Audiobook Clubs Bring People Closer Together: A How-to Guide

Make listening an experience to share with friends. Follow our how-to guide and get your audiobook club started today

What’s your favourite way to listen to audiobooks? Do you pop in your headphones and transport yourself during your commute or do you prefer to dim the lights with a glass of wine and listen at home? Maybe you like to gather your friends together and listen as a group.

Starting an audiobook club gives you a chance to spend more time with the people you care about while enjoying an enriching, entertaining form of storytelling together – or sharing your reactions to what you listened to on your own. It can be tough to get together with friends on a regular basis, but a club like this gives you a reason to spend more time bonding over amazing stories, as well as an opportunity to discover new titles to explore.

This how-to guide will help you get your audiobook club started.

Invite Your Friends to Join

The first step is finding people to join who will be interested in the titles you choose. Will you be listening primarily to the , nonfiction, podcasts, comedy, biography or a mix of genres? If you want to focus on one genre, invite friends who already listen to that type of story. You can also invite friends first and decide what kind of audiobooks you’re going to listen to as a group.

Pick a Title

Decide on a system for choosing titles. One way is to give everyone a chance to choose a title they’ve been longing to listen to, and you can draw names out of a hat to determine the order.

Another way is to ask everyone to come with one or two suggestions and then have a group vote to decide what’s next. Remember to mention the edition, too, so everyone enjoys the same listening experience. There are some truly unique audio versions available these days.

Jane Austen’s is the perfect example. Austen is a classic pick for audiobook clubs, but there’s so much more available than titles with a single narrator. You can find Emma as an Audible Original Drama, narrated by Oscar-winning actor Emma Thompson with a full cast of voice actors and vivid sound design that takes the story to new heights. Take a look at the section to find more dramatic adaptations of titles you might pick.

If you’re looking for more suggestions, our list can help you find inspiration – this roundup offers editor-picked audiobooks too good not to share. From to up-close-and-personal memoirs, find it all right here.