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Audiobook stylistics: Comparing print and audio in the bestselling segment
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Literature, Sociology of Literature. Uppsala University, University Library.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7280-1112
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Languages, Department of Linguistics and Philology.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4990-7880
2021 (English)In: Journal of Cultural Analytics, ISSN 2371-4549, Vol. 6, no 3, p. 1-30Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

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.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. Vol. 6, no 3, p. 1-30
Keywords [en]
audiobooks, bestsellers, stylometry, publishing studies, sociology of literature
National Category
General Literature Studies Natural Language Processing
Research subject
Literature; Computational Linguistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-457845DOI: 10.22148/001c.29802Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85122339805OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-457845DiVA, id: diva2:1608185
Projects
Patterns of Popularity: Towards a Holistic Understanding of Contemporary Bestselling Fiction
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-02829Available from: 2021-11-03 Created: 2021-11-03 Last updated: 2025-02-01Bibliographically approved

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Publisher's full textScopushttps://culturalanalytics.org/article/29802-audiobook-stylistics-comparing-print-and-audio-in-the-bestselling-segment

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Berglund, KarlDahllöf, Mats
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Sociology of LiteratureUniversity LibraryDepartment of Linguistics and Philology
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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf