Jacob Shymanski

The show airs weekends and Mondays at 1 p.m.

Eastern on AMI-audio, but we're also available on all the big podcasting platforms.

You can email us your feedback at audiobookcafeatami.ca, and you can follow us on Instagram at AMI Audiobook Cafe.

The Instagram handle is at AMI Audiobook Cafe.

I'm your host, Jacob Szymanski.

Happy listening.

Welcome to 2026, another year that I fully expect the popularity of audiobooks to continue to grow.

And this show, Audiobook Cafe, will be ready to welcome any new listeners with open arms.

Winter is kind of a weird time for readers and listeners because if you didn't know, the publishing industry kind of sees the winter season as a kind of a down season.

For them, it's all about summer and especially fall leading to the holidays.

You know, a lot of people are buying gifts for their friends and family for Christmas and stuff like that.

But for us, the readers and listeners, winter is prime listening season.

and january in particular for me is an audiobook listening month because of specifically january 2024 which was the weirdest month of my life let me explain around that time i had just moved to toronto in my apartment and at the time my partner and i were in essence of long distance so i was on my own for a while and it was wintry i didn't want to leave i think i only went into the office twice

For some reason, I didn't leave the apartment whatsoever for practically the entirety of January.

I stayed at home and I listened to audiobooks.

All day.

All night.

I've never listened to so many audiobooks.

And it just so happened that the books that I was reading just happened to be very wintery.

Mainly, I was reading a lot of Robin Hobb.