Audio book is a dramatized recording or audio narration which gives the opportunity to listen to any book of your favorite author as needed anytime by just playing the book on your computer, ipod, cell phone or stereo recorder. As opposed music or songs, audio books are primarily the recording of spoken words that may be a recorded version of a book or spoken program. Abridged and unabridged are two different categories of audio books. The edited content of the original is called abridged and the original word for reading content is called unabridged. The one who edit the contents are termed abridger and abridgments help in saving time and cutting cost. Trained vocal artists are often behind the narrations of audio books. Text to speech software is sometimes used for better sound quality.

Need of Audio Books

The main purpose of audio books where primarily explored at schools and libraries designed for children and students as recorded spoken materials that include nursery rhymes and teaching. It was in the early 1980s that spoken word publishing began to emerge as a popular recording. Any spoken publication was from then onwards commonly termed as the audio books of today which are available in downloadable versions on the web, either for free or for purchasing.

Audio books are now available as cassette tape, CD, or downloadable digital formats including Windows Media Audio and MP3. You can even find some preloaded formats of digital audio books. The most important benefit of audio books is that it is highly helpful for the visually handicapped people capable of handling them independently as they are also published in typical formats with specialized players. They can be played while traveling and even when busy with daily work. Audio books are now published together with hard cover editions the first being the audio book of Jedediah. P. God’s Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings.

With the advent of CD technology, you can now store plenty of information in a single CD and DVDs can store more than a book and can be played with ordinary CD or DVD players as well. You can also enjoy digital audio books from portable music players including IPod, Zune, Zen player etc.

As compared to hardcover editions, audio books are little pricier. Preloaded audio content are priced similar to those recorded in CDs. However, you can download audio books affordably or even for free without the need for storing and transporting.