A Writer's POV: Does Listening to an Audiobook Really Count as Reading

I love books.

I love the feel of them, the smell of them, the ridiculous number of them stacked around my house, and the way I can tell myself I absolutely need another one even though there are already several waiting patiently to be read.

But I also love audiobooks.

And apparently, that can be controversial.

Mention that you “read” a book on Audible or Libby and, sooner or later, someone will say:

“But you didn’t actually read it. You listened to it.”

Well.

Yes.

Technically, my ears were involved. But does that mean I didn’t experience the book?

That question sent me down a research rabbit hole, and what I found was much more interesting than I expected.

The short answer is this:

Listening to an audiobook and reading a printed book are not exactly the same thing—but when it comes to understanding a story or absorbing information, they are much more alike than many people realize.

And yes, I am firmly in the camp that audiobooks count.

What Are We Really Talking About When We Say “Reading”?

Part of the problem is the word itself.

When we think of reading, we picture someone sitting with a book, eyes moving across the page.

And certainly, that is reading.

Our brains recognize letters, turn those letters into sounds and words, and then make meaning from them.

But the meaning part matters.

A lot.

Literacy researchers often describe reading comprehension as a combination of decoding and language comprehension.

Decoding is the ability to look at printed words and figure out what they say.

Language comprehension is understanding what those words actually mean.

An audiobook takes away most of the decoding work.

The narrator does that part for you. But your brain is still busy doing everything else.

You still have to follow the story.

You still have to remember who is related to whom—which, if you happen to be listening to an epic historical novel with eighteen cousins and three men named William, is no small task.

You still have to understand vocabulary, recognize sarcasm, notice clues, make predictions, infer what a character is feeling, and connect what is happening now to something that happened six chapters ago.

In other words, your brain is not exactly lounging around while the narrator does all the work.

The Research Is Actually Pretty Fascinating

A large 2022 review looked at 46 studies involving more than 4,600 people and compared reading comprehension with listening comprehension.

The overall finding?

There was not a significant difference between the two.

People generally understood what they were reading and what they were hearing at similar levels.

That does not mean the experiences were identical.

Print sometimes had an advantage when readers needed to slow down, reread something complicated, or make deeper inferences.

And that makes complete sense.

With a book, you can stop. Go back. Read a sentence again. Stare at it. Read it one more time.

Wonder why the author decided to make things unnecessarily complicated.

Then continue.

With an audiobook, the narrator keeps happily marching along unless you reach for the rewind button.

Still, the overall research suggests that listening comprehension can be remarkably similar to reading comprehension.

And neuroscience gives us another interesting piece of the puzzle.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley studied brain activity while people either listened to language or read it.

They found that the brain processed the meaning of the language in strikingly similar ways regardless of whether the words entered through the eyes or the ears.

That is the part I find especially interesting.

The book may enter your brain differently.

But once the story gets there? Your brain starts doing many of the same things with it.

Which Explains Why an Audiobook Can Completely Wreck You Emotionally

If you have ever listened to a really good audiobook, you already know this.

You are driving peacefully down the road.

Everything is fine.

Then a character dies.

Or someone finally admits they are in love.

Or the dog gets old.

Suddenly you are crying at a stoplight while the person in the car next to you is desperately trying not to make eye contact.

Your brain does not seem particularly concerned that you did not physically turn the page.

You were in the story.

That matters.

Another study compared adults who read an e-book, listened to an audiobook, or did both at the same time.

Researchers tested them immediately and again two weeks later.

They found no significant differences in how well the groups remembered the material.

Again, that does not mean every book or every reader will have the same experience.

A dense science textbook is very different from a novel.

But it does make it harder to argue that audiobook listeners somehow aren't retaining anything.

Why I Sometimes Prefer Audiobooks

There are simply times when an audiobook works better.

I cannot safely read a paperback while driving.

Apparently, society has rules about these things.

But I can listen to one.

I can also listen while walking, cooking, folding laundry, exercising, cleaning the house, or doing any number of other things that would normally make reading impossible.

And honestly?

Sometimes a narrator makes a book better. Julia Whelan anyone? 

A wonderful narrator gives characters personality.

They give you accents, timing, emotion, humor, and pauses that completely change how a scene lands.

Historical fiction can be especially fun this way because suddenly all those Scottish place names I have been confidently pronouncing incorrectly in my head have actual pronunciations.

Audiobooks can also make books more accessible.

For someone who struggles with decoding, has dyslexia or another print disability, is learning a language, or simply gets tired reading large blocks of text, audio can open the door to books that might otherwise feel out of reach.

And I am very much in favor of anything that opens more doors to books.

There Is Even Evidence That Audiobooks Encourage More Reading

This was one of my favorite things I found.

Research from the National Literacy Trust found that many children and young people who listened to audiobooks said the experience actually increased their interest in reading.

More than half of audiobook listeners surveyed said audiobooks had made them more interested in books.

That matters.

Especially when we are talking about reluctant readers.

Sometimes the problem is not that someone hates books.

They just have not found the right way into them yet.

Maybe that doorway is a graphic novel. Maybe it is romance. Maybe it is fantasy.

Maybe it is listening to a fabulous narrator tell them a story on the bus ride home.

Once someone discovers that books can be wonderful, I am not terribly interested in policing the format they used to get there.

But Print Still Matters

This is the part where I make the print-reading people happy.

Because they are not wrong either.

Reading a printed book gives you something audio does not.

You control the pace.

You can reread a paragraph in seconds.

You can underline something.

Write in the margin.

Flip back to Chapter Three because you suddenly realized something important in Chapter Twelve.

You can see how a word is spelled.

You can notice paragraph structure and punctuation.

You can quickly scan a page for something you missed.

Those things matter.

And they matter tremendously for children who are learning how to read.

A beginning reader needs actual time with print.

They need to connect letters with sounds. They need to recognize words. They need to practice decoding until it becomes automatic.

An audiobook cannot do that job for them.

It can help build vocabulary and comprehension. It can expose them to richer language and more complicated stories.

But it should not completely replace reading print.

For developing readers, I think the best answer is often not audio or print.

It is audio and print.

Sometimes I Want the Book in My Hands

There are also books I simply prefer to read.

If I am reading something complicated that I know I will want to underline and come back to later, I usually want the physical book.

If there are maps, photographs, charts, recipes, or diagrams, I definitely want to see them.

And there are some books where I just like turning the pages.

There is something wonderfully slow about sitting with a book when nothing else is demanding your attention.

No multitasking.

No folding laundry.

No GPS interrupting the most important scene in the entire novel with, “Turn left in 500 feet.”

Just the book.

I love that too.

So Does an Audiobook Count?

I think we sometimes get far too caught up in deciding what counts as “real” reading.

Hardcover is better than Kindle.

Literary fiction is better than romance.

Classics are better than mysteries.

Print is better than audio.

And meanwhile, everyone could simply be enjoying their books.

If a child needs to learn how to decode words, then yes, they need print. If a student needs to analyze the structure of an essay, they probably need to see the page.

But if two people finish the same novel—one reading the hardcover and one listening to the audiobook—they both know the characters.

They both followed the plot. They both noticed the clues. They both formed opinions about the ending. They can both argue passionately about whether the hero deserved forgiveness.

One used their eyes.

One used their ears.

Both experienced the book.

And I am perfectly comfortable calling both of them readers.

Because for me, reading has always been about more than turning pages.

It is about stories, ideas, imagination, and curiosity.

Learning something you did not know before.

Falling in love with characters who do not actually exist and then missing them when the book is over.

If an audiobook gives someone all of that, I am not going to tell them it does not count.

In fact, I may ask what they are listening to next.

A Little of the Research Behind This

Clinton-Lisell, V. (2022). Listening Ears or Reading Eyes: A Meta-Analysis of Reading and Listening Comprehension Comparisons. Review of Educational Research. This analysis examined 46 studies involving 4,687 participants and found no overall significant difference between reading and listening comprehension.

Deniz, F., Nunez-Elizalde, A. O., Huth, A. G., & Gallant, J. L. (2019). The Representation of Semantic Information Across Human Cerebral Cortex During Listening Versus Reading Is Invariant to Stimulus Modality. The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers found substantial similarities in how the brain represents meaning during reading and listening.

Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2016). Does Modality Matter? The Effects of Reading, Listening, and Dual Modality on Comprehension. SAGE Open. Participants who read, listened, or did both showed no significant differences in comprehension or later retention.

Moore, J., & Cahill, M. (2016). Audiobooks: Legitimate “Reading” Material for Adolescents? School Library Research. The review discusses the role audiobooks can play in comprehension, vocabulary, motivation, and access to literature.

National Literacy Trust. Children, Young People and Audiobooks. Research found that audiobook listening was associated with reading enjoyment and that many young listeners reported that audiobooks increased their interest in reading.