Platformed audio fiction: How streaming and audiobook imaginaries transform contemporary publishing in Sweden

Abstract

The article examines how the audiobook’s increasing centrality on the contemporary book market influences publishing strategies. Departing from the case of Sweden, where audiobooks are primarily distributed via subscription-based streaming services, the article is based on interviews with 12 Swedish publishers and streaming service representatives. Thus, it contributes with a producer perspective to existing research in audiobooks, which is mostly centred on the consumption aspect and what audiobooks do to reading and uses of literature. Analysing interview results through the theoretical lens of platformization, the article shows how the publishers’ ideas and strategies related to audiobooks, what we call ‘audiobook imaginaries’, are connected to streaming platform imaginaries. Rather than producing texts ‘for sound’, publishers strategically focus on texts that are expected to perform well on the streaming platforms, resulting in preferences for serial fiction and in publishing strategies inspired by other streaming media. The article finally discusses how the audiobook boom pushes parts of the Scandinavian publishing industry towards cross-industry logics of streaming and platformization, resulting in an imagined fragmentation of the book market, as audiobooks and printed books are understood to exist in two different spheres that include different genres sold in different spaces, to (partly) different audiences.

Audiobooks have risen dramatically in popularity in recent years. Consequently, the format has moved from a marginal position toward the centre of contemporary publishing.

Most existing research on audiobooks focuses on questions about reading and how audiobooks transform literary experiences and book consumption habits (Berglund, 2024; Have and Stougaard Pedersen, 2015; Rubery, 2016; Tattersall Wallin, 2022). However, as the format moves toward the centre of the publishing industry, and authors and publishers begin to produce texts primarily for audio, it becomes necessary to consider how the rise of audiobooks impacts not just how we read, but also literary production: what is published and how literary texts are produced. This article accordingly examines how the so-called audiobook boom influences publishing strategies. What does it mean to produce texts for the audiobook format’? Which ideas about the audiobook dominate the publishing industry, and how do these ideas, or audiobook imaginaries, shape the texts produced?

While the ‘audiobook boom’ is an international phenomenon, the tendency is particularly strong in Scandinavia, where the format is closely linked to the distribution model of subscription-based streaming (Berglund and Linkis, 2022). The present study focuses on the Swedish market, where more than 50% of all titles sold are in digital formats and streaming-based sales make up a 32,7% market share (Svenska Bokhandlareföreningen och Svenska Förläggareföreningen, 2025). The success of book streaming services in Scandinavia can be explained by digitally savvy populations, ready to positively embrace new technologies (Berglund and Linkis, 2022). However, the audiobook’s stronghold on the Scandinavian markets is also related to the strength of major actors, such as the Swedish streaming service Storytel, which in the early 2000s secured a strong market position. Storytel is the biggest actor on the Scandinavian book market, and a transnational actor currently present on 25 markets across the world. Studying audiobook production in Sweden thus becomes a way to examine how the rise of the audiobook relates to broader transformations of the publishing field, including the increasing dominance of digital distribution platforms and streaming.

The study is based on interviews with representatives of Swedish publishing companies and streaming services. As an interview study, it provides insights into the informants’ experiences and strategies related to the audiobook format. These experiences and strategies are based on established ideas about the audiobook format in the industry, or what we call ‘audiobook imaginaries’ – adapting the notion of sociotechnical imaginaries, as developed by Jasanoff (2015) and developed by Bucher (2016) and van Es and Poell (2020). The concept of imaginaries allows us to understand how ideas and strategies related to the audiobook format become interlinked with ideas and strategies related to streaming and the logics of media or audio convergence (Jenkins, 2006; Colbjørnsen, 2024). Approaching audiobook publishing through a theoretical framework based in platform studies as well as publishing studies, we aim to analyse how publishing strategies related to the audiobook, in the Swedish context, are influenced by cross-industry logics of streaming (Colbjørnsen, 2021) and platformization (Poell et al., 2021). The study thus contributes to an integration of publishing studies and platform studies (Parnell, 2021). Furthermore, by highlighting the specific production conditions on the Scandinavian, streaming-based audiobook market, rather than focusing on the Amazon-dominated Anglophone markets, we contribute to demonstrating the relevance of studying the significance of regional contexts in the study of the platformization of cultural production (Poell et al., 2025).

Audiobook imaginaries and platformization

The audiobook format per se is nothing new; its history can be traced back to the phonograph and the first audio recordings of poetry in the 19^th century (Rubery, 2016). During the 20^th century, the format held a rather marginal position in the outskirts of literary culture, perceived primarily as an aid for the visually impaired or people with reading disabilities and, thus, as a medium secondary to the printed book. This changed, however, with digitalization and especially with the arrival of the smartphone in the 2000s. The smartphone made it possible to listen to audiobooks on the go, while doing other things. Digital audiobooks are thus associated with mobility, flexibility and accessibility: a way to access any book anytime and anywhere through a smartphone and a pair of headphones (Have and Stougaard Pedersen, 2015). This changes the status and uses of format: more than merely an aid to those who cannot read, the audiobook is now broadly used also by those who do not have time to read printed books. The audiobook accordingly becomes connected to the idea of the multitasking cultural consumer, paving the way for integrating book consumption into everyday life ‘on the move’ (Koepnick, 2013).

Following this development, most existing research on audiobooks has, as mentioned, focused on consumption aspects: discussing the audiobook experience through phenomenological approaches (Have and Stougaard Pedersen, 2015; Koepnick, 2013, 2019); audiobook use as a social practice (Tattersall Wallin, 2022); or tracing patterns in audiobook use through quantitative methods, based on consumption data from streaming services (Tattersall Wallin and Nolin, 2020; Berglund, 2024). The present study looks beyond the consumption perspective to focus, instead, on audiobook production. There are studies on publishers’ perspectives that touch on audiobook production, centring on Norwegian (Colbjørnsen, 2015; Spjeldnæs, 2022) and Danish (Have and Stougaard Pedersen, 2020) cases and contexts. Our study complements these studies with a Swedish perspective while also changing the perspective by emphasizing the audiobook’s connection to broader cross-industry tendencies, such as streaming and platformization. We want to understand how publishers strategically work with the audiobook format, and how these strategies are shaped by established ideas about the audiobook format and about streaming platforms.

To capture these connections, we apply the notion of socio-technical imaginaries, as introduced by Jasanoff (2015). The concept allows us to study the interplay between the ideas of social actors, such as publishers, and new (or old) technologies. Bucher (2016) develops the concept focusing on ‘the algorithmic imaginary’, which she defines as ‘the way in which people imagine, perceive and experience algorithms and what these imaginations make possible’ (2). Following Bucher, we apply the concept of audiobook imaginaries to understand the way in which publishers imagine, perceive and experience the audiobook format and its users, and how they strategically adjust their production and marketing of titles to these ideas. Grasping the significance of these imaginaries is important to avoid technological determinism – instead of claiming that the audiobook format per se results in one form of content, we aim to explore how social actors and their collectively held ideas about the format and its users shape the content produced for the format.

The concept of audiobook imaginaries furthermore allows us to explore how established ideas about the audiobook are interlinked with notions about the digital distribution platform, that is, in the Scandinavian case, the streaming service. The distribution platform is important because it is where the product, the audiobook, meets the users. As the producers typically target audiobook users through the streaming service, audiobook imaginaries, we argue, overlap, in part, with (streaming) platform imaginaries. We here draw on Van Es and Poell’s concept of platform imaginaries, defined as ‘the ways in which social actors understand and organize their activities in relation to platform algorithms, interfaces, data infrastructures, moderation procedures, business models, user practices, and audiences’ (2020, 3). With this definition in mind, we want to examine how publishers understand and organize their activities in relation to the streaming model and logics, as well as the medial affordances of the audiobook. A central aim of the article is to thus understand how, in the Scandinavian context, audiobook production is defined, in part, by streaming platform imaginaries: how publishers imagine that the streaming platforms work, who the users are and how they adjust their audiobook publishing strategies to this understanding.

In this way, we also contribute to developing the field of audiobook research by approaching audiobook production through a theoretical framework informed by the notion of platformization (van Dijck et al., 2018; Nieborg and Poell, 2018). Platformization, as described by van Dijck et al. (2018) is linked to processes of datafication, commodification and selection. Nieborg and Poell (2018) apply these principles to cultural production, noting how platforms define what creators and users can do, what content they produce and who they can reach, creating a ‘platform dependency’ (Duffy et al., 2019; Nieborg and Poell, 2018; Poell et al., 2021). Platformization, consequently, is linked to the idea of asymmetrical power relations in cultural production. Nieborg and Poell (2018) describe how this development leads to cultural commodities becoming ‘fundamentally contingent’, that is ‘increasingly modular in design and continuously reworked and repackaged, informed by datafied user feedback’ (4276). Other studies describe how cultural products, such as music and television series, become increasingly datafied and ‘optimized’ for platforms and streaming (Morris, 2020). Less attention has been directed at platformization in the publishing industry, a field traditionally dominated by print-centred institutions where the producers, authors and publishers hold strong positions as creators, copyright-holders and gatekeepers. Existing studies on the platformization of publishing have centred on minor actors, amateur writers and self-publishing platforms such as Wattpad or Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (e.g. Parnell, 2021; Parnell, 2025). Less attention has been paid to streaming platforms and traditional, commercial publishers. John B. Thompson, in his influential work on digital publishing (2021), concludes that streaming has not gained any hold on in the book industry (Thompson, 2021). The case of the Scandinavian audiobook market, however, suggests otherwise (Berglund and Linkis, 2022) and we argue that considering streaming (audio)books through a platformization perspective holds the potential to deepen our understanding of platformed publishing. Notably, this also implies looking beyond the emphasis on Amazon that dominates existing, US-centred research on digital publishing and distribution platforms (e.g. McGurl, 2021; Parnell, 2025).

Streaming services, according to Colbjørnsen (2021), ‘offer temporary and contingent on-demand access to vast content databases for a fixed fee paid on a regular basis, or for exposure to advertising, and through an internet connected device’ (1268). Thus, streaming implies a shift from selling ownership to selling access which, in the case of the book industry, means moving from selling books as physical products to selling (temporary) access to a catalogue of digital books, mainly audiobooks. This shift has a series of interlinked consequences for production conditions and consumption behaviour. In a recent report on the impact of streaming on the economic conditions of Danish authors, Linkis and Mygind (2025) chart these consequences and conclude that the dominance of streaming in the Scandinavian book industry has led to a market increasingly oriented towards demand, that is, by what (the producers think) the users want to read/listen to. That is because, with the streaming model, publishers and authors get paid for actual use (reading/listening time measured in streamed minutes) of the titles through the services. While physical books can be bought for several reasons, including as gifts or objects to be displayed on a bookshelf, the streaming model implies a commercial emphasis on producing content that people will spend time listening to. This observation becomes important for our analysis, as we examine how the publishers’ ideas about audiobooks, and how they imagine audiobook uses on streaming services, become defining for the kind of content that is produced in audiobook format.

Methodology

The article is based on a qualitative study of semi-structured interviews (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2015), with representatives of 10 publishing houses and two streaming services. The publishers cover small, mid-size and large publishing houses in Sweden and include publishers oriented toward digital formats, as well as publishers focusing more on print productions and literary fiction. Together, they constitute a representative group of Swedish publishers publishing fiction for adult readers. As we want to understand how audiobook and streaming imaginaries impact literary production (not, for instance, non-fiction), the study is limited to producers of fiction. The informants are in charge of editorial processes and have titles such as editor-in-chief and content manager. Streaming service representatives hold similar positions as they are in charge of content management – reflecting a development where streaming services increasingly take over the traditional responsibilities of a publisher in relation to producing or curating original content (Colbjørnsen, 2024).

The interviews focus on publishing strategies related to the audiobook format and how the format’s popularity impacts publishing decisions and market conditions. The informants participated in their professional roles, and the study does not involve sensitive personal data. Taking measures to ensure that the study lives up to the highest ethical standards, we have secured written informed consent and have pseudonymized the informants. Each informant has been assigned a capital letter for reference. Citations have been translated from Swedish to English by the first author. The interviews were analysed following the principles of thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The material was structured into a range of categories, relating to (1) producing and publishing texts for the audiobook format, (2) publishing for the streaming economy, and (3) perceived impact of these strategies on the book market. The analysis is structured accordingly.

As an interview study, it provides insights into the informants’ experiences and strategies in relation to audiobook production. As these are partly based on notions about the audiobook format which are already established in the industry, there is a risk that the study reproduces these industry ‘truths’. For broader insights into the impact of audiobooks on literary production, other actors, such as authors and narrators, should be included, and interviews should be combined with analyses of content produced for the audio format; something we do in other parts of the project ‘Between Sound and Text’. In the present study, the producer interviews provide valuable insights as they allow us to understand how the above-mentioned ‘truths’, that is, the established ideas or imaginaries about audiobooks and streaming, contribute to shape publishing strategies as much as the format itself.

Analysis

Publishing ‘for audio’: Streamlined stories and maturing audiences

Focusing on publishing strategies related to the audiobook format, several informants repeat what they perceive to be established truths in the industry about ‘what works’ in audio. The dominant opinion, especially among publishers who focus on digital formats, is that stories written for audio should be easy to follow and have straightforward storytelling, without overly long descriptions or jumps in time that may confuse the listener. ‘It can’t be too complicated in sound, basically… it must be adjusted to allow people to listen a lot; a certain pace all the time… no big jumps in time or space, so that the listener sort of, hangs on… and then it becomes kind of a streamlined listening experience’ (Publisher G). ‘It shouldn’t be too complex’, another publisher confirms. These ideas about what to publish in audio are linked to the notion that the audiobook experience should be easy and streamlined for the multitasking (potentially distracted) user. This tendency reflects a widespread notion, even among listeners, to associate audiobooks with texts that are easy to follow, whereas ‘complex’ literary texts are associated with printed books (Spjeldnæs and Karlsen, 2024).

Some informants associate this idea of the streamlined listening experience with specific genres, which are perceived to dominate the audiobook field: ‘Of course, it is more plot-driven, fewer characters, linear storytelling, one timeline… quite schematic, but that’s nothing new; it’s genre fiction; that’s how it is’ (Publisher D). ‘Crime fiction is very big [in audiobook format]; feelgood is quite big… biographies go well, with a few variations, those are the genres that are big if you look at the top lists at Storytel or Bookbeat [Swedish streaming services]; sometimes romance’ (Publisher C). The fact that the audiobook is associated with popular genre fiction is supported by recent studies of the most popular titles in Swedish audiobook services, demonstrating the popularity of, especially, crime fiction (Berglund, 2024). Crime and romance also dominate titles produced exclusively for the audio format (Berglund and Linkis, 2022). The seemingly implied notion that genre fiction is characterized by streamlined storytelling and narrative simplicity can be questioned – tendencies towards multiple timelines and complex narratives in genres such as crime and fantasy suggest otherwise. The connection made by our informants can be seen as a result of the audiobook being associated with straightforward, linear stories and with popular genre fiction, leading to a logic where popular genre fiction in audio format is associated with (reduced to) straightforward, linear stories. We later return to the idea that the audiobook becomes associated with the notion of a widening gap between genre fiction and literary fiction (Mättää et al., 2022).

Publishing strategies focusing on streamlined plots and genre fiction reflect how audiobook imaginaries include specific notions of who the audiobook users are, and how the texts are used. The format is associated with a broader target group than readers of printed books. ‘We’ve found a target group that is quite new’, notes a representative of a publishing house focusing on digital formats. ‘That is, in socioeconomic and geographic terms, the audiobook has a lot of potential and reaches readers who do not enter a normal bookstore’ (Publisher G). The broader target group is explained by the format’s multitasking potential: ‘We experience that… many of our listeners, they listen at work, where, maybe, you have the kind of job that doesn’t require you to be super-concentrated… that’s a target group we respect very much: people who commute, work nights’ (Publisher G). Because audiobooks allow users to integrate book consumption into everyday life, to listen while working etc., they come to be associated with a ‘democratizing’ potential, allegedly allowing a more diverse group to access literature: ‘readers who do not enter a normal bookstore’ (see also Have and Stougaard Pedersen 2015). This notion of a broader target group, in turn means that the emphasis on publishing ‘streamlined’ fiction is not merely guided by the publishers’ ideas about the medial affordances of the audiobook and what kind of stories work, aesthetically, in sound, but also by what this broader group wants. In other words, the emphasis on publishing ‘streamlined’ genre fiction implies a strategic decision to associate the audiobook with demand-driven – commercial – publishing.

While the idea that publishing ‘for audio’ equals publishing straightforward texts in popular genres is dominant, it is questioned by other informants, who make it a point to say that, in principle, most texts could work in audiobook format. They explain how ideas about ‘what works in audio’ have been changing in the industry during recent years: ‘I think the media have painted a bit of a twisted image; it so easily turns into this discussion, that it’s “easy” literature that works in sound’, one publisher notes. ‘Our experience, for the past 20 years, is that most [texts] work very well in sound, with a good narrator who makes all the difference…’ (Publisher H). Similarly, publishers producing texts explicitly for the audio format explain that they have moved away from having too strict guidelines for the authors about how to write for sound and now have more flexible ideas about what works in the format:

We do see works with long environmental descriptions… there’s been much discussion about that, that it’s supposed to not work well in the audio format, but take a work like Where the Crawdads Sing… it has very long descriptions of environments which… works nicely in the audio format, so, there are a lot of ideas about the audio format in the industry that don’t really hold true in reality. (Publisher H)

Thus, the audiobook becomes associated with conflicting imaginaries: while the above-mentioned ‘industry truths’ about the format still stand strong, we see an ambition to nuance the overall view on ‘what works in audio’ – reflecting a process of adjusting imaginaries to the developing format and market. Notably, the informants who thus seek to nuance perspectives form a diverse group: while some represent minor publishers, who focus on literary fiction and want to explore ways to use the audio format for this category of texts, others are larger commercial players, who motivate the ambition to nuance perspectives with a perceived development in the market. They connect the idea that audiobooks could be linked to more complex texts to the notion of a ‘maturing’ audience. One publisher notes that, ‘if you’re a new listener, it might be easier to get lost in the listening experience, whereas if you’re a trained listener… we shouldn’t underestimate that the listener can also approach complex literary texts’ (Publisher H). ‘We have become more used to reading by sound’, another states, ‘there’s sound everywhere… so we are more mature listeners’ (Publisher A).

The idea of maturing listeners reflects the general notion of a maturing audiobook market in Sweden. Several publishers note that listeners are becoming increasingly ‘professional’, and this observation is linked to the notion that listeners have strong preferences, not just for the kind of texts, or genres, produced for audio, but also relating to the performance of the text. A central theme in the interviews was the significance of (selecting) performing narrators. ‘The listeners have become professionals; they want their favorite performers’ one publisher (C) states, highlighting the tendency to select well-known or celebrity performers rather than having authors narrate their own books. Our informants generally considered narrators highly important to the success of audiobooks

The notions of the maturing market and increasingly ‘professional’ listeners impact the informants’ publishing strategies relating to the audiobook format, and how they experiment with the audiobook’s ‘audio dimension’. When asked about whether they use sound effects, music or multiple narrators in audiobook productions, many explain that they have experimented with this. Publishers focusing on literary fiction also note how they see the aesthetic potential in such sound experiments in relation to, for instance, poetry productions. However, the large majority of publishers conclude that audiobook users ‘don’t want it’:

People don’t want audio drama; they don’t want podcasts, and I think that’s because, in Sweden, because of the streaming services, we have a lot of people who listen to audiobooks, and the tendency is that they want ‘clean’ performances. They want to build their own mental images... you see that in the comments as well [user comments in the streaming service app]; people don’t want sound effects, like water splashing… (Publisher C)

While a general reluctance to experiment with the ‘audio’ dimension can also be explained by high production prices, the main motivation is thus a perceived lack of interest on the part of users. Again, we see an orientation towards the demand of the target group, reflecting how audiobooks are associated with a strategic emphasis on fiction ‘on demand’. While the developing ‘audiobook imaginaries’ include notions of a maturing listener who becomes more used to listen, this does not result in strategic emphasis on producing all kinds of ‘sound texts’: on the contrary, the imagined listeners want ‘clean’ performances. Thus, there is a strong discourse about audiobooks as being, indeed, books. This is indicated by the fact that the leading book streaming platforms in Sweden, such as Storytel or Bookbeat, are very much centred on distributing (audio)books; while some do distribute podcasts or other ‘audio experiences’, the bookish content is clearly in focus. The audiobook imaginaries among industry professionals in this way reflect, and result in, a market defined by user demand for ‘clean’ readings and professional performers. One exception is children’s books – which constitute a relatively large market in Sweden. Several informants see a greater potential for experiments with the audio format in this category, including sound effects − something that is in line with the tradition in children’s literature to be more open to embracing intermedial and transmedia experimentation (Steiner, 2023).

Both the notion of a maturing market and the hesitance to embrace the ‘enhanced’ audio format should be seen in relation to the Scandinavian context. While the Swedish audiobook market may be more mature than most markets, with a large part of the population (72%) reporting that they listen to audiobooks (Mofibo, 2024), it is still a small market. Experimental productions, including so-called ‘full cast’ audiobooks and fiction podcasts, are more common in the larger Anglophone market. The audiobook service Audible, for instance, has an explicit ambition of promoting ‘literature as performance’, in the words of founder Don Katz (Usborne, 2014), which has resulted in the strategic emphasis on ‘theatrical’ audiobooks (Verma, 2019). In Sweden, audiobooks are still primarily imagined as books. Furthermore, as we have shown above, audiobook imaginaries are shaped not only by notions about the format’s medial affordances, but also by established ideas of the audiobook users, who they are and what they want. As we explore further below, this emphasis on the demands of the users is, in turn, connected to the model of subscription-based streaming. Thus, the general picture is that publishing strategically for the audiobook market is associated not so much with writing or producing for ‘sound’ (or, including sound in books) but rather with publishing strategies that target the streaming market.

Platformed publishing: Discoverability and cross-media influences

Since streaming, as mentioned, makes up a large part of the Swedish book market, the publishers depend strongly on their content being available on the streaming platforms. This form of ‘platform dependence’ is especially true for publishers focusing mainly on commercial genres and publishing for the audiobook format. This situation suggests an asymmetrical power balance characteristic of the platform economy, where producers, including publishers, become increasingly dependent on producing content that ‘works’ for and on the platforms (Colbjørnsen, 2021). The streaming platforms do not to any greater extent regulate content in the sense of actively removing or reducing content (Gillespie, 2022); they do, however, control the curation and, thus, the visibility and discoverability of the titles. Producing books for the Swedish audiobook market therefore, for most publishers, implies producing content that can attract attention among the many other titles available in the services (in Storytel’s Swedish app, for example, more than 800,000 titles are available). Based on our interview results, we argue that this situation results in a strategic orientation toward producing content that is ‘discoverable’, visible (Petre et al., 2019) and ‘sticky’ (Jenkins et al., 2018), to attract and maintain users’ attention on the streaming platform.

The most dominant strategies mentioned by our informants in this context involve publication rhythm and serialization. ‘Tempo’ is a recurrent theme in the interviews, referring not only to tempo in the narrative (as audio fiction is described as ‘fast fiction’), but also to publication rhythm: publishers mention the significance of frequent and preferably serial publication when publishing for the audiobook format; ‘frequent releases, basically’ (Publisher G). Frequent releases are important in a streaming context because they ensure that the author and/or book series remain present and visible in the streaming service. As discussed by Berglund and Steiner (2021), the streaming economy entails a greater emphasis on backlist sales, that is, books older than 12 months, because of ‘long tail’ logics (Anderson, 2006), with the streaming service providing access to a large catalogue of older titles. However, as our informants emphasize, the backlist titles do not sell themselves; there needs to be something to draw attention to the older works in the streaming database. Serialization and frequent publications help to ‘pull backlists’ for the series and authors in question (Berglund and Steiner, 2021). Every time a new volume in a series (or a new title by a popular author) is published, other volumes in the series or by that author also receive renewed attention, and the listener numbers increase for the entire series (Berglund and Steiner, 2021; Linkis and Mygind, 2025).

The emphasis on publishing a lot and frequently furthermore reflects how the publishers adjust to a streaming-based economy, where they are paid based on the time users spend listening to their books on the platform. Because they get paid per minute (or second) of listening, the economic interest of the content providers is to promote long-time commitment, and this commercial agenda impacts publishing strategies related to the audiobook format. Our results show that frequent and serialized publications are imagined, by both streaming services and publishers, to ensure consistent and continuous consumption on the streaming services (see also Linkis, 2021). Further reflecting a commercial orientation, several publishers mention an explicit emphasis on serialization as a strategy to meet user demands: ‘We want serials’, one informant stresses, ‘because we see how our users want more, that is, when they thrive somewhere, in a certain environment, and with certain characters, and then they just want more…’ (Publisher B). Another informant similarly stresses a strategy of publishing serials, explaining that, ‘We want to work with serials, long serials, because people consume like they do on Netflix; they want to binge pretty hard, and they can’t wait…’ (Publisher G).

As reflected in these comments, audiobook consumption, similarly to the consumption of genre fiction such as romance and crime, is often associated with the notion of excessive consumption: audiobook users ‘binge’ and ‘want more’. This idea is a central part of the audiobook imaginary in Sweden and contributes to shaping publishing strategies related to the format. The notion of ‘binging’ – originating in a television context – and the overall emphasis on the serial format furthermore reflects how the audiobook is connected with the publishing world’s transition, at least in part, into a platform economy, where books become ‘content’ similar to other forms of content available on streaming platforms (Linkis, 2021). Both publishers and streaming services emphasize how audiobooks, rather than competing with printed books, compete with the broader field of entertainment media: ‘We all compete over people’s time, like Netflix, like everything you have to consume… the audiobook is just one part of a whole buffet of things’ (Publisher G). The audiobook is thus connected to a development in which books become part of the general attention economy. Some informants note how most people are used to streaming music and television, rather than books, and one streaming service representative mentions how the service wants to ‘expand the market’ and therefore target young users, who are believed to be less inclined to buy physical books: ‘This age category [25–34 year olds], they are more used to paying for other subscription services’ (Streaming service J). The imagined audiobook streamer is thus someone who navigates between formats and platforms. Targeting this user, according to the publishers, means imitating other media. Consequently, audiobook productions are frequently compared to other media products. The serial format, especially, is associated with podcasts and television series (Linkis, 2021). Netflix is a common reference when publishers talk about strategies for targeting the streaming audience. Notably, the reference is to the platform (Netflix as a leading transnational actor), rather than to the format (television series), reflecting how streaming platform imaginaries shape the publishers’ modes of strategically navigating in the audiobook market. The Netflix influence can be observed in the creative process, the recruitment of writers, as well as in the product, as one informant explains:

We’re looking for tempo, a tempo in the narration, like, if you take this [a crime series], we published 10 books in two months, and… you [the listener] want more, you want to know what will happen next; every book ends this like, you look over your shoulder and there he is; it’s exactly like Netflix… we want people who can write these very plot-driven, speedy narratives… so you need to be, like, a scriptwriter; [writers] could come from radio, television production, rather than from a traditional ‘author’ role. (Publisher G)

The recruitment of writers from other media industries reflects how the orientation towards audio, and streaming, transforms book production and potentially destabilizes established (power) relations within the industry, including the traditionally strong position of the author. Thus, audiobook production is, by some informants, also associated with a development towards more collective production processes, where the author becomes a writer and is only one of several actors involved in the creative production, with other actors, such as the editorial team and narrators, having equally important roles.

This tendency is exemplified in the so-called Originals produced by the dominant streaming service in Sweden, Storytel. Storytel Originals are serial stories, produced specifically for audio, and presented as something similar to Netflix Originals (Linkis, 2021). As such, they exemplify what we may describe as a ‘platformization’ of audiobook production. Reflecting a logic of datafication (van Dijck et al., 2018), these stories are produced partly based on the service’s data on user behaviour, suggesting the strategy of ‘optimizing’ content according to what users like and resulting, again, in the emphasis on popular genres such as romance and crime fiction (Berglund and Linkis, 2022). The Originals are remarkable not only because they are produced for audio (with no print edition) but also because they are produced by the streaming service, reflecting the ‘blurring of production, distribution and consumption contexts’ that, according to Simone Murray (2018, 19), characterizes digital book culture. By signing a contract with the streaming service, authors to these stories give up a large part of their rights, and the streaming service thus controls the content, which is therefore also exclusively available on the platform (Linkis and Mygind, 2025). Notably, the tendency to produce streaming originals can be observed across cultural industries, reflecting a strategy described by Colbjørnsen as: ‘exclusivity as a way of gaining autonomy and power’ (2021, 1275) – allowing the service to become less dependent on content providers while producing content that is exclusively available on the platform.

Competing with this kind of content, publishers describe how they, too, imitate other media logics. For instance, one publisher describes handling the development on the streaming market by, in their words, ‘pulling a Marvel’: developing several different book series related to the same story universe (Publisher I). This universe is initially built around one main character, developed by one author, but is then unfolded in many different storylines, written by different authors, about many other side characters: ‘So, his wife gets her own book series. And some other antagonist in the series gets his own series. So, we have these different… six or seven authors writing in that universe’ (Publisher I). The publisher owns the brand together with the author of the original book series. They emphasize this as a strategy that allows them to ensure that both authors and the book series will stay ‘in the house’ – that is, producing ‘sticky’ content, to make not only readers but also authors stick around. Furthermore, the strategy is seen as a way to develop new author profiles. The publisher describes how they recruit less-established authors to write ‘for’ the universe who might then develop their brands through the collaboration. Accordingly, establishing a multi-book universe and thus drawing on the kind of franchise-building strategies we know from the television and film industries is presented as a strategy for securing visibility on the platform: ‘To be seen, you must have a strong brand, then you become more visible in the vast flow of content’ (Publisher I). These examples suggest how audiobook imaginaries overlap with streaming platform imaginaries in the sense that publishers imitate other streaming media to secure discoverability for their products, aiming at ‘gaming’ the platform (Petre et al., 2019).

Separate fields: Audiobooks and print culture

As presented above, producing audiobooks in Sweden is associated with publishing that is moving toward the cross-industry logics of streaming and platformization, with streaming services seeking out broader target audiences (than traditional book readers), and publishers adapting strategies (and recruiting writers) from other media industries: ‘pulling a Marvel’ or producing the bookish equivalent of a Netflix Original. These strategies are connected to the audiobook as a popular format, but as argued above, they also reflect streaming imaginaries: that is, how publishers respond to the way (they understand) streaming services work, including the economic model of streaming (getting paid based on time spent by users), and how the streaming model influences marketing conditions, uses, target audiences etc.

As noted above, the orientation towards the streaming market also implies that the audiobook format is primarily associated with commercial publication: while some informants, as mentioned, stress that texts written for audio could be more complex than the average idea of audiobooks as easy-reads, and publishers who mainly focus on literary fiction highlight the potential in the format to stress the aural dimensions of, for instance, poetry, most informants emphasize that the dominance of the streaming model in the Swedish market means that texts produced for audio are ‘commercially motivated’. Several informants thus reflect on the overall consequences of the audiobook boom for literature less as a matter of producing and writing texts ‘for sound’ and more as a matter of changing priorities toward commercial fiction: ‘It [the audiobook] hasn’t affected literature that much, but it has totally changed the book industry’, one publisher states. ‘We do publish much more commercial fiction’ (Publisher C). The informants broadly agree that the turn towards audio has, consequently, resulted in a fragmented publishing sphere: ‘It seems like we’ve gotten two different [publishing] circuits − that of the physical book and that of audiobooks; like, certain books are consumed as audiobooks and others are not’ (Publisher D). This idea confirms a tendency noted by Määttä, Steiner and Berglund (2022) in a recent report on the conditions of literary ‘quality’ fiction in Sweden. They conclude that ‘quality’ fiction and genre fiction exist in ‘separate worlds’: while literary fiction still holds a strong position in print-based cultures, it is only circulated and consumed on streaming services to a limited extent (Määttä et al., 2022). Our results stress how this fragmentation is connected to the question of format. While, as some informants are quick to note, the two ‘spheres’ of popular fiction and quality fiction have long been somewhat separate, the audiobook boom is perceived to have widened that gap, and while printed books are linked to literary fiction, audiobooks are broadly associated with popular fiction (Määttä et al. 2022).

This picture can be complicated, as some books (mainly literary bestsellers) are sold both in print and on streaming services. Furthermore, the notion of a gap is not based on availability, as many books are produced in both formats (althought Määttä et al (2022) do conclude that literary fiction and especially poetry is only published in digital formats (and audiobook format) to a very limited extent). Rather, our results suggest that the notion of a fragmentation relates to the publishers’ perception of where each genre is sold and has its primary audiences. As one publisher of literary fiction explains:

… the literary sphere is, maybe, more fragmented than ever before; I think that, and what you lose is very much, that shared “shop window”, you know; now it’s more like commercial fiction is in a separate space, [on] the streaming services, and [literary fiction producers] are in a completely different place. (Publisher F)

Again, it is stressed that it is not the audio format per se that is not suited to certain types of fiction: instead, it is the streaming model that arguably produces a situation where different types of fiction are sold and marketed in separate spaces. This is, of course, according to the publishers (whose audiobook imaginaries may even be influenced by the aforementioned report). While it may be discussed whether the market is in fact this polarized, the notion of a gap does strongly inform their imaginaries in relation to each format. While literary fiction producers especially are critical towards this development, they do not describe attempts to resist it; instead, both publishers of literary fiction and commercial fiction describe how they adjust their publishing strategies to the perceived fragmentation (and in this way, way also be said to reproduce the fragmentation) by focusing mainly on the printed format for literary fiction, and on the audio format for commercial fiction. The notion of a gap evokes Bourdieu’s notion that the literary field is divided between cultural and economic capital, and between the logics of autonomy and social, or commercial, dependency (Bourdieu, 2000). However, in the age of streaming, rather than existing as opposite poles within the same space, the field, according to the publishers, has been split into separate fields that operate according to different logics or value hierarchies, to further evoke Bourdieu (see also Mättää et al., 2022). While printed books are strongly connected to the notion of cultural capital and ‘quality fiction’, audiobook production is imagined to make up a field on its own, where legitimacy is defined almost exclusively by streaming platform logics and values, such as the work’s commercial value, its discoverability and ability to maintain continuous consumption, resulting in the above-mentioned publishing strategies: focusing on frequent and serial publication.

The picture of an audiobook market shaped by platform dependency and resulting commercialism can be nuanced. As noted by Cunningham and Craig (2019), platformization of cultural production is associated with ‘bottom-up’ influences, including creator power, as much as top-down governance by platforms or commercial actors. Several of our informants note that the positive side to book streaming is that the streaming model arguably ‘lowers the threshold’ to book culture, paving the way for a more diverse group of users as well as for minor actors such as self-publishing authors. One of our informants notes:

It’s kind of a democratization, because it’s both easier to produce these things [audiobooks] and it becomes, like, easier for listeners to choose without having to pay more to test out something new, and it doesn’t really work like that when it comes to the printed books; there it’s like more of a needle’s eye to get [your work] into the bookstore, and maybe even more difficult to make customers pay some hundred kroners to, like, buy an untested book… (Publisher E)

Because the audiobook market functions according to different logics and values than the market for printed books, it is imagined as a way into the market for some actors. The streaming-based model allows readers to ‘test out’ new authors or books that they might not otherwise invest in. New or self-publishing authors are especially emphasized as a group that benefits from the transition to streaming, as it becomes possible, via the streaming platform, to circumscribe traditional gatekeepers or the ‘needle’s eye’ of the print bookstore (Linkis and Mygind, 2025). This picture fits well into the broader imaginaries surrounding digital culture, emphasizing the ‘democratizing’ potential, especially to allow small actors and creators entrance to the cultural sphere (Jenkins, 2006). However, while digital distribution allows more content to be distributed to more people, the limiting factor is, still, visibility on the platforms: while everything is available, it is far from everything the users see. This represents a challenge for minor actors and self-publishing authors, who cannot attract attention based on an established position or backlist (Linkis and Mygind, 2025; Parnell, 2025).

Stressing the picture of a market marked by platform dependency (and resistance against it), several conflicts have arisen in recent years between publishers and streaming services in Sweden and Denmark. Many of these conflicts concern the curation and marketing of content on the streaming services, with publishers complaining that their content is less visible on the streaming services than the services’ own products (such as Originals) (Fodge, 2022; Silva, 2019). Another recurrent conflict involves authors, and concerns royalties, since streaming audiobooks are associated with lower payment ‘per book’ compared to physical book sales. In a recent study on the impact of streaming on economic conditions for Danish authors, several authors are quoted as saying that, while streaming does lead to the works reaching more people, it is not possible for most of them to make money on this extended readership, because the streaming model is associated with lower pricing per title (Linkis, 2025; Linkis and Mygind, 2025). While some authors react to this by withdrawing their titles from the platforms, this is not an option for most authors writing in popular genres, because they depend on the platform to reach their readers (who are mainly listeners). Several authors writing report that they adjust their writing strategies to this reality, for instance by focusing on serial genre fiction that allows them to make money on their backlist sales (Linkis and Mygind, 2025). This observation supports our argument that cultural producers, such as publishers and authors, adjust their production strategies to fit the perceived reality of a streaming-dependent audiobook market.

Concluding remarks

Our results reflect how audiobook imaginaries overlap with streaming imaginaries because of notions about the format; “what works” in audiobook format is interlinked with notions about what works in a streaming-based book economy. Understanding this overlap between audiobook imaginaries and streaming imaginaries is important for nuancing discussions about audiobooks and how the format’s recent popularity impacts book production and consumption. Our results imply that it is not the format per se that promotes specific types of literature; rather, ideas about the format are shaped by the interplay between social actors, such as publishers and users, evolving technologies and distribution models and platforms. Thus, while our informants acknowledge that the audio format in principle could be applied to complex literary texts, the dominance of streaming on the Swedish market means that producing texts for audio equals producing the kind of content that secures discoverability and continuous consumption on the streaming platforms. That is because audiobook production, in Sweden, is associated with a strategic emphasis on commercial content; in other words, our results reflect how audiobook production is platformized as cultural producers, such as publishers and authors, become increasingly dependent on the logics and values of the streaming services. This results, according to many of our informants, in a fragmentation of the literary field into separate fields, as commercial fiction is increasingly sold in audio format on streaming platforms, separately from the printed book market. ‘This is how people are going to consume books in the future’, one informant concludes about the audiobook format. ‘I think the printed novel is always going to be there, but if you want to reach a broad audience, like with a thriller, you need to publish in audio’ (Publisher G).

These results are, of course, limited to the Scandinavian context. The Swedish market is, as mentioned, highly digitalized, with one of the highest streaming penetrations globally. In other regions, the audiobook market is not, to the same extent, dominated by streaming logics, although the streaming model is on the rise even outside of Scandinavia, as the music streamer Spotify has recently entered the audiobook market in several countries. The dominance of Amazon-owned Audible in the anglophone markets suggests the broader relevance of studying the connection between audiobook imaginaries and platform imaginaries; however, it is also worth reflecting how these imaginaries change depending on the platform. Audible is not a subscription-based streaming service and is thus associated with different production and consumption conditions than those set by Storytel or similar services. This, along with other market conditions in the anglosphere, arguably results in other strategies, including more experiments with sound, full-cast dramas and ‘literature as performance’ (Verma, 2019).

Drawing attention to the specificity of the Scandinavian audiobook market, our study documents the importance of considering different regional contexts (and platforms) when analysing the platformization of cultural production. Thus, combining publishing studies’ attention towards regional actors and national (book) market conditions with platform studies’ emphasis on transnational and cross-industry platform logics, the broader relevance of our study lies in how it paves the way for understanding the role of different platforms and distribution models in shaping how publishers work strategically with new (and old) formats.