Simply Audiobooks Inc.

You may recall that Simply Audiobooks did a big word of mouth “advertising” campaign several months ago. Well, today we got the final results from the company that managed that effort, Bzzagent. Some interesting results for sure.

We discovered that women are much more into telling their friends about us than men. That people who commute more than 30 minutes are also better promoters, or at least, more likely to say good things.

We discovered that a lot of people in audiobook-land have actually heard of us. I think part of that has to be that our name sounds kind of like a generic company. When US Air was trying to pick a name for itself, they did a survey on “Safest US Airline”, and threw in their test name (US Air) along with 4 real airlines. And US Air did the best. Hilarious.

Probably the most useful item I gleaned from the presentation is that our best evangelists are people who get their audiobooks from the library. These are people who already like audiobooks, but are finding the library inadequate, or at least, not as good as our service. No coincidence then that many of them also thought we were expensive. How do you compete with free?

When presented with a choice, we often agonize over making the right decision, but if we’re simply presented with a decision, we usually enjoy it anyway. What does that say about the value of freedom of choice? A week ago, I saw a live comedy performance, and it was hilarious. That’s generally my reaction at live shows. Last night I watched 20 minutes of a stand-up comedy routine on TV (I had the choice to switch channels). I hated it.

This morning I fiddled with my mp3 player through 10 songs before I found one I wanted to listen to. But a few days ago when I didn’t have any audiobooks or mp3 player in the car, I was thankful to find a song I even recognized on the radio.

At lunchtime I stood at a Subway counter going through my standard indecision routine. The choice of bread types is usually what fazes me. Thank god there are no Starbucks’ near our office. But this evening, I was invited to dine at a friend’s house, where I ate what was put in front of me, and I loved it.

I wonder what would happen if someone else picked my audiobooks for me. I suspect I’d enjoy them just as much, perhaps more. We’re working on a recommendation engine for audiobooks. Let’s see what happens.

Here’s a question for you. It’s well established that a narrator can make or break how an audiobook is received. Harry Potter’s a good book, but Harry Potter with Jim Dale reading it makes for *great* audiobooks. The question is, how do you use this information?

I don’t know enough about narrators to even really know whether one is good or bad. I mean, “Agenda” which is read by it’s author, is really bad, and it’s because the author has a grating voice. But other than that one, all I really know is whether I like the book. I kind of assume all the narrators are at least ok. Would you ever search for books to listen to by narrator? Or would you do a normal title or genre search, and then want to know if the narrator was any good?

I think all I’d want to know is if people liked the book, when doing a general search. This is important, because we’re always evaluating what information to present to consumers and what information to allow in search parameters. Nobody seems to complain that our narrator fields are now kind of hidden (you have to rollover the title details link on the book details page), but that’s not a great indicator of preferences. The aforementioned “Agenda” has a bad overall rating in addition to the narrator single-handedly driving the stock of “earplugs R us” skyward.

I personally don’t ever care about the narrator, but clearly there are legions of audiobook fans out there who start foaming at the mouth on the subject. It’s second only to ‘reading’ vs ‘listening’ as a topic for rampant rabidity. And I won’t wade into that particular morass, today at least. Maybe conversations about narrators are just a way for audiobook enthusiasts to interact. Kind of like wine enthusiasts talking about legs, or mossiness, or what not. All I care about is whether it tastes good.

Well, I couldn’t find any ads for audiobooks, so I dredged up one we’d done this past summer, and we’ve put it on our simply audiobooks home page for the first time. Having not looked at it in a while, I found it pretty entertaining, especially the look on Hook’s face as he chews the donut. Click here to see this great ad to “Add some character to your commute” with audiobooks.

I’m constantly amazed by how many people I meet who’ve never heard of audiobooks. I wish we could afford to put this ad up on the superbowl next weekend. I’ll cross my fingers… maybe some enterprising publisher with deep pockets will put up an ad to promote books/books on cd. That’s the great thing about hope – it can be totally irrational, but still makes me feel better.

There are several research studies that show reader comprehension of written material goes up substantially when accompanied by the audiobook. I gave a talk this morning to middle school teachers as part of a media literacy program, and when I mentioned this, suddenly there was a lot of interest in audiobooks.

When parents think of audiobooks, they’re usually thinking of something to keep the kids occupied. That means Harry Potter books on CD. But if you’re trying to teach them something AND keep them occupied, well, they’re not going to learn much from Harry (magic isn’t real, sorry to say.) BUT… if you have a print version, and have them listen to the audio version at the same time – they’ll be entertained, AND edumacated. As I discovered by listening to the audiobook – Hermione is pronounced “Her-mine-eee”. Why you’d name your daughter that, I have no idea.

The learning acceleration effect is most pronounced when a child has learning disabilities; however, even gifted children see an increase in reading volume as well as comphrehension.

Not only teachers, those of us who are parents owe it to our kids to introduce them to audiobooks. Libraries will loan them out for free. When you want a larger selection, you can go to a commercial audiobook source. Tell them Her-me-own sent you, see if they laugh like my daughter did when I tried to talk about my favourite character.

When I sat down to write this, I was actually thinking, “Why don’t book publishers promote audiobooks more?” And then I realized they don’t really promote anything at all.

Maybe I’m missing something, but there seem to be darn few ads for books, let alone audio books on CD or MP3. I made (and lost) a bet with a friend last Superbowl that there would be no ads for beverages or cars in the next 2 minute ad segment. I figured the chances were 50/50. Not so. For the next 10 ad segments, there was always an ad for a car or a beverage. So that settles who advertises the most.

But what about books? Movies get advertised, in fact you can tell how good a movie is going to be by how few ads you see for it. Video games are now getting advertised too, as if I didn’t already have enough to occupy my free time…

So what is it with the books? I hear about books through my friends, and through in-store displays. Sometimes it’s the “people who bought this, also bought…” feature on our website, or at Amazon. But often, I don’t hear about them at all. Much to my surprise, Frederick Forsythe, one of my favourite authors, came out with a (not so) new audiobook, “The Afghan”. I would’ve bought or rented it instantly, but had no idea it existed.

A lot of books get sold every year. There are bestseller lists, Oprah’s recommendations, book clubs… but no advertising. Is it because the market is too small? At $20 billion/yr I don’t think so. Music gets advertised incessantly – it’s called the radio. No such thing for books. I’m starting to find it amazing that people read books at all, given the dearth of promotion.

The only time I hear about books when I’m not actively looking is when a new Harry Potter comes out, or a movie based on a book comes out. There’s something very odd going on here. Every other form of content I can think of gets tons of advertising – music, movies, video games, DVDs, television shows… but not books. I’d love to end this blog entry with an answer, but I don’t have one. Maybe someone out there will think of something and enlighten all of us.

Remember the days of late fees? They were the bane of movie renters everywhere, and to a lesser extent, audiobook renters. Between Netflix, ourselves, and other unlimited rental companies though, late fees have gone the way of Dodo futures on the mercantile exchange. Except in libraries.

Sam Houston comments in his blog that he forces himself to gorge on audiobooks sometimes to make sure they get read before they’re due back. This is the dark “other” side of late fees. To avoid the insidious dollar a day, time is taken away from your loved ones so you can hide in your garage and listen to audiobooks, in all likelihood while catching a smoke and spying on your neighbours with the binoculars you got for Christmas.

It’s a no-win situation. Either you second-finance your house to pay the late fees, or your spouse divorces you because of all that time spent getting your neural pathways hopped up on audiobook crack. Libraries must surely notice this trend and either cancel their late fees or at least sponsor free couples counseling in the atrium after kids reading hour.

This may sound like a fairly self-aggrandizing post lauding our incredibly inexpensive audiobook rental program (click here to sign up now), but no, really it’s a thank you to libraries everywhere. Thank you my local library for your late fees. You drive customers to us every day. Well, actually they drive themselves. I mean, no, they don’t drive at all (yet are driven just the same), to avoid the scourge of the library tax-man. Thank you.

I’m listening to Phil Gordon’s poker audiobook, and being a big fan of poker, it is proving fascinating – a little too fascinating in fact, as I’ve been in Las Vegas for the past few days, and spending time at the poker tables at the Wynn Hotel and Casino. Listening to advice on no-limit Texas Hold’em and then trying to apply it at the table, WHILE you’re listening, is confusing at best, and economically self-destructive at worst.

The problem is that I hear a passage about playing just about any hand when you’ve got the dealer button because of the enormous advantage of position in no-limit Hold’em, and bam! I’m on the button and lookie here, I’ve got 2-5 suited! That qualifies as just about any hand, so I play it aggressively and manage to lose 3 stacks of chips on the hand because the guy with the sunglasses to my right knows I’m listening to a poker audiobook and therefore probably know jack about actually playing poker. And he’s right.

The problem is that when listening to advice on audiobooks, there is an immediacy to the information that doesn’t exist (for me) when reading a paper book. With a paper book, because I tend to skim, I get an overall feel for the subject and don’t have a chance to apply the advice until after I’ve gotten the overall feel. With an audiobook, I’m concentrating enough on it that my brain processes the advice and spits out recommendations on how to alter my current behaviour, on the spot.

When I’m listening to business advice books, particularly on the subjects of sales or marketing, every paragraph seems to give me an idea for something I have to do when I get out of the car and in to the office. It’s disconcerting, because I have to then rewind the audiobook to avoid missing the next piece of advice. While I’m doing all this contemplating, rewinding, and note-taking, I come close to getting into a car wreck.

Which brings me back to my poker game. I’m concentrating, rewinding, and note-taking, and all of a sudden a pile of chips appears somewhere down the table. I don’t see it in time, and bam! Car wreck. Right there on the poker table. Next time I’ll give the poker advice time to settle, after listening to it (it’s fascinating) on a lunch walk. And at the poker table I’ll listen to music. But I’ll avoid Kenny Rogers.

The last two audio books on CD I’ve listened to, “How to become a Great Boss”, and “Use What You’ve Got”, are both self-help books. I love self-help books. But in both books there were parts I liked and parts that bored me to the point of nearly falling off my treadmill.
Platitudes are boring. Platitudes are statements like “networking is important”, “don’t quit”, and “use what you’ve got”. Yeah yeah, I know all that. What I need is a good story to entertain me and make me remember the point tomorrow morning when I go in to the office. When we argue at work about key points, it’s pointless to try and have the other person see your point of view based on a platitude.

Far more effective are analogies and stories. Jeffrey Fox, in his audiobook on great boss-ness, had me snoring on statements like “praise in public and criticize in private”. Uh huh, been there, heard that track before. Much better to hear a story about yelling at an employee in public, seeing that employee quit,  go work for a bigger company, do really well, and eventually original boss applies at that company for a job. Haaaa ha ha. That’s a good story. And it will give me some potential satisfaction next time my boss yells at me.

I love Harvey McKay’s business wisdom books.  Short homilies, long stories. To be fair, both Fox and Corcoran do have lots of stories, but I’d rather hear just a series of stories with implied platitudes. Where are THOSE self-help books? I suppose “The Google Story” is kind of like that, but not enough platitudes. Aaah, you can’t win.

Driving home today I had a shocking experience. I don’t have any audio books on cd in my car because I’d rented 2 short ones in a row and one of them was really bad so I returned them together. And my mp3 player’s battery ran out because I leave it in the car and it was really cold today. That’s my assumption anyway, because otherwise I’d have to assume that Apple’s batteries are really poorly designed. (That’s sarcasm folks).

I tried staring out the window for a while, but I quickly got bored. No passenger to talk to. I thought of maybe calling someone on my phone, but it was 11pm eastern time, and I couldn’t think of anyone on the west coast I really wanted to talk to.

Out of sheer boredom I started looking at my instrument panel, and lo and behold, there’s a radio! I never noticed it before. Both FM AND AM! I bet I paid extra for that. I remember something called talk radio, so I dialed in to the top station on the AM dial (I mean touchscreen pushbutton thingy, not dial) and started happily listening to newsradio. But I must have done something wrong because the sound quality was really bad and I swear they kept repeating the same news stories over and over.

I tried hitting the FM button, but it was just music I didn’t like. Apparently this radio thing has gotten really hard to use. I’m sure I would have liked it if I could have figured out how to use it. It sure was simpler in the old days. Only 2 stations, both on the AM dial, one was country and the other was rock. Back then radio was great and I didn’t need audiobooks.

Or maybe audio books have spoiled me.