The pitch-perfect voices bringing alive audiobooks

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All-Time Favourites for Children, read by Anuj Datta, Bond told PTI that the format could be called “a stimulus, a catalyst for the whole art of reading". As true as this may be for children, many adults, too, listen to books so that they can multitask during a commute or while doing chores, and meet reading or learning goals. India is the third largest audiobook market in the world after the US and China, according to Statista.

The country’s audiobook market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5% between 2024-29, hitting a market volume of $585.30 million (around Rs. 4,860 crore) by 2029. With this, the projected number of audiobook “readers" will be 416.4 million in five years.

“Audio is one of the oldest ways we have consumed stories, from our grandparents and parents (reading to us or narrating stories) to audiobooks now," says Piyush Agarwal, a Bengaluru-based audiobook narrator who primarily voices Hindi titles. He has recorded Nirmala by Premchand, Kashmirnama by Ashok Kumar Pandey and Barahvin Raat, a Hindi translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, among other books. With the boom in demand for audiobooks, more narrators are needed to voice the books.

Yet, few artists truly shine as audiobooks require diverse skills and the artist has to think like a storyteller. “VO (voice-over) artists often have a diverse mix of experiences across radio, ads, dubbing and singing," says Arcopol Chaudhuri, executive editor of rights and new media at HarperCollins India. “Some additional strengths are crucial: impeccable pronunciation, a good understanding of the mood of the text, effective voice modulation skills and their fondness for reading." Voice-over artists say there has been a surge in