LEILA FADEL, HOST:
As the year comes to an end, we've been looking at 2025 trends. Today - audiobooks. The latest figures show romantasy is still strong. Celebrity memoirs, not so much. NPR's Andrew Limbong has more.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: It was yet another solid year for audiobooks, says Sean McManus, the president of the Audio Publishers Association, a trade group supporting the industry.
SEAN MCMANUS: The audiobook industry as a whole has been growing by double digits year over year for almost a decade, and we saw that again this year.
LIMBONG: Because there are so many ways to listen to audiobooks, there's not a lot of great data as to who the bestsellers are. But speaking broad strokes...
MCMANUS: On a genre basis, romantasy continues to win the day.
LIMBONG: You know, sexy stories about dragons and knights and fairies.
MCMANUS: We're seeing a lot of success in horror, as well as mystery thriller, of course. But romantasy authors such as Rebecca Yarros, Sarah J. Maas, they are still the ones leading the charge in terms of audiobook consumption.
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REBECCA SOLER: (Reading) The wooden library cart squeaks as I push it over the bridge that...
LIMBONG: Case in point - the streaming service Spotify has started including audiobooks in their year-end Wrapped roundups. In the top audiobook spot for Spotify Premium listeners in the U.S. is Rebecca Yarros' "Fourth Wing," narrated by Rebecca Soler.
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SOLER: (Reading) The archives smell like parchment, bookbinding glue and ink. They smell like home.
LIMBONG: The No. 2 spot is its sequel, "Iron Flame." Speaking of Spotify, McManus says having audiobooks on a platform like that has been a boon to the form.
MCMANUS: It is opening the gates and the door to individuals who have never listened to an audiobook by offering it on a platform where they get their music and their podcasts.
LIMBONG: On the audiobook platform Libro.fm, their top audiobook of the year was the nonfiction book "Everything Is Tuberculosis," written and narrated by John Green.
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JOHN GREEN: (Reading) To me, it was a disease of history, something that killed depressive 19th century poets, not present-tense humans. But as a friend once told me, nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.
LIMBONG: But in general, McManus says nonfiction had a soft year.
MCMANUS: For nonfiction, we've actually seen a plateau, if not a slight decrease in sales in audio. We simply haven't seen a ton of hits in the nonfiction space, especially with memoirs.
LIMBONG: There was no runaway hit akin to, say, Britney Spears' memoir, narrated by Michelle Williams, or Barbra Streisand's memoir, narrated by, well, Barbra Streisand. But looking ahead to 2026, if the trends from this year continue, as a whole, more people - particularly younger ones - will listen to audiobooks.
Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
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