Prompt #5

Ebooks and audio-books are a part of our landscape. What does the change in medium mean for appeal factors? 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? How about readers being able to change the font, line spacing, and color of text - how does that affect pacing and tone? How about audio-books? Track length, narrator choice, is there music?  For this week, I want you to think about how ebooks and audio-books affect appeal factors - also think about appeals that are unique to both mediums.

These three forms of media all allow us ways to enjoy great stories. Despite my own personal love for the feel of paper and ink in my hands, I have also enjoyed eBooks on my Kindle and audio-books in my car. The change of media does not change our knowledge of the genres we enjoy, just the ways we enjoy it. With eBooks, the ability to change font, line spacing, and color of the text allows us to give ourselves a personalized experience. This allows us to alter the normal pacing and tone and make it so we can read it faster and with more ease. Changing the color can also affect how we perceive the words written, as different colors invoke different emotions. Blue text could make a story calmer or more melancholy, and red could add anger or excitement. With audio books the story is a little different in this case. Because audio-books are narrated, the pacing and tone are set by who is reading the book. This makes narrator choice incredibly important, because they have the ability to make or break an otherwise great audio-book. Also the speed they read may be so different than your own it becomes distracting or hard to keep up with. Also, if the audio-book has included ambiance music that could really affect the tone or even be distracting as well. If the publisher decides to add music to an audio-book, they need to ensure that it matches the pacing of the book and the tone of the story at that moment.

Audio-books and eBooks offer their own unique appeals in the world of reading. With eBooks you can have a vast digital library available to you at almost any moment. Portable devices like tablets and smartphones make accessing this collection easy and fast. Their back-lit options also make is easy to read in low-light settings. Audio-books also prove to be very portable, but do require a device to play them off of. The narrators of audio-books themselves can also be a drawing factor. A very appealing voice that can really convey the intended emotions has the ability to really bring a novel to life. Another benefit to audio-books is that they leave your hands and eyes free to accomplish other tasks. This makes it easier to fit in the joy of a novel while accomplishing other tasks like cooking or exercising. It is also a great alternative for individuals with visual disabilities or who suffer from eye strain. As someone who is very near-sighted and prone to headaches, I can really relate to this appeal here. Each medium allows readers a distinctive experience with their own benefits and drawbacks. As readers, we should not exclude their values and appeals when making decisions.