By: Adam Sockel, OverDrive Social Media Specialist and audiobook addict.

June is widely known as Audiobook Month, a time to celebrate the greatness that is reading with your ears! Audiobooks are perfect for people with busy lifestyles who don’t always have time to sit down with a book regardless if it’s digital or physical. Over the last few years, as the process for enjoying digital audiobooks has been simplified we’ve seen circulation of this format take off. The growth in usage of digital audiobooks has grown even faster than that of eBooks.
People are borrowing digital audiobooks from their library more than any other source. This makes Audiobook Month the perfect time to capitalize on this trend. Throughout the month of June you can take advantage of the rise in audiobook popularity by creating curated collections of audiobook content. Try featuring books that are perfect for long family vacations or humorous titles to help pass the time for people while they workout. Promote summer reading audiobooks for students living an active lifestyle. You can even promote collections of your staff’s favorite narrators, which we all know can enhance a reading experience immensely.

Audiobooks offer more than just convenience for people on the go. In fact, they provide countless benefits for readers of all ages:

Audiobook-TestimonialLanguage Development
Whether a child is learning how to read for the first time or is discovering a brand new language, audiobooks help them better understand sentence structure, context clues, flow and pronunciation. Studies have even shown that audiobooks can help with knowledge retention. They can even help young readers develop critical listening skills that are essential for all walks of life. Some readers may struggle to read at their age level, leading to frustration and dropping the idea of reading all together. Audiobooks are a great solution that lets them read at their grade level. Try pairing an audiobook with an eBook with students. It’s a great way to make sure the highest amount of information possible is retained from a reading experience.

Pass the time
We all have tasks to accomplish each day that might not be the most exciting things in the world. Whether it’s finishing up house chores, cooking dinner for the family, walking the dog or going for run, audiobooks make that time fly by. An enthralling audiobook can even make traffic seem like it’s not so bad. You might just find yourself taking the long way home to finish up a chapter.

a1bcf4fedd82731823051d626d7351c1Narrators! Sweet, sweet narrators

I still remember story time from when I was a child. My dad would sit on the bed and read stories to my brother and I, making up different voices for each character we met in our books. I like to think that these magical moments were some of the many reasons why I fell in love with reading. You regain that lost whimsy when you hear a truly talented voice actor read an audiobook. There’s something special about letting your mind wander to the worlds they’re creating and imagining all the characters and their experiences.

An added narration bonus is when writers themselves read their books. Personally, I love hearing comedians share stories. It’s like getting hours of stand-up comedy for free. Not to mention the fact that hearing authors read their stories makes me feel like I know these people on a personal level. What I’m saying is, I’m basically besties with the likes of Billy Crystal, Felicia Day, Nick Offerman and Neil Patrick Harris.

Read more!
Think of all the books you can get through when you add in all those times you thought you didn’t, “have time to read.” When you take all the hours spent in cars, running around, working out or performing mindless tasks it adds up to dozens of books a year you can get through, if not more. Libraries will be promoting their digital audiobook services all month and, thanks to the OverDrive app, it’s never been easier to enjoy them on the go. Instead of swapping CDs out every hour, you can take entire audiobook adventures with you on your smart phones anywhere you go.