By the Numbers: Audiobook Appreciation Month

Stats celebrating audiobooks

By Diana Panuncial | June 1, 2022

June is Audiobook Appreciation Month.

1998
Year the Audio Publishers Association—which represents the audiobook industry—established June as Audiobook Appreciation Month.

71,000
Number of audiobooks published in the United States in 2020.

1975
Year that the company Books on Tape was founded by Duvall Hecht, an Olympic gold medalist in rowing and a former Marine Corps pilot. Hecht was a pioneer in harnessing the then-new technology of cassette tapes to create audiobooks, later selling his business to Penguin Random House.

1,300+
Number of audiobooks to which actor George Guidall has lent his voice. Named the “heavyweight champion” of narration by The Guardian, he has read such classics as Crime and Punishment, Frankenstein, and Don Quixote.

4
Average hours per day people spend listening to audio, including one hour per day dedicated to spoken word audio, according to the Spoken Word Audio Report from 2019.

57%
Percentage of people who listen to audiobooks who say that they help them finish more books.

DIANA PANUNCIAL is an associate editor at American Libraries.

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