More than half of Americans aged 18 and older, an estimated 157 million people, have listened to an audiobook, according to the Audio Publishers Association. Back in May, Audible likely added a few more to the fold with its Story House experience, which the Amazon-owned audiobook company proclaimed to be the first ever “bookless bookstore.” Following a pop-up during the return of BookCon at NYC’s Javits Convention Center in April, the Audible Story House operated for a month (from May 1-May 31) in lower Manhattan and saw more than 7,000 unique visitors come through its free-to-enter doors. It housed an immersive listening theater with Dolby Atmos surround sound and a “Listening Bar” with a dedicated “Story Tender” staffer offering up personalized recommendations for sampling.
There were creator programming and panels, book clubs, hands-on crafting activities, a pop-up cafe from Brooklyn’s Land to Sea and tons of merch. The most popular included “Project Hail Mary,” “The Hive: A Thriller,” “George Orwell’s 1984,” “Just Kiss Already,” and Audible’s full-cast recording of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” There was also a lot of interest in Matt Dinniman’s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” LitRPG series, which released new book, “A Parade of Horribles” on May 12. But it wasn’t just the “Carl” fans that were sticking around.
Audible says it counted more than 15,000 “deep engagement” experiences among its Story House guests, meaning the person did more than simply enter the space and browse. It didn’t exist,” Finn says. So the RFID component with it, we were able to see what people were listening to, and it was fantastic because everybody has different tastes and we saw such an interesting read across the entire slate of content there.” Finn adds: “But after the fact, what we’ve been doing is assessing what does Audible Story House look like in our plans for ’27.
Right now, what we’re doing is similar to what you saw at BookCon. We’re going to bring a version of that with the core fundamentals to Guadalajara Book Festival, and then Frankfurt Book Fair.”
Extract — continue reading at the source.
