Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age (Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures)

In Chapter 1, book streaming is conceptualized by placing the ongoing structural changes and their effects within a book historical framework. More concretely, I propose a model that pinpoints how subscription-based streaming services function, and what effects they have on contemporary literary culture. In the context of streamed audio, the production, distribution and consumption of books are becoming increasingly interrelated. This also applies to the category of the book itself: in streaming services it is hard to separate material books as objects from their distribution; books and book distribution have in some respects converged into floating, overlapping categories. The model highlights the consumption-data feedback loop, which allows streaming services to know much more about readers than publishers and authors do, or that has ever been known about them before.In Chapter 2, I zoom in on the kind of fiction that currently dominates the audiobook format: popular genre fiction, predominantly crime fiction and romance. Building on streaming patterns of print bestsellers and ' best streamers, I show how audiobook reading has become more or less synonymous with easy reads. This emerges clearly in which genres are consumed the most, but also which books that are completed by readers to the highest degree. The concept of completion levels is posited as a way for scholars to study readerly devotion, and to measure the ability of books to absorb their readers. In understanding the results, multiple explanations are highlighted, including media-specific aspects of audiobooks, customer base, platform design and the role of performing narrators. In the chapter, I also emphasize the need to talk about beststreamers: since book streaming services do not sell books, but access to books, the term bestseller no longer applies. Cover Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements Introduction: Audiobook reading on digital display Digital book culture and digital methods Books, audiobooks and book reading A new way of studying digital private reading Storytel and the Swedish context Materials and methods Data access and ethical concerns Outlining the book 1 Understanding book streaming services Streamed audiobooks in context Modelling subscription-based book streaming services Reading and the reading data feedback loop Book streaming services and content production Bibliographic codes in book streaming services Book subscription beyond the Nordic countries Conclusion: Alterations on all ends 2 Bestsellers and beststreamers: Genre reading Popularity seen as finished streams Print books versus streamed (audio)books The segmentation of book streaming Mapping nuances in book streaming through completion rates Conclusion: Aligning publishing studies and reading studies 3 The re-emergence of the old: Backlist and frontlist reading Bestseller frontlist patterns in streaming services The rule of topicality: Bestseller backlist in practice Alterations in the backlist–frontlist power balance Digital steady sellers? Seriality, brand names and algorithms Conclusion: The universal and the personalized 4 Voices leading the streams? Narrated reading Mapping performing narrators The gender dimension in the choice of voices Readers following voices? The special case of The Mirror Man Tracing readers who follow voices Conclusion: The elusive significance of the voice 5 The reading hours of the day and night: Temporal reading Comparing ebook and audiobook reading Reading what when? Kinds of readers Night readers – sleep trouble or graveyard shifts? Day and evening readers – periodical reading Coda: The aggregated literary year 6 Repeaters, swappers and constant readers: Expanded reading Three important groups of outliers Typical audiobook reading? Repeaters: Reading as entering the comfort zone Swappers: Impatient customers in the digital economy Constant readers: The always plugged-in Conclusion: New reading practices and material effects Conclusion: Listen up to the reading data References Index The first computational study of reading to focus on audiobooks, this book uses a unique and substantial set of reader consumption data to show how audiobooks and digital streaming platforms affect our literary culture. Offering an academic perspective on the kind of user data hoard we associate with tech companies, it asks: when it comes to audiobooks, what do people really read, and how and when do they read it? Tracking hundreds of thousands of readers on the level per user and hour, Reading Audio Readers combines computational methods from cultural analytics with theoretical perspectives from book history, publishing studies, and media studies. In doing so, it provides new insights into reading practices in digital platforms, the effects of the audiobook boom, and the business-models for book publishing and distribution in the age of streamed audio.