What is Audible Captions? Audible Captions, introduced by world’s largest audiobook producer—Audible, will capture the audio you are listening, turn the audio into text, display the text on the screen, and highlight each word when it has been narrated aloud. If you have ever used the YouTube Captions, you will know what I mean.
Below is the video released by the Audible Official YouTube channel. Just watch it to know what Audible Captions is.
The Audible officially takes Audible Captions as the education-driven feature. It was born out of Audible’s work with students in its Newark, New Jersey but later be introduced to the press as an education tool. This can be proved by the statements from Audible Chief Executive Donald Katz,
“We know from years and years of work, that parents and educators, in particular, understand that an audio experience of well-composed words is really important in developing learners.”
The Benefits of Audible Captions
As the Audiobook consumers, this feature may be really in demand for the language learners or students. Here are the main potential benefits of reading Audible audiobooks:
- Improve comprehension, vocabulary, word recognition and listening skills;
- Improve memory and concentration;
- Good for hard of hearing people.
Also, most of the audiobook lovers think this feature is helpful and express their thanks to Audible.
The aforementioned are all benefits to Audible listeners, how about the Publishers or authors?
Publishers and Authors’ Reactions to Audible Captions
This upcoming feature raises copyright fears among publishers, authors, and agents.
According to the statement from the Authors Guild,
The Audible Captions feature will lead to fewer ebook sales and lower royalties for authors for both their transitional published and self-published books.
This coming feature also raised the hot discussion on Tweeter. Erin Bowman, a novelist tweeted
“Unless Audible has purchased print rights for the title or the reader has purchased the book in print form (physical or ebook) and unlocked "captions" with a code or something, I'm not sure how this is legal....”
Besides the authors, a large numbers of publishers request their books be excluded, saying these captions are “unauthorized and brazen infringements of the rights of authors and publishers.”
It seems this upcoming feature is strongly opposed by the publishers and authors. I can see there are still voices that believe this feature will boost both audiobook and ebook sales.
According to Felix J.Torres,
“They’re selling different things to different people but enhancing both brings in more customers of each type. TTS is very useful to dyslexics and captions are useful for hard of hearing. Both enhance the product, increase sales marginally, and cost the publisher nothing.”
I am sure this discussion will never come to the end, but will this new feature be released or not at last?
Differences between Audible Captions and Immersion Reading
Talking about Audible Captions, the immersion reading comes into my mind. So what's the real differences between Audible captions and immersion reading? The following table shows the exactly differences of Audible Captions and Immersion Reading.
| Audible Captions | Immersion Reading | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic requirement | Own the audiobook | Own both audiobook and eBook of the same title |
| The way to listen or read | When you play the audiobook, this feature will generate the text and display on the screen of your device. Please note that these texts are generated by machine learning technology so they may be not the same as the ebook. | When you read the ebook at the immersion reading supported kindle device or app, just type the play button to listen to the audiobooks at the same time. |
| Supported device | Audible for iOS/ Android | Kindle for iOS/Android, kindle fire HD/HDX |
From above table, it is obvious that Audible Captions is not the same as Immersion reading. As for me, I will never give up the ebook. Reading and listening are two different experiences. Some time I prefer reading, but some time I prefer listening to audiobooks. So I think the audiobook will never replace ebooks, right? But I will not reject to read Audible audiobooks while listening. How about you? You are welcome to share your opinion in the comments.
Iris Yan has been a passionate member of Epubor since 2017. Her mission is to enhance your ebook reading experience by sharing insightful tips and tricks. Join her on a journey towards reading excellence today!
