Early this month, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jason Steger mentioned, in his weekly email, a recent survey into Australian audiobook listeners. It was also reported by the Australia Reads* website.

This survey was conducted by the Australian National University (ANU), but Australia Reads also shares the findings of a second report, Creative Australia’s 2026 and most recent survey of arts participation, which includes audiobooks in its research. The two projects had rather different goals but both found overall that audiobook listening is increasing in Australia. However, before I delve more into the findings, I’ll outline the two projects, because their aims and methodologies affect our understanding of their results.

Both reports are based on surveys conducted in 2025, but the ANU’s was smaller and focused specifically on the form. It had just over 500 participants, all of whom had read an audiobook at least once in the preceding year. By contrast, Creative Australia’s broader report is based on data coming from an online survey completed by a little over 9,000 participants drawn mostly from the general population.

The ANU’s report is part of a wider research project titled, Audiobooks and Digital Book Culture: Australian Books and Publishing at a Time of Global Disruption, but this report focuses specifically on audiobooks. It aims to analyse “the role of audiobooks in shaping book culture and consumption, and how they are driving major global changes to Anglophone publishing and media industries”. The project collaborates widely with book industry professionals through their peak bodies, other organisations (like Vision Australia) and academics. In addition to academic articles and reports, it plans to produce “a comprehensive database of Australian audiobook titles”. (Incidentally, Jason Steger referenced an article by Barry Diavola listing the top 10 audiobooks released this year to date, but it’s paywalled so I can’t share that with you.)

By contrast, Creative Australia’s report is the sixth in a series, with the previous ones dated 2009, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022. They say that “the National Arts Participation Survey is a cornerstone of Creative Australia’s research on arts participation, seeking to understand Australians’ attitudes towards and engagement with the arts”. The research informs government policy, strengthens advocacy and supports audience development strategies for the arts. It covers the gamut of the arts, but a chapter is devoted to “Reading Books”.

Here I will digress, briefly, to mention terminology. The ANU found that less than half (40%) of Australians think “listening” to audiobooks counts as “reading”, but I will use the term “reading” rather than “listening” in this post, except where the report has specifically used “listening”. (Apparently in Germany, only 21% call it reading.) Although I find audiobooks a less satisfactory form of reading, I am more than happy to count it as such.

Staying on this topic, before I move to the wider figures, Australia Reads summarised the ANU’s findings. Apparently 33.6% see ‘listening’ as something distinct from reading, while the remaining 26.4% “gave answers that were ambivalent, neutral or undetermined”. However, those who used audiobooks more frequently were “more likely to consider it reading” which suggests how “frequency of reading overlaps with a sense of ‘reader identity’”. 

The ANU’s report includes some participant comments. I loved this one on the reading/listening issue:

“If it is a volume of something that is new to you, that is reading. If you are listening to it for a second or subsequent time, that is listening”. (Australian respondent, female, late 40s)

Now, the overall figures

• Creative Australia found that 37% of Australians listen to audiobooks (which I think means had done so at least once in the previous year), an increase on 34% in 2022, and 31% in 2019. Breaking this down into age groups, they say that 69% of 15–24 year olds, and 69% of 25–49 year olds listened to audiobooks, with around 33% for those over 50. The frequency of reading audiobooks had also increased. 24% read audiobooks at least once a week. (Worth noting is that reading for pleasure is holding strong at around 69% of Australians, and the proportion of those who read weekly has increased across all format.)
• The ANU found that 59.2% of audiobook readers listen to an audiobook at least once a week, and that around 83% of audiobook readers multitask. Because they only surveyed exisiting users these figures don’t “necessarily reflect the attitudes of the general public”. However, research is ongoing, so this may be part of future study.

ANU’s 59.2% is very different from Creative Australia’s 24%, due, of course, to their different survey group, but conclusions can be drawn. For example, Australia Reads draws from the ANU’s figure that “over half of audiobook listeners have successfully embedded audiobooks into their weekly routines, and are regularly making time and space for listening to books”. Further, they suggest that the fact that you can listen to audiobooks while doing something else (multitasking) – like commuting, housework, cooking, exercising – is a reason for their increasing popularity.

An aside: Creative Australia found reading of eBooks had declined, but those who did read them had increased their frequency! The decline in numbers reading interests me, because, anecdotally, I am hearing that there is a developing (or renewed?) interest in analog media. Are we becoming tired of devices?

As to what people are listening to, it appears that fiction is the most popular. Jason Steger summarised the ANU’s findings as follows:

The survey says that 46 per cent of Australians listen to fiction, 29 per cent to cookbooks and similar instructional non-fiction, 29 per cent to creative non-fiction, 13 per cent to a graphic novel or comic, which seems an odd way to read what is also a visual form, 9 per cent to poetry, and 6 per cent to a play.

The ANU also found, not surprisingly, gendered differences in audiobook preferences. You can guess – probably rightly – what those might be, so I won’t explore this further. More interesting is that they also found “a strong correlation between audiobook and podcast listening” and, further, that those ‘who “very often” listen to audiobooks read print at a far higher rate too’. In other words, people who love reading, read across the formats. Are you surprised?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on audiobooks (or anything else I’ve mentioned here).

Sources

Creative Transformations: Results of the National Arts Participation Survey (Creative Australia, 2026)
Dr Millicent Weber, Audiobook Reading in Australia: A Report on the Audiobooks and Digital Book Culture Survey (Australian National University, 2026)

* Australia Reads was founded in 2019 as an industry-led initiative aimed at getting more Australians reading. Its Board draws from publishers, authors, booksellers and librarians. This year, 2026, it was formalised as “an independent not-for-profit and registered charity”.