The audiobook industry will grow more than 25% annuallyaround the world in the next 7 years

• The culture of orality: More than 3,000 different languages ​​have been identified in the world, but less than 100 have written literature, while all languages ​​have developed an oral culture.
• Streaming platforms such as Audible, Spotify and Storytel are driving the growth of the audio industry around the world by investing more than 250 million euros in the last 5 years to boost the format, especially in Europe.
• There are different consumption models (unit sale, digital loan, etc.), but the most widespread marketing model is the unlimited subscription, also known as “All you can eat”, especially in Spanish markets, which represents around 75 % of audiobook sales.
• Audiobooks «travel» (are listened to) between territories with cultural ties. Spanish and English being the languages ​​that travel the most around the world.
• The entry of Spotify and Amazon Music into the audiobook market, the appearance of devices for listening to children’s audio content and the emergence of B2B2C models, are diversifying the audio industry business models.
• Artificial intelligence presents both challenges and opportunities for the industry, impacting the production, marketing and commercialization of audiobooks.

Guadalajara City (Mexico) on December 2nd, 2025. The audiobook industry market is experiencing astonishing global growth, more than 25% every year for the next 7 years, while the printed book market is estimated to only will grow by 2% on average worldwide in the same period. This is one of the main conclusions of the report “Evolución global de la industria del audiolibro (Global Evolution of the Audiobook Industry)”, published by Dosdoce.com in collaboration with the Guadalajara Book Fair and the distribution platform Bookwire. The report offers an in-depth analysis of the audiobook industry in the main languages ​​​​of the European continent: Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese, as well as a look at the audio industry in Arabic.

Over the past 15 years, the global audiobook market has experienced staggering growth, representing an industry worth nearly $7 billion annually worldwide. Several sources indicate that this market will continue to grow until reaching 35 billion dollars by 2030, thanks to the incorporation of new markets and languages ​​​​such as Chinese, Hindi, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese, among others to the world of audiobooks.

In the last 5 years, more than €250 million have been invested in Europe by the main streaming platforms to create the audiobook category. Every year, the main streaming platforms such as Audible, Storytel, Spotify, etc.) have invested millions of euros in promoting this category, from the production of paid audiobooks and podcasts to the expansion of their audiobook catalogs in different languages.  These streaming platforms have also allocated millions of euros in marketing and advertising campaigns to attract new users to their respective platforms. According to the report “Evolución global de la industria del audiolibro”, we are talking about more than 50 million euros per year of collective investment, year after year, led by the streaming platforms mentioned above in the production, marketing and promotion of content in audio for the last 5 years.

Thanks to the aggregate data provided for this study by the distribution platform Bookwire, which distributes more than 300,000 audiobooks in several languages ​​​​around the world, we have been able to analyze the evolution of audiobook sales in different languages ​​(German, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese) for the first time in the audiobook industry.

Thanks to this data, we have also been able to analyze how audiobooks «travel» (are listened to) from one market to another, generating new business opportunities for the publishing industry worldwide. The languages ​​that “travel” the most are Spanish and English, followed by Arabic and Italian. The languages ​​that are least traveled are German, French and Portuguese.

Audiobooks in the English language are the most widely traveled around the world given that they have more than 1.4 billion speakers, of which almost 400 million are native. For historical cultural reasons, English is spoken on both sides of the Atlantic, but the number of listeners in the United States is much higher (50%) than in the United Kingdom (20%), due to the size of the respective markets.

After English, the European language that travels the most to other countries is Spanish, which has more than 500 million speakers around the world. The catalog of audiobooks in Spanish has grown a lot in recent years, reaching 30,000 titles, of which more than 50% are listened to all over the world, especially in the United States, Spain and Mexico. Another clearly “global traveler” language is Arabic since more than 60% of sales are made outside the countries of the Middle East region.

For the first time in the audio industry, we have also been able to carry out a comprehensive comparative analysis of the commercial relevance of each of the categories in the different languages. Fiction, for example, is the best-selling category in German, generating 90% of revenue, while in Spanish and Italian fiction represents 55% of sales and in English less than 40%. Publishers must consider these linguistic singularities when designing their annual audiobook production plan if they want to maximize their commercial potential in all markets.

And finally, the “Evolución global de la industria del audiolibro” report also analyzes the behavior of audiobook sales by language in the different business models. The most widespread consumption model is subscription, reaching 87.4% in German-speaking markets, followed by Portuguese with 84.8% and in third place 73.5% in Spanish-speaking markets. In Arabic, English and French, audiobook consumption on subscription platforms is below 50% of total sales (47.7%, 39.1% and 34.5% respectively).

“The audiobook industry is in a moment of boom and transformation, driven by the growth of consumption, innovation in business models and the emergence of new players. The diversification of consumption models, expansion into new markets and adaptation to the uniqueness of each language will be key to the future success of the industry. Artificial intelligence presents both challenges and opportunities, and its impact on the production and marketing of audiobooks will be crucial in the coming years,” says Javier Celaya, founding partner of Dosdoce.com and author of the report “Evolución global de la industria del audiolibro”.

Click on this link (PDF) to download the full report.