The rise of (audio)books. We have come a long way — from renting...
By: Akash Mukherjee
Tags: Books, Futurism, Audiobooks, AI, Voice Assistant

Image Source: Photo by Elice Moore on Unsplash

We have come a long way — from borrowing books from libraries, buying and reviewing them online to reading and highlighting on electronic reading devices (Kindle) that feel like books but can carry tens of titles without the weight.

It took us some time to try, adopt and get comfortable with listening to narrated audiobooks. Some of us are still resisting this change. While books/ebooks have some nostalgia associated with them, audiobooks have made reading handsfree and added a new dimension to reading — tonality aka emotion.

When I searched “Audible” on Google, an a Google Ad popped up stating: “Listening Is The New Reading‎”. Below are the five prominent ways, in which I expect audiobooks, or books in general, to evolve.

1) Narrator-less Audiobooks

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While driverless cars steal attention and make more attractive headlines, a nearer reality is one, in which Artificial Intelligence gradually eliminates the need for human narrators of audiobooks.

Unlike a few years ago, robots don’t sound robotic anymore. They sound more human as tonality is now infused into the the voice of our digital assistants. Yes, we can still distinguish a computerized voice from a real human’s voice. But, we are not far from making that distinction unnoticeable.

The ousting of human narrators will lead to mass production of audiobooks, greater profit margins and faster time to market of audiobooks.

2) Increasing Competition

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Audiobooks are not competing with books or e-books. They’re competing with podcasts, our music playlists, meditation apps, Youtube, phone calls and even in-person conversations.

Thanks to the popularity and convenience of Apple’s airpods, listening is on the rise and so is the ambition of each of the audio apps above. While Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime compete on screen time, podcasts, audiobooks, music apps and phone calls will complete on eartime.

3) Informative → Engaging

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One reason why some book/ebook readers haven’t yet turned into audiobook listeners is possibly because they zone out.

In order to convert these readers to listeners, we may see introduction of a lot more knobs to customize the AI generated narration — from “monotonous” to “dramatic” to maybe “rap music”.

Voice emulation has an unbelievable power. In the last couple of years, there have been a good number of videos on our social media feeds cautioning us about how voice emulation could result in the rise of deep fakes and hence can be a danger to our society. While such dangers do exist, any technology is only as good as how we put it to use. It is worth spending some time thinking about the bright side of the possibilities it opens up for the entire humanity. To see what is possible, check out this story on how DeepMind and Google recreated ALS patient and former NFL linebacker Tim Shaw’s voice using AI.

Coming back to audiobooks, we can imagine voice emulation would allow us to choose narrators from hundreds of voices — from celebrities to grandpa/ma.

4) Convergence of Media

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There are book lovers who love to read. Then, there are audiobook fanatics who are glued to their airpods. But, it is not all black and white. Some people prefer reading and listening at the same time.

Currently, book, ebook and audiobook purchases for the same title are considered separate. This could be caused by any of the three reasons: 1) poor integration, 2) each trying to optimize their individual revenue, 3) assumption that people always choose one experience exclusively over the other.

In future, we can expect audiobooks to be bundled for free (or for a nominal price) with book and ebook purchases. Captions on audiobooks will be the new ebook.

Interestingly, Audible is already developing two new features addressing exactly this: 1) Immersion Reading, 2) Audible Captions.

5) Auto-translation

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Market expansion is not just limited to converting readers to listeners.

There’s a massive untapped market of people across the globe who do not prefer to read English, cannot read English, or for that matter cannot read at all.

Making stories available for listening in local/regional languages and accents can open up a huge market opportunity, particularly for the self-help category.

Translating millions of books to 1000+ languages in many different accents and voices is something that only technology can scale.

Stories and knowledge can transform people, whether it be an investment banker at Wall Street or a fruit seller in Asia.

If you’re unaware of the power of language translation capabilities that Google has developed, then check out the real-time translation that’s in the store with the upcoming Google Pixel buds. The technology is not perfect, but it is promising, specially when translation is not required in real-time.

Can you imagine how real-time language translation with Google Pixel buds would change travel forever? But, that’s for another post.

If you like this, please give it some love 👏. Do you think I missed something? Did you find any holes in my arguments? Did you think these were pretty obvious? Let me know in the comments.

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