Barnes and Noble Numbers Soar... And So Do Cars

So the first story is from, uh, a big research report just came out that up to half of readers are open to trying AI narration for audiobooks.

Tell us more about this.

Well, according to Publishing Perspectives and Publishers Weekly, an Audible-commissioned Nielsen IQ survey of 18,000 listeners across 11 countries found that half are open to trying AI-narrated content.

That's not the same as saying half of them like it [laughs].

The resistance publishers assumed would hold is much softer than they expected.

At the same time, audio is not draining print and e-book sales, it's actually feeding them.

So Audible's chief content officer, Rachel Ghiazza, repent- uh, presented the findings from The Future of Listening at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The fe- uh, survey, fielded in August across Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the US, asked listeners about audiobooks, podcasts, and audio series.

50% of them said that they were now open to listening to or trying AI-narrated content.

Openness ran from 42% in Germany to 66% in Japan.

That German number really surprises me.

They're usually much more, uh, conservative when it comes to that kind of stuff.

In most markets, listeners were most open to AI narration for fiction, while Germany and Japan preferred it for nonfiction.

Uh, Ghiazza called this an and strategy, so humans and AI.

Human performers remain.

Production savings are meant to actually fund more titles.

She told hesitant publishers the time is not coming, the time is now.

Quality and transparency matter.

Listeners wanna know what they're listening to, and it has to sound good.

Openness is not the same as preference or purchase behavior.

Audible has not released their full methodology.

I, I will say often w- when people are thinking about what should I do, y- you have to compare an AI-narrated version of your book to your next best alternative, and for some authors, if that's doing it yourself, you as a narrator may not be better than a high-end AI narrator [laughs].

[laughs]

I-

But the human voice, Thomas [laughs].