Whoopi Goldberg accepts her Audie Award for Narration by the Author for her reading of ‘Bits and Pieces,’ an audiobook from Blackstone Publishing. Image: Shutterstock for the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Awards, Stephen Lovekin
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
The Audie Awards Competition Names Its 2025 Finalists
AAP’s December StatShot: US Book Market Up 6.5 Percent
‘Hearing Things Read to Me Is Heaven’
Having brought you in January the shortlists for the annual 28-category Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association, we have the winners today (March 5) from the awards program, which took place overnight in New York City.The top-line news from Tuesday evening’s red carpet is Whoopi Goldberg’s win for Narration (Reading) by the Author for her Bits and Pieces audiobook from Blackstone Publishing.
In thanking her fellow narrators (readers) of audiobooks in the room, Goldberg said, “You all should know that I probably have each and every one of you in my phone because I have 10,000 audiobooks. I grew up dyslexic, so hearing things read to me is heaven.”
Barbra Streisand’s two awards—Audiobook of the Year and Autobiography/Memoir for her My Name is Barbra—were accepted on Streisand’s behalf by Karen Dziekonski of Penguin Random House, who told the audience, “Every recording session with Barbra was an absolute open door into her process. It showed what a steadfast and committed artist she is. And a remarkable human being.”
A point of clarification for our international book-publishing business readership: The Audie Awards are open to submissions from beyond the United States, but their regulations require that a title must be for sale in the States in order to be considered. As organizers tell us, many submissions are indeed made from other world markets, but the key to eligibility is a title’s availability on the US market.
Digital Audiobook Statistics From the New Statshot Report
During the day on Tuesday prior to the awards show, the Association of American Publishers‘ (AAP) StatShot report for the year 2024 was released. The industry statistics provided there revealed that digital audio—the format that has launched a thousand publishing conference panels—stood at an 11.3-percent share of the US market in 2024 by format.
In the trade sector, the digital audio format was up 23.8 percent, coming in at US$1.1 billion in revenue.
Digital audio was up 12.0 percent for the month of December itself, coming in at $92.9 million in revenue.
Marketplace Impact of the Audie Awards
At the 2025 Audie Awards ceremony. Image: Shutterstock for the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Awards, Stephen Lovekin
As our coverage has noted in the past, one way that the Audies are like other book and publishing prize programs is that they have the potential to contribute to the industry’s insights into how such accolades move audiobook sales. It would be helpful to know how much these honors—singling out so much fine audiobook work—actually can mean in the marketplace. This information could also mean more publisher interest in submissions, and more industry-wide interest in the awards and the professionals they recognize.
In the United Kingdom, the book industry has benefited from seeing the Booker Prize Foundation, the Baillie Gifford Prize, and the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding share information about what effects its awards have on sales. We’re told that ALTA’s National Translation Awards may also follow suit in the United States.
This is very helpful to the world publishing industry in assessing the actual value of so many accolades and their accompanying seals of approval—those “golden stickers” for winning products.
The book business is up to its metaphorical ears in awards programs, and very few of them have the entertainment-media connections that can create such a celebrity-filled awards program as the Audies do. It would be seriously meaningful if the Audies’ leadership considered following up after a period of some weeks or months with an accounting of what sales energy can be discerned in the marketplace for audio products awarded.
How much noise does an Audie win make at the cash register?
The 2025 Audio Awards Finalists
Michele Cobb, the Audio Publishers Association’s executive director speaks at the 30th Audie Awards ceremony in New York. Cobb speaks at London Book Fair on March 12 on the future of AI narration labels. (Details below.) Image: Shutterstock for the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Awards, Kristina Bumphrey
Audiobook of the Year
My Name Is Barbra
- Written and read by Barbra Streisand
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Audio Drama
George Orwell’s 1984
- By George Orwell, adapted by Joe White
- Performed by Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, Tom Hardy, Chukwudi Iwuji, Romesh Ranganathan, Natasia Demetriou, Francesca Mills, Alex Lawther, and Katie Leung
- Published by Audible Originals
Autobiography / Memoir
My Name Is Barbra
- Written and read by Barbra Streisand
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Best Fiction Narrator (Reader)
Julia Whelan for The Women
- By Kristin Hannah
- Published by Macmillan Audio
Best Nonfiction Narrator (Reader)
Justin Vivian Bond for Candy Darling
- By Cynthia Carr
- Published by Macmillan Audio
Business / Personal Development
Come Together
- Written and read by Emily Nagoski, PhD
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Erotica
The Heartbreaker
- By Marni Mann
- Read by Savannah Peachwood, Connor Crais
- Published by Dreamscape Media LLC
Español
Medea Me Cantó un Corrido
- By Dahlia de la Cerda
- Read by Irene Azuela, Maya Zapata, Astrid Mariel Romo, Gabriela Guraieb, Julio Dublán, and Sara Vivanco
- Published by Editorial Audiolibre
Faith-Based Fiction or Nonfiction
The American Queen
- By Vanessa Miller
- Read by Angel Pean
- Published by HarperAudio
Fantasy
Bookshops & Bonedust
- Written and read by Travis Baldree
- Published by Macmillan Audio
Fiction
Rednecks
- By Taylor Brown
- Read by Ramiz Monsef
- Published by Recorded Books, Inc., a division of RBmedia
History / Biography
The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created the President
- Written and narrated by Edward F. O’Keefe
- Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Horror (judges’ category)
Bury Your Gays
- By Chuck Tingle
- Read by André Santana with special guest appearances by Mara Wilson, CJ Leeds, T. Kingfisher, TJ Klune, Mark Oshiro, Sarah Gailey, Georgia Bird, Liz Keri, Charlie Jane Anders, and Stephen Graham Jones
- Published by Macmillan Audio
Humor
The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science
- By Kate McKinnon
- Read by Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne
- Published by Hachette Audio
Kate and sister Emily McKinnon at the 30th Audie Awards ceremony. They won the Humor category for their reading of Kate McKinnon’s ‘The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science.’ Image: Shutterstock for the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Awards, Stephen Lovekin
Literary Fiction and Classics
James
- By Percival Everett
- Read by Dominic Hoffman
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Middle Grade
Black Star
- By Kwame Alexander
- Read by Angel Pean, Nile Bullock, Karen Chilton, Aaron Goodson, and Dominic Hoffman
- Published by Hachette Audio
Muti-Voiced Performance
When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day
- By Garrett M. Graff
- Read by Edoardo Ballerini and Garrett M. Graff, with a full cast
- Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Mystery
Listen for the Lie
- By Amy Tintera
- Read by Will Damron and January LaVoy
- Published by Macmillan Audio
Narration (Reading) by the Author
Bits and Pieces
- Written and read by Whoopi Goldberg
- Published by Blackstone Publishing
Nonfiction
There’s Always This Year
- Written and read by Hanif Abdurraqib
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Original Work
Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan [Dramatized Adaptation]
- By Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski
- Performed by Tim Carlin, Rob McFadyen, Nora Achrati, Scott McCormick, Eric Messner, Lydia Kraniotis, Ken Yatta Rogers, Michael John Casey, Amanda Forstrom, Marni Penning, Steven Carpenter, and a full cast
- Published by GraphicAudio, a division of RBmedia
Romance
This Could Be Us
- By Kennedy Ryan
- Read by Ines del Castillo and Jakobi Diem
- Published by Hachette Audio
Science Fiction
The Book of Doors
- By Gareth Brown
- Read by Miranda Raison
- Published by HarperAudio
Short Stories / Collections
You Like It Darker: Stories
- By Stephen King
- Read by Will Patton with Stephen King
- Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Thriller / Suspense
Lone Wolf
- By Gregg Hurwitz
- Read by Scott Brick
- Published by Macmillan Audio
UK-Produced Audiobook
Northern Lights
- By Philip Pullman
- Read by Ruth Wilson
- Published by Penguin Random House Audio UK
Young Adult
The Real Education of TJ Crowley: Coming of Age on the Redline
- By Grant Overstake and May Wuthrich
- Read by Dani Martineck, Dion Graham, Tavia Gilbert, Johnny Heller, Kevin R. Free, Shayna Small, Ari Fliakos, Michael Crouch, Kirby Heyborne, Graham Halstead, Peter Berkrot, Thérèse Plummer, Brittany Pressley, John Wright, and Sheila Brown Kinnard
- Published by Grain Valley Publishing Company and Blackstone Publishing
Young Listeners
Nothing: John Cage and the 4’33”
- By Nicholas Day
- Read by Fred Berman
- Published by Live Oak Media
A Programming Note
The Audio Publishers Association executive director Michele Cobb will be in the Tech Theatre at London Book Fair (March 11 to 13) with Jon Watt, Bonnier Books UK’s audio and business development director, in a session on an initiative in the book publishing industry to handle consumer labeling of audio work the production of which involves AI.
The session runs 1:15 to 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, the “middle day” of London Book Fair.
More on the session, Collaborative Guidelines: Audio Associations Shaping the Future of AI Narration Naming, is here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on audiobooks is here, more on the Audie Awards is here, and more on the Audio Publishers Association is here. More from us on international publishing and book awards is here.