I like to include a lot of humour in my writing and that’s one thing that audio books do better than traditional printed media. If you listen to a lot of comedians, the laughter often comes from their intonation and timing rather than what they say. “It’s the way I tell em,” as Frank Carson used to say.

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I’ve spent the last few weeks in my back bedroom talking to myself. With the curtains drawn to keep out as much sound as possible I’ve has spent long hours talking to an empty room about my hillwalking and climbing adventures that span over forty years. Although I was alone in the room my recording equipment was catching every word and now my book has been released as an audio book for listeners across the world.
I’ve been fascinated by the rise of audio books over the last few years. it’s the perfect medium for me as it allows me to combine my writing with my acting experience. It gives me a rare opportunity to talk to my audience in a different way from the written word.

Only a few years ago many experts were predicting that printed books would rapidly be consigned to history and become as outmoded as the quill pen and the horse and cart. Their demise was largely attributed to a change in reading habits as many people switched to digital books that can be read on mobile phones and hand-held devices. Predicting the future, however, is by an uncertain business as gypsy fortune tellers and book makers can testify. Sales of e-books, which once threatened to drive their paper predecessors from the market place, are now in decline and the future of the traditional paper book seems to be secure. Audio books are the new kid on the block as far as the ‘written’ word is concerned. Their sales have rocketed in recent years as they have a unique ability to fit in with our changing lifestyles. You can listen to an audio book practically anywhere. Many people listen on their daily commute or in the gym or whilst doing the gardening.

Pennine way 40 years on

Audio books as open up a new readership to writers. I don’t see audio books as competing with paper books in the way e-books have done. I think it quite likely that people who have enjoyed reading a book off the page might decide to listen to the book again on audio. I think that’s a different experience, especially if the person narrating the book is also the author.

My first book has now been succeeded by a second, Bothy Tales, which is a mixture of the fact and fiction and tells the kind of stories that walkers and climbers might tell each other as they sit in front of the fire in a bothy. Bothy tales begins with my attempt to repeat a walk he did forty years ago when he was starting out on my journey into the mountains. Now in my sixties, I met up with the same friend he walked the Pennine Way with when he was nineteen and together we set off on the 270 mile trek.

Malham Cove on the Pennine Way

That we attempted the walk again, now we are both of retirement age, I see as a victory of nostalgia over neuralgia. There’s nothing like tramping twenty miles across wild moorland to bring home to two deluded middle-aged men that they are not nineteen any more. Forty years on the walk the walk was still an adventure although for very different reasons, I’m afraid you’ll need to buy the book to find out how we got on.

I see audio books as a way of allowing me to relate to my readers in new ways. Ten years ago, I began a project to develop podcasts as a way of reaching out to a new audience. At that time podcasts were a very new medium whereas now they have become mainstream with many mainstream broadcasters investing in them. producing podcasts helped me to learn how to record and edit sound and produce recordings that met the exacting standards of audio book retailers.