This article about the US based Listening Library audio books publisher was first published in Magpies: Talking about Books for Children in September 2002

I’m a reasonably recent convert to audio books. For many years I had a completely unexamined prejudice towards them; somehow, I viewed them as a poor relation to the written text. I’ve since discovered that a great recording of a great book can be a wonderful experience and one that can extend the listener’s enjoyment and appreciation of the original written text. It seems that the rest of the reading world agrees with me; audio publishing and sales are on the rise.

According to Tim Ditlow, publisher of the New York based Listening Library, avid readers are the biggest consumers of audio books. "People’s available time has shifted. Lots of people like to listen to audio books when they can’t be reading." Families have discovered how fantastic audio books can be on long drives. I once met a mother in a bookshop whose daughter couldn’t, or wouldn’t, go to sleep at night without the audio of one of Emily Rodda’s Fairy Realm books playing. People buy them to hear a favourite tale read, and read really, really well, or to sample a book they’ve heard good things about. A good audio book can be as exhilarating as a night in the theatre.

I first met Tim Ditlow a few years ago when he was visiting Australia, and again in 2001in New York. I’d been struck by the enthusiastic recommendations given to Listening Library audio books by US teachers and librarians I know from email discussion groups. Once I had the opportunity to listen to some Listening Library titles, I understood why they are so highly acclaimed. Ditlow and his team of producers have a remarkable facility to choose the right reader for the right book, and it is this, along with the quality of books selected for recording and high production standards that make them arguably the best specialist children’s audio publisher in the English-speaking world.

Anthony and Helen Ditlow, Tim’s parents, founded Listening Library in 1955. It began as an unabridged recording company focusing on the classics — Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald — and included some children’s books. Titles in the public domain such as The Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden were early Listening Library children’s audio.

When Tim joined his parents’ company in 1979 he came into contact with prominent children’s editors such as Margaret McElderry and Charlotte Zolotow who asked him why Listening Library didn’t publish a wider range of children’s books. Tim began to look at the children’s books available — this was the 80s, the "golden age" of children’s publishing, and there was a proliferation of great children’s books being published, but hardly any were recorded. "All the major publishing houses had started audio divisions", says Tim, "but no-one was focusing on children’s books."

Tim began releasing authors such as Judy Blume and Madeleine L’Engle, and highly successful series such as the Ramona books on audio. Since the 1950s, the core audience for audio books had always been library market wholesalers, with a smaller market share in retail shops. Listening Library was, says Tim, a "one stop shop for libraries, because librarians understand the intrinsic value of listening as a skill set."
By the 90s, Listening Library had become a specialist children’s audio publisher, and the market for audio books had moved into the retail sector, with families looking for recordings for listening at home and in the car. In the late 80s, Listening Library became part of Random House US, although Tim retains full creative control over selection of titles and production. Critically, Listening Library to this day continues its policy of publishing only unabridged audio books.

I asked Tim how he selects books for the Listening Library list.

I’m in a different position than book publishers, because I’m looking at existing books to decide which are going to work as audio books. Every book can be recorded, but not every book should be. Some are better left as books. It’s an inexact science. Non fiction is very difficult to record, as are books, which are mostly narrative.

The selection process is very careful. We only record 50-60 titles per year, so we’re very choosy in selecting titles. I look for evergreen books, books, which I think will be around for a long time.
We publish chapter books through to YA titles such as Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. I try to shape the list so there’s something of quality for all ages, for boys and girls, so there’s humour as well as dramatic fiction. I take input from a wide variety of sources; my own reading, trade shows, reviews, librarians’ feedback, word of mouth amongst the kids of my colleagues, friends and family. We even get recommendations from people who access our website.

Tim has a remarkable gift for selecting the right reader for the book. Sometimes the right reader is the author; Jack Gantos (the Joey Pigza books) and Lyn Reid Banks (The Indian in the Cupboard series) have read their own books to great effect. More often though, a professional actor is selected:

Casting is an artform. Just as in movies or casting a play, the right voice makes or breaks an audio book. There’s no cookie cutter approach; I’ll do whatever is necessary to get the right voice. Other audio publishers use the same small pool of readers. We risk unknowns, if that’s what’s required — it’s important to bring in new voices. For An Na’s A Step from Heaven, for example, we auditioned 30-40 Korean actors to read before we found the right one (Jina Oh). We also use professional storytellers, although we have to be careful that they don’t make the story "their own", rather than the author’s.

Notable readers of Listening Library recordings include Tim Curry (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Garth Nix’s Sabriel and Lirael), Miriam Margolyes (Adele Geras’ epic Troy), Stockard Channing (the Ramona books) to name a few. Some books require a full cast approach; notably, Listening Library recorded Philip Pullman’s "His Dark Materials" with a full cast, narrated by Pullman himself, to multi-award-winning success. Listening Library’s recording of The Amber Spyglass was the first children’s title to win three categories in the AUDIE awards, given by the Audio Publishers Association. Two of the categories it won are usually reserved for adult titles. Many Listening Library titles have been recognised in the various awards they are eligible for. Listening Library’s recording of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, narrated by British actor Jim Dale, won a Grammy Award. Perhaps even more significantly, Listening Library titles have in the past few years received 50% of the notable awards given for audio books by the YA selection committee of the American Library Association.

I was interested to learn that one of Listening Library’s recent recordings is of Paul Fleischman’s remarkable novel Seek, published by Cricket Books, one of the USA’s most innovative small publishers for children and young adults. For his final high school English assignment, Rob tells, in the form of a radio script, the story of his life, his family, and his search for his long-absent father, a radio DJ. I was astounded at how effectively and vividly Fleischman creates character through speech alone. Seek seemed like an obvious choice for audio, but not so, says Tim:

Seek is a perfect example of how imprecise a science audio publishing is; you’d think, given it was written as a script, that it would translate immediately into audio. In fact, Seek is one of the few books we made changes to the text for recording purposes. We actually worked with a radio producer, and in consultation with the author we needed to make some small changes to the text to make it work as an audio book.
Authors are also consulted during the pre-production phase, to ensure accuracy of pronunciation and to ensure that the reader has got the voice "right".

Finally, I asked Tim about the feedback he gets from young listeners, and where Listening Library will go from here.

I’d love to get more feedback from kids, but publishers rarely get direct responses from the audience. The feedback we do get anecdotally is great. We do sometimes get critical letters, good and bad, from kids about our casting choices. As for the future, we’ll be issuing more audio on CD. Apart from that, we’ll continue to produce the best children’s audio with the highest production standards possible.