A Moment of Silence for Audio Book Lovers

One of my dirty little secrets is that I love audio books. I have for years. I am a voracious reader, going through a couple hundred books a year. But, in my down time (in other words when my head isn't actually in a book) my ears are more often than not listening to one.

Audio books quench my thirst for what I call "snack books". Those are your garden variety mysteries and NYT Best Seller List titles. I like having a story told to me. I usually have one on the tape player as I nod off to sleep. Maybe it reminds me of my childhood-but I find it comforting. I've heard every audio book version of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie that I could get my hands on..probably more than once. I discovered and fell in love with the indefatigable Amelia Peabody Emerson of Elizabeth Peter's works through audio books. I heartily admit that I adore the entire "Cat Who" series that for the most part has been voiced entirely by George Guidall. I know my book readers. I favor Barbara Rosenblat, George Guidall, Charles Keating, Michael Jayston and Meegan Fellows. And of course Jim Dale of Harry Potter fame.

This week marked the end of an era in the audio book arena. Last week there was a funeral at the midtown Manhattan offices of Hachette, the book publisher, to mourn the passing of the cassette tape. While the medium long ago shuffled off this mortal coil in the music business, it has lived and thrived among audio book publishers for decades.

"Cassettes accounted for 7 percent of all sales in the $923 million audio-book industry in 2006, the latest year for which data is available, according to the Audio Publishers Association. While many publishers, like Random House and Macmillan, stopped producing books on cassette in the last couple of years, there are holdouts.

At Blackstone Audio, which produces cassette versions of its roughly 340 annual titles, Josh Stanton, the executive vice president, said there was still demand from libraries and truckers, who buy them at truck stops. But he could forecast only that his company would produce cassettes through 2009.

Recorded Books, whose authors include Philip Roth and Jodi Picoult, still issues cassettes of all its titles, roughly 700 a year. Retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble have essentially stopped ordering them, but libraries have been slower to abandon them, said Brian Downing, the company’s publisher. "

So goodbye dear friend. I'll miss those funny little comments at the beginning of most recordings; "if you have difficulty with any of these cassettes, hold the cassette in your hand and slap it smartly across your palm." Without my audio book cassette, what am I going to slap smartly across my palm? I ask you?

Ah well. I'll be holding onto my good old reliables until they snap and break.

Keep your paws off my Whitney Otto's and we'll be just fine.