The adoption of Kannada audiobooks has increased since the Covid crisis broke out in 2020. Translation of classics, narration by popular Kannada personalities, and production of original titles are driving the demand.
“We saw increased adoption of Indian-language audiobooks last year. But the interest among Kannada readers peaked recently, with the release of titles by novelist S L Bhyrappa and actor Ramesh Aravind,” says Yogesh Dashrath, country manager of Storytel India, a Mumbai-based company.
Bhyrappa’s novel ‘Anchu’ is available on the platform in English as ‘Brink’, translated by R Ranganath Prasad. Some of his other books, ‘Daatu’, ‘Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane’, and ‘Aavarana’ are available in Kannada as audiobooks. Likewise, Ramesh has chronicled his life experiences and narrated them in his voice in an audiobook called ‘Maasada Mathugalu’ (Words that Never Fade).
Storytel launched its Kannada chapter in 2021 and has over 200 Kannada audiobooks. “The state has a rich history of literature and the crowd here is more open to trying new concepts, so we were confident that Kannada audio books would perform well,”says Surabhi Chatrapathy, Kannada publishing consultant, Storytel India.
At Bengaluru-based MyLang Books, Kannada audiobooks currently account for 35 per cent of the total revenue, as against 15 per cent in 2020, says cofounder Vasant Shetty. They have released 150 Kannada audiobooks in the past 18 months. A majority of their listenership is in the 20-40 group but there are exceptions too. “Younger kids are also are gravitating to the concept,” he says.
Keli Katheya, another platform, has seen an uptick in demand since it launched a collection of Kannada audiobooks in 2014 and the second collection in 2020. The platform logged approximately 20,000 listeners last year. Cooped up at home, people were looking for newer ways to engage and entertain themselves, its director Mukund Setlur explains. The increasing screen fatigue is also pushing people to switch to audiobooks, adds Surabhi.
Production takes time
The technology available to produce audiobooks in Indian languages is limited, and so it takes two to four weeks to produce one.
Shetty explains, “There are many software programs to read out and record English books. But the technology to produce Kannada audiobooks is not that advanced. So each book has to be recorded manually. This makes it a time-consuming and resource-heavy process.”
Once the stories are shortlisted, the publishers look for narrators. For some books, they use more than one narrator to do the voice-overs for different characters.
Keli Katheya gets Kannada film personalities such as actors Prakash Rai and Rakshit Shetty and singer M D Pallavi for the job. “We also add music to set the mood,” adds Mukund.
Classics, a favourite
While audiobooks exist in all genres, more listeners are tuning in to classic Kannada literature. “Works of famed writers such Kuvempu and Poornachandra Tejaswi are a favourite,” says Vasant Shetty, cofounder, MyLang Publications. Surabhi Chatrapathy of Storytel has noticed a similar trend: “Classics evoke nostalgia and pull in readers. For example, the earlier works of Girish Karnad such as ‘Tughlaq’ and ‘Nagamandala’ are quite popular among our readers.” Apart from classics and biographies, thrillers and murder mysteries are doing well. Shorter audio content, spanning 15 to 30 minutes, is also in demand.