Yasmina Jraissati, Storyside (Storytel group)
This essay is set to appear in the bilingual publication Voyage of the Book (MBRL Publications, Forthcoming 2026)
In recent years, I’ve come to seriously enjoy audiobooks. This is partly due to my work as an audiobook publisher, but that’s not the only factor. I knew, as a professional, that the success of audiobooks coincided with deep societal changes: The demands of modern life seem to have changed how we spend our free time. When people take the time to sit and relax, they are confronted by a diversity of entertainment possibilities, ranging from watching a film on a streaming platform to scrolling social media. During this “sit-and-relax” time, books compete for attention with a myriad of other forms of entertainment.
Yet, audiobooks have an edge neither film nor social media can compete with: Audiobooks don’t require the use of our hands or eyes. We might be walking, driving, cooking, or exercising, as listening is something we can do while physically engaged with something else. I knew the success of audiobooks was partly due to this deep social transformation. Yet experiencing it myself felt like a liberation. Suddenly, I had a whole new chunk of time that I had never before used for reading.
And so it is for many readers, as audiobooks have seen major success in Northern America and Northern Europe, with spectacular year after year growth, as well as impressive projections over the next ten years. As a result, the catalogues in these languages are massive. English boasts hundreds of thousands of audiobooks that listeners can choose from on several platforms. But are audiobooks as successful in other parts of the world?
Arabic, for example, is a very large language, with over 400 million speakers. It seems like an obvious market to invest in for any audiobook publishing house. In 2017, two Sweden-based companies saw the potential and took up this challenge. That’s when Kitab Sawti and Storytel launched their apps in the MENA region, and, backed by investors, aggressively bought audio rights from publishers and produced audiobooks, establishing the best practices and quality standards in the region. Quite a few other companies followed.
The faith in Arabic audiobooks was—and remains—big because it is a medium that excels at making books accessible. Like ebooks, digital audiobooks overcome the distribution problem faced in the region. Yet the audio experience is also independent of the device—it doesn’t matter how large or comfortable your screen is—and it has the potential to extend the pleasure of reading to segments the ebook doesn’t reach, such as the elderly and visually impaired. Audiobooks, moreover, can cultivate the love of reading in standard Arabic in children.
Yet, almost a decade after the launch of Arabic audiobooks, it is fair to say that while audiobooks are picking up, they are not growing as fast as expected. To date, there is no clear reason why, yet several factors are worth considering.
The investment required to build a substantial audiobook catalogue is important. Buying audio rights is only part of the cost. The real burden lies in the production. This cost is still impossible to reduce without jeopardizing the quality of narration—a reality AI narration might soon change. Today, there are perhaps roughly 15,00 Arabic audiobooks. It is very possible that such a volume is simply not enough to attract an audience beyond early adopters. This “catch 22” is inherent to any pioneering enterprise: You need to produce more audiobooks for more people to listen, yet you need more people to listen to produce more audiobooks. At some point, producing more books requires a leap of faith. It also requires the realization that two or three companies cannot, alone, build a market.
Other regional challenges also need to be recognized. We can tell from the large volume of pirated copies (which sometimes have hundreds of thousands of listeners) that audiobooks are popular. Are we not, then, ready to pay for Arabic audiobooks?
Another wrinkle lies in the fact that audiobooks are a spoken format. And unlike podcasts, which are currently booming, audiobooks, like the printed books they are adapted from, are in standard Arabic. As a result, the listening experience lacks the naturalness and intimate feeling listeners get in other languages, because standard Arabic is formal by definition. Some suggest this could be an obstacle to a wider adoption of audiobooks.
Yet perhaps a more important challenge has to do with fact that the Arabic language is common to very different countries. As such, Arabic books published in one country tend to be sold in the whole world, with no territorial restrictions. An Egyptian book, with its Egyptian topics and dialogues is also sold in Saudi Arabia (and every other Arab country). While this does not seem to be a problem in print or ebook format, the audiobook audience seems particularly keen on local content. People want to hear their own stories being told. This is challenging for audiobook publishers and apps, which have made the strategic decision to target all Arabic-speaking countries at the same time, so as to minimize risk and ensure a market that is sufficiently large.
While in North American and Northern Europe, audiobooks have been fully embraced, we are still waiting to see whether this deep shift in reading habits will reach Arabic, too. I believe indications are that it will.
