Audiobooks Versus Podcasts

wind at the back of audiobooks. They’re cheaper to make than they ever were before and they’re now very easy—just as easy as spelled-out words—to deliver as well. It seems reasonable to expect that long-form books will gradually decline and long-form audio will grab a larger share of consumer attention for many years to come.

One question for the future is whether text-to-voice (TTV) tech becomes so good that production is hardly needed at all or, even more threatening to publishers, a consumer can simply “apply” a TTV app to an e-book text and make their own audio. We’re