Davy Nougarede's love affair with books is a bit off the ordinary. And to validate his extraordinary interest in alternative book formats, he constantly churns out facts and numbers. For instance, he says, in the last six months, alternative book formats has "grown by 800 per cent in Europe". And audio books market is growing at a "rate of 20 per cent every month in the UK". The 34-year-old French entrepreneur is the director and co-owner of Britain-based Heavy Entertainment, one of the country's largest manufacturers and producers of audio books. The company recently launched an abridged audio edition of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Arvind Adiga's White Tiger. In his interview, Nougarede tells BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini that there is a growing need for audio books in India and how this form of alternative books could overcome literacy-related problems.
What is the role of an audio book as an alternative book format?
An audio book is the production of bringing to life characters and the story the author had in the book. In an audio book, we check the manuscript, we have characters; we have actors who read from the story. It is also produced with music, with sound effects and professionally recorded in a studio. You may be familiar with BBC readings. This is the same process, but we do this in the commercial arena. And we tend to record a lot of fiction titles, the latest novels, we also record some personal development titles and non-fiction work.
Can you explain the process of producing an audio book?
There are two types of audio books. First is the commercial one. Until now we made abridged audio books whereby the publisher is going to send a manuscript and we will have to decide if it is better released and produced in 2-3 CDs or 5-6 CDs — either 2-3 hours or 5-6 hours. These are two main abridged formats we release both in the UK as well as the US. The process takes about a week for 2-3 CD and two weeks for the 5-6 CD format.
Once we have abridged, we get the author to approve the abridgement. When we do it, the abridgement is still on paper and nothing is recorded yet. Before we record, we need to get the approval from the author or the editor, but mainly the author normally. The author will come back with some comments about the abridgement, which is normal because it is his work that has been condensed. And once the abridgement is approved, we start the casting. We normally start the casting in parallel. So we will know who is going to read the audio book — sometimes it is one reader, one narrator that does all the voices. But sometimes the project is suitable for multi-voice casting, so, we have 2, 3, or more actors up to 10 who will read and take part in the story-telling. We record at our studios in London. We have a dedicated spoken-word recording studios. It's very important, because you cannot record an audio book from anywhere else -- you wouldn't record it from your bedroom, from your house, you really have to record it in a proper studio. These are spoken-word recording studios where sound is incredibly important. Particularly with this medium where you are going to listen to for hours and hours and hours.
We start the editing process after this. And obviously depending on the fluency of the reader, there will be quite a lot of editing. This is quite a long process. Then we do the quality control listening just to make sure that whatever has been approved by the author has been recorded word for word and that we haven't missed anything. We then add music that we have produced in parallel or we use library music. It's very important because it's a small market. Therefore, we cannot pay huge licences. We have to work on a buy-out basis. We have an archive as we have been working for the past 15 years. We have an archive of a lot of music that we reuse and we have more than 1,000 tracks. But we also ask our musicians to specially compose music for the audio books which is license-free, so can be sold anywhere in the UK and the US. There is no extra royalty to be paid.
Are you also involved in the marketing efforts?
Yes, we market the audio book hand-in-hand with the publisher. We work with the marketing and the publicity department who create web pages with audio clips. We send it by e-mail by way of viral marketing. We are in the niche marketing, although we are in a growing market — growing by 22 per cent — it is important for us to carry on raising the awareness for this particular medium. We have been very fortunate for the last few years because a company called Audible has been very proactive in marketing audio books. They are an online database, an online retailer of audio books whereby most of your audio book downloads are now being downloaded from Audible.
Audio books have also been revolutionised with iTunes. And iPods are perfect to listen to audio books. In the UK, iTunes also has a link to Audible. Gradually, people in India too will listen to audio books provided the publishers give them access to them digitally. I have checked the sales of books in India and still predominantly it is the Indian novelists who are the bestsellers. So it is important that Indian publishers piggy-back on the new format so that they can generate a new growth into their industry.
What is your view on the opportunity for audio book market in India?
I think there is a huge opportunity for India. Everyone here has a mobile phone and some even have two phones — one personal and one professional. India has got second fastest growth rates for mobile phones only after China. Every month there are 6 million new subscribers. Your signal coverage covers 90 per cent for the country. You are using the phone for SMS, for storing the music, to listen to the radio and in the future it will be used for listening to audio books and this is something that Indian publishers must become aware of.
In fact, I think audio book format is perfect for India. The literacy level is slightly below the Unesco threshold of 75 per cent. The youth literacy is good at 73 per cent while the average level in India is 71 per cent. For instance, in Bihar region the literacy level is 47 per cent. Because of the tradition of the story telling in India and the literacy level audio books could work well here.
Personalities 
Davy Nougarede's love affair with books is a bit off the ordinary. And to validate his extraordinary interest in alternative book formats, he constantly churns out facts and numbers. For instance, he says, in the last six months, alternative book formats has "grown by 800 per cent in Europe". And audio books market is growing at a "rate of 20 per cent every month in the UK". The 34-year-old French entrepreneur is the director and co-owner of Britain-based Heavy Entertainment, one of the country's largest manufacturers and producers of audio books. The company recently launched an abridged audio edition of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Arvind Adiga's White Tiger. In his interview, Nougarede tells BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini that there is a growing need for audio books in India and how this form of alternative books could overcome literacy-related problems. 
Once we have abridged, we get the author to approve the abridgement. When we do it, the abridgement is still on paper and nothing is recorded yet. Before we record, we need to get the approval from the author or the editor, but mainly the author normally. The author will come back with some comments about the abridgement, which is normal because it is his work that has been condensed. And once the abridgement is approved, we start the casting. We normally start the casting in parallel. So we will know who is going to read the audio book — sometimes it is one reader, one narrator that does all the voices. But sometimes the project is suitable for multi-voice casting, so, we have 2, 3, or more actors up to 10 who will read and take part in the story-telling. We record at our studios in London. We have a dedicated spoken-word recording studios. It's very important, because you cannot record an audio book from anywhere else -- you wouldn't record it from your bedroom, from your house, you really have to record it in a proper studio. These are spoken-word recording studios where sound is incredibly important. Particularly with this medium where you are going to listen to for hours and hours and hours. 
