National classics, now in audiobook mode

At some point you have to lower the volume so that the voice of Andrea Mina, a student in the seventh cycle of Communication at the University of Azuay, sideways, provokes the idea that "the night is cold and foggy", that "it snows in the Andes”, and that “the north wind shakes the branches of the trees stripped of their leaves by the merciless hand of winter...”. 

Such a distant image, detailed in the first lines of Novelitas Ecuatorianas, written by Juan León Mera at the end of the XNUMXth century, and which sounds very close these days, thanks to those technological miracles that are simplified with such a simple word of just three syllables: apps. Mina's is the voice that narrates one of the first four of a series of Ecuadorian classics translated into audiobooks, a task that has been imposed by a Cuenca-based enterprise. 

"We won a seed capital that we obtained by participating in a call for the Cultural Incubator, which allocated funds from UNESCO and the House of Culture to support ventures that have to do with the cultural area," says Andrés Gárate Peralta, one of the members of AudioStories, an audiobook and podcast application directed by Claudia Saquicela Novillo. 

The SectorIn 2020, revenue from ebook and audiobook sales grew 113% compared to 2019, according to Bookwire, compiled with data from 840 publishers. 

The first prototype of this project has four audiobooks: Los Gagones, by Manuel Muñoz Cueva; Legends of the Heroic Time, by Manuel de J. Calle; and a part of the Complete Works, by Pablo Palacio. Also, of course, Novelitas Ecuatorianas, by León Mera. 

“We aspire to have more titles. We are working on the issue of copyright, in the second phase of the project, which involves increasing our catalog with contemporary authors and adding them to the classics that are free of copyright, and with this launch the application to appstore stores” Garate adds. 

The contribution achieved through the Cultural Incubator was $3.500, so there was a need for a lot of self-management by those behind this proposal, which, according to its managers, seeks to promote the reading of classic works of Ecuadorian literature and that also, in the future, help people with dyslexia, blindness, hyperactivity and special abilities. 

According to a previous investigation carried out by Claudia Saquicela, the country's publishing industry decreases 6% per year, but there is a potential sector that would be interested in listening to audiobooks. The study identifies potential consumers of this type of application to people between 17 and 34 years old. 

In the explanation about the attributes of audiobooks, it is detailed that the voice of the narrator or narrator and its different nuances when telling a story, allow a greater effect of immersion on the text, especially if sound effects are used, one of the options on which this type of technological application is based, to go in search of new readers, because, as has already been said: "Listening to audiobooks is also reading". 

three months reading books 

To develop the AudioStore prototype, recording sessions of up to two hours a day were required, from August to October. "But it wasn't boring or exhausting," says Andrea Mina, who helped record the demos for the books. In her case, reading for thousands of potential listeners was attractive. The very act of tackling that task was. "It's not just about standing up and reading a book, it's about bringing the characters to life, so you have to act when you're telling the story, so that the audio is interesting to the listeners and not something dull and boring." The possibility of participating in this project was given thanks to the fact that she came to AudioStore as an intern.