Audiobooks: The Dominant New Media

The rise of the internet and technology has changed the way of life for millions of people. Old habits like buying tickets at a venue, sending physical letters through the mail, and renting books through the library have all died hard. That’s why audiobooks are emerging as one of the most prevalent forms of consuming literature in our digital world.

Audiobooks allow you to tap into another life, all through your phone or computer. The ease and simplicity of an audiobook triumphs over the clunky, outdated method of carrying around books with you. You have access to anything from short poetry to thousand-page textbooks about topics unfathomable to the average person. The audiobook can also pull their listener in with seemingly hypnotic narrators, and sometimes even light soundtracks. While some may argue most Audiobook sources are expensive or require subscriptions to unlock all of their digital databas, and a physical library remains free. While this may be true, online distributors have vastly more books to offer than any physical library. The largest digital bookstore, Audible, has over 200,000 titles to select from. That number also excludes some hyper-specific entries like documentation texts and podcasts. With the rate Audible and other digital book distributors are growing, it won’t be long before that number reaches half a million.

It’s clear physical books, while nostalgic, are on their way out. Audiobooks are here to stay and are already rivaling the books’ role in the world of literature.