Abridgement

An abridgement (or abridgment) is a condensing or reduction of a book or other creative work into a shorter form while maintaining the unity of the source. The abridgement can be true to the original work in terms of mood and tone, capturing the parts the abridging author perceives to be most important; it could be a complete parody of the original; or it could fall anywhere in-between, either generally capturing the tone and message of the original author but falling short in some manner, or subtly twisting his words and message to favor a different interpretation or agenda. Compare/contrast with epitome.

A written work may be abridged to make it more accessible to a wider audience; for example, to make an adaptation of it as an audio book or a television show, to make a more convenient companion to an already established work, or to create a shorter reference version.

Abridgement for audio

Abridgement is most often used to adapt a book into a narrated audio version. Because books written for adults are generally meant to be read silently to oneself (which is usually much faster than reading aloud), most books can take between 20 and 40 hours to read aloud. Because many audio book listeners are looking to more quickly listen to the information in a book, and because of the high cost associated with recording and distributing 40 hours of audio, audio book versions of novels are often produced in an abridged version.