HEAR! HEAR!
Thanks to a demand for portable entertainment, audiobooks are growing in popularity in Canada
Toronto actress Carina Cojeen is a voracious bookworm these days — thanks to her headphones and computer speakers.
In the past year in a half, she’s consumed dozens of titles via digital audiobook, a format she first got into as away to help her sleep at night.
Now, she also listens while cleaning and doing work at home. “Almost every second of the day,” Cojeen says. “I don’t listen to the radio anymore, I hardly watch movies or TV.”
Cojeen is part of a growing trend of readers looking for convenient ways to consume their favourite authors.
Audiobook production has grown for the past three years, according to a recently released study by industry organization BookNet Canada on the state of digital publishing in this country in 2017. More than half, or 61 percent, of Canadian publishers are now producing digital audiobooks — up from 37 per cent in 2016, according to the report. And 73 percent of Canadian publishers surveyed said they believed audiobook sales will increase in the coming year.
Last September, Penguin Ran- dom House Canada launched its own audiobooks program, complete with a recording studio in its Toronto office. They ’ve created more than 50 digital audiobooks in Canada, including Miriam Toews’s upcoming novel Women Talking and Debbie Travis’s book Design Your Next Chapter.
“The business itself is in its infancy, so we’re starting from the ground and going up, but we are seeing a really good response,” says Marion Garner, who heads the audiobooks program as deputy publisher at Penguin Random House Canada. HarperCollins Canada says it’s also seen a growth in audiobook popularity this year.
“It’s a 60 per cent increase for us this year, compared to year over year,” says Leo MacDonald, senior vice-president of sales and marketing at HarperCollins Canada. Simon & Schuster Canada, meanwhile, released its first Canadian digital audiobooks this past spring.
House of Anansi Press also entered the audiobook market in the past year, producing more than two dozen of its own titles in Toronto through ECW Press, including Tanya Talaga’s award-winning book Seven Fallen Feathers. “It’s a super time-consuming activity but it’s also totally fascinating, and not cheap,” says Sarah MacLachlan, president of House of Anansi Press. “We are still waiting to see how it bears fruit.” Both Kobo and Audible say they ’ve seen growth in the market recently.
Experts point to a rise in listening culture due to the popularity of podcasts, the ubiquity of smartphones and smart speakers, and a demand for entertainment that can be consumed on the go and while multi-tasking. Canada was slower to adopt the format, largely due to a lack of dedicated digital audiobook retailers in this country. But that changed in the past year with the emergence of platforms including Audible and Kobo.
Audiobooks are also available in Canada on the OverDrive platform for libraries and schools. Carlyn Craig, founder of Canadian audiobook publisher Post Hypnotic Press, says she used to run into “a lot more snobby attitudes toward” the format in this country when she first launched her company in 2010.
Most of her company’s sales are in the U.S. but these days she’s seeing “a small uptick” in the market in Canada.
“We’re certainly seeing a big interest in actors who want to narrate, in publishers who want to get their work out there,” Craig says. Penguin Random House says it has hired some local actors for audiobooks in Canada, including Gordon Pinsent for author Wayne Johnston’s First Snow, Last Light and Paul Gross for Operation Medusa by Major Gen. David Fraser and Brian Hanington.
But not all performers are a good fit to voice books, says Dawn Harvey, a Calgary-based audiobook narrator who’s done about 50 titles and teaches a course on the craft. Harvey notes audiobook narrators often specialize in doing different accents and reading different languages.
They can also voice both male and female characters who range in age, and “do it in such a way that the listener knows who’s speaking even without attributions in the text.”
Some authors also narrate their own books. Publishers say they prefer it when it comes to memoirs.
Canadian author Vironika Tugaleva decided to narrate her own book, The Art of Talking to Yourself, in part because of its personal nature.
“If somebody else were to read those words, it just wouldn’t have felt right,” Tugaleva says, noting there’s one part in the upcoming audiobook where her voice shakes because of the emotional material.