What audio books are Australians listening to?

Audio books are becoming more popular in Australia, but which titles and genres in particular and why go audio at all?
Against a yellow background, a picture of a person's profile in black with soundwaves passing through their head.

Audible, a company that produces spoken audio content including digital books, is celebrating its 10th birthday. To celebrate a decade of listening, it has curated the 100 best era-defining listens of the past 10 years, including Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape and It Burns by Marc Fennell.  

Speaking of the power of the spoken word, Karen Appathurai-Wiggins, Head of Regional Content for Audible, APAC, tells ArtsHub, “Audio storytelling has an incredible ability to unlock vulnerability and make certain stories even more impactful. Whether it’s the anonymity and absence of a screen that can open up dialogue, like in Pat Abboud and Simon Cunich’s The Greatest Menace, or creating space and comfort to tackle often taboo topics, as Chantelle Otten does in her Sex Therapy series, it’s a medium that feels deeply personal. 

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Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian. She has three collections of poetry published by the University of Western Australian Press (UWAP): Turbulence (2020), Decadence (2022) and Essence (2025). Threads: @thuy_on123 Instagram: poemsbythuy