Publishing Company Blog | Audiobooks are booming – and now there’s a chart to prove it

Audiobooks are booming – and now there’s a chart to prove it

Written By Unknown on Monday, August 17, 2015 | 6:03 AM

The Bookseller’s inaugural top 20 list, led by print bestsellers, is notable for the absence of children’s titles

“Listen to any good books on your holidays?” is a question that soon might not sound so weird. More and more of us are downloading audiobooks, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, and – no doubt – the Serial effect, as last year’s true-crime podcast reminded thousands of the joys of the spoken word.

The UK audio market rose by nearly 25% in 2014 – and has grown by an astonishing 170% in the past five years, making it the fastest growing market in publishing. The Bookseller magazine has published an audio chart for the first time, with data from Audible, the Amazon-owned company that dominates the market for audiobook downloads. The inaugural top 20 list is led by print bestsellers, with Grey and The Girl on the Train up top, followed by some backlist titles (Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is 13th) and a couple of Audible-produced sitcoms.