Audiobooks are made like songs by your favourite bands are. They are recorded in a studio and then released on CD`s, cassettes or are offered for downloading online. Such a recording, instead of chapters in the printed version, is divided into many smaller recordings, lasting up to several minutes so that the listener might continue “reading” as desired. Recorded books follow the colourful variety of their printed counterparts when it comes to themes, therefore apart from various self-help texts, you can find world`s greatest fiction hits as audio editions. Apart from recording previously printed editions, certain companies, like the BBC for example, release only audio editions. The world audiobook market is worth billions of dollars and versions that can simply be downloaded online are most popular versions. Such distribution format is most simple for the publishers, who do not have to worry about the quality of CD`s for instance, but for the listeners as well, especially today when almost every mobile phone has a build in MP3 player. Such form of releasing texts seemed unnecessary to many at first. Books in printed form have been around for centuries, and even the blind, who seem to be the ideal focus group for audiobooks, have their printed editions that are “read” with fingers. The main purpose of audiobooks is not just to help people with special needs, but to enable “healthy” individuals to enjoy literature that is impossible to use as “ordinary” books. Audiobooks are listened to while driving, at work, at all the special places where most people listen to music.

Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials. Her work as a forensic anthropologist is internationally recognized. She has traveled to Rwanda to testify at the UN Tribunal on Genocide, helped identify individuals from mass graves in Guatemala, and done forensic work at Ground Zero in New York. For her work with CILHI she has identified war dead from World War II; from all of Southeast Asia – she even examined the remains from the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.