Digital Internet-distributed audiobooks are a surprising game changer in digital publishing. In recent years, audiobooks have moved from being a peripheral by-product of the printed book into the centre of digital publishing and reading, but are typically still ignored in publishing studies. This article raises the voice of the audiobook by giving it a privileged status in the current transformations of book publishing caused by digitization. We present an original model of the digital audiobook circuit, which is based on interviews and knowledge from the Danish market as part of a global industry, which makes it possible to reflect and adjust according to national variations. The model is framed by theoretical discussions of values and dynamics within the digital audiobook circuit in general.

<p>This article addresses cultural changes resulting from the growing number of audiobook users and changes in audiobook use emerging from digital technological developments of the past decade. The sonification of the written text is inscribed in the general transformation and mediatization of the printed book but offers radically different affordances than do visually perceived e-books. New portable digital audio media change the act of reading, moving it towards fields of practice in which reading has not been common before: the gym, the bicycle ride, gardening, resting in the dark, etc. From being a medium typically associated with children, the visually handicapped, or the dyslexic, the audiobook has developed into a popular phenomenon, which, we argue, has as much in common with other kinds of mediated mobile listening practices, like music and radio listening, as it has with the reading of printed books. Taking an inductive approach from the micro-level of the individual’s use, the term <em>affordances</em> will be used as a methodological tool within the concept of mediatization.</p>

In this article we wish to introduce and discuss a theoretical framework for a possible conceptualisation of the differences between reading a printed book and listening to an audiobook. We tend to introduce similarities and differences between reading with the eyes and reading with the ears, implying that we should not discuss the audiobook experience as a remediation of the printed book experience only, but as an entirely different experience that could be conceptualised in continuation of mobile listening practises. As a methodological strategy we will emphasise the differences between the literary practices, reading with the eyes and reading with the ears. These different perspectives on reading are used to accentuate the distinct experiences, and future thorough analyses in continuation of this framework would appear much more complex and connected than in the present article.

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The digitization of the publishing business has provided publishers with new media and new means of distribution, which in turn have created new modes of reading. The impact of the digital revolution on the production and distribution of literature has already been widely discussed, but much less has been written about how current media developments have affected reading and readers. A central thesis of this special issue is that the phenomenon of reading should be studied from various disciplinary perspectives. Reading as a phenomenon evolves in the intersections among media developments, literary trends, and social practices. By bringing together scholars from literary theory, media studies, aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, and linguistics, the special issue explores different perspectives on how the technological, sensorial, cognitive, participatory, and aesthetic aspects of reading have evolved in recent decades. Reading practices are changing rapidly in close conjunction with the evolving formats in which literature is distributed to its readers. The purpose of the special issue is to provide a forum in which to rethink existing categories and challenge prevalent notions of reading.