Purpose: This article explores, identifies and conceptualises everyday audiobook reading practices amongst young adults.

Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Swedish audiobook users aged 18–19. The material was analysed using qualitative content analysis and focused on their audiobook use during an average weekday, as this was the time that they listened the most. The theoretical framework consists of theories on practice, time and everyday routine.

Findings: Five timespaces emerged when audiobook practices were most prevalent: morning routines, commuting routines, school routines, after school routines and bedtime routines. Within these timespaces, several practices could be identified and conceptualised. Three mobile practices were commute listening, exercise listening and chore listening while more stationary practices were homework listening, schoolwork listening and leisure listening. An unexpected finding was how audiobooks routinely were used to aid respondents’ wellbeing. This wellbeing listening was used to alleviate stress, loneliness and help listeners relax or fall asleep. Furthermore, respondents switch between Music, Audiobooks and Podcasts, which is conceptualised as MAP-switching.

Originality/value: There is a scarcity of research on audiobook use, and this paper contributes with new knowledge on audiobook reading practices, how audiobooks fit into everyday routine and provides concepts to aid further research on audiobook practices.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to clarify issues related to the contemporary study of audiobook practices, in order to aid subsequent research on topics related to reading, digital audiobooks and streaming subscription services.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the concept of remediation, this paper covers four messy issues for audiobook researchers, primarily by developing the concept of reading by listening and then exploring the different remediations of the audiobook, clarifying the audiobook as a book and exploring the context of streaming subscription services.

Findings

Reading is here conceptualised according to the human sense used when making meaning from text, with reading by listening suggested for reading done with the help of the ears. Three different forms of remediation can be seen in subscription-based audiobooks, related to format, content and sense. Audiobooks simultaneously follow traditions of reading aloud, remediates the printed book and previous audiobook formats. It is suggested that the content is what makes an audiobook a book. The concepts library model and bookshop model are introduced to understand different audiobook subscription service models.

Originality/value

This is a research area on the rise with several messy issues and the concepts and clarifications in this paper may benefit future research.

With remediation of the printed book into audiobook subscription services, reading by listening is becoming a popular alternative to reading by seeing. This article explores when people read by listening and whether there may be a shift regarding the places and times people read by listening rather than by seeing. Based on a considerable dataset from a Swedish subscription service for digital books, this article reveals that audiobook reading takes place at somewhat different times than expected and that subscribers read significant amounts each day. The findings indicate that the remediation into reading by listening using digital audiobooks may close the gender gap common in reading, as the reading practices of men and women are very similar, with men even reading slightly more than women. The reading practices of young adults are also similar to the larger population. Furthermore, the concepts stationary reading, mobile reading and stationary/mobile reading are introduced.

Introduction. Audiobooks are increasing in popularity and are now widely used through apps from subscription services. While these apps are part of audiobook practices, there is scant research on this topic. This article contributes to an understanding of the audiobook player function and the features therein.

Method. The article builds on an interview study with ten young Swedish users and a study of the apps from subscription services Storytel, BookBeat and Nextory.

Analysis. The player functions in the apps were explored using a feature analysis and the interview material was analysed using qualitative content analysis. The focus was on affordances of the different app features, and how these related to audiobook reading practices.

Results. There were ten to twelve features each in the different players. Four common user practices emerged in the interview material: adjusting the speed, selecting a track, setting a sleep timer and rewinding the audiobook.

Conclusions. The apps play a significant part of audiobook reading practices. However, while the apps afford certain practices, some features create hindrances to other reading practices.