Reading Audio Readers

The first computational study of reading to focus on audiobooks, this book uses a unique and substantial set of reader consumption data to show how audiobooks and digital streaming platforms affect our literary culture. Offering an academic perspective on the kind of user data hoard we associate with tech companies, it asks: when it comes to audiobooks, what do people really read, and how and when do they read it?
Tracking hundreds of thousands of readers on the level per user and hour, Reading Audio Readers combines computational methods from cultural analytics with theoretical perspectives from book history, publishing studies, and media studies. In doing so, it provides new insights into reading practices in digital platforms, the effects of the audiobook boom, and the business-models for book publishing and distribution in the age of streamed audio.

Karl Berglund is Assistant Professor in Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden.

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements Introduction: Audiobook reading on digital display 1. Understanding book streaming services 2. Bestsellers and beststreamers: Genre reading 3. The re-emergence of the old: Backlist and frontlist reading 4. Voices leading the streams? Narrated reading 5. The reading hours of the day and night: Temporal reading 6. Repeaters, swappers and constant readers: Expanded reading Conclusion: Listen up to the reading data References Index