" Nearly $1 billion worth were sold last year, meaning 15 percent of all books sold these days are the kind that read themselves."

That seems... off. There were $15 billion trade sales in books last year (eg, not counting textbooks and the like), but audiobooks are massively more expensive than printed books. 15% of the dollars may be audiobooks, but each individual book takes up a lot more of that space.

Gang Leader for a day goes for $16 in paper, $25 in hardcover... and $34 on audio. But it can be even more extreme: Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla goes for ten bucks in paperback, $35 in hardcover... or $75 for CDs. Granted, all of these are list prices, and on Amazon (etc) may be lower. But even Amazon's discounted CD price is still $47, nearly five times the cost of the same book in paperback.

So while the rest of the article's perfectly reasonable, I remain very skeptical of the idea that audiobooks constitute 15% of the total books sold in America, even if they provide 15% of the dollars spent on books.

You can get audiobooks from Audible.com at less than ten bucks a pop with a platinum subscription.

SimplyAudiobooks.com has a similar service, great selection, and several types of rental plan. It works just like Netflix - CD sets are delivered right to your door and postage both ways is included in your rental fee.

Or free from your public library. I can't afford to buy them (except used ones), but my local lib has plenty of great audio books. Most libraries are also seeing increased circulation with the economy so bad, and I bet that isn't reflected in the numbers.

I agree that the library selection has been improving, both in audio and videos. My local library is quickly shifting from cassette books to the CD format, for which I'm grateful. And frankly we pay for them through our local taxes. On the road, I've always been satisfied with Cracker Barrel rentals, as well.