Even Better Than The Real Thing

Malcolm Gladwell was on The Bill Simmons Podcast yesterday, chatting about his new book Talking To Strangers. The stat he dropped that blew my mind had nothing to do with the content, but with the consumption: sales of the book are only 70% of what the audiobook sales are. Said differently — the audiobook is outselling the regular book.

Gladwell attributes this to the success of his podcasts Revisionist History and Broken Record. He says there is a whole new generation of people interested in his work that don’t really know him as an author. They’re used to listening to him talk them through his ideas and points of view on the world, which makes sense.

Anecdotally I know so many friends who’ve taken to listening to books during their workouts or while commuting. While I previously thought eReaders like the Kindle would slowly replace physical books, it never occurred to me that the act of reading itself could seem as quaint as the page the words were printed on.

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My heart is where it’s always been
My head is somewhere inbetween