During Member Appreciation Day, Listeners Bond Over Their Love of Audible

“This event was very special,” said Barbara, a New Jersey native who loves listening to mystery and romance, about Audible’s recent Member Appreciation Day. “It felt good to meet others who listen to audiobooks as much or even more than I!”

Barbara was one of about a dozen avid listeners Audible recently invited to visit our headquarters in Newark, NJ. In these bi-annual member appreciation events, we bring together intimate groups of diehard listeners and give them a behind-the-scenes tour of our state-of-the-art on-site recording studios and Audible's new Innovation Cathedral, hold meet-and-greets with our Customer Care, Content and Editorial teams and then treat our guests to a delicious dinner in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood. These events help us “get to know our listeners on a personal level,” says Rick Murphy, Employee Engagement Specialist at Audible, as well as offer members “a truly unique experience.”

For Barbara, it was eye-opening to see what goes into producing Audible books, but meeting fellow listeners was her favorite part. It was a feeling that was shared by the group, all of whom found themselves immediately pulling out their phones to compare audiobook libraries and total listening times, and discussing various iterations of the Audible app—many of them having listened on the app for hours a day for close to a decade.

Listeners like Timothy, a Shakespearean actor and theater teacher from Teaneck, NJ, uses Audible when on the road traveling to shows and performances. At first he never thought he’d favor audiobooks, but appreciating the craft of narration made him fall in love with listening. For him, listening to a professional actor who can embody all different characters, is “truly remarkable.”

Charlotte, a pediatrician from New York City, expressed how crucial Audible is to her life. She became an Audible listener in medical school to escape feelings of fatigue and stress. “[Audible] allows me to decompress and multitask” after a day of reading medical journals, patient charts and emails, she says. Not only can she enjoy stories like Nick Offerman's Bedtime Stories for Cynics without taxing her eyes, she doesn't miss a chapter thanks to the Audible app's sleep timer feature, which she uses almost every night.

Phara, a virtual assistant and project manager who works from home in Union, NJ, was once a voracious reader of physical books. Her bookshelf started to gather dust, though, after she had her first child, and she got hooked on Audible during the many late nights up with her baby. Since then, Phara’s turned countless friends and family members onto Audible—she even started an Audible listening club at the accounting firm where she used to work.

Inna, a packaging designer from Fort Lee, NJ, says pretty much “all the designers love Audible” and listen separately but companionably while they work. Jason, an ultra-marathon runner from Manhattan, loves to listen to Audible with his 14-year-old daughter, Sophia, and while he trains and competes in marathons. With ultra-marathons starting at 26+ miles, it’s no wonder that Jason has collected all but two of the Audible listening badges!

“Meeting fellow listeners helped me realize how much the Audible experience means in my life,” said Josh, an Audible listener since 2015. “It was a pleasure to visit and see the operation up close, to meet so many lovely members of the team, and to learn more about what makes Audible work.”

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