And I can ’ t help observing that I am consistently asked by The New Yorker , when I ’ m reading an article from the current issue on my phone , whether I ’ d like the audio version of that .
This causes a certain degree of cognitive dissonance in an old “ words-to-beread ” person like me who is actually annoyed when the link I click leads to audio or video rather than something more to read . My default for my computer is “ mute ”, and , anyway , the bluetooth for my hearing aids connects to my phone , not my computer , so “ listening ” through any other device is a nuisance . I doubt I ’ m particularly unusual in that way .
So while we have been recently living through an era where audio pioneers like Don Katz of Audible have had to make the case ( and offer the tools ) to enable creation of good audio content that was originally intended as “ words-to-be-read ”, that may be about to flip . More and more , we ’ re going to find that extra effort is required to make content accessible to the word-reading population , who otherwise will not be able to enjoy a variety of fiction and non-fiction content that will only be professionally rendered to be seen and heard . .
Of course , just as there is automation that enables text-to-voice and text-tospeech , there is automation that transcribes words-to-be-heard into words-tobe-read . As any of us who has read the transcription of a phone message knows , we ’ ll just have to hope that there is some investment in cleaning up what the machine thinks it heard before we ’ re asked to read it .
And this is yet another reason for book publishers to be concerned about their future . As powerful as Amazon is in the distribution of print and ebooks , Amazon ’ s Audible operation is ever so much more dominant for audio content . If the ground shifts so that “ words-to-be-heard ” frequently engages more consumers than “ words-to-be-read ”, it simply adds to any content creator ’ s dependence on Amazon and increases the challenge for any other “ middle ” player to generate enough value to justify their participation .
The post Words-to-be-read are losing ground to words-to-be-heard , a new stage of digital content evolution appeared first on The Idea Logical Company
Reprinted with Permission
WRITERS ’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
PAGE 33
SUMMER 2018