Pages vs. Playback:
What Science Reveals About Reading and Audiobooks

Over the past decade, reading has been enjoying something of a renaissance. Fiction sales are climbing, especially among younger readers, fueled by BookTok enthusiasm, celebrity book clubs, and a steady stream of fantasy, romance, and thriller best sellers. At the same time, audiobooks have surged in popularity, becoming the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry. The Audio Publishers Association reported double-digit growth in audiobook sales for ten consecutive years, and surveys suggest that more than half of U.S. adults have listened to an audiobook at least once. For many, switching fluidly between formats has become second nature: ebooks on the commute, print before bed, and audio while doing household chores. 

Beyond traditional narration, a new format known as “graphic audio” is carving out its own niche. Marketed as “a movie in your mind”, these full-cast productions layer multiple voice actors, sound effects, and musical scoring. Their rise reflects not just a hunger for convenience, but a desire for deeply immersive auditory storytelling. 

Against this backdrop, a familiar debate lingers - are audiobooks slower than reading, and do they “count” towards your reading goals? Just as important, how does the brain process audiobooks, and what impact do they have on comprehension and experience? As someone active on BookTok and Bookstagram, I have my own thoughts but what does the research say? 

The Pace of Reading and Listening

Silent reading in English is, on average, significantly faster than listening to an audiobook at 1x speed. A large-scale meta-analysis that combined data from nearly 19,000 participants found that the average adult reads nonfiction at about 238 words per minute (wpm) and fiction at around 260 wpm, with most individuals falling in a range between 175-320 wpm depending on text difficulty (Brysbaert, 2019). By contrast, audiobook narration is paced for clarity and accessibility, averaging around 155 wpm (ACX, n.d.) That means most adults read about 60-100 wpm faster than a typical English audiobook delivers. 

Over the course of a 100,000-word novel, that difference adds hours of listening time. This explains why many bookworms feel like audiobooks move too slowly, while others, especially those who read more slowly or struggle with decoding text, may find audiobooks equal to or even faster than their natural reading pace. Research also suggests that experienced readers can push above 300 wpm when reading familiar or narrative-driven material (Carver, 1992). 

It’s also worth noting that reading speed varies across languages. For alphabetic languages like English and Spanish, the average silent reading speeds typically fall in the 200-300 wpm range. But in character based languages like Chinese and Japanese, the counts are lower when measured in “words per minute,” since a single character often represents more information than a single English word. Cross-linguistic comparisons suggest that while the surface speed (characters or words per minute) differs, the rate of information intake is surprisingly consistent across languages (Sun et al., 1985; Liversedge et al., 2016). Audiobook narration speeds, however, tend to be in the same conversational band worldwide because they are tied more to speech rhythms than to written text conventions.

Making Sense of Stories on the Page and Out Loud

One of the most persistent debates in reading circles is whether audiobooks “count” as reading. Is listening to a story the same, cognitively, as reading it on the page? Or is there something fundamentally different about the two experiences? 

Neuroscience and psychology suggest a clear answer: yes, audiobooks count. That’s because once words are recognized, whether through the eyes or ears, the same language comprehension networks are recruited. Both listening and reading engage the superior temporal gyrus and Wernicke’s area for mapping sound to meaning, the inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area) for syntactic parsing, and the angular gyrus and default mode network for semantic integration, narrative understanding and mental imagery (Hickok & Poeppel, 2007; Price, 2012). 

Neuroimaging studies confirm this overlap, showing that once words are recognized, the same semantic systems handle meaning (Holloway et al., 2015). Behavioral studies echo the imaging findings showing that comprehension and retention appear comparable whether people read nonfiction text, listen to it, or do both (Rogowsky et al., 2016). Broader reviews echo this finding showing that comprehension is broadly similar across reading and listening (Clinton-Lisell, 2022). From a scientific standpoint, audiobooks “count.” They may not require visual decoding skills, but for fiction lovers seeking immersion, story structure, and character arcs, listening delivers the same cognitive and emotional experience. 

In some cases, audiobooks can even reduce cognitive load by bypassing the effort of visual decoding and easing sustained attention during long reading sessions. Narration also introduces prosody which can strengthen memory and emotional connection to a story in ways that flat text cannot (Brewer & Lichtenstein, 1982). 

Finally, audiobooks are not just about convenience. For many readers, they are essential. People with dyslexia, ADHD, and/or vision impairments often rely on audiobooks as their primary mode of accessing literature (Wolf, 2018). In these cases specifically, listening isn’t an alternative to reading. It IS reading. Suggesting otherwise risks excluding entire communities who already face barriers in traditional print environments. Audiobooks expand who gets to participate in the world of books. 

The Limits of Listening Speed

A lot of audiobook apps let you accelerate narration up to double the speed or beyond, and many listeners experiment with faster settings to save time or sustain attention. The science suggests there's a limit, however, to how far you can push it before comprehension starts to suffer. 

Research shows that comprehension is generally preserved up to around 270 wpm, or roughly 1.75x the pace of a typical audiobook. It begins to drop dramatically around 300-315 wpm, which is close to the typical 2x speed (Kuperman et al., 2021). At moderate speeds, many listeners report sharper focus, since the quicker tempo reduces opportunities for the mind to wander. Beyond that threshold, however, attention fragments and working memory struggles to keep pace. 

The exact ceiling also depends on what you’re listening to. A dialogue-heavy romance or thriller might hold up well at 1.75x, but a dense literary novel, textbook, or world-building focused fantasy may require a slower pace. 

Where Speed Meets Storytelling

In the end, audiobooks and print are not rivals, but companions. What research makes clear is that there isn’t one “correct” way to read a book. On the page, most people naturally move faster than narration at 1x. But audiobooks can easily catch up by boosting playback speeds and putting listening on par with silent reading while keeping comprehension intact. The best pace isn’t fixed. It depends on the reader, the genre, and even your mood. Some books invite you to linger while others beg you to race ahead. 

So whether you read with your eyes, your ears, or both, the act is the same: engaging with narrative, building worlds in your mind, and carrying stories forward. The science says audiobooks belong in the definition of reading. What matters most is not how the words reach you, but what they leave behind.