Audio Books

I had a little “ah-ha” moment while reading Roger Magoulas’s “Ebooks and the threat from ‘internal constituencies’”. He writes that “[t]he audio book market may provide guidance as an alternate media channel that complementarily coexists with print books.” In this whole semester, I’ve never once thought about audio books, I guess because I never listen to them or purchase them. There was one time that I did borrow one from the library. (I “read” To Kill a Mockingbird by audio book.) I found this “easier” way of reading to be much more difficult than just reading the book itself. In some ways, I feel the same way about ebooks. While everyone concerned with the issue brings up the ease of storing ebooks, there is also a difficulty that arises (what if the ebook maker goes out of business, etc.). I do, however, like the idea of ebooks, print books, and even audio books living in harmony together. I don’t think one should be restricted to a certain kind of book. We have discussed the possibility of books going straight to digital rather than being published in print. I think that for now these books can also be easily printed. In the future this may not be the case, but it seems to me that once we get to the point of the books not being printed fairly easily, that the book wouldn’t really be the same if it was experienced any way other than digitally.