Audiobooks should have exploded by now.
They've grown steadily—20% annually in recent years—but they haven't had their podcast moment. That explosive, culture-shifting breakthrough where everyone suddenly gets it.
The bottleneck has always been narration.
Most audiobooks sound flat. Lifeless. Text written to be read silently gets read aloud by someone who treats every sentence the same. No rhythm. No emphasis. No soul.
The good narrators—the ones who bring personality and energy—create hits. But hiring them is expensive. Recording is expensive. Direction is expensive. Publishers pick their battles. And also, no clear business model to get that investment back. For the most part, audiobooks are still meant to be bought as a whole, rather simply streamed like a podcast or a song.
This creates a vicious cycle. High production costs mean high prices. High prices mean listeners hesitate to try new books. Limited audience means limited budgets for good narration.
But I’m hopeful there is two factors that are changing this completely.
First is business model. We’re used to paying for Spotify, and Spotify would like you to spend more time in their app. They are rolling out support for audiobooks; giving users an incentive to simply try a book, and publishers an incentive to stream books and get paid for them. It also allows publishers, like podcasters, to ad-support their books; adding another revenue model to their business. Users are now more used to audio from podcast, I’m hopeful audiobooks will catch on as well.
Second change is the promise of genAI. Which could change the narration game completely. Paradoxically, AI could replace the robotic (albeit human) voices of audiobooks we have today, with much more intonation. Making bland text a lot more fun to listen to. That means that every book suddenly can have engaging narration and the cost drops from thousands of dollars. Publishers are more free to experiment. And that means listeners can browse freely without the $15-per-book commitment anxiety.
This isn't just about making audiobooks cheaper. It's about making them discoverable. Let’s give audiobooks their moment to shine