Audiobook stylistics : Comparing print and audio in the bestselling segment

The paper explores differences between bestsellers in print and the most popular audiobooks ina subscription-based streaming service for books (“beststreamers”) by means of computationalstylistics. The point of departure is the complete set of print bestsellers and digital audiobookbeststreamers for the Swedish book market 2015–2019, in total 172 novels. We probed 34linguistic measures to track differences between subsets at the stylistic level. The results indicatethat there are pronounced differences between the formats. Print bestsellers are longer,syntactically more complex and varied, and seem to focus more on depiction. Beststreamingaudiobooks, by contrast, are shorter, more straightforwardly written, and appear to highlight plotand dialogue. The results are replicated when the comparison is restricted to crime fiction, themost prominent genre in the commercial top segment. Given these results, it is argued that it ispossible to discern a particular audiobook style as one factor affecting book consumption indigital formats, and conversely that the printed format is associated with other stylistic preferences.
Patterns of Popularity: Towards a Holistic Understanding of Contemporary Bestselling Fiction