The advantages of Audio Books

The market of audio books has been growing over the past few years. The popularity of iPod and MP3 players has attracted a new generation of audio book customers, many of them have not bought an audio book on tapes or CDs before.

Some book publishers even predicted that audio books would outsell paperback books or e-books one day. This trend is understandable considering that audio books do provide many advantages over paperback books.

1) Listening to audio books is convenient and it fits into the busy lifestyle of city dweller. You can listen to your favorite novels anytime anywhere, while you are walking, shopping, waiting at a doctor’s clinic or doing housework.

2) For many people, listening to an audio book is more entertaining and exciting than reading a paperback book.

3) For those of you who have to look at the computer monitor and documents for hours, listening to an audio book is more relaxing to your strained eyes after work.

4) Downloading audio titles is easy and quick. You don’t need to wait for the shipment to arrive or find a particular book at the bookstore.

5) Audio books are affordable. Many audio book clubs provide audio book download and rental services at low cost. For examples, you can download a free digital audio book for under $10/m or rent unlimited number of audio books for as low as $15/m. There is also no shipping cost involved.

6) Audio book is a good learning tool. You can improve your listening skill and vocabulary by listening to the audio book alone or reading the paperback book at the same time.

7) Parents can listen to audio books together with their kids and have fun. An audio book can substitute a bedtime story.

8) For the book publishers, audio book recordings can be duplicated easily and downloadable audio books will never run out of stock.

9) Unlike paperback books, audio books can be kept for indefinite period of time, they are easy to store and do not take up space.

To sum up, digital audio books provide hours of entertainment to listeners at low cost. More and more book publishers now produce digital audio titles simultaneously with the release of the paperback version. If you have not listened to an audio book before, try this new way of entertainment and experience the difference.

Kwan H Lo is the owner of an online site, which provides information on audio book clubs and audio book rental / download services.