At the second annual audiobook forum at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, panelists compared the Spanish-language and Latin American markets with their more mature European counterparts, identified the U.S. as a key market in which to grow Spanish-language audio, and stressed the importance of growing the audiobook catalog for children as a way of creating a new generation of listeners and readers.
This year’s forum was opened by a keynote from Carlo Carrenho, the Frankfurt Book Fair’s audiobook ambassador and a partner of Rio de Janeiro–based audiobook publisher Pop Stories. Carrenho, who is Brazilian but based in Sweden, highlighted the popularity of the format in Scandinavia. In Sweden, he said, 62% of book sales were in audio format in 2024, compared to 33% for print and only 5% for ebooks; just over 35% of Swedish publishers’ revenues came from audiobooks. Meanwhile, in Denmark, 19.6% of publishers’ revenues came from audiobooks in 2023, while 51% of books sold in Norway in 2024 were audiobooks.
While Latin America lags behind Europe and the U.S. in terms of audiobook penetration, panelists identified the need to target the children’s segment as a way of creating future readers. They also stressed the importance of the Spanish-language U.S. market, taking advantage of the fact that the format is already well established in the country and there is demand among Spanish speakers for audiobooks in their language, particularly for children who may speak the language at home while using English at school and socially.
Spain’s Javier Celaya, founder of Dosdoce.com, said that “collectively, we need to bet on audiobooks for children as a way of creating new readers, and a way of encouraging reading in this digital age,” pointing out that audiobooks represent less than 1% of total book sales in Latin America.
“We have to make audiobooks more visible,” added Celaya, who is responsible for the launch in Spain and Latin America of Bookwire, Storytel, and Podimo.
He also stressed the publishing industry’s need to adapt to changing consumer preferences. “We have been hearing stories orally for centuries, and we are now in a society that is more visual and aural, and the publishing sector needs to realize that this format is a way of reading, but there is very little content for children,” he said. “With AI, we are going to see a surge in the production of children’s audiobooks, and we need to embrace this format because it’s going to create readers.”
Celaya also considered the economics of audiobook production, particularly as it pertains to Latin America. “There is a three- to five-year return on investment in producing audiobooks, but it needs to be made, as well as selling rights to audio platforms, in order to create readers,” he said. “All of Latin America has audio producers and book publishers that can cover the needs of the sector, there are dozens of producers, and we have the resources, while children’s audiobooks are not expensive to produce.”
However, he noted, audiobooks for children need post-production, to add sound effects and music, for example, which can elevate the production costs.
Panelists also debated whether reading and listening to audiobooks is the same thing and whether, for a student, listening rather than reading could be considered “cheating.”
Another participant was Johan Almqvist, manager of content for North America at Yoto, which manufactures the eponymous audiobook listening device aimed at children, which he called a “camouflaged toy” that introduces children “to stories before they have learned to read.”
Yoto acquires content from publishers big and small and makes it available to customers in both English and Spanish via its creators’ marketplace, where producers can upload their audiobooks and sell them on the Yoto platform. The platform, he said, is growing quickly in the U.S. market, and has been growing to provide more opportunities for smaller publishers.
“There are still few audiobooks for children and that is due to the big platforms solely focusing on adults,” Almqvist said. “It’s important to think of the U.S. as part of Latin America, with more than 60 million Latinos in the country, and so we can start selling Spanish-language audiobooks for children in the U.S., and publishers need to think about the U.S. as a Spanish-language market.”
Another audiobook pioneer and participant in the forum, Colombia’s Catalina Holguín, is a former digital editor at the country’s national library and the founder of Mákina Editorial, which specializes in the production and distribution of digital publications, as well as MakeMake, a digital and interactive reading platform for schools and libraries with content from around 80 publishers in Latin America and the U.S.
“I saw how in public libraries there was a lack of audio content for kids in Latin American Spanish, with that local emphasis, and we also found that in the U.S. there was an interest in Spanish-language audiobooks, and many of our clients are in the U.S.,” Holguín said. Make Make, she said, “works better with people who have not traditionally belonged to the written culture,” and aims to “create interactive books and which are a fundamental tool for learners of Spanish in the US.”
Mónica Romero Girón, a children’s literature editor and consultant and former head of publications at Mexico’s culture ministry, said during the same panel that “we come from an oral tradition of telling stories, and the audiobook can continue that way of accessing stories.”
“Young people today also have the curiosity for other formats apart from print,” she added, which is a taste that publishers need to take into account. “Publishers need to think about what works aurally.”
The panel’s moderator, Elisa Castellanos van Rhijn, editorial director at Mexican children’s publisher CIDCLI, also highlighted the importance of creating audiobooks for children, but identified the challenges involved, such as the sacrifice of illustrations for the audio format. The format, she said, calls for creativity but should not be shied away from.
“When I began producing audiobooks I realized the script of the book had to be modified so that the voice somehow replaces the illustration, converting a visual experience into an aural one,” she said. “We should not be afraid that something cannot be adapted.”
This year’s audio forum was followed by the inaugural Bookwire audiobook awards, won by Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, narrated by Nikki García, with special mention for voice of the year for Miguel Ángel Jenner for Los colmillos del lince by Karin Smirnoff (Planeta Audio). Best audiobook adaptation went to La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas (Penguin Random House Audio), while Mexico’s Audiolibre won the award for best sound design for Amor tumbado by Alejandro Carrillo and César Gándara.
