Week Eleven Prompt: E-books, Audiobooks, and RA Services

It’s funny, when I first read the prompt for this week’s discussion topic I had a kneejerk response:

How do ebooks and audiobooks change appeal factors? Easy, they don’t. Boom. Discussion post done. Time to turn on the college basketball game and eat nachos.

I initially saw the question of audiobooks/ebooks being more of a technology question rather than something that affected the appeal factors of a book. After all, the book is still the book. How a reader takes in that book doesn’t affect what they’re taking in. It doesn’t affect the style, tone, characters, plot, or pace. I have spent a lot of time talking with patrons about what they’re looking for in a book and, separately, what they’re looking for in a device. They’re separate things and separate conversations.

But the more I thought about it the more I started to change my tune. One of my supervisors has a saying that she likes to use during our staff meetings (one that several of you have probably heard): books are our business. So, if how a patron reads/hears a book impacts they’re enjoyment of the book than it absolutely matters. In her 2011 guest column entitled “E-books and Readers’ Advisory” in Reference and User Services Quarterly, Katie Dunneback writes that, “the format you use to access the story expands the appeal factors of the content.” Dunneback lists several different possible factors including the display options, size and weight of the device, and various accessories. It's not that the devices affect the established appeal factors, it's that they add new and different appeal factors to the already crowded slate.

Another major appeal factor strictly for audiobooks is the reader. I have heard many times from patrons who have had to stop an audiobook because they didn’t like the reader. Conversely, I’ve heard numerous times from patrons who felt that the reader played a major role in their enjoyment of the book. (Jim Dale, who did the Harry Potter books, is one often cited.) I have one patron who adores Scott Brick so much that she only listens to the books he narrates.

Dunneback points out that, “this convergence of readers’ advisory and consumer information reference requires excellence in the skill set common to reference services and readers’ advisory services.” And I think that’s a good point. So many of us are already offering assistance with devices that it’s an easy transition. We just have to start thinking about our technology advisory services as part of our readers’ advisory services.