The History Of The Audio Book

Historically if you mentioned the term Audio Books, people would picture a book literally on one or more audio tapes that you could listen to on your tape player at home or in the car.

As technology advanced the CD came of age and the era of the audio tape began to wither and fade although there are more than a few of us out there that still have a tape player and will carry on using them until the tapes stretch and/or break (wasn’t that a pain) or our faithful tape player finally gave up the ghost.

Many businesses recognised the opportunity that online retailing could bring (principally much lower overheads and no need for costly retail outlets or having to rely on the footfall of passing pedestrians), so at this point Audio books went online and ordering over the net became the norm.

Well as we witness on a daily basis technology stands still for no man (or women to be politically correct) and two further technologies emerged that would shape the delivery and format of audio books for another generation. The Mp3 player and Broadband internet connections.

The coming together of these two technologies heralded the arrival of the next paradigm for shopping on line – Digital Downloads. Digital downloads also allow the consumer to save money compared to traditional purchases as thers is no packaging or shipping required.

Enter the age of the digital audio book. Digital downloads literally enable you to download audio books or any digital media directly to your computer. In the case of audio books you can then tranfer them to your Mp3 or mp4 player and carry your library around with you.

If you find that you don’t have time to stop relax and read your favourite book or you want to use spare time to further your education with self help books for example then downloadable audio books are well worth investigating.