Between reading and listening: audio book, instructions

Sometimes free, most often paying, the audio book has experienced a new craze in recent years thanks to new technologies and more ergonomic reading devices, smartphones.

However, the audio book evokes an ancestral practice around the story read aloud, the only means of transmission before the appearance of writing and still widely practiced until the generalization of learning to read and of writing.

Today, international publishing is investing in this format, which is also seeing the appearance of new broadcasters, such as Audible, owned by Amazon, or, on the French side, Book d'Oreille, VOolume and others. Publishers are also taking this format in hand, with creations from Audiolib, Listen to Read at Gallimard, a subsidiary at Actes Sud or even Lizzie for Editis.

The format, which enjoys a strong growth rate in the United States, the United Kingdom, Arab countries and the Indian continent, has a more measured use in France, but now has all the cards for appeal to a previously reluctant audience. Local libraries even lend a few titles, most often in CD format, while waiting for the MP3...