Does Listening To Audiobooks Count As Reading?

About 40% of Brits hadn’t finished a book in the 12 months between 2024-2025, YouGov reported.

Of those who had, 30% listened to an audiobook; 18% had ticked titles off their list through headphones, without ever picking up a physical book.

Some people think that shouldn’t “count,” though. For instance, author Nathan Bransford said in his blog, “Consuming an audiobook is a fundamentally different activity than reading. We already have a word for it: LISTENING”.

He also argued that reading from a page engages the brain differently. But not everyone agrees.

In 2016, Dr Beth Rogowsky, a professor specialising in language learning styles from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, co-authored a study comparing comprehension rates for people listening to audiobooks to those who read from an e-reader page and another group who did both.

It tracked how much they remembered right after taking in the information and two weeks later.

Speaking to NPR, Dr Rogowsky said, “We found that there was no significant difference between reading a book using a Kindle or listening to a book or doing both – listening and reading simultaneously.”

Of course, that was only for adults who already knew how to read; the professor said physical books might be more helpful to children who can’t yet read.

But, to be fair, the “do audiobooks count?” debate does not rage among three-year-olds so much as it does those with Goodreads accounts and access to Reddit.

Fine, you might take in information from listening to an audiobook. But that isn’t the definition of the word reading – is it?

Well, major dictionaries don’t seem to agree about that.

Merriam-Webster defines “to read” as “to receive or take in the sense of (letters, symbols, etc.) especially [but not exclusively!] by sight or touch”.

Another definition – “to learn from what one has seen or found in writing or printing” – does not technically preclude listening.

Cambridge Dictionary, however, puts the first definition as “to look at words or symbols and understand what they mean,” and Collins Dictionary puts “look” in their main definition too.

A very compelling article, written by visually impaired author James Tate Hill for Literary Hub, reads: “It was hard to say if the words read with my ears reached my brain differently from everything I had read with my eyes”.

For instance, he said, the narration of audiobooks placed a new layer on top of the experience – but it took “minutes” for the author’s words to override the narrator’s voice.

He identified as a “reader” thanks to his love of audiobooks, and added it “didn’t matter if I was reading or listening” to his favourite titles; “the words in my ears were the same words other people saw when they held a book in their hands.”

I have to agree. The strongest argument I can find against calling listening to audiobooks “reading” is a (disputed) semantic nuance, but I don’t find that compelling enough to stop someone calling themselves a reader if they want to (side note: self-identifying as a reader is linked to increased happiness).

It’s true that you can’t fold laundry while you’re rifling through War and Peace, and accents and pace changes are more in your control when you read from a page.

But seeing as two in five people aren’t enjoying books in any form, that information seems to land similarly whether it’s read from a page or some headphones, and that reading is good for us, whether we listen or look, I’m not particularly fussed about how it’s done.