Michele Cobb, host of the Behind the Mic podcast published by Audiofile magazine, interviewed bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell to talk about audiobooks, podcasts, and the meeting of the two.
Gladwell is the host of the Revisionist History podcast. Check out his latest audiobook, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know. Gladwell is the president of Pushkin Industries, an audiobook and podcast production company.
Discover more audiobook recommendations at https://audiofilemagazine.com.
As Malcolm writes his books, he’s always think about the audio experience as well. What will the audiobook sound like? What extra content can he add to the audiobook?
His company creates what he calls 5-star audiobooks that offer an immersive and enhanced listening experience. As he notes,
“When … you start with the audio in mind and then move toward the print, I think the writing really does change. I think your writing is necessarily more conversational. You spend a lot more time on character and emotion and those kinds of things. But you tend to do a little bit less of the things that print is good at (print is good for complicated, analytical kinds of stuff). Hard to do that when you're talking. So I think it does change the shape of books.”
When he writes a book, he does a table read of the entire book, listening for how it sounds. And then he often rewrites the draft to make it more concise, more interesting, more attractive to the ear. He’s also done public performances of parts of a book to get audience feedback.
His company, Pushkin, originally focused on podcasts but quickly moved into producing audiobooks as well. As Gladwell notes, the difference a podcast and an audiobook is slight. You pay for one, the other is free (in most cases). The other differences are mainly technical, which most listeners would not notice.
John’s Comments
If you are doing hour-long podcast interviews, you are essentially creating short audiobooks and print books with each session. And you can create even longer books and audiobooks by interviewing the same person or other experts in a series of related podcasts.
Podcast of the Day: Malcolm Gladwell on the Future of Audiobooks