.

dhosek 2y ago

46 comments at this point and nobody clicked the link where the author’s thoughts are behind the paywall and instead argue a point that she explicitly says she’s not going to address!

maxglute 2y ago

Why cling on the book label? It's 2025, it's visual content vs audio content. I'd like listening to my content. Rather I like doing both, listening at 3x speed robot voice while reading text, be it a book or transcript. I'll adjust playback speed and attention if the content pleases me.

timonoko 2y ago

There should be better text-to-speech readers by now. Human readers are now little bit better, but when AI recognizes characters and narrators, the came is over. Worst thing on text-to-speech readers is when you fall asleep and dreams and text get weirdly mixed and you have search afterwards where you dropped off and started dreaming. AI might help on this also because smartwatch recognizes sleep stage quite well.

cafard 2y ago

A while back, our neighborhood book club read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. One of the members said that she couldn't stand the jumping around in the narrative sequence of the book. It hadn't bothered me, and it was only later that I remembered that she habitually listens to books. Listening was how most of humanity consumed literature for most of history. But the written word has its advantages as well.