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Audiobook Sales Are Outpacing Those Of Hardcovers
An ear-turner // Illustration by Kate Walker
Sales of audiobooks are now starting to outpace print bestsellers.
Why It Hits: Although bookstores have been regaining popularity, overall print book sales are sliding — down 1% last year to 679 million copies — and trending to keep falling. But that’s not to say books are any less popular. It may be how we consume them that’s changing.
Between The Pages: There’s nothing quite like having a story read to you, per The WSJ.
According to the Association of American Publishers, digital audiobook sales were up by 24% in 2024, reaching $1.1 billion.
Audiobooks now command 11.3% of the total book market, edging past ebooks’ 10% market share.
Titles from celebrity authors (like Jeremy Renner, Nate Bargatze, and Brooke Shields) sold more audiobooks than even their best-selling hardcovers.
The same goes for recent top-selling fiction titles like Karin Slaughter’s We Are All Guilty Here, Callie Hart’s Brimstone, and S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes.
Last Chapter: While audiobooks have been around for decades, having authors routinely read their own stories — and layering in sound effects — is a relatively new experience. Maybe reading a book is taking cues from listening to a favorite podcast: we want closeness to a person’s actual voice.
It’s also a gift to publishers in the digital age. To market Brimstone, digital publisher Podium Entertainment released excerpts of the audiobook across social media… ultimately propelling the title to No. 1 on the December New York Times fiction audio bestseller list.
Next Read Listen: With the advent of AI voice-cloning, expect every book to come with an audio component… which may prompt some savvy readers (listeners?) to seek out titles that still have a human voice behind them.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited, Polled, and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.