Guaranteed click-bait in Facebook groups and Instagram comment sections is some form of a question asking whether listening to an audiobook is the same thing as reading the book. Do books listened to count towards someone’s Goodreads’ target? Accusations of ‘cheating’ directed at anyone claiming they’ve read a book when they ‘just’ listened to it. Policing people’s annual ‘books read’ totals to check whether they’ve actually read them. It’s an exhausting and frustrating narrative.
Reading and listening are not the same thing. Correct. Of course they are different…but in a debate about reading audiobooks versus reading printed books it is a false equivalence. A more valid comparison would be to examine looking relative to listening because looking and listening – and touching with regards to braille – are the verbs that describe how we access those senses which enable us to read.
In 2019, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the brain response of subjects while they listened to stories and as they read the same stories in print. The results, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, concluded “… the representation of language semantics is independent of the sensory modality through which the semantic information is received.”
Basically, your brain doesn’t know the difference.
Often, the distinction between audiobooks and physical books is framed by dissenters saying one is not better than the other, just that they are different. In which case, why make the distinction at all? Gate-keeping? Superiority? Othering? It is usually under the ‘helpful’ guise of being accurate because of what ‘the dictionary says.’ But this argument is not a gotcha. There are a great many dictionaries with a great many homonyms, so it is bad faith to cite a single entry that focuses entirely on decoding printed matter with your eyes. If you work through all the definitions of reading listed then you will spot that hearing and understanding an audio transmission is also a valid dictionary definition of reading. It is why we say ‘do you read me?’ when using radios. Woven through all the definitions of reading, the common thread is the comprehension and not the medium.
It might be there is a perception bias that audiobooks are ‘cheating’ because they are ‘easier’ but that is confusing different cognitive effort with less cognitive effort. The ability to multi-task whilst an audiobook plays does not lessen the mental effort it takes to actually absorb and understand the words. As someone who has been known to eat, walk and make dinner with a physical book in my hand, my barrier to doing more while holding it is the restriction on my hands and not on my mind. When it comes to zoning out – people do this with a physical books as well – the issue isn’t an audiobook, it is distractibility and inattention.
In 2025 to say with your whole chest that audiobooks do not count as reading is a deliberate decision to discount those who require audiobooks to have equitable access to literature. It is ableist. ADHD, visual impairment and dyslexia are a few of the reasons books in print form are not accessible to everyone. I’m the parent of a child who relies on audiobooks to access the curriculum. He has severe dyslexia and has just devoured the ‘How to train you Dragon’ series on audiobook. In the evening, when all five of us are gathered around for our nightly reading time, do I tell him that while everyone else is reading, he is just listening – and it’s not the same thing? Or, do I validate his reading and encourage his inclusion in reader community, giving him confidence to debate and discuss the books he has processed because he is welcomed as a valued reader? His understanding and opinions are no less or different because he formed them whilst using his ears to absorb the source material.
Speaking to award winning author Katy Summers about the importance of audiobooks, she lends some insight to what it means to have books in accessible formats.
“I have a visual impairment which means I struggle with printed material and have been listening to audiobooks for over fifteen years. I find it baffling that anyone would think this isn’t reading simply because the words enter my head through my ears rather than my eyes. The story unfolds in the same way, I hear all the twists and turns, I fall in love with characters, I go on the same journey as anyone who is absorbing the words from a page.”
No one should have to disclose a disability to ‘count’ consumption of audiobooks as reading by gatekeepers. Even in the absence of an underlying ‘valid reason’ for not sitting down with a book in your hand, uninterrupted time to look at symbols on a page is a privilege. It is so many steps of privilege that low income and/or busy individuals without access to an e-reader, a library or time may struggle. When I started a family in 2013 my reading time disappeared overnight, and an activity that had been such a strong tether to my personality and mental health vanished. In the last eighteen months, audiobooks have connected me back to my ‘reader identity’ and I am so grateful to have that part of myself back. The fact I processed input to my ears and not my eyes doesn’t lessen anything.
The Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) uses hundreds of reader judges to score its entries; anyone who loves reading Romance can sign up to be a judge and you get free books!
Sign up here: https://romanticnovelistsassociation.org/awards/the-romantic-novel-awards/register-as-a-judge
At the 2025 Romantic Novel of the Year Awards the RNA awarded their Joan Hessayon Debut Award to Katy Summers for her intersectionally diverse debut novel Love, Rebooted. Since its publication her novel has had over 3,000 ratings on Goodreads. Katy wrote a book, she has a literary agent, a publisher and an experienced editor. Her novel has praise from a Sunday Times’ bestseller in its blurb. She is an author. Love, Rebooted is currently only available in audiobook format – and still, she has readers and recognition from a leading novelists’ association. To deny audiobook consumption is reading means this book with all its acclaim has no readers…seriously?
As a writer myself I was keen to know if writing for an audio readership changed Katy’s process at all.
“I was blown away by the quality of my debut with Audible. I’ve recently completed the first draft of my second book in the series and this time I was writing in the knowledge it would be published as audio first. Did this impact my style or narrative choices? Not significantly. My style is very conversational, and first person, which I think really lends itself to the audiobook format. My novels are written and edited in exactly the same way as any other traditionally published book but then they’re put into the hands of gifted narrators and something truly magical happens. I’d encourage everyone to give audiobooks a try, you won’t regret it.”
Katy’s steamy, slow-burn Romance, Love, Rebooted, is available on Amazon and if you like Romances, and have a soft spot for nerd culture, I highly recommend checking it out.
And there is something magical about Emily Atack and Stuart Martin’s performance of Love, Rebooted. Critics will say that having a narrator will influence understanding, but every medium shapes experience – typography, punctuation and page design all factor in to how a text is interpreted. People often cite they cannot use e-readers because the feel and smell of a physical book shapes their experience so other sensory factors do come into play with reading various mediums.
There is an argument that exposure to audiobooks doesn’t teach spelling, punctuation or decoding but, for some people, printed text won’t do that either and having aural access is just as important. Once literacy is established these things are no longer the goal – comprehension and critical evaluation are so much more important. In a world where media literacy is dying, we should welcome and nurture these skills.
So, if we count an audiobook as reading, surely that means podcasts are reading too? No, because even though you employ the sense of listening to both, one is a book in alternative format, structured and paced accordingly, the other is an unstructured commentary or conversation.
If you don’t consider audiobook consumption to be reading, what is your reason beyond narrow adherence to a single definition? Is it because there is something that deems print to have a higher value than audiobook? That is cultural bias and not cognitive truth. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but in this case opinion often discounts the facts and brings with it relative negative implications for inclusion and developing a learned, well-read society.
The Iliad existed as an oral poem long before it was written down… so who is willing to say that Homer isn’t literature?
