How long is an audiobook, really? Which narrators carry the most titles? How much ground are synthetic voices actually gaining? Audiobooks are the fastest-growing format in publishing, yet the numbers stay scattered across press releases and paywalled reports. This observatory gathers them from a source we know inside out: our own catalogue of more than 19,000 reviewed titles, one of the largest independent audiobook databases on the web.
The statistics below are computed automatically from the site's database and refreshed every day. They photograph the market as it is actually sold in the United States: running times, genres, narrators, release years. Journalists, bloggers, students: these figures are free to quote, and the terms are spelled out at the bottom of the page.
The catalogue in numbers
18,101
audiobooks reviewed
0
reviews already scheduled: a living catalogue
181,657 h
of listening time indexed
10 h
average running time of an audiobook
4.52/5
average listener rating
7.7%
of titles narrated by a synthetic voice
Titles by genre
Number of reviewed titles per genre. Fiction and romance lead, but the long tail of non-fiction (sports, memoirs, history, faith) is where the audio format has grown fastest.
The most prolific narrators
The voices behind the most titles in the catalogue. A narrator builds loyalty: many listeners pick their next book to hear a voice again.
- Scott Brick67 titles
- Travis Baldree58 titles
- Teddy Hamilton53 titles
- Ray Porter52 titles
- Julia Whelan50 titles
- Robert Petkoff40 titles
- Abby Craden40 titles
- R.C. Bray40 titles
- Tom Brooks39 titles
- Simon Vance36 titles
Alongside human narrators, 1,371 titles in the catalogue (7.7% of the books with a credited narrator) are read by a synthetic voice. We track that number closely: it says a lot about where the industry is heading.
Audio releases by year
Official release year of the audio editions in the catalogue: production has accelerated sharply since 2020.
How to cite these numbers
These statistics are free to quote and reuse, including in the press, with a mention of the source and a link to this page:
Source: Audiobook Observatory, Audiobook Daily (audiobookdaily.com), data as of September 7, 2026.
Need a specific figure, a custom breakdown or a quote for an article? Write to us, we answer within 48 business hours. The way we collect and check this data is explained in how we review audiobooks.
Last automatic update: September 7, 2026.
