If last December we talked about the lack of audiobooks in Catalan, which were growing slowly, the Audible audiobook platform has increased its commitment to this language, with a 20% increase in its catalog in the last year and around thirty titles new from Club Editor, Encyclopedia and Ara Llibres.
In an act at the Laie bookstore in Barcelona, the director of Audible in Spain, Juan Baixeras, offers some data on the growth of the sector, with "5.4 of Spaniards consuming audiobooks", but also "45% of people who don't read, many due to lack of time”: they are, he comes to say, a potential audience. In fact, Baixeras explains that in one year listening hours have increased by 75%: "We must have some successes," he ironically.
Audible's director of editorial relations, Irene Bigas, is aware that there is still relatively little content in Catalan –barely 600 titles compared to the 14,700 in Spanish–, but they are working to reduce the difference, and for this reason they have joined forces with these three publishers, because if titles grow, subscribers can also grow. He has also explained to La Vanguardia the success of the presentation at the European headquarters, in Berlin, of the project for the growth of Catalan on the platform, and that he wants to host original titles in Catalan, of course, but also, as in any culture, translations.
One of the bets that they want to make, he explains, is to try so that many audiobooks also appear in Catalan simultaneously with the publication on paper, as is the case of some of those that have been presented this Thursday. Novels, for example, such as the latest books by Eva Piquer, Aterratge (Club Editor, narrated by Alba Pujol and Jordi Boixaderas) or Xavier Bosch, 32 de març (Univers, narrated by Núria Samso), but also recent non-fiction such as Ruralisme ( Ara Llibres, narrated by Marta Begué), by Vanessa Freixa, or one of last year's surprises, Cuina o barbàrie (Ara Llibres) by Maria Nicolau, narrated by herself.
"Listening to Rodoreda is magical, it seems that she has written to be narrated," said the editorial director of Club Editor, Alejandro Dardik, following the publication of some audiobooks by the writer a few days ago for the 40th anniversary of her death. . Dardik has also celebrated the appointment as finalist of Eva Baltasar's International Booker de Boulder, the entire narrative trilogy of which is available narrated by Aina Clotet.
For the director of the Enciclopèdia group, Ester Pujol, "audiobooks broaden the horizon of these works", as well as helping people with reading difficulties to read. “The more formats, the better”, she has insisted, because “they are not incompatible but complementary”.
In this sense, Joan Carles Girbés, from Ara Llibres, explained that audiobooks also "make the books we publish bigger, and broaden the margins of Catalan literature". Girbés has affirmed that the current moment of the audiobook reminds him of "the beginning of the electronic book", because it is a moment in which "you have to assume high costs but there is still no consumption habit, which will have to be created by growing the offer ”.
An offer that goes through simultaneous releases with the paper and also in other languages, Bigas said before announcing that, for example, they will soon publish the audiobook of the next novel by Camilla Läckberg, as well as another background title at the same time in Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician, in what they call multicasting (narrated by different voices for the characters): a classic like Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Catalan version, here
