Let me make this real clear. A listener is not a reader. You have to stop thinking about the reader of your print book and start thinking about the listener.

When we're just talking to each other, we give each other a tremendous amount of redundant information. We repeat things. Often we don't change the words, just change the emphasis. So when we listen to someone talking, we rarely need to concentrate on every word that is spoken. If we miss something, we know that it will most likely be said again. But if it isn't, we know we can just ask to have it repeated. If we are in view of each other, we don't even need to use words. All it takes is to give the speaker a little confused glance to trigger him repeating the key content. If that doesn't work, we can verbalise a brief 'Huh?' or 'What'd you say?'

Try this experiment

Try this yourself. Find a tape recorder and tape about 5 minutes of some ordinary conversation between you and a friend. Put the machine where you won't see it and just forget the machine is running.

Later on listen to it. Count how many times things are repeated, how many times the same thing is said. It will be a lot.

Now think about your book. It isn't like a conversation at all. When you wrote it, you worked hard to make it tight and concise. You purposely removed most of the redundancy, both in the narration and in the dialogue. As a result, your book is not repetitive. But that same conciseness that makes it a good read, makes it very difficult to listen to. When spoken, it demands constant attention from the listener.

Listening to an audiobook requires much greater concentration than reading a print book. Think about this: If you are reading (with your eyes) and come to something that isn't clear, what do you do? You stop reading. All forward reading motion instantly stops. Then you skim back a bit (again with your eyes) until you find the place where the confusion started. You might have to turn back a page or two, but locating a good spot to start from isn't hard, because you can see the words. Then you re-read from there, looking for whatever it was that you missed the first time, maybe slower and maybe several times, if necessary.

Now let's switch over to the audiobook experience. What is the most obvious difference? Your listener can't see the words. And your listener can't easily stop the forward listening motion. He has to get his hand on the playback device, find the pause button, and press it. Doing that isn't much, but it takes some degree of your listener's concentration away from listening. And while he not listening, you keep on talking. If he decides not to pause and back up the recording, there is going to be a bit of lost narration while he is thinking about whether or not to do it.

Because there are no words to look at, there is no easy way to listen backwards over an audiobook. When we are reading, we can skim backwards with our eyes, and the individual words and phrases are still there, in the same order. But when you hear a machine playing in reverse, each word is heard in reverse. There are no phrases. 'Hello, Jim' sounds like mmmiJih, ole-leh. It sounds like garbage.

Backing up a tape is never exact. It is damned hard to backup a recording to exactly a certain point. Your listener is much more likely to come up short, or way overshoot the spot.

And if the spot is more than a few seconds back, the listener will rewind where he hopes he wants to start over at, but if he's close, he'll compromise and start listening from there. It's too much of a hassle to find the exact point that he would like to backup to.

What else makes it hard for your listener to stay with you? The big reason is that your listener is probably doing something else while listening. If your listener is driving, he has to stay aware of the traffic and pedestrians all around. If he is at home, maybe he is cleaning or putting dinner together. The baby is wandering around. The TV is on in the other room, or the phone just started to ring. You are competing against all of this.

So make your listener's job as easy as possible.