iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(8) Multitasking continues to dominate audiobook consumption behaviours. - Only 16.9% of Australian audiobook listeners use audiobooks without multitasking.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(7) 40% of Australians consider listening to an audiobook to "count" as reading. - 40.0% of Australian respondents considered audiobook consumption a form of reading. By comparison, only 21.2% of German respondents considered audiobook consumption a form of reading.

110

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(6) Listeners who haven’t tried AI-narrated audiobooks are neutral or ambivalent rather than definitively opposed. - These made up 57.6% of respondents who haven’t tried AI narration.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(5) The uptake of AI narration is highest among listeners with vision and hearing impairments. - Accessibility needs to be more prominent in conversations about AI narration.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(4) Most people have never listened to an AI-narrated audiobook. - 17.4% have tried an AI-narrated audiobook or other text-to-speech technology at least once. Men are more likely than women to have listened to an AI-narrated audiobook.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(3) Male listeners listen almost exclusively to male narrators, while female listeners listen to both male and female narrators evenly. - 81.4% of men and 45.3% of women most recently listened to a book narrated by a male narrator.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(2) The Australian market is dominated by US accents. - 37.6% of respondents’ ‘most recent listens’ had a US-accented narrator, compared to only 22.1% with Australian-accented narrators.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

(1) Audiobook listeners are regular consumers. Nearly three-fifths (59.2%) of audiobook readers listen to an audiobook at least once a week. Once people begin consuming audiobooks, they quickly become habitual listeners.

100

Veronica St. Pierre @millicentweber.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

For those of you playing along at home, my Audiobook Studies (yes it's a real thing) State of the Discipline Article has just been published by Book History. Find it here (or email me for a PDF if you don't have access): muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...