Since the publication of my first book, “The Footprint of Leadership”, I’ve repeatedly heard people say that if it were available as an audio book, they would listen, but they don’t have time to read it.
A while ago I also found a studio to do it with, but then he disappeared. I couldn’t even find the person who owned the studio by googling. By the time Marge Tänava from the Estonian Centre for Digital Books wrote to ask if I had thought about making my book into an audio book. Of course I had thought about it, interestingly enough just the day before her letter again.
And reading my own book seemed the only way, even though I was scared. That’s what actors are trained to do, after all, with all the diction and other training. I’ve just been doing podcasts for 6 years, trying to hone my digital voice to be clearer and more precise.
But when I finally went into the studio and started reading under the guidance of Janno Sooäär, I really started to enjoy it. In the meantime, Janno also put some honey on my moka so that it would come out well. I kept believing and kept reading.
Reading your own book was not just reading the text. It was a kind of new encounter with the thoughts that had once come through me when I was writing.
Some sentences sounded different when spoken out loud than when written in silence, and some thoughts touched me again from a new angle. Because it is never possible to step into the same river again. The river is different and the man is different.
I realised that the written word and the spoken word have a different life, that you can play around with emphasis and understand the same sentence in very different ways – exactly as the reader (listener) needs to receive it at the moment.
I am particularly pleased that “The Footprint of Leadership” is now available on the Elisa Raamat app as both an e-book and an audiobook. 🎧
Not only because it is now more accessible to those who don’t like reading, but because it is more accessible to listening. I’m also glad that some ideas are better conveyed through the voice. As I read the book, I was left thinking that storytelling from person to person is one of the oldest ways of passing on knowledge, and the written word is, after all, a very recent invention.
Maybe that’s why we’re so much believers in podcasts and increasingly in audiobooks.
Reading the book turned out to be much more enjoyable and meaningful than I had initially expected. Instead of a technical skill, I immersed myself for those days and hours in the tonality of my own thoughts again, in the experiences and lessons written in the book.
So .. if you’ve been thinking of listening to this book rather than reading it, now’s your chance: “Leadership Footprint” on the Elisa Book app is now available for you! And no, it’s there right now at a special discount, for the first 2 weeks you can even have a trial of audio and e-books if you’re not an Elisa Raamat customer yet.
PS. And my next book is not far away, so it’s high time to catch up on the prequel.
