Is Listening to a Book “Cheating”? (Spoiler: Your Brain Doesn’t Think So)

It is the question that every audiophile dreads:

“Does listening to an audiobook ‘count’ as reading?”

In truth, while the audiobook industry continues to thrive, the stigma persists that listening to a book is not as intellectually stimulating as reading it. In fact, according to a 2025 NPR/Ipsos poll, a startling 40 percent of American adults agreed that listening is not a form of reading, despite noted neuropsychologists having proven that the brain processes both mediums equally well.

I’ll come clean with you. Having worked in the audiobook industry in various capacities over the last fifteen years, I decided in 2026 to take a break from listening.

A few months later, my husband gave me a polite reminder of a promise I’d made to listen to the audiobook version of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which he had gifted me quite some time ago.

Well, back in the saddle.

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When I fired it up in the car on my way to run errands, the capable, clear voice of narrator and veteran actor Hugh Fraser immediately set the ominous tone appropriate to impending murder, coupled with the signature stoicism that makes British mysteries so entertaining. In one passage, Fraser threw in a deliberate mispronunciation of Poirot’s name (as PAW-rot) by a skeptical inspector of the case, and I began to think to myself, I would never have this experience just reading this on the page.

When freed from the professional responsibility of listening with a critical ear for an audiobook review or carefully finding errors to flag or snip out as I did in my former life as an audiobook proofer and editor, I was able to relax into the narrative. The marriage of a great book with a talented narrator can be magical, and my husband will join me in listening to a chapter or two on a car ride, creating a meaningful shared experience.

And, dear reader, I realized I had truly missed the warm, cozy sensation of someone reading to me. Mr. Fraser’s voice is active therapy amid the hot, stressful traffic of Houston, TX, which is a part of my current daily life. 

Tavia Gilbert, founder and CEO of Talkbox Productions and 2017 Audie Award winner for Best Female Narrator, says audiobooks offer another avenue for libraries to expand public access to literacy.

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“Audio is the most present, alive, high-vibration version of an author’s story,” shares Gilbert. “The medium brings a story off the page and creates three-dimensional space, because voice and breath—coupled with those sound waves — are matter, and a story has more matter as it is spoken aloud.”

While Gilbert has come across the cheating stigma, she largely ignores it because “there doesn’t need to be a hierarchy or superiority of reading.” Audiobooks can aid people who have difficulty making sense of words on the page, allowing them to embrace stories and worlds that might otherwise be entirely inaccessible to them.

“I’m not interested in other people’s judgments of how people connect to a story,” says Gilbert. “I know people who have been unable to read, and once they paired visually connecting with the printed text while listening to the audio text, they were able to improve their skills and become both functional and joyful readers.”

Expanding on this, Gilbert says she has friends and colleagues who prefer print but realize they can increase their reading time by including audio, while others listen exclusively because it is the most fulfilling and efficient way to enjoy literature.

In the past, I have both read and listened to a book, chapter by chapter, just because I enjoy hearing how the narrator interprets the text in their own creative, performative style. And as a full-time professional writer and busy mom to a young daughter, leisurely settling down to crack the spine on the latest tome with a cup of coffee is just not realistic in my current season of life.

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With libraries across the United States prioritizing free and easy access to audiobooks through apps such as Libby, these institutions are supporting the oldest art form known to the human race: storytelling.

“Oral tradition was established well before print,” says Gilbert. “One of our human characteristics is that we need narrative. It’s not optional for us as a species; we make sense of our lives through narrative . . . it is completely in service of reading and of libraries themselves to encourage listening as reading.”

Need help finding the right audiobook for you? Gilbert recommends talking to a librarian about the genre of literature you enjoy most, narrowing down a few titles of interest, and then taking a listen to multiple audio samples.

“Don’t be put off if you don’t like the sound of one person’s voice, or if the book recommendation doesn’t grab you. Not every narrator is for everyone,” says Gilbert. “Sample a couple until you find the story you can sink into and fall in love with. Librarians are the greatest evangelists for audiobooks; they will steer you very well.”

BY ELIZABETH ELLIS

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