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Chapter 1: What are the highlights of Audiobook Café's best interviews from 2025?
As I record this, I'm one day away from heading off to two and a half weeks of vacation. And I've warned my partner, I'm going to listen to so many damn audiobooks.
the holiday season is the best for audiobook listening because you've got time on your hands and i don't know about you guys but i want to go i don't want to go outside anyways so i'll be busy for the next couple weeks which means that the show is also going on a holiday break but we'll be back on january 10th 2026 but before we let you go
We want to leave you with an episode where we look back at our favorite bits of conversation. It's a best of episode. And by the way, when I say we, I'm not talking about the multitudes of me. I'm including senior producer Andrika. She's been grinding in the background, keeping the show going. And for today, for example, she wrangled up clips from the past couple months episodes.
And not unlike presents under a Christmas tree, they're all clips that are well worth unwrapping.
Chapter 2: How does winter influence audiobook listening habits?
This is Audiobook Cafe. I'm Jacob Szymanski. Red Sale is the host of My Life in Books on AMI-audio. He's joining me for this look back at the year. Red, is wintertime an audiobook season like it is for me, just as much as it is for you?
Absolutely. I think, yeah, even more so than summertime, I just like to curl up with a good audiobook. And do nothing. Eat and be slothful. And it's great. I'm always going somewhere in the summer. The audiobook's always on my phone, plugged into my ears. But, you know, it's interrupted by having to change from a train onto a bus and lug my climbing gear somewhere.
No, wintertime, it is just pure, utter indulgence. If I tell you that... Actually, since recording my last episode last week, I've read two of the books on my want-to list this winter. You'll see how slothful I've been. My bass guitar playing has really suffered as well.
in in looking back at my good reads you know looking back at my year in reading uh i see the date that i add that i read these books and like i read a lot of books in december and january like i probably like 30 40 of the books i read all year were in this time period um but it's been a good year for reading for me i think a big part of this is because of the show introducing me to
All sorts of really interesting authors and books that I normally wouldn't read. Like I've, I don't know about you, right, but I've been reading a lot of romance recently and I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of enjoying it. I get it. I get it. It's fun.
It's nice to read something that makes you happy, isn't it? And I think we'll talk about this a little bit later in the show, I guess, but... You know, all these naysayers who just turn around and say, oh, well, it can't be proper literature because, you know, it's fun and enjoyable. Well, no, sorry.
Actually, some of what we now consider to be literature did start off as being written off as light and fluffy and not literary enough. So, yeah, no. Do what makes you happy.
I don't know why light and fluffy has negative connotations. Everybody likes it when things are light and fluffy. That's how I like my lattes. At least the foamy bits. Okay, let's get to this first clip. We have a couple to get to. As we're going to go through these clips, we're going to come back and we're going to comment on them. And...
I think you'll find that these clips are pretty self-contained, but they're pretty rich. And we're going to throw back to make sure that you know where you can find all of these full episodes because we've had some really good guests on the show this year. All right, so let's get started with this first clip from Molly Burke.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Molly Burke share about personal growth?
I give them that. But, you know, they're not... There is so much on Audible that you are just assaulted by the choice. And it's very, very difficult to pick out a book, as you might have done off a shelf or, you know, from a carefully curated table of books in a bookshop. All I can say is that we all need to just go out and buy as many physical copies of books as
for friends and family as gifts as possible, because that's what keeps the authors going. And that's what spreads the word about great books. These platforms, the way that they are behaving is rapacious and unnecessary and punishing people who really do not earn a huge amount of money anyway.
If you want to go back to that episode, everything that Robin and Daniel said in the episode still applies today. It still applies today. Nothing's really changed. But they do a really good job at explaining a very complicated royalty system. But the short version is that it ends up screwing over so many people. And you have to give Audible their flowers for developing the audiobook industry.
There's a reason they are who they are today. Nowadays in 2025, they are a monopoly. There's no doubt about that and they're acting monopolistically. Moving on to the next clip, I want to bring you a clip from an interview I had with a YouTuber that I really appreciate. Another YouTuber actually.
According to Alina is an awesome YouTube channel that does video essays on all things literature and book industry stuff. She's Very nuanced in her approach and super articulate. It was awesome to talk to her. And I had her on because I kind of see her as an expert in book talk.
The section of TikTok that loves talking about books, which is, if you're not aware, hugely influential on what gets published nowadays. Here's that clip with According to Alina. So the way you put it, it all sounds pretty wholesome and harmless. Where does the hate come from?
Who knows, really? It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the hate started and whether it is just people hating to be haters because that's a feature of the Internet or if people actually have valid points in their criticism of BookTok. I think the fact that romance and the so-called spicy books are so popular on BookTok plays a huge role in this.
Obviously, people have been reading romance and erotica books for ages. I recently went to Romania, which is where I'm from, to my grandfather's house. And I found a bunch of those sort of mills and boons, very cheesy cover romance novels that my mom used to read back in the 90s.
So clearly people have been reading this type of book for a very long time, but it's now super popular to talk about it. I guess they used to be a bit of a guilty pleasure for a lot of women. And now there are these young women online who are talking about it and sort of recommending them to each other and hyping them up essentially.
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