Many people gush over audiobooks. My niece loves them because she spends a great deal of time in her car ferrying her son to school and back. Me, though, I have a few, mostly those narrated by Stephen Fry since I love listening to him. But other than that, audiobooks never fit into my life and the person I am.
My first audiobook I received free from Amazon when they first purchased audible and were trying to hook people on them. For me, I listened to the historical fiction novel, The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (in case you are wondering. ) I love history so I read mostly historical fiction, historical romance, and history books and have read plenty of Philippa Gregory before and enjoyed her books.
So, I thought this is a good first audiobook to sink my teeth or maybe, press my ears into (shouldn’t it be something like that—anyway) I listened to it. In bits and pieces. Yet, I never found myself immersed in it like I usually am when reading. I should have been especially with this one. The Other Queen was everything that I love—history and Mary, Queen of Scots. But, I found my mind wondering about anything or sometimes nothing so the audiobook just became background noise to me. I can say that listened to the whole book but cannot remember anything about it. And when the audiobook ended, I remember sitting on the sofa with my earplugs in and no sound coming from them. After a few seconds or a minute or two (I’m not sure how long it was), I was shocked to discover the book ended. I pulled out my plugs and shrugged my shoulders. I was disappointed. I had wanted to be able to do dishes, clean, or just lay in bed in the dark, listening to a book. But it wasn’t for me—the reader.
Now, as an author, I saw dozens of articles about turning my books into audiobooks. That was the new publishing format. But I refused to spend money on that endeavor since it cost at the time roughly a thousand dollars. For me, the return on investment just wasn’t there.
I don’t know if I’m a dinosaur or not. I read e-books and still have old-fashion paper books and that is just fine for me. What about you? Do you love audiobooks? Why? Or are you indifferent to them?
