I think it’s fairly easy to relate to the idea that the way in which messages are delivered affects how we receive them. Something written in blunt, terse language can trigger defensiveness before we’ve even processed the content and make us feel more reluctant to follow its advice, while something gentle and carefully phrased can make the exact same advice feel supportive.
In a similar way, if we have instructions yelled at us from afar, we might react in an instinctive way to their warning, but if the information is more nuanced, it’s usually beneficial to deliver things in more clearly measured tones.
Because tone, context, and what those signals imply about intent matter to how we take in info. In face-to-face conversation we don’t merely exchange information. We exchange mood, attention, care, status, reassurance, warning, solidarity, impatience and more. When the channel strips those cues away, the message becomes easier to misread (makes me think of McLuhan’s ‘media is the message’ where how a message is delivered is as important as the message being delivered).
There is research to suggest that listening to angry voices can have profound negative impacts: diminution of self-confidence and feelings of discomfort, for example. The impact of more positive tones and language may be linked to people’s resting empathy levels, but there is a strong sense in which people report greater well-being levels from listening to happy voices.
That’s why written communication can sometimes feel ‘colder’ even when it isn’t meant to be, and why audio can sometimes restore that warmth and clarity. Audio is powerful, but it’s not magic in that it amplifies the relationship between speaker and listener, which can include all the messy human baggage that relationship might contain. But sometimes, it’s all the things that a voice can mean that tools like personalised audiobooks can bring to life so clearly. Connection isn’t clean, it’s wonderfully messy.
Audio can be a powerful tool for learning, reinforcing key messages, and developing a range of different ways in which we interact with information, factual and fictional. And the way we communicate positive emotions, such as love, can be fascinating in the way it goes beyond the scope of patterns of positive phrases. It can make content feel addressed to the listener, rather than passively sitting on a page. This matters for both factual and fictional material. Narratives are not only understood intellectually; they can be felt too.
The voice itself has huge potential to convey positive emotions simply through its range of vocal signals. Coupled with familiar, reassuring, uplifting and meaningful content, it’s an area that had potential for much wider exploration and development.
This is especially true for love, which is one of the strangest and most underestimated features of human communication. Love is often discussed as if it’s primarily conveyed through positive phrases, such as: “I’m proud of you,” “I’m here,” “I love you.” But love is also conveyed through steadiness, patience, and presence, and the voice carries these signals incredibly well. Sometimes love is not the sentence itself, but the way someone reads your favourite story, the highs and lows of emotion in the text, the whispering of parts, the loudness of others.
Personalised audiobooks are interesting in this regard. A familiar voice, that of a loved one, close family member, trusted friend, or respected peer, can take an already meaningful text or story and transform it into a powerful agent of change. When those signals are paired with familiar, meaningful content, something interesting happens, the listener is not only receiving information, but reconnecting with a relationship. In that sense, personalised audiobooks can become relational infrastructure where ‘even if I’m not physically here tonight, I’m still present’ can be enough.
By capturing a sample of your voice, then using it to create personalised audio snap-shots, we can explore the impact in more detail. Whether this is in the form of having bedtime stories available to be read to children at bedtime when one parent or another is stuck in traffic on the daily commute, or in memorialising the voices of ageing relatives so we can always have a way to refer to their signature delivery of a phrase, a story, or a powerful message, there are accessible digital approaches to making this happen.
As we consider the different ways in which this emerging set of technologies can be used for good, perhaps a good start is simply to experiment and find what works. Services such as the Dudley Editions app – available in the Apple and Google app stores – are worth considering.
As we consider different ways this emerging set of technologies can be used for good, a reasonable start is simply to experiment and notice what works. Services such as the Dudley Editions app (available in the Apple and Google app stores) offer a way to test the idea as going beyond theory and into lived practice. Does a familiar voice change how a child settles at bedtime? Does it help someone feel closer to family across distance? Does it give comfort in grief, or connect with loved ones in care? The answers will differ, and that’s the point; it’s not one-size-fits-all media.
And, in a society where the way we connect with our networks and families has never felt so filled with challenges and possibilities, how we use our voices to bridge those divides presents us with an exciting new frontier to explore.
If you are a publisher or author who wants to explore how we can work together to help bring people closer using the power of personalised audiobooks, get in touch. It’s straightforward, simple to set up, and can generate new revenue streams for your backlist.