Bookworms! like what they hear
18/03/07 21:01 Filed in:
Audio BooksCommute makes Bay Area a prime market for audiobooks
By Marton Dunai
From the CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Simon Vance is not claustrophobic. He spends eight hours a day in a sound isolation booth.
He can touch all four padded walls without leaving his chair. Inside, it's dark, save for a desk lamp and a single tiny window that connects him to his garage, where the booth is set up. It's a quiet spot -- though often not quiet enough for Vance.
Often, he waits for a neighbor to finish mowing the lawn. When the buzzing stops and the Walnut Creek suburb falls silent, Vance retreats into his black hole and begins reading aloud. This time, he starts with the first chapter of "The Quest," a new book by Wilbur Smith, due out in April.
His voice flows in a pleasant, measured baritone.
"Two lonely figures came down from the high mountains. They were dressed in travel-worn furs and leather helmets with ear-flaps strapped beneath their chins against the cold. Their beards were untrimmed and their faces weather-beaten ..."
The flat screen flashes in front of him as the $1,000 microphone transmits his words onto a nearby computer's hard drive. Twenty-three more hours of this, and an audiobook will be complete.
Vance, an actor and now an award-winning professional audiobook narrator, is in high demand. Audiobooks have reached new millions lately as they migrate from the home to the car to the iPod, and from tape to CD to digital files, available for download over the Internet.
"Business has really taken off, and iPods" helped, Vance said. "I turned down offers (to record) every day last week."
The audiobook market has grown to nearly $1 billion a year, mostly a result of the popularity of downloading centers such as Audible.com, according to the latest research. Offering books, speeches, lectures, sermons and all sorts of spoken word recordings, Audible alone registered revenue of more than $82 million in 2006, nearly tripling its results since 2003, when it first broke even.
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