I’m going to say something that may be mildly controversial in bookish circles.
Audiobooks don’t count as reading.
At least, not in the literal sense of the word.
Before you close this tab, let me explain what I mean.
This isn’t an argument against audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks. I enjoy audiobooks. Some books are absolutely wonderful in audio, especially when the narrator brings a voice, rhythm, or emotion to the story that gives you an entirely different experience.
Audiobooks have also made books accessible to people who might otherwise have difficulty reading printed text, including people with visual impairments and some people with dyslexia or other reading challenges. For them, audio isn’t simply an alternative. It may be the way a book becomes accessible at all.
So this isn’t about deciding that one format is somehow more legitimate than another.
It’s about calling two different experiences what they are.
Reading is reading.
Listening is listening.
And both can be valuable.
We’re listening more than ever
There’s certainly no question that audiobooks have become a significant part of how we consume books.
According to the Audio Publishers Association, 58 percent of American adults have listened to an audiobook, and audiobook sales reached $2.43 billion in 2025, continuing a long stretch of industry growth. Perhaps even more telling is why people say they like them: 86 percent of listeners cited the ability to multitask as a top benefit, while 84 percent pointed to being able to listen on the go.
And I understand the appeal.
You can listen while commuting.
While walking.
While folding laundry.
While cleaning the kitchen.
While doing a hundred other things that make up a day.
Suddenly that time can also become book time.
Except I think that’s where this gets interesting.
Because if we’re doing something else while listening to a book, are we really giving the book our attention?
Or has it become one more thing running in the background?
Reading and listening aren’t the same thing
There has been research comparing what happens when we read information versus hear it.
And the results are actually more nuanced than you might expect.
A 2016 study out of Bloomsburg University compared people who read an ebook, listened to an audiobook, or did both at once, and found no significant difference in either immediate comprehension or retention two weeks later.
A larger analysis pulling together 46 studies and nearly 4,700 participants came to a similar conclusion: overall, reading comprehension and listening comprehension weren’t dramatically different.
But there was an interesting wrinkle.
Reading showed an advantage when people were allowed to move through the material at their own pace, and when comprehension required making inferences rather than simply remembering literal information.
That makes sense to me.
When you’re reading, you control the pace.
You can stop.
You can reread a sentence.
You can go back three pages because something suddenly clicks into place.
You can sit with a paragraph for a minute before moving on.
You might even stare out the window for a while because something the author wrote sent your thoughts somewhere else entirely.
An audiobook keeps going unless you make the conscious decision to stop it.
That doesn’t make listening inferior.
It makes it different.
Brain imaging research has actually found a striking amount of overlap in how our brains process meaning whether we’re reading or listening, alongside some activity that’s specific to each form. Reading naturally engages visual processing areas more heavily, while listening draws more on auditory regions.
The story may be the same.
The way we encounter it isn’t.
What are you doing while you’re listening?
This might actually be the question I’m more interested in.
Not:
Do audiobooks count as reading?
But:
What are you doing while you’re listening?
Because I don’t think listening to an audiobook with your full attention is the same experience as having one playing while you’re answering emails, cleaning the house, scrolling your phone, or navigating rush hour traffic.
Our attention can only be stretched so far.
There’s a reason you sometimes realize you’ve been listening to something for ten minutes and have absolutely no idea what was said.
The sound was there.
Your attention wasn’t.
I’m guilty of this with podcasts. I’ll suddenly realize someone has been talking for several minutes while my brain wandered off and started thinking about something completely unrelated.
Audiobooks aren’t immune from that.
And ironically, the thing people say they love most about audiobooks, the ability to multitask, may sometimes be the very thing that keeps us from fully experiencing the book.
Maybe an audiobook deserves the same thing a printed book does.
Your attention.
Something different about creating the story yourself
There’s another part of reading that’s harder to measure.
When I read a novel, I create it.
Not the words, obviously. Those belong to the author.
But the voices do.
The rhythm does.
The pauses do.
The expression does.
A character develops a voice in my head that exists nowhere else. You may read the exact same book and hear that character completely differently.
An audiobook makes some of those decisions for you.
A talented narrator can do extraordinary things with a book. Some performances are so good that listening becomes almost theatrical. Full cast recordings and dramatizations can transform a story into something closer to a radio play.
And sometimes that’s exactly what I want.
There’s also something wonderful about reading a book first and later listening to someone else perform it. Suddenly you hear emotion in a passage you hadn’t noticed. A character sounds different than you imagined. A familiar story shifts slightly because another person has interpreted it for you.
But again, that’s a different experience.
Not worse.
Different.
So, do audiobooks count?
If you mean the literal act of reading?
No.
You’re listening.
And I don’t think we need to twist the definition of reading in order to make audiobooks valuable.
Audiobooks are books experienced through sound.
They can entertain us, move us, teach us, introduce us to stories we might never encounter otherwise, and make literature accessible in circumstances where printed words cannot.
None of that requires us to call listening reading.
But I do think there’s a second question hiding underneath this debate.
Why does it matter so much whether audiobooks “count”?
Maybe it’s because we’ve turned reading into something measurable.
How many books did you read this year?
How many pages?
What’s your Goodreads goal?
Did you finish twelve? Twenty five? Fifty?
And once reading becomes something we count, suddenly the format seems to matter, because we need to decide what qualifies.
But that’s never been what Within the Bookends is about.
I’m far more interested in your relationship with books than the number beside your name at the end of December.
So listen to the audiobook.
Read the hardcover.
Switch back and forth between an ebook and audio.
Listen to a wonderful narrator perform a story you already love.
But every once in a while, try giving the book your full attention.
No laundry.
No inbox.
No commute.
Just you and the story.
And if reading itself has become difficult, if sitting with a book feels uncomfortable or your attention immediately starts looking for somewhere else to go, it might be worth getting curious about that too.
Is it time?
Focus?
The book you chose?
The expectation that reading has to look a particular way?
Because maybe the more interesting question isn’t whether audiobooks count as reading.
Maybe it’s what kind of experience with a book are you looking for.
And are you giving yourself enough space to actually have it?
Sources
Audio Publishers Association. 2026 Consumer Survey (conducted by Edison Research at SSRS) and 2025 Sales Survey (conducted by Toluna). audiopub.org/research-faq
Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2016). Does modality matter? The effects of reading, listening, and dual modality on comprehension. SAGE Open.
Clinton-Lisell, V. (2022). Listening ears or reading eyes: A meta-analysis of reading and listening comprehension comparisons. Review of Educational Research, 92(4), 543-582.
Deniz, F., Nunez-Elizalde, A. O., Huth, A. G., & Gallant, J. L. (2019). The representation of semantic information across human cerebral cortex during listening versus reading is invariant to stimulus modality. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(39), 7722-7736.
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