Secretary of the HCMC Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen finds out the information of audibooks

In the series of festivals, every day there are unique and diverse activities, which are meaningful to developing reading habits in the community and introduce new ideas to encourage and promote creativity and connection between traditional and modern reading.

The first Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day also has a cultural space of Book City organized on Nguyen Hue street with the theme ‘Books and Digital Transformation’ with many activities such as interacting, experiencing models audiobooks, e-books, models, solutions, book experiences including audiobooks, e-books, virtual reality 3D books associated with new technology, artificial intelligence and models, good solutions for digital transformation applications associated with the publishing industry namely digital library system (audiobook library), review and editing support tools for the publishing industry by voice to introduce to with city dwellers.

At Nguyen Hue pedestrian street, four mobile library vehicles have been displaying books that are available for children to read at the festival.

Young readers  queuing to experience listening to audio books at Voiz FM's booth during the first Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day 

Varieties of books that children can read on many topics; they can also use computers to look up, read e-books on the Internet, watch scientific movies, and other book-related activities.

The most interesting place of the event at Nguyen Hue pedestrian street is Booth Smart Library which can meet the demand of readers with all different tastes from printed books, and e-books to audiobooks while they take part in the festival. With 200 titles of Seeds of the Soul on display at Booth smart library, small readers will have many choices and especially experience the smart reading space. They can borrow and return books with the operation of the application on their smartphones.

In addition, at the Smart Library Booth space, readers will experience many attractive mini-games, interacting with book authors to receive gifts with more than 500 books published by First News - Tri Viet.

Audiobooks also bring interesting experiences for readers and visitors during this week of activities to celebrate this year’s Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day. The ‘World Wall of Sound’ presents the content of the work through vivid images when listening to audiobooks.

In addition, the voice-over narration plays a major role in audiobook purchasing decisions as buyers attach great importance to the narrator’s voice which makes up the attractiveness and attraction of an audiobook work. Therefore, within the framework of this activity, readers and visitors can interact with famous voices and experience free audiobooks with Voiz FM.

However, developing a community reading culture with audiobooks will also require many challenges. Before the opening ceremony of the first Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day, a small talk show with the theme ‘Voice books and the development of community reading culture’ was held, with the participation of Director of the Department of Publication, Printing and Distribution Nguyen Nguyen, Chairman of the Association of Libraries in the Southeast region Tran Dai Chinh and Executive Director of Voicebook application Voiz FM Le Hoang Thach.

At this talk show, Mr. Nguyen Nguyen said that there are still many barriers to developing audiobooks including the legal corridor, especially the issue of copyright protection, and administrative procedures. Plus, the issue of investment must be taken into account because without technology investment, there can be no innovation whereas human resources are short.

Therefore, the first important issue is to change people’s awareness, especially amongst young people who are passionate and love books.

Mr. Nguyen assessed that 21 percent of Vietnam’s population reads books or equivalent to 21 million people, this is a potential market and needs further development.

A young girl listens to audiobooks at the event

Also in the talk show, the representatives also made suggestions to promote the role of audiobooks in developing a community reading culture. Mr. Le Hoang Thach and Voiz FM aim to support audiobook copyright. In the near future, Voiz FM will have a lean book testing system, hoping that related units will be more open to new types of books for its future development.

Mr. Tran Dai Chinh suggested the coordination between the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Science and Technology for a coordinated program for five years to have practical policies for businesses.

The Director of the Department of Publication, Printing and Distribution also agreed with that recommendation believing that it is possible to support libraries to spread reading cultural values.

By Ho Son – Translated by Anh Quan