To the literary snobs it’s the cheat’s way of reading – books without pain; worse, abridged books, butchered by barbarians for the entertainment of morons! “I don’t listen – I read,” commented one of my most enlightened colleagues acidly, on hearing that I was writing this article.
And to my many chronically youthocentric pals (who themselves tend not to read), audiobooks are either for tiny tots (“and do you know what Flopsy did next, children?”), or for grannies, whose failing eyesight and social isolation leave them little alternative other than to take their teeth out and curl up with a tape-deck. In the movies slick young heroes drive their cars to a pounding beat, or Pavarotti arias – not to Alan Bennett reading “The Wind In The Willows”.But these contemptuous attitudes are now being challenged as, gradually, those who make and those who buy talking books emerge from the closet. Yesterday the first awards for talking books were announced at a ceremony and lunch at the Landmark Hotel in London. Dubbed “The Talkies”, the event saw prizes awarded for abridged classics (Ulysses and Death in Venice shared the award), non-fiction (Bill Bryson’s Made in America), Best reader (Martin Jarvis, of course) and ten other categories. Organiser Peter Dean, editor of the new trade mag, Talking Business, revealed the economics behind this new confidence: “Last year the talking books business grew by 50 per cent – the highest percentage growth in any home entertainment medium in Britain”. Although not massive, this has meant a UK trade worth around pounds 34 million, and set to grow.Dean sees no reason why Britain should not follow American trends. In the United States the audiobook business took off earlier and is more highly developed.

Truckers embarking on a long trip will rent unabridged tapes of Louis L’amour Westerns, dropping off and picking up instalments at way-stations en route. So that grizzled veteran of a million road miles, sat high in his cab, chunky chocolate bar in hand – far from contemplating how to run your hire-car off the road – is probably transfixed by the tale of how Rex Hightower wooed and won Rachel Rodgers (the belle of Reno) down among the purple sage. As is the passenger on a Delta Airlines plane, now offered talking books on most internal flights. For the buyer, there are over 200 stores in the US that sell only audiobooks.But apart from me and my Mum, who else in this country is buying these tapes, what do they buy and where do they listen to them? According to the market research the “who?” turns out to be any of us. The profile of tape buyers is the same profile as that of the population at large. Phew! I may have Virginia Woolf on the Walkman, but there’s nothing odd about me.The absolute bestsellers are the BBC’s recordings of classic comedy programmes – ranging from the Goon shows to the more recent (and utterly brilliant) “Knowing Me, Knowing You”. These can apparently clear anything up to an astonishing 100,000 copies Next come the mass-market books; the thrillers and romances.

Penguin’s top draw is Dick Francis, whose race-track whodunnits can sell as many as 17,000 audiobook copies. But Penguin’s audiobook publishing manager, Jan Paterson is most proud of the succcess of its classic recordings, like the Odyssey read by actor Alex Jennings, its five Thomas Hardy titles, its Steinbecks and its collections of horror, ghost and supernatural stories. These are beautifully packaged, often boxed up with explanatory booklets and maps They are fabulous. It is, however, possible to be too solicitous of the listener.

One disadvantage with taped books is that you can’t easily skip the boring bits. Penguin’s edition of Macchiavelli’s The Prince has a first 45 minutes entirely taken up with a long and scholarly discourse on the crafty courtier’s life and times, before you hear one word of Niccolo’s own bien-pensants. Nevertheless the Penguin classics are selling and – judging by the sumptuous new catalogue – the company’s faith in the product is riding high.While some listeners will – as in days of yore – sit down in their living rooms, tea and digestives close to hand, and switch on the tape recorder, most talking book consumers are either sleepers or drivers. Sleepers relive the warm childhood experience of being read to as they drift off.