I have an audiobook of my book, "Inventing the Future." You can see me and my narrator talking about it at [1]. I auditioned about 25 narrators before picking him.
If you have a lot of dialog, like I do, I think a narrator can bring it to life, by inhabiting the characters. If you're reading the book, you might well be imagining the author talking to you, so an audiobook narrator becomes the voice of the author.
Not quite the case. Reading a book requires a focus on word and sentence structure, a level of attention, that listening to an audio recording doesn't really match. At the least reading requires basic literacy. Thus, listening and reading aren't the same. Writing by any means or dictating text on the other hand both make you have to focus on exactly how you say things in the clearest possible way. This makes them much more similar.
So? This seems like a thought-stopping word: "Oh, gatekeeping! Awful". I'd say we could use some more gatekeeping.
>Some people rely on audiobooks
Well, if you mean the blind, or even people with no time outside car commuting, etc, well for them it's another matter.
I might rely on a walker to go around, but that doesn't mean that it's just an altertive for walking that I prefer, as opposed to a remedy for a health issue.
I think it’s reasonable to distinguish reading a book and listening to a book. I don’t particularly think one is better or worse, but certainly they are objectively different.
My sense is that when people talk about gate keeping there’s necessarily an emotional component. In this case I’d guess perhaps there’s a sense that “reading a book” is valuable or prestigious and they don’t want to exclude someone from it.
But to me it’s just an observation of how you consumed content, free of emotional charge.
If you have a lot of dialog, like I do, I think a narrator can bring it to life, by inhabiting the characters. If you're reading the book, you might well be imagining the author talking to you, so an audiobook narrator becomes the voice of the author.
So no, they're not mutually exclusive.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGchbES0DhU