What does abridged mean in books

That directly reflects the use cases mentioned above post-secondary students looking to be familiarized with classic literature, introducing children to audiobooks, etc.

As expected, the categories offering the most unabridged audiobook formats are Literature and Fiction, and Mystery and Thrillers. These are the types of novels offering thick plots and character development so rich you can almost taste it!

People who love these genres will be less likely to seek out an abridged version of a book from these genres. The discussions on this go far and wide. And though there is an overwhelming favoritism for unabridged audiobooks, there are a few remaining use cases for abridged audiobooks. So long as publishers and producers are paying attention to their audiences needs and the genre of the literary work, they will make the best decision for their customer. A book about how to succeed as an entrepreneur is most likely going to perform better as an abridged audiobook than a classic novel about a captain of a whaling ship looking for revenge on a great white whale.

Making those types of distinctions are apparently critical to the success of audiobook producers and publishers. The voice over industry is filled with actors who can perform a multitude of accents. Even more striking than this exercise in biblical trimming is the way that some audiobook authors have used abridgment as an opportunity to enhance their work.

Poet Galway Kinnell would spontaneously alter his poems when reading them to audiences. He liked these unexpected improvements so much that he stuck with them subsequently, and used these revisions when recording albums of his poetry, rather than the published versions. Thus Kinnell treated his poems as ever-evolving creative works—much as another celebrated wordsmith, Kanye West, would later do with his released-but-never-definitively-finished album The Life of Pablo. The key factors in the rise and fall of abridged audiobooks are economics and technology, which of course interrelate.

In the s, companies like Libraphone and the Audio Book Company seized upon the longer playing time of LP records to record full novels. It became common for bookshops to carry audiobooks in the mids. Olympic rower Duvall Hecht founded the company Books on Tape in , and business boomed among commuters and travelers. Trentman, the Recorded Books founder so antipathetic toward abridged books, was a traveling salesman who wanted unabridged audiobooks that would provide plenty of entertainment during long journeys.

Later, Brilliance Corp. Abridged audiobooks have been declining as physical media like CDs become less important, and space is less of a consideration. Carting around a massive set of tapes for a train journey, which crowds out valuable space in your backpack?

No, thank you. Listening to audiobooks is one of the best and easiest ways to catch up on new books and old favorites without having to carve out special time in the day to actually sit down and read. Audiobooks are easy to listen to anytime, but most people take advantage of down time in their vehicles or when doing mundane chores such as housework or yard work.

The unabridged version of the book is read, in its entirety, exactly the way the author wrote the book and exactly the way it was originally published. Containing the original content; not condensed.

There are many reasons that a book may be abridged. What is the difference between abridged and unabridged audiobooks? Information Title. URL Name. Answer Answer. Filtering Content You can filter your searches for abridged or unabridged audiobooks by using the Advanced Search feature on Audible.

Advanced Search also allows filtering of category, audio format, author, narrator, and more!