Audiobooks have become a regular part of my reading life in recent years, prompted by one of those free trials that resulted in me discovering how a strong narrator can transform a book. Since then I’ve been and on/off again subscriber, unsubscribing after more than two credits accumulate. I have over sixty titles in my audible library, and for some reason I decided to put them all in a spreadsheet so I could ponder the data. Some observations:
(1) 54% of my listened-to titles have been from Audible’s subscription library, compared to 46% being outright purchases. That surprised me, but it also counts “Audible originals”, which are often shorter than a conventional audiobook, especially the Christmas themed ones. (I’ve listened to several different versions of “A Christmas Carol”) The number of subscription titles would be even higher had I actually begun listening to everything I’ve “added to library”. I also noticed that a lot of the titles I’ve listened to, or started listening to, have since been removed from the subscription library, like the Great Courses History of Japan.
(2) To no one’s surprise, the most frequent narrator was Wil Wheaton, with Roger Clark second. If we were going by hours-listened-to, Wheaton would be even further ahead because some of the Clark titles have been rather short, like How to Tell a Joke. That is, unless we count my listening to Roger Clark in Red Dead Redemption 2….
(3) John Scalzi is the most common author, with Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle a distant second. That tracks fairly well with Wheaton & Clark, because I’m experiencing Scalzi’s book on Audible for the Wheaton delivery. There are a few titles I’ve tried just because of the narration: that’s how I got into the Black Badge series and subsequently got into Rhett C. Bruno as an author. How could I resist Arthur Morgan narrating the story of an undead cowboy bounty hunting werewolves?
(4) There are ten authors who did their own audiobook recordings: Stephen Fry, Michael Malice, and Richard Nixon among them. (The Nixon one, In the Arena, was an abridged version of the real book.)
(5) Science fiction is the clear genre leader for the moment, with baseball closing in on its heels. (Baseball has already gotten a lead on Wil Wheaton-narrated books, which is impressive given that Wheaton is the reason I got into Audible to begin with.)
(6) While Star Trek is not a huge presence on the list, with only one title, its castmembers are: Wheaton, Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, Kate Mulgrew, Brent Spiner, and Zachary Quinto all feature as narrators, and two books had larger casts that included other Trek actors like Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, etc. (The lone Star Trek title is Spock vs Q, featuring Nimoy and de Lancie, and yes, it’s fun.)
(7) Nonfiction enjoys a 60/40 lead somehow, despite all the Scalzi. Gotta be the baseball.
Reading Freely 
There’s a lot of older sci-fi on the subscription! I wish they’d add more star trek and other tiein fiction bc it’s hard to spend credits on those shorter books!
Definitely! I’ve been known to buy some of them with cash when there was a sale on. Kinda tempted to do that at the moment with Scarlett Johannson’s “Alice in Wonderland”, since if we learned one thing from HER is that she can REALLY act with her voice.
Wil wheaton is definitely one of my favourite narrator as well. I have several sci-fi titles which I haven’t listened to yet since for some reason I like to look at the words when I hear it. Is it weird ? Idk. And yessss, they should bring more books to audible original. Can’t spend a credit on 5 hours audiobook
I haven’t taken the audible plunge yet, but I am a major user of Libby’s audiobooks. I’ve only listened to fiction so far, but I have been eyeballing a couple nonfiction that may happen this summer … garden watering season racks up a lot of hours 😉
My library consortium’s audiobooks STAY checked out, so I’ve never given them a shot. I take it your system has more copies or less demand?
A smaller market. My system did not join the state consortium, so all the digital materials in our collection are for our county ONLY. We do end up with waits for some of the big ones (my hold on EmHen’s latest just came in, there are 22 waiting for 2 copies), but since it’s a much smaller base of people using them it’s not as bad. One of my besties also has a card that lets her use the consortium, and it’s always a ridiculous wait 🙃
I also listen to a lot of audiobooks.
I posted this:
“Books listened to in 2024:
53 [50 in 2023]. This is an average of 4.4/month = 32% of all my reads.
Total of 20,522 minutes (25,747 min in 2023) with an average of 56 min/day (70 in 2023)
That’s an average of about 6.27 hours/audiobook. (8.58 hours/audiobook in 2023)”.
And in 2025, 19 so far, that is, 30% of all the books read.
I listen to an audiobook when I do chores around the house or garden. Helps keeps the house cleaner!
I get a lot thorugh my public library – and they do have The Great Courses.
Audible is too expensive for me. I use Bookbeat: cheaper, and doesn’t work by number of books, but number of hours (I have the smallest subscription, for 20 hours/month = $11).
Yes, Wil Wheaton is just fabulous!
Thanks for that heads up! A woman on facebook was asking about a service plan like that.
Oh great!
I am an audiobook enthusiast!! I’ve been listening to audiobooks for a long time and the past 2-3 years I’ve mainly listened to audiobooks vs reading them. This year I’ve exclusively listened to audiobooks so far…. In other words, all 32 books I’ve “read”, have actually been audiobooks.
Narrators and audio quality make a huge difference in how much I enjoy an audiobook! I definitely have my favorite and least favorite narrators. I tend to avoid audiobooks with narrators I dislike.
I’ve moved away from Audible to Chirp for my audiobooks. You don’t have to sign up for a subscription with Chirp like you do for Audible and Chirp also offers up to 95% off on their audiobook deals…. I’ve snagged numerous audiobooks for as low as 99 cents to $1.99! Chirp also has a nice selection of audiobooks and a rotating selection of audiobook deals.