AARP Hearing Center
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For most of my life, I have been an obsessed reader. Editor of my high school literary magazine. English Literature major in college. Professional book reviewer for three decades.
I lived to read.
Today, however, I listen. Asked to choose between reading a book — hardcover, paperback or digital — and listening to an audio version, there’s no contest. I’d much rather use my ears than my eyes.
More and more people are joining me. The Audio Publishers Association estimates that audiobook sales in 2017 totaled more than $2.5 billion, up 22.7 percent over 2016. That continues six years of double-digit growth. There has also been a massive increase in the number of audiobooks being published in the United States. In 2011, there were 7,237 compared with 46,089 in 2017.
“We are on a meteoric rise,” says Michele Cobb, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association. She points to a number of reasons for the explosion in people listening to audios, including ease of technology: Instead of audio cassettes and CDs, you can now listen with your smartphone — the number-one device people use for audiobook listening (an estimated 73 percent of audiobook consumers do so). Gaining in popularity as listening devices are “smart speakers,” such as Amazon's Alexa or Google Home.
Cobb also surmises that people who are on their phones and computers all day want to relax by closing their eyes. “People don’t want to look at anything,” she says. And 53 percent of listeners say they listen most often at home, while 36 percent report using audiobooks most in their car.
I can relate to screen fatigue. Five days a week, from early morning to late afternoon, I am attached to my computer as I write and edit. I also devour two newspapers, my Twitter feed and email accounts on my iPhone. So the appeal of snuggling up under the covers with a good book is, shall we say, limited.
Another reason I and many others have become audiobook converts: You can multitask while you listen. I find that, somehow, a massive traffic snarl, a towering pile of laundry or, worse, exercising doesn’t seem quite so daunting when I'm listening to, say, The Husband’s Secret, the bestseller by Australian sensation Liane Moriarty, voiced by Caroline Lee with her pitch-perfect Down Under accent.
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