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Brave New Audio World
Shannon Maughan -- 10/9/00
Publishers and buyers evaluate the evolving formats of children's audiobooks



Though the volume of discussion in the marketplace isn't cranked up to 10 yet, an audiobook revolution has begun. Children's audiobooks are slowly but surely evolving to meet the needs of an increasingly technology-savvy customer base. In an arena where cassettes have been king since the mid-'80s, the compact disc (CD) is gaining considerable ground, and the potential of digital/Internet delivery systems, which allow listeners to download audio files onto their computers or a specific audio player device, is also causing a stir. Children's audiobook producers and buyers recently spoke to PW about these emerging trends.

For Listening Library publisher Tim Ditlow, his company's recent adoption of the CD format began with the audio adaptations of J.K. Rowling's mega-popular Harry Potter books. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,performed by Jim Dale, was released on cassette in October 1999 to critical praise and strong sales. "We did not initially do Harry Potter on CD," Ditlow explained. "But we were specifically asked by Barnes & Noble to create a CD edition; the customer demand was there." As a result, Listening Library devised a whole new packaging design (no flimsy jewel cases here--"I deplore them," Ditlow commented) and released the CD versions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in December 1999.

To date, Listening Library has recorded all four of Rowling's books, shipping a total of more than1.3 million units,with just over 10% of those (roughly 140,000) in CD format. Encouraged by this early success and eager to meet the changing needs of the marketplace, Ditlow plans to launch a retail CD line next spring, which will eventually incorporate popular titles from the Listening Library backlist as well as new recordings. Debut releases in February 2001 will include CD versions of The Giver by Lois Lowry and Redwall by Brian Jacques.

Heather Frederick, publisher of Audio Bookshelf in Freeport, Maine, has just taken the CD plunge as well. "I have been keeping an eye on it [the emergence of CD format] for a couple of years but didn't want to be first out of the box," she said. "I attend between 15 and 20 educational conferences every year, and I wanted to wait until those customers were asking for CDs and were ready to purchase them on the spot. And recently, that's what's been happening. My colleagues have been saying, 'We can't keep up with our CD orders.' Now that the market is developed enough, I can hit on some of the demand." Frederick released CD versions of 19 titles from her existing catalogue on September 25, a list that includes Bull Run by Paul Fleischman and the Lives of... series by Kathleen Krull.

Tim Zavaleta, buyer and marketing director for the Earful of Books audiobook store chain based in Austin, Tex., is one retailer grateful for these efforts. "There is definitely a big demand for CDs. We're trying to get our hands on as many of them as we can. If publishers make them available, we'll be there." Zavaleta estimates that he has increased by 50% the total number of CDs stocked in recently opened stores. "In addition to asking about [general-interest] unabridged titles on CD, parents are making more and more requests for children's
titles on CD," he added. At the Earful of Books in Paramus, N.J., manager Roger Tashjian concurs: "There is a general demand for titles on CD, and I plan to continue to grow that area."

With demand established, publishers move into the nitty-gritty of getting CDs into the marketplace. Packaging--trying to keep it as unbulky as possible--is but one hurdle they face. Packaging w s go hand-in-hand with a second major obstacle: the time limitation of CDs. A compact disc can hold only 74 minutes of recorded material, whereas one audiocassette has a recording capacity of 100 minutes. This technological gap raises the financial stakes all the way around for CD producers. "A recording that fits on two cassettes translates into three CDs, so automatically your price point is higher," said Ditlow. Frederick expressed similar concerns. "Trying to work with a 74-minute CD is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; it's a little frustrating," she said. "Even though we are re-releasing existing titles first, all the raw materials have to be remastered and the artwork redone. I feel like we're creating a whole new company, all at once. It took some effort to find appropriate packaging and a CD duplicator that would work with me on price."

At HarperAudio, where associate publisher Carrie Kania has recently begun to resurrect out-of-print children's recordings from the company's Caedmon and HarperChildren's catalogues, CDs have not yet posed many difficulties. "We work around the recording capacity," Kania said. "With shorter children's books, we know we can still keep the price point under $30 for four or five CDs." As for the look of the new releases, Kania said, "We have a lot of fun with CD packages." Retailers and listeners will get a gander when Harper releases a new unabridged recording of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, read by Michael York, this month. "We put art on the CD, too, to make it a keepsake," Kania said. Once the audio publishing program is at full steam, six to 10 titles will be released per season--a combination of reissued and new titles. For now, selected titles will be produced both on CD and cassette, all others still on cassette only.

The Road Ahead for CD
Several factors fueling customer demand indicate that CDs are here to stay, despite their limitations. As all the audiobook publishers contacted pointed out, car manufacturers are playing a huge role in the CD audiobook revolution. "The newer cars are coming equipped only with CD players," noted Paul Coughlin, marketing manager for Oregon-based Blackstone Audiobooks, a company that has primarily produced unabridged editions of public-domain works. According to Chauni Haslet, owner of All for Kids Books and Music in Seattle, this change has created a shift in her stock. "Right now the ratio of cassettes to CDs in the store is probably 50-50. I think it's because we are all spending so much time in our cars," she said.

But all this in-car listening brings up a bit of a problem for Tashjian. He laments that the CDs customers rent from his store seem to take much more of a beating than do the rental cassettes. "People are much more careless with CDs," he said. "They set them on the seat or floor of the car. They get scratched easily and I need to replace them more often. I've been looking for some kind of coating or shield to put on them, but haven't had any luck."

But growing pains aside, audio publishers have every reason to be enthusiastic about strides made in CD production. Unlike their predecessors, today's CD players allow listeners to "bookmark" their CDs: if a listener stops a CD at a certain point, the player will remember that point and pick up the recording there when playing resumes. (Bookmarking works only while the CD remains in the player, however.) Kania said that HarperAudio expects this kind of stop-and-start repeated play, especially for some children's titles. "We wanted to put The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on CD because it's such a classic that people will want to listen to it again and again. You can do that easily on CD because we do track recording [in which, unlike on cassettes, tracks are separated, allowing listeners to skip from track to track]." Further lauding the format, Coughlin said that compared to cassettes, "CDs are so much cleaner. The sound quality is clearly better, and they make our inventory more slim-lined."

The interviewed publishers all agree that the demand for audiobooks on CD began in the public libraries and is just now taking hold in the retail world. "We fought the change for about two years," Coughlin said. "But we've recently seen the demand spread from the library market to the general consumer. We brought out a couple of titles on CD last year and now plan to make a bigger commitment to the format."

But as the cassette continues to hang on, publishers must make tougher decisions about which titles to publish in which format. "Retailers only have so much shelf space," Ditlow said, "and when you have the same title in two formats, you may cannibalize your own space."

Though the popularity of the CD format is definitely on the rise, some buyers have been conservative when it comes to stocking CDs at this point, except for Harry Potter, which, like its print counterpart, is an anomaly. "For the audiobooks, we do not do a huge business in CD right now," said Camilla Corcoran, children's audio buyer for Barnes & Noble. "Some publishers have offered CD and cassette together, in a 'buy-the-CD-and-get-a-free-cassette' approach," she noted. And though this has been mostly seen with shorter recordings, Corcoran believes, "This idea meets the needs of the whole family."

So far it looks like the listening audience is ready to spend the additional money for CDs--particularly if the title's right. "We've had no trouble selling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on CD for $70 [a 17-CD set]," Haslet said. The children's audio buyer at Borders, who due to corporate policy cannot be identified, said that although cassettes are still the strongest performers, "We are experiencing a growth trend in the CD format." In addition, Ditlow at Listening Library believes that consumers have thus far supported the idea that "CDs make nice gift packaging."

Going Digital
In recent months it has been hard to avoid news of the music industry's struggles to sort out the parameters of downloading and distributing music via the Internet. Napster, the most well-known of the Web companies that feature technology that allows users to swap MP3 (digital audio) files on the Internet, is defending itself in a pending federal court case. This lawsuit and similar ones have raised issues of copyright as well as the ire of music fans and artists, who are sometimes in opposing camps. The legal resolution will help determine the future path of not only music but of all recorded material.

Ditlow is among those children's audiobook publishers who are ready to embrace a digital future and are preparing for it, with appropriate caution. "We've been spending the past year digitizing our library and preparing for Internet delivery," he said. "So far, we've only released our titles on Audible.com [a Web site providing spoken-word audio downloads, which is a strategic partner of Random House, Listening Library's parent company], because they offer encryption security measures. But the audiobook industry will ride on the coattails of the music industry. Five years from now, there may be hundreds of places that can deliver audiobooks to a consumer base. If you can protect against copyright infringement, it's a great delivery system." In fact, Ditlow believes that MP3 files could turn out to be a "godsend" to those publishing audiobooks for teenagers. "Today's college kids are the first post-cassette generation," he said. "Digital delivery is the perfect demographic match for edgy YA novels."

"We love it," said Blackstone's Coughlin, of digital delivery. "We have titles on Audible.com and Broadcast.com right now. The music industry will set the standard. Eventually, packaging will become less of an issue, and we will be able to really bring down our price points."

"All of us are looking at our digital options," said Kania. "We want to do what's best for the author, the books and the business. The technology is very exciting. I think the Internet can be a great help to reading groups, listening groups and students faced with things that can be difficult to read, like books with lots of dialect, or something like p try or Shakespeare."

"I'm keeping a very open mind about it," said Frederick of Audio Bookshelf. And looking ahead, she summed up the assessment of many: "There's an awful lot going on out there. In five years I'm sure we'll have trouble recognizing the industry."