New book highlights impact of streamed reading

More and more readers are opting to stream audiobooks , preferably in the crime fiction or romance genres. For many, it has become a way to fall asleep at night. These are findings detailed in a new book by literary scholar Karl Berglund.

In just ten years, audiobook use has risen from an obscure existence to become one of the most common ways of consuming fiction. This type of reading has more in common with listening to radio and podcasts than reading books, meaning audiobook consumption can be more easily integrated into people’s daily lives.

“People use the audiobook medium in very different ways. When it comes to new practices, it is very strongly linked to sleep. We can see this by the fact that many users start listening late at night – sleep sessions that end exactly after 30 minutes or three hours. They’ve simply fallen asleep to the book,” explains Berglund, Assistant Professor in Literature at Uppsala University.

In a newly released book, Berglund describes the changes in both the book market and people’s reading habits, based on unique amount of research material. He has studied a large amount of consumption data from the book streaming service Storytel, covering almost half a million Swedish users and around 500 books. The material examined is unique in an international research context and has been made available for research through a non-commercial collaboration agreement between UU and Storytel.

“It’s fantastic that we’ve got access to this kind of data. You can see how people actually use streamed books throughout the day. It’s interesting for a lot of reasons, in part because of what people choose to listen to, but also because publishers and authors get paid for every minute streamed,” explains Berglund.

He has noticed that popular genre fiction is very dominant and that old titles have been revitalised. Most people listen to crime fiction and romantic stories, while the bestseller list for printed books also includes Nobel Prize winners and August Prize winners. Some users listen to the same book over and over again.

“Suddenly, literature is taking on a different purpose. People use literature for other purposes than to find out how things are going. It can be a way to enter a familiar fictional world to relax or feel good,” notes Berglund.

What surprised him is that the importance of the voice is not as crucial as previous research has claimed.

“The story is at the centre of the story, even in audio books. However, there can be a negative bias – if a book is narrated by a person whose voice someone is allergic to, they then choose not to listen.”

Karl Berglund: Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age, Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 9781350358386.

For further information:

Karl Berglund, Associate Senior Lecturer and Assistant Professor in Literature at Uppsala University, email: karl.berglund@littvet.uu.se, mobile: +46 72 999 91 56