Audio books are more popular today than ever, in part because people are so busy nowadays and being able to listen to a recording of a book can be a great time saver. In addition, the ready availability of digital versions of books to play on an iPod or other favorite audio book player makes them very convenient as well. However, sometimes when people are shopping for a new audio book to add to their collection they are surprised to see both an unabridged audio book and an abridged audio book version of the same title.

There are many people who don’t realized that they might want to look for the unabridged audio book version when they were buying a new audio book, but had simply bought whatever was featured or listed as the most popular for that particular title. In fact, a very good percentage of all audio books on the shelves of bookstores or available as audio book downloads are actually the abridged version and many people purchase them without even realizing that fact. Still, the question remains, what is the real difference between the two types of audio books on sale?

The unabridged audio book version contains every last word from the book, just as it was released in print. An abridged audio book version will have been edited to one extent or another. In some cases, this editing is either done by the author or under their supervision. In other instances, a publisher who purchased the rights to the book has free reign to edit the work at their discretion.

What this means is that an abridged work, whether in the form of a printed book, an electronic ebook, or an audio book on CD or MP3, does not contain the complete and original work of the author. An unabridged audio book, on the other hand, will be read by the author or by a voice-over artist and every single word in the volume will be recorded as the audio book. Therefore, the unabridged version will be as close to the original message and intent of the author as one can possibly get without inviting the author over for a personal reading.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.