Week 11 Response

What does the change in medium mean for appeal factors?

I think the change in medium, especially for audiobooks, begins to incorporate integrated appeal factors into the book space. As Saricks points out in Listening for the Appeal in Audiobooks, the voice acting of the narrator or cast of an audiobook becomes a defining quality of the work. This is something the world of books has a little experience with in the realm of extremely popular authors, but now legions of fans might take to a work they wouldn’t have before because they love the narrator. This begins to tie the community of people around books even more closely to other mediums through voice acting. Did the reader of the next best seller act as your favorite character in a cult classic show or voice your favorite cartoon/ video game character? It’s possible now, so it adds another layer on top of all the other appeal factors that the work would have expressed itself.

If you can't hold a book and feel the physical weight of it in your hands, how does that affect your knowledge of the genre?

Psychologically the experience of reading an ebook, to me, seems about the same. The non-weight factor doesn’t seem to influence my thoughts of the genre, although with an ebook, I’ve noticed I actually study the art on the cover for a moment because I know I will not happen to glace down at it at the end of my reading session. This may influence my idea of the cover, depending on the cover and the genre, but I haven’t found it to be a large factor.

How about readers being able to change the font, line spacing, and color of text - how does that affect pacing and tone?

In my experience changing the font has been one of the two biggest reasons I bought and use an ereader. I was recently prescribed glasses, but before that I was having issues reading smaller text. I just thought my eyes were tired from starting at a screen all day in my editing job. Being able to adjust the font and the backlighting (the other reason I purchased an ereader) really helped me be able to read when picking up a book may have been a little too blurry to enjoy at the end of the day. Ironically, with my glasses this doesn’t happen any more, so I’ve been pickup up more physical books again. The font being large did seem to change pacing, it could be because I was new to a digital book. The act of turning a page, to me, is thoughtless, and I don’t think I ever notice it when I read. For some reason taping the screen to turn to the next page tends to break my concentration a little. It could be the time the text takes to populate, even though it is quick. So the large font combined with the act of digitally ‘turning-the-page’ is something I had to get used to. I also noticed that sometimes my reader will skip a few pages ahead, maybe it senses two touched on the screen instead of one or my unit is a little funky. This is akin to flipping a page stuck to another page, but it seems to happen a lot more often on my reader than any book I’ve had. While these things don’t directly affect the pacing of the actual work, they seem to be more apparently involved in my reading experience on a digital device than on a paper book, and they add up to very minor annoyances. The benefits of the lighting and font allowed me to read more comfortably and more often before my glasses so it was a welcome trade off that a book just wouldn’t be able to offer.

How about audiobooks? Track length, narrator choice, is there music?

I think audiobooks have the ability to completely change the mood and pacing of a book. The narrator may linger on words in a section in a way you would not have as a reader, or the background music may give you a different feeling of the setting than you’d experience if you were imagining it yourself. These are almost like seeing an adaption of a Shakespeare play you are familiar with. Where the setting choices may have been changed to make a social statement or just because the director has a different feeling about the play than you do yourself. I find an audiobook to be more of an interpretation of the work than the work itself, closer to the actual work than a play or film version, but it is more than just the book itself. Choices have been made for the listener by people besides the author, the tone of the characters voices, how fast they talk, the particulars of their accents, this means a work can be elevated through a great audiobook presentation or completely ruined. Most audiobooks I’ve experienced have moments of both yielding an overall neutral experience. I’d much rather read than listen, but sometimes you can’t read (like when driving) and audiobooks become a trade off for me.