How to Get Into Audiobooks: 10 Tips for Beginners

To get into audiobooks, start with a short, easy-to-follow book, ideally one you already know, and borrow it free through your library's Libby app. Play the sample first to check you like the narrator. Then listen in short sessions while you walk, commute or do chores, set the speed so the voice sounds natural to you, and rewind as soon as you notice your mind has drifted. It feels strange at first for most people. It gets easier the more often you do it.

It is worth the effort. A 2022 meta-analysis of 46 studies with 4,687 people found no reliable overall difference between how well people understand what they read and what they hear. And you would be in good company. In a Pew Research Center survey of 8,046 US adults in October 2025, 26% said they had listened to an audiobook in the past year, up from 11% in 2011 (Pew changed its survey method along the way, so treat that as a rough trend). Libraries lent 315.9 million audiobooks through Libby and Sora in 2025, 13% more than the year before, according to OverDrive.

Why is it so hard to listen to audiobooks?

Because listening gives your attention less to hold on to than reading does.

In a 2013 study in Frontiers in Psychology, Varao Sousa, Carriere and Smilek had 211 university students read one passage aloud, read one silently and listen to one, and asked at random moments whether their minds had wandered. While listening, students were off task at about half of the check-ins (0.51), compared with about a third (0.36) during silent reading. Listening also produced the worst memory for the passage and the lowest interest in it.

There is a second reason. When you drift while reading, your eyes stop and you notice. When you drift while listening, the narrator keeps going. By the time you notice, you have missed a page and you are not sure where.

So a rough start is normal, not a sign that audiobooks are not for you. The tips below are about setting yourself up so the first few books stick. If your main problem is a wandering mind, we go deeper in how to focus on audiobooks.

How to get into audiobooks: 10 tips

1. Get your first audiobook free

Don't pay for a subscription before you know you like listening.

• Your library. With a library card, Libby and Hoopla lend audiobooks free, including new bestsellers. Popular titles have a waiting list, so borrow something that is available now for your first try.
• LibriVox. More than 21,000 free public domain recordings read by volunteers. Good for classics, though narration quality varies from book to book.
• Audible's free listens. A rotating selection you can play by signing in with an Amazon account, with no trial needed.

Our guide to listening to audiobooks for free covers nine legal options and the catch with each.

2. Start with a book you already know

A book you have read before, or a story you know from a film, is the easiest first listen. You already know who everyone is, so a missed minute costs you nothing, and you can get used to listening itself.

There is indirect evidence for this. In a 2006 study of 160 Taiwanese college students listening in English as a second language, Chang and Read found that being told about the topic beforehand helped comprehension more than any other kind of support, followed by hearing the passage a second time. A familiar book gives you that head start for every chapter.

3. Or choose a book that is easy to follow by ear

If you want something new, pick for the ear, not for prestige:

• Memoirs read by the author. They sound like a long conversation.
• Comedy, thrillers and mysteries. A strong plot pulls you along.
• Full-cast productions. Several actors and sound effects make it easier to tell who is speaking.
• Short books. A 300-page book runs about 8 to 10.5 hours. For a first try, look for something under 8 hours.

Save the dense history with forty named characters for later.

4. Play the sample before you commit

The narrator matters as much as the book. Some voices will suit you and some won't, and you can usually tell within a minute. In Libby, a book you have not borrowed opens as a sample with the later chapters locked, and you can borrow it from there if you like what you hear.

Voices also affect you more than you might expect. In a 2020 study in Scientific Reports, 102 adults heard audiobook clips and watched film or TV clips of the same stories, such as Pride and Prejudice. They rated the videos about 15% more engaging, but their bodies said otherwise: heart rate ran about 2 beats per minute higher during the audio, and skin conductance and skin temperature were higher too. The study was funded by Audible, and it measured arousal, not understanding.

5. Keep your first sessions short

At the start, 15 or 20 minutes is plenty. A short session ends while you are still enjoying it, which makes it easier to press play again tomorrow. You can go longer once listening feels normal.

6. Tie listening to something you already do

The easiest way to build a habit is to attach it to a routine you already have: the commute, the dishes, a daily walk, folding laundry. If the routine you already have is scrolling in the evening, an information diet hands that slot to the book.

Expect it to take a while. In a 2010 study by Lally and colleagues, 96 volunteers each tried to build one new daily habit and tracked it for 12 weeks. The time until it felt automatic ranged from 18 to 254 days, with a median of 66 days, and missing a single day did not materially set people back. A 2024 review of 20 studies with 2,601 people found typical times of about two months. So if listening still feels deliberate after two weeks, you are on schedule.

Pick tasks that keep your hands busy but not your words. Anything that uses language, like texting, email or reading, competes with the narrator.

Driving is a classic listening slot, with one caution. In a 2001 simulator study in Psychological Science, Strayer and Johnston found that listening to the radio or a book on tape did not disrupt driving, while a phone conversation doubled the rate of missed traffic signals. A 2018 study by Nowosielski, Trick and Toxopeus found that an audiobook made drivers respond faster to hazards on simple roads but was especially harmful on complex ones. Pause the book in heavy or unfamiliar traffic.

7. Find a speed that sounds natural to you

Start at 1x for the first chapter, then adjust in small steps. Some narrators read so slowly that 1.25x sounds normal; others are already brisk. In UCLA experiments with recorded lectures, Murphy and colleagues found little cost at 1.5x or 2x on an immediate test, but scores dropped beyond 2x. Lectures are not novels, so treat 2x as a ceiling to work up to, not a place to start. We go through speeds by book type in what speed should you listen to audiobooks at.

8. Rewind the moment you drift

Don't push on and hope the plot fills itself in. Go back to the last thing you clearly remember. Thirty seconds is often enough, and most players have a button for it.

The hard part is knowing how far back to go. Seeing the words fixes that: an app that highlights the text as the narrator reads, such as HushBook, lets you long-press the last line you remember and the audio plays from there.

9. Use earbuds, and a sleep timer in bed

Earbuds or headphones block out the room and make the voice clearer than a phone speaker. If you like to listen in bed, set a sleep timer for 15 to 30 minutes, or to the end of the chapter, so you don't wake up four chapters later with no idea what happened.

10. Quit books that aren't working

If a book or a narrator hasn't clicked after a chapter or two, return it and try another. Giving up on one audiobook is not giving up on audiobooks. Many people find that one genre works on audio and another only works on paper.

What is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks?

For most people it is the phone they already have: a free library app, a pair of earbuds and a book borrowed in two minutes. In the car, play it through Bluetooth. At home, a smart speaker works too. Libby can stream to an Amazon Echo or Google Home over Bluetooth, though you cannot control it by voice.

What is the easiest way for seniors to listen to audiobooks?

It depends on eyesight and how comfortable someone is with apps.

• Free talking books in the US. The Library of Congress's National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) is a free audio and braille library for people who are blind or have a visual, physical or reading disability, certified by a qualified professional. Books and the player come free of charge by mail, and listeners can also use the BARD Mobile app or an Alexa skill called My Talking Books.
• Free talking books in the UK. RNIB's Talking Books service is free for people with sight loss, with books on USB stick, CD, download or through Alexa.
• Everyone else. One library app on a phone or tablet, set up together the first time, with earbuds or a smart speaker. Fewer apps means fewer things to remember.

Is it better for your brain to read or listen to audiobooks?

For most books, neither wins. The 2022 meta-analysis by Virginia Clinton-Lisell in the Review of Educational Research found that "the overall difference between reading and listening comprehension was not reliably different." Reading did better when people could set their own pace and when the questions asked them to infer ideas the text did not spell out. In a 2016 experiment by Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal, 91 adults took in a non-fiction chapter as an audiobook, as an e-text or both at once, and scored the same on comprehension straight away and two weeks later.

So listening is a fine way to take in a novel, and print still has an edge for dense, difficult books. We cover the evidence in does listening to an audiobook count as reading?

Do people with ADHD have trouble listening to audiobooks?

Often, yes, though many people with ADHD also find audiobooks the easiest way to finish a book. In a 2015 study of 2,708 university students, Seli and colleagues found that ADHD symptoms were strongly linked to mind wandering that happens without meaning to. Audio makes books easier to start, but it does not stop that drift on its own. Short sessions, simple tasks for your hands and the words in front of you all help. More in are audiobooks good for ADHD?

What the evidence does not show

• No study has tested which tips help beginners get into audiobooks. The tips above combine research on attention, speed and habits with what experienced listeners recommend.
• The mind-wandering study used short passages with university students in a lab, not whole books at home.
• The topic-knowledge study was with second-language listeners, so it only suggests why a familiar book helps.
• The speed study used lecture videos, not novels, and the driving studies were run in simulators.
• The habit study tracked everyday health behaviours, not listening.
• The engagement study was funded by Audible and measured arousal, not how much people understood.

Getting into audiobooks with HushBook

HushBook is an audiobook player for iPhone and Android that shows the words while you listen. It transcribes the audiobook on your phone and highlights each word as the narrator says it, so if you drift, you can see exactly where the story is and long-press a line to play from there. It has a built-in store of free LibriVox and Internet Archive audiobooks, so your first book costs nothing. You also get speed control from 0.5x to 3x, a 30-second rewind, a sleep timer and a low-vision profile with large, high-contrast text. Nothing is uploaded and you don't need an account.

Honest limits. The text comes from speech recognition, so unusual names can come out wrong. HushBook plays audio files you can import, such as MP3, M4A and M4B, and its free public domain library. It cannot import copy-protected books such as Audible downloads or Libby and Hoopla loans.

Sources

• Clinton-Lisell (2022), "Listening Ears or Reading Eyes: A Meta-Analysis of Reading and Listening Comprehension Comparisons", Review of Educational Research
• Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal (2016), "Does Modality Matter? The Effects of Reading, Listening, and Dual Modality on Comprehension", SAGE Open
• Pew Research Center (2026), "Do Americans read print books, e-books or audiobooks more?"
• OverDrive (2026), "Libraries Break Digital Lending Records in 2025 with Over 820 Million Checkouts and Over 1 Billion Minutes Streamed"
• Varao Sousa, Carriere and Smilek (2013), "The way we encounter reading material influences how frequently we mind wander", Frontiers in Psychology
• Chang and Read (2006), "The Effects of Listening Support on the Listening Performance of EFL Learners", TESOL Quarterly
• Libby Help, "Why are chapters locked in a title?"
• Richardson, Griffin, Zaki and colleagues (2020), "Engagement in video and audio narratives: contrasting self-report and physiological measures", Scientific Reports
• Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle (2010), "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world", European Journal of Social Psychology
• Singh, Murphy, Maher and Smith (2024), "Time to Form a Habit: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Health Behaviour Habit Formation and Its Determinants", Healthcare
• Strayer and Johnston (2001), "Driven to Distraction: Dual-Task Studies of Simulated Driving and Conversing on a Cellular Telephone", Psychological Science
• Nowosielski, Trick and Toxopeus (2018), "Good distractions: Testing the effects of listening to an audiobook on driving performance in simple and complex road environments", Accident Analysis and Prevention
• Murphy, Hoover, Agadzhanyan, Kuehn and Castel (2022), "Learning in double time: The effect of lecture video speed on immediate and delayed comprehension", Applied Cognitive Psychology
• Seli, Smallwood, Cheyne and Smilek (2015), "On the relation of mind wandering and ADHD symptomatology", Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
• Library of Congress, "NLS at the Library of Congress"
• Library of Congress, "Apply for NLS Services"
• RNIB, "Talking books service"