You’re Buying the Audiobook. But You’re Really Buying the Voice.

When you drive a lot, an audiobook becomes an interesting option. A long drive can turn into time to catch up on a book instead of watching the kilometres go by. I’ve listened to plenty of audiobooks that way, and I’ve learned something I didn’t really think about when I started: sometimes the book isn’t the problem. It’s the voice. There was a time when I followed a particular narrator because I liked the way he told a story. I knew what I was getting before I even started the book. Then there are the other experiences. You start listening and, after a while, realize the voice, pacing or delivery just isn’t working for you. It doesn’t matter how good the book might be. You move on.

That’s because an audiobook can be a pretty big commitment. A two-hour movie isn’t much of a decision. You sit down, watch it and you’re finished before dinner. A ten-hour audiobook is five movies. A 20-hour audiobook is ten. Some books go way beyond that, with The Count of Monte Cristo, Against the Day and War and Peace all running roughly 50 hours or more depending on the edition. That’s a lot of time to spend with one story and one voice. Sometimes an audiobook is a little like a marriage. You start out enjoying each other’s company, but after 20 or 30 hours, you can get a little bored. Your mind starts wandering and eventually the narrator can sound like one of those adults in the old Peanuts television specials — Wah wah wah wah wah. Luckily, with an audiobook, you don’t need a divorce lawyer. You just press stop.

That’s one of the things I like about audiobooks. They can become company. When you’re driving, the narrator is there with you for hours. You’re not sitting in front of a television watching somebody. You’re going somewhere, doing something else, and there’s a voice telling you a story along the way. BookNet Canada’s latest Canadian Leisure & Reading Study found that 81 percent of audiobook listeners listen while doing other things such as working, commuting, travelling or doing housework. That probably explains why I was surprised to discover that audiobook narrators have developed something that looks a lot like fandom. There are listeners who specifically look for certain narrators, follow them from book to book and recommend them to other people. Julia Whelan has narrated more than 700 audiobooks, George Guidall has narrated more than 1,300, and narrators such as Simon Vance and Jim Dale have become major names among audiobook listeners. You might not recognize their faces, but plenty of people recognize their voices.

And the numbers show that the narrator really can matter. BookNet Canada’s research found that 64 percent of Canadian audiobook listeners search for specific narrators when deciding what to hear, while 66 percent have stopped listening because they didn’t like the narrator’s voice. Even more interesting, 84 percent prefer a human narrator to an AI narrator. That makes perfect sense to me. I can like the idea of a book and still decide I don’t want to spend 15 hours listening to that particular voice. You can reject a book without rejecting the book. Sometimes you’re really rejecting the person telling you the story.

The business behind all of this has also become enormous. The Audio Publishers Association says publishers reported more than 750,000 active audiobook titles in 2025, up 43 percent from the previous year, while U.S. audiobook revenue reached $2.43 billion. Yet the average audiobook listener listened to just 3.8 audiobooks during the year. That’s a lot of books competing for our attention, but our time hasn’t grown along with the catalogue. We already have more television, music, podcasts, games and movies than anybody could possibly consume. Audiobooks have simply joined the race. At some point, the problem isn’t finding something. It’s deciding what is worth giving your time to.

That’s also why I don’t see audiobooks as necessarily replacing printed books. They can reach people differently. Someone who would never sit down and read a 400-page novel might listen to it while driving. Someone else might read the hardcover and later listen to the audiobook. Another person might discover an author because they liked a narrator and then go looking for that author’s other books. The same story can now have several lives, and the audiobook gives it another way into somebody’s day. For the author, that’s another opportunity to find a reader. For the listener, it’s another way to fit a book into a life that may not leave much time for sitting down and reading.

The really interesting thing is how much that relationship can become part of the culture. There are particularly strong narrator communities in genres such as romance, where listeners follow performers from book to book and discuss performances almost the way movie fans talk about actors. The narrator isn’t invisible anymore. For some listeners, the narrator is part of the attraction. And I think that’s an important change in the way we experience books. We normally think about the author as the person creating the relationship with the reader, but in an audiobook there is another person sitting between the words and your ears. If that person is good, you barely notice the separation. If they’re not, you notice every minute of it.

Now AI is getting into the business, which could make it possible to produce even more audiobooks with synthetic voices and at a lower cost. Maybe that will be useful for books that otherwise wouldn’t get an audio version. But I’m not sure that producing more and more recordings solves the problem we’re already facing. If there are 750,000 audiobooks available now, I don’t know that I need another million choices. I need to find the one I actually want to spend 20 hours with. And considering that 84 percent of Canadian audiobook listeners still say they prefer a human narrator, it looks like the human voice still has something going for it.

Because that’s really what we’re talking about: time. A good narrator can make a long drive disappear. A bad one can make ten minutes feel like an hour. You can become familiar with a voice you’ve never seen, look forward to hearing it again and even choose your next book because you know who’s going to tell you the story. We used to talk about actors becoming famous because of their faces and singers because of their voices. Audiobook narrators are something different. They can become part of your life without you ever seeing them.

So the next time you’re looking for something to listen to, don’t just look at the title or the author. Look at who’s doing the talking. You’re not just choosing a book. You’re choosing who you’re going to spend all those hours with. And like a marriage, that’s a commitment you want to get right.

Recommended Reading

From Sandbox World

• The Secret Lives We Live in Our Cars — Our cars have become much more than a way to get from one place to another. They’ve become private spaces for thinking, dreaming, singing, remembering, and sometimes simply sitting for a few extra minutes.
• Keith Scott explores Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age — Keith Scott digs behind the familiar voices of classic cartoons, uncovering the often-anonymous actors who brought characters like Droopy, Popeye, and Betty Boop to life.
• Mythos: The Illustrated Edition by Stephen Fry and Jesús Sotés — Stephen Fry’s wonderfully irreverent retelling of Greek mythology gets a beautiful new life with Jesús Sotés’ vibrant illustrations in this deluxe edition.

External Reading

• Audio Publishers Association — Audiobook Industry Research — Industry research and statistics tracking the growth of audiobooks, listening habits, sales, and the changing way people experience books through audio.
• BookNet Canada — Canadian Leisure and Reading Study 2025 — A look at how Canadians are reading and spending their leisure time, including what they read, how often they read, and the habits shaping today’s Canadian book culture.
• PBS — Julia Whelan Is the Adele of Audiobooks — PBS profiles narrator Julia Whelan and explores how her distinctive performances have made her one of the most recognizable voices in modern audiobooks.

Tony M.

If this article made you think, brought back a memory, or made you see something differently, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at sandboxworld@gmail.com. I read every message personally and, with your permission, may feature your thoughts in a future article because the best stories are the ones we share.