Audible Launches Immersion Reading for Deeper Engagement with Books

Today, Audible announced the roll out of immersion reading in the Audible app, making it easier than ever for book lovers to engage deeply with the storytelling they crave. This new feature allows customers who have the audiobook and eBook versions of a title in their Audible and Kindle libraries to follow along with synchronized, highlighted text, delivering a seamless, best-in-class experience.

Reading while listening joins existing benefits leveraging the extensive Audible and Kindle catalogs, including discounted audiobooks for customers who own the matching eBook, and easy page syncing between formats and devices.

"Audiobooks count as reading,” said Andy Tsao, Chief Product Officer at Audible. "But now at Audible, you can read with your eyes too. Read & Listen gives book lovers the best of both worlds. Whether you're learning a new language, studying for school, or lost in a story’s world, you no longer have to choose one format over the other."

Why Immersion Reading?

We're bringing this functionality, currently available on Kindle, directly into the Audible app to give audiobook lovers a home for listening and reading along. Research shows that combining the two can improve focus and comprehension, and Audible’s own data backs this up. Customers who currently listen while reading along are among Audible's most engaged users, consuming nearly twice as much content per month as audiobook-only customers. In a recent U.S. survey of people who read and listen together, more than nine in ten agreed that reading while listening improves cognitive retention and comprehension. These benefits make the feature especially valuable for language learners, students, and anyone who simply wants to consume more books.

With hundreds of thousands of titles available at launch, including titles in English, German, Spanish, Italian and French, immersion reading in the Audible app offers customers even more ways to enjoy our unmatched catalog. The feature is now rolling out to customers in the U.S., with the UK, Australia and Germany to follow in the coming months.

Seamless and Intuitive

Immersion reading is integrated in the Audible experience that users already know and love, with customers instantly able to switch between the “Listen” and “Read & Listen” modes while real-time word-by-word text highlighting stays in sync with the audiobook narration.

Discovering eligible titles is simple. Audible automatically identifies which eBooks in a user’s Kindle library have audiobook matches, and a dedicated library filter will surface all their available titles in one place, with no searching required. Publishers will not see changes to related royalty payments.