by: Andrew Adam Newman
As physical formats and devices have shrunk, revenues for the audiobook industry have grown, since it is more convenient to listen to an iPod while exercising and commuting than fiddling with CDs. Digital downloads grew to 21 percent of the industry’s total sales in 2008, from 6 percent in 2004, according to the Audiobook Publishers Association.
It is all the more odd, then, that Hachette Audio recently announced that the latest audiobook by David Sedaris, “Live for Your Listening Pleasure,” which features readings before audiences, would be available on the least portable of formats: vinyl.
Reminiscent of Blue Note albums from the 1950s and 1960s, the cover features a photograph of a woman sprawled on a white shag rug with a come-hither look, albums strewn about.
Albums are enjoying something of a renaissance, posting $57 million in sales in 2008, more than double the previous year and the best for the format since 1990, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The format is so rare for audiobooks, however, that the Audiobook Publishers Association has never even tracked its sales.
But Maja Thomas, senior vice president for digital and audio publishing at the Hachette Book Group, said she was drawn to the idea precisely because it was quirky. Mr. Sedaris’s “audience is very attuned to irony and is going to find this funny,” Ms. Thomas said.
The 31-minute album, which will be released on Jan. 5 and cost $24.98, will include only two of the five essays on the CD version of the audiobook, but will feature a code enabling purchasers to digitally download the entire program.
Hachette was less kind to another past-its-prime format in 2008. Upon releasing “Sail,” a novel by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, in a cassette version, it declared it would no longer release in the format and held a mock funeral for cassettes in its Manhattan office.
“We had a funeral for one format, but you can think of this as the ultimate zombie,” Ms. Thomas said. “The record is coming back from the dead.”
From: NYTimes
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