The Library Vault

If you think of beaten up CD cases containing scratched up discs when you hear the term “audiobooks,” the time has come to revisit them. During the pandemic, audiobook use skyrocketed when folks wanted to avoid public places. But their use has continued to gain in popularity even post-pandemic. Today, over half of audiobook listeners are between the ages of 18 and 44, and a third of them are people of color – more than the general population.

Speaking as someone who falls within the biggest group of users, I fell in love with audiobooks when I became a parent who works full time. Reading print books simply isn’t realistic. Instead, I use audiobooks to ingest stories throughout my day: in my car after I’ve dropped my kids off at school, on breaks when I take walks through Middletown’s beautiful streets, while I eat lunch at work, and at home while I work in the kitchen or on the laundry. Audiobooks fit easily into busy lifestyles.

Nowadays, the vast majority of audiobooks are listened to through apps on a smart phone. You can also listen to them on tabled and computer browsers. That makes it easy to start and stop in the middle of a chapter as life demands. With the Hoopla, Libby, and Palace e-book and e-audiobook apps, I can listen to stories anywhere that I can carry a phone. I even have armbands at work and at home so that I can strap my phone on when I don’t have pockets, especially in the summer. Armbands are very affordable, starting at $10 at local retailers and online. Headphones, even ones that plug into smartphone jacks, also start at $10 these days.

Even if I had time to read gobs of print books, I would still listen to audiobooks for the sheer entertainment factor. My favorite non-fiction genre is humorous memoir-style parenting books. They are often read aloud by the author of the book. They’re much more fun to listen to than to physically read, because the authors know their own stories so well. The author tells jokes and emphasizes passages in their own authentic way. It’s like the author is telling you a personal story, as if you were face-to-face. Many of them are laugh-out-loud, startle-your-coworkers funny.

Similarly, my favorite genre of fiction books – funny mysteries – are much more enjoyable in audiobook format than on the printed page. The narrator performs the text like a play or a screenplay are performed, except that one person does all the parts. A good narrator can use their voice to create dozens of different voices. Most of the actors are so good that I forget that I’m listening to just one person. It doubles the value of the audiobook over a physical book: you get both the content of a printed book with an artistic performance. There are certain series that I will not read the printed version of if there’s an audiobook format. Compared to the lively audiobook, the print book is boring. Driving around on errands or washing dirty dishes actually becomes enjoyable when I have a lively story to listen to.

In addition to the performance value of an audiobook, it’s easy to switch between audiobooks even within the same app. I read or listen to books based on my mood. With four checkouts available on Hoopla alone, I can have that many different titles available to me based on whatever mood I may be feeling. When I’m in an ambitious over-achieving parent mood, I listen to parenting books like The Whole-Brained Child. If I’m feeling stressed and wanting to be a better parent, I listen to books like How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids. As I fall asleep at night, I listen to The Complete Works of Jane Austen. When I’ll be desperately trying to finish my book of the month for Russell’s May Mystery! book club, you can be sure that I will have that title checked out.

What’s the difference between the Hoopla, Libby, and Palace apps? You can listen to audiobooks with a Russell Library card in all three apps. In Hoopla, the library subscribes to an entire database of titles and the library pays per use. Patrons have access to everything in that database at the price limit set by Hoopla. Libraries have a choice of how expensive of items to make available to patrons. The prices vary between $1 to $5 a title. Libraries can also limit how many items patrons can check out. Russell Library currently allows four checkouts a month per patron. Every time I check out an item in Hoopla, my library pays the price of that checkout. As much as I love Hoopla, I know that libraries are paying a hefty price tag for the service: bills can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year, and they are often unpredictable because the cost is based on patron use, which changes from month to month.

By comparison, the Libby app, which connects to the Overdrive database, works on a pay-per-title model. Every book on Libby must be hand-picked by librarians. Libby often charges $60-125 per title, which is then also limited by the number of times the title can be checked out. Most often, a Libby title disappears from our Overdrive offerings after 26 uses or 2 years, whichever comes first. Like physical books, only one patron can check out a Libby title at a time – unless the library has purchased multiple copies. That’s why there are often long waits on bestsellers in Libby: libraries can’t afford to purchase many $100-a-book titles.

Recently, Russell Library began to offer a third e-book and e-audiobook app: The Palace App. The Palace App easily accesses content from The Palace Project. The Palace App does not charge Russell Library any fees and it has no checkout limits. It’s paid for by the Connecticut State Library in an effort to bring more affordable e-books to Connecticut’s libraries. Their database currently hold up to 30,000 titles. So if you’re looking for an audiobook, I recommend starting there. Palace has an increasing number of fascinating titles.

To see all your options with a Russell Library card, go to Russell Library’s Downloads Page. Happy listening!

Source referenced: “The Audiobook Market, and Its Revenue, Keep Growing” in Publishers’ Weekly (June 1st, 2023). Accessed at: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/92444-the-audiobook-market-and-revenue-keeps-growing.html