July 2026 News Roundup
Summer travel is in full swing and your road-tripping K9 wants to listen to a good book. The New Yorker steps up to help you choose the right ones. Writers Gabriella Bennett and Sarah Moss discovered that reading their books aloud had an effect on their writing. A panel of narrators at the LA Times Festival of Books discuss the complexities of their craft while deaf narrator J.J. Jones proves that accessibility in production, expands the future of audio storytelling. In AI news, Chinese voice artist, Shen Anyu, fights to gain control of the rights to his voice while a survey reveals that a percentage of those surveyed prefer AI narration of multi-voice audiobooks. Audiobook execs weigh in on how audiobooks are redefining reading habits. So, plug in and listen to a good book before digital audiobooks go the way of cassette tapes? Say what?
General News
Reading aloud changes a book. Even if you wrote it
“You’ll write differently after doing this recording,” the studio producers told me on day one. They were right. [Source: thetimes.com]
Are Digital Audiobooks Going the Way of Cassette Tapes?
What if the next format to disappear isn’t just the delivery mechanism, but the recorded audiobook itself? [Source: all-about-digital-publishing.com]
How Audiobooks Are Redefining Reading Habits
Top audiobook executives weigh in on book consumption, listener habits, challenges ahead and the coming years. [Source: freepressjournal.in]
The business of audiobooks
Masters of the Mic
At the LA Times Festival of Books, moderator Karen Grigsby Bates sat down with four “crown jewels” of the audiobook narration community—Julia Whelan, Dominic Hoffman, January LaVoy, and Scott Brick—to unravel the hidden complexities of their craft. [Source: latimes.com]
Polish Competition Watchdog Allows Publishers to Launch New Digital Book Platform
In their application for the watchdog’s approval, the publishers said the platform will enable them to increase competition, and to “expand the transparency of the sales of audiobooks and ebooks.” [Source: publishingperspectives.com]
A.I. News
The Chinese Voice Actor Forced to Prove He’s Human
AI has made Shen Anyu’s voice cheap to copy and nearly impossible to control, drawing him and his wife into a widening fight over income, identity and ownership. [Source: sixthtone.com]
Do SOME Listeners Prefer AI Narration for Multi-Voice Audiobooks?
A survey commissioned by Portland, Oregon–based AI audiobook production company, Spoken, found that listeners rated the company's multi-voice AI narration highly against professional human narration for character-driven fiction. [Source: publishersweekly.com]
FEED YOUR EARPODS
Editing for the Ear: What I Learned Producing My Own Audiobook
When the themes and text of her book proved challenging for an audiobook publisher to find a narrator, author Shelley Fisher Fishkin took on producing the book herself. [Source: publishingperspectives.com]
Interviews & Podcasts
Former Child Star Mara Wilson Turned Away from Hollywood and Embraced Audiobooks
“I love that you can be anything,” Wilson said of why she enjoys recording audiobooks. [Source: people.com]
Deaf Narrator J.J. Jones Performs an Audiobook He'll Never Hear | Catch Got Your Tongue
This proves that when we prioritize accessibility in production, we expand whose voices shape the future of audio storytelling. [Source:youtube.com]
Sarah Moss on audiobooks
Translators and actors know a writer’s sentences from the inside, inhabit our grammar and the rhythms of our voices sometimes more knowingly than we do ourselves. [Source: irishtimes.com]
SOMETHING OUT OF THE BOOTH
This Summer’s Hottest Audiobooks for Dogs
Our audiobooks are available in Bark, Woof-Woof, Whimper, and Latin. [Source: newyorker.com]