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The House of Oojah is an audio book store that has been in operation since 2004. We sell mainly audio books on CD, although some are on mp3 CD. Categories include Childrens audio books , An audiobook is following the text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine, and may be shorter (abridged) the full length and exactly the same (unabridged) or a dramatized version of a book with actors playing parts in the story.

Spoken audio has been available in colleges,schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word albums were created in the past up to the age of VCRS, DVDs, compact discs, and downloadable audio, however frequently of dramatic plays rather than books. It was not until the 1980s that the audiobook medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays. Many talking book recordings of stories were available on wax cylinder in the early 1900s.

In 1931, the US Congress established the Talking Book program, which was intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print. This program was called "courses for the Adult Blind venture." The American Foundation for the Blind developed the first Talking Books in 1932. One year later the first reproduction machine started the process of mass publishing. In 1933 anthropologist J.P. Harrington drove the length of North America to record oral histories of Native American tribes on aluminum discs using a automobile battery-powered turntable. Audiobooks preserve the oral tradition of storytelling that J.P. Harrington pursued many years ago. By 1935, after Congress approved free mailings of audio books to blind citizens, products for the Adult Blind Project was in full operation. In 1992 the National Library Provider for the Blind and Physically Challenged (NLS) network circulated millions of audiobooks to more than seven hundred thousand physically challenged listeners. All NLS recordings were created by professionals audio book readers.

Though spoken tracks had been popular on thirty three and a third vinyl record format for colleges,schools and libraries into the early 1970s, the beginning of the booktrade acceptance of this medium can be traced to the introduction of the audio cassette player and, most significantly, to the prevalence of these cassette players as accepted equipment in imported overseas cars, which became very popular during the nineteen seventies energy crisis. Thereafter, consumers,authors and book publishers slowly accepted the medium. Into the early nineteen eighties there were still many book authors who refused to have their courses created as audio books.

With the development of portable cassette players, audio tapes had become very preferred and by the late nineteen sixties libraries became a supplier of free audiobooks, mainly on vinyl records but also on tape cassettes. Instructional and academic recordings came very first, followed by self-help/motivational audio tapes and then by classic literature. In nineteen seventy, Olympic gold medalist, Duvall Hecht founded Books on Tape, Inc. as a driver to consumer mail order rental service for unabridged audiobooks, and expanded their services selling their products to libraries and audiobooks gaining popularity with commuters, students and travelers. By the middle of nineteen eighties the audio book publishing business grew to several billion dollars a year in retail value.

Caedmon was the first to work with integrated production groups (Poetry/Plays) and professional actors, while Nightingale Conant concentrated on economics,business and self-help book authors reading their own works first on vinyl records and after that on tape cassettes.

The Audio Publishers Association was established in nineteen eight six by six competitive companies who joined together to promote the consumer awareness of spoken audiobooks . In nineteen ninety six the APA established the Audie Awards for audiobooks, which is similar to movie Oscars for the talking books industry. The nominees are announced each year in January.

While most music fans rapidly accepted CDs, audiobook listeners were slower to accept CDs for playing audiobooks. One cause may have been that a cassette tape by nature retains their position when the player is turned off, but numerous early CD players did not retain the playing position of CDs when turned off. Also, it had been not until cassette players were replaced by CD/mp3 players in most automobiles that this type of audiobook became commonly available.

With the advent of the Internet, broadband technologies, brand new compressed audio formats and portable media players, the popularity of audiobooks has increased significantly. This growth was reflected with the advent of audiobook download subscription services. Creating an audiobook consists of a narrator seated in a recording booth reading the text, while a studio engineer and a director record and direct the performance. If a error is created the recording is stopped and the narrator reads it again.

Narrators tend to be usually paid on a finished documented hour basis, intending if it took 20 hours to create a 5 hour book, the narrator is paid for 5 hours, thus providing an incentive not to make mistakes. Depending on the narrator they are paid US0 per finished hour to US0 . The overall cost to produce an audiobook is US,000 at the minimum to many tens of thousands, depending on the length of the audiobook and the popularity of the narrator.

Audiobooks are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, MP3-formatted audio CDs (MP3CDs), downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), Advanced Audio Coding (.aac)) ogg and preloaded digital in which the audio content is preloaded and sold together with a hardware device.

In two thousand and five, cassette tape earnings were 16% of the audiobook market, with CD earnings accounting for 74% of the marketplace and downloadable audio courses accounting for approximately 9%. In the United States, a sales research program estimated the industry to feel worthwhile eight hundred and seventy one million US dollars.

Some audiobooks products tend to be the audio archive of a radio broadcast, which is often radio programs serializing books. Audiobooks may come as fully dramatized versions of the printed book, occasionally calling upon a complete cast, musical, and sound effects. A dramatised audiobook version of a book is effectively an audio drama or similar to old radio plays. These days popular book titles are released simultaneously with the books publication.

Recent technology has encouraged the proliferation of free audiobooks that take works from the general public website and enlist volunteers to read them. Audiobooks are also distributed online by for-profit companies. Until recently, major audiobook publishers needed that their works be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), when available as downloads, but this is no longer the case. Companies such as Apple Inc. have licensed their proprietary FairPlay DRM system to only one company. Because of the long-standing major publishers' insistence on DRM, this effectively created a monopoly in the sale of the works of major publishers to iPod users, who create up the majority of the portable audio market.

Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than hardcovers because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of measure in high "print" runs that are available in the publishing of printed books. Downloadable audiobooks tend to charge slightly less than hardcovers but more than their paperback equivalents. Market penetration of audiobooks is substantially lower than for their printed counterparts despite the high marketplace penetration of the hardware and despite the massive market penetration attained by audiobook products.

However, there are certain economies of measure that favor downloadable audiobooks. Downloadable audiobooks do not carry bulk production fees, do not require storage of a big listing, do not require physical packing or transportation. If these economies are passed on to customers, audio book income margins would feel reduced but sales volumes would increase. It is not known what effects this would have on book earnings in other formats.

Audiobooks have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. They are also helpful for the blind. The National Library of Congress in the USA and the CNIB Library in Canada provide free audiobook library services to the visually impaired; requested courses are posted out to people. Started in nineteen ninety six, Assistive Media of Ann Arbor, Michigan had been the first organization to produce and deliver spoken-word recordings of written journalistic and literary works via the interwebs to provide people in the USA with visual impairments.

About 40% of all audiobook consumption starts through public libraries, with the remainder served mainly through retail book stores. Library classics programs are presently getting rapid development. Libraries are also popular places to check out audio books in the CD format. According to the National Endowment for the Arts' recent study, audio book listening is one of very few kinds of reading that is increasing general literacy.

Audio books are considered a valuable discovering tool because of their format. Unlike classic books or a video program, one can know from an audiobook while doing other activities, although it should be noted that this can detract from the primary task, assuming the discovering is not the main activity. These types of multitasking is feasible after doing mechanical tasks that choose not require much thought and have only little or no chance of an emergency arising. These activities consist of doing the laundry and exercising inside, among others. The most popular general use of audiobooks by adults is after driving an automobile or traveling with general public transport, because an alternative to radio. Numerous people listen because really simply to relax or as they drift away into sleep.