The future of publishing – this is a broad topic, covering many different topics and technologies: electronic paper, Kindle, scribd, espresso book machines, and more. And since the future hasn’t happened yet, our only method of determining what is going to happen is to examine history and the present, and infer possibilities from the empirical evidence.

How exciting! Well, here I am at OLA in a pre-conference about recorded books, which seems like as good a place as any to start.

Number one: as a society we are more mobile now than ever. And we have tools that help us stay connected while mobile, which adds to the vicious circle.

Number two: Audio books, like many wonderful and useful technologies, started as an adaptive technology – something to help “impaired” people enjoy books. But, like automatic doors in supermarkets, the application of the technology has now expanded beyond the design, because everyone is “impaired” in different ways, sometimes. For example, many people have no trouble opening a door for themselves most of the time. When they’re pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, they are temporarily impaired, and in need of the assistance the doors provide. Once the universal need was recognized, the technology advanced – so now there are those crazy revolving doors at the airport that you can just about drive your car through. Back to recorded books and being mobile – people still love their stories, but are finding less and less time to sit and read. Commuters and truckers discovered recorded books early on, sure, but now the young people are realizing that they can get these books and listen to them on their fancy mp3 devices. So all of a sudden audio books are being taken seriously as a method of publication – not just a side note, but as a main method of delivery. All kinds of people are becoming consumers of audio-books, even people who are not in any way “impaired,” either permanently or temporarily. They just like to listen to the books.

The future: People are taking recorded books more seriously, so more books are being recorded with better narrators, who are actually enjoyable to listen to for ten, twenty, even thirty hours. I know there have been attempts to publish books that are only available in an audio version – these are called “radio dramas,” and have been around for a while. The audio book version of a radio drama is a “full cast recording” which can sometimes be good, and sometimes not so much. I think that all these elements have the potential of spurring on greater interest in literature that originates as an audiobook, rather than just ends up as one.