Audiobook Survey for a Graduate Student's Research-- Please Consider Participating

Today I am sharing a survey by a grad student. Please pass this on far and wide. Share it everywhere. And consider taking it yourself. She explains how to participate anonymously and how to share more if you want. 

See below for her introduction and click here to participate. 

Audiobook Narration Survey

Hello, my name is Chelsey Hahmann and I am a student at the University of Stirling. As part of my master's degree in Publishing Studies, I am doing some research into audiobook narration. 

Please read the information below before filling out the survey: 

1.     Research Project Title

Are You Listening? Audiobook Narration and its Effects on Listener Satisfaction

2.     Opening text:

You are invited to participate in a web-based online survey on audiobook narration preferences. You have been invited to participate because you are over 18 and have listened to an audiobook within the last two years, or have previously been a regular listener of audiobooks. This survey is part of a research project being conducted by Chelsey Hahmann, a postgraduate student at the University of Stirling. It should take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete. You will be given some multiple choice questions and a few written questions to answer about your personal preferences as a listener of audiobooks. 

Please read through these terms before agreeing to participate below.

3.     Background, aims of project 

The aim of this project is to help publishers better understand what makes audiobook narration successful in order to create a better product for their listeners. 

4.     Do I have to take part?

No. Your participation in this survey is voluntary. You may refuse to take part in the research or exit the survey at any time without penalty by pressing the ‘Exit’ button / closing the browser. You are free to decline to answer any particular question for any reason – simply leave the question blank and move on to the next one. 

You can only take the survey once, but you can edit your responses until the survey is closed on [date – to be determined]. 

5.     What happens to the data I provide?

I am carrying out this study as part of my work towards the completion of my degree. Your answers will be completely anonymous, and we will use all reasonable endeavours to keep them confidential. Your data will be stored in a password-protected file. Your IP address will not be stored.

At the end of the survey you will be asked if you are interested in participating in an additional survey, in which case you will be asked to provide your email address. If you choose to provide this contact information, your survey responses may no longer be anonymous to the researcher. However, no names or identifying information would be included in any publications or presentations based on these data and your responses to this survey will remain confidential. Furthermore, your email address information will be safely deleted after the second survey has been sent. However, we will ask all participants for their permission to use direct quotes.

6.     Will the research be published?

The research will primarily be used for my dissertation project. 

7.     Who has reviewed this research project?

The ethical approaches of this project have been approved via The University of Stirling General University Ethics Panel.

8.     Whom do I contact if I have concerns about this study or I wish to complain?

If you would like to discuss the research with someone, please feel free to contact me, Chelsey Hahmann, at the email address cdh00012@students.stir.ac.uk, or my advisor, Alastair Horne, at alastair.horne@stir.ac.uk.

In case of a complaint, please contact our Publishing Studies Programme Director, Caroline Wintersgill, at caroline.wintersgill@stir.ac.uk.

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey! 

Please click here to access the survey. And thank you in advance for participating and passing it on. 

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: Booker Prize Longlist

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.  

The Booker Prize Longlist was recently announced. What is the Booker Prize? From their About Page:

The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades

Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. It is a prize that transforms the winner’s career. 

Go to this page, helpfully titled, "Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025 longlist." The page itself if a gold mine of a resource to help readers. It had details about every book, information about the judges. And on the prize's main page, there are even more articles about this year's longlist. I will also post them at the bottom of this post. 

But even with the regular. display, backlist, and collection development advice I give for every award (access above), The Book Prize is an award you need to know about for a variety of reasons, reasons which give you even more options to serve your patrons.

First, these books are always among the top books written in English every year, which means this year and past year's lists make for reliable suggestions to your curious readers. The backlist is also very easy to access in two different ways. The first is a page here where you can use drop down menus to do so deep dive searching and/or scroll under those drop downs to see the announcements for each year in reverse chronological order. The second is a page here with a list of each year (reverse chronological order) of every title beginning with the winner and then listing all of the longlist titles and the titles are linked to get even more information about them.

Second, these titles (2025 or any year in the recent past) tend to be on the "readable side." What do I mean with that? What I mean is that they tend to pick excellent titles of high literary merit that are readable for a general adult audience. These are critically acclaimed, literary fiction titles that you can give out to a wide swath of readers with confidence. 

Third, the Booker Prize has a history of identifying authors worth you time early in their careers, sometimes earlier than they get singled out for other major awards. These are authors worth having on yourself and suggesting, but you (and your readers) may not have them on their radar yet. Take this comment from the judges this year:

Kiran Desai is the only previous Booker winner on this year’s longlist, following her 2006triumph with The Inheritance of Loss. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is Desai’s first novel since her Booker win 19 years ago. Should she win this year, she would become only the fifth double winner in the prize’s 56-year history. Her mother, Anita Desai, was shortlisted for the Booker three times.  

Tash Aw, who joins a select group of 24 writers who have been nominated for the Booker three times (he was also longlisted in 2005 and 2013), is bidding to become the prize’s first Malaysian winner. He is one of two Malaysian novelists to be nominated for the Booker Prize in its history, the other being Tan Twan Eng (another three-time nominee). 

Two other writers on this year’s list have been nominated for the Booker before (making four in total): Andrew Miller was shortlisted in 2001 for Oxygen, while David Szalay was shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is.  

Nine of the authors (Claire Adam, Natasha Brown, Jonathan Buckley, Susan Choi, Katie Kitamura, Ben Markovits, Maria Reva, Benjamin Wood and Ledia Xhoga) are longlisted for the Booker for the first time, but all 13 longlistees have literary awards to their names.

Fourth, this award list serves as a readalike for itself. Not all awards can do this, but I have used this award list as a suggestion engine for readers who have enjoyed any book that has appeared on the longlists. In fact, back in the early days of the 2000s, I offered a "Holds Without Hassle" program at my library, and not only did we allow them to pick authors for that list, but we also had a few awards they could select. This award (called the Man Booked back in the day) was one of the most popular choices. People wanted the winner put on automatic hold and then after reading it, we helped them find the other nominated titles. I have seen this work in action, even with the books being about widely different topics and from a range of authors.  

Fifth, and this is how my readers first found out about this award in the first place, these titles make excellent book discussion choices. There is a very helpful Booker Library, where you can find books by author, title, or even pick a prize year. And to make it even easier for you, they have Reading Guides designed specifically for libraries. Using the backlist from 2-5 years ago is a great resource for winning discussion titles.

And finally, the judges. I have talked about this before, but look at that list of judges from this year or past years. (Click on the post for each year on that page and scroll down to read about the judges.) Take this year for example-- click here and scroll down. The judges themselves are excellent options for displays, suggestions, and purchase if you don't own their books. You can also use the judges list as one of my 5 Resources You Cannot Live Without-- Author Recs of Other Authors. Last year, I wrote about how that works in relation to the NYT Best Books of the Century discussion.

I am sure there are even more reasons why this award is a great resource for you to help your readers. Click through for all of the details and information and decide how you can best use this list for your library. The site is really a treasure trove of resources, suggestions, and lists all year long. 

I will end this post with  the most basic info-- the titles on the long list and the summary by the jurors about the list as a whole. All from this page:

Longlist

The 13 nominated books are: 

• Love Forms by Claire Adam (Faber)  
• The South by Tash Aw (4th Estate)  
• Universality by Natasha Brown (Faber)  
• One Boat by Jonathan Buckley (Fitzcarraldo Editions)  
• Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape)  
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)  
• Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press)  
• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Faber)  
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Sceptre)  
• Endling by Maria Reva (Virago/Little, Brown)  
• Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape)  
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)  
• Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Daunt Books Originals) 

The longlist features authors representing four continents and nine countries: Albania, Canada, Hungary, India, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, the UK and USA. 

It features two debut novels – Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation and Maria Reva’s Endling. Six debut novels have won the Booker in its 56-year history, the most recent being Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain.The nominated novels encapsulate a vast range of international experiences. Arguably more than any other year in the prize’s history, this year’s longlist boasts a truly global outlook.  

The longlisted books transport readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate and a small coastal town in Greece. They shine a light on the lives of Koreans in postcolonial Japan, a homesick Indian in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor living in New York, a shrimp fisherman in the north of England, a mother whose child was given up for adoption in Venezuela and even endangered snails in contemporary Ukraine. They reimagine the great American road trip as a slow-burning mid-life crisis, and take us into the heart of the UK’s coldest winter. 

There’s a novel that began life as a short story in the New Yorker, one that was almost 20 years in the making and another that’s the first book in a proposed quartet. There are books that explore modern masculinity in its many forms, the intense bonds between mothers and children, and the multiple ways in which country, class, race and history shape people’s lives. 

There are books here that are playful and expansive, sweeping and intimate; that stir up long-held secrets, painful memories and unsolved mysteries; that present us with characters on a journey to escape or confront their pasts, or performing roles they have created or that have been foisted upon them. There are books that are quietly devastating and darkly comic; that provide powerful meditations on love, guilt and responsibility; and that cast a satirical eye on the media and identity politics.   

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: Cundill History and Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Longlists

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.  

Two important longlists for our RA purposes were announced in the last few days.

First up The Cundill History Prize. From the announcement:

The jurors have chosen 15 exceptional titles to be longlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

Following in the footsteps of recent Cundill History Prize winners, Kathleen DuVal (2024) who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2025, Guardian journalist Tania Branigan (2023) and National Book Award winner Tiya Miles (2022), the fifteen longlisted authors will now be in the running for the US$75,000 prize. The Cundill History Prize is awarded annually to a book that demonstrates excellence across the prize’s guiding criteria: craft, communication, and consequence.

The books on this year’s longlist shed light on compelling stories that span continents and generations, taking us from the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s to the German Peasants’ War of 1524; from Soviet dissidents in the 1960s to American and Australian abolitionists of the 1800s.

The shortlist will be announced in early September, 2025.

Chair of the Jury Ada Ferrer, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University and a Cundill History Prize finalist in 2022, said: “As is to be expected from a Cundill History Prize book, the fifteen titles on this year’s longlist combine superb writing with rigorous and imaginative craft to tackle topics and questions of lasting, sometimes urgent significance. They range widely not only in geographic and temporal scope, but also in method: from sweeping narrative history and biography, to close reading of legal texts, photographs, and dance cards, even to a fascinating walk in a postcolonial city as means to understand an unwritten history, centuries old. The result is a list of fifteen singular books that represent the calibre and diversity of history writing today. Huge congratulations to all the historians and authors on our list.”

Ada Ferrer has been joined by leading international historians and writers Sunil Amrith, François Furstenberg, Afua Hirsch and Francesca Trivellato to complete the jury this year.

You can see the full longlist of titles here 

As you can see above, this is a history prize that values, "craft, communication, and consequence." This focus on those three pillars, especially the "communication" piece means that these 15 titles are excellent history reads for a library patron audience. History is one of the nonfiction area where we see

not in the same high numbers as things like true crime, cookbooks, or biography and memoir, but it is popular enough that we can make displays, use prize lists to build out our collections

And because these are just "History" and not a specific branch or type of history, the titles themselves represent a broad swath of excellent, vetted history writing. You can coincidently add these titles across your dewey areas and suggest them with confidence.

The Cundill Prize also has easy backlist access going back to 2008 here. Since we are talking about history books, backlist titles are less time sensitive. Dig deep into the backlist for this one because history never gets old. (pun intended)

And that backlist will help you make a display of history books. You can even use the prize's mantra as your catchy sign/title-- "History books of craft, communication, and consequence"-- that will draw readers in to see what that means. You can even put the logo for the prize on the sign. And for the online version of your display, add a link to the prize itself.

And second of the two, a prize for debuts. The Center for Fiction recently announced their longlist for the First Novel Prize. From that announcement:

We are pleased to announce the longlist for The Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize. This year, we received 185 submitted titles with U.S. publication dates between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Over 300 readers, writers, booksellers, librarians, and other members of The Center’s diverse community reviewed the submissions and selected the 29 debut novels on the 2025 First Novel Prize Longlist below. 

Inaugurated in 2006, the First Novel Prize honors the best debut novel of the year and supports emerging voices in fiction. Each year, the winning author receives a $15,000 prize in recognition of their contribution to contemporary literature and in support of their ongoing creative career. Past winners of the Prize include Marisha Pessl, Junot Díaz, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Raven Leilani, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow. In the fall, our judging panel of four distinguished authors will determine the 2025 First Novel Prize Shortlist. Each shortlisted author will receive a $1,000 award. 

We are proud to share these extraordinary books with you. Please join us in congratulating The Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize longlisted authors. 

The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize is supported in part by Hawthornden Foundation. For support opportunities, please reach out to Melissa Wyse and Anne Townsend at development@centerforfiction.org.

This one speaks for itself. You need to go check if you own all 29 of these novels. You probably have a lot of these, but make sure. I love how long this long list truly is. They are identifying a huge list of excellent debut novels to make sure all who deserve to be noticed in the crowded publishing landscape get their moment to shine.  

In the Fall there will be a short list narrowed down by a panel of judges, and each of those authors will get $1,000, which is important to note. Only 1 person can win the $15,000 prize, but that $1,000 for the short list authors will go a long way toward keeping them on th path to write a second book.

Also, don't forget, the easily accessed archive of every longlist and winner for the First Novel Prize is also a treasure trove of information. Obviously, you can find authors who are now bestsellers in that backlist, yes. But what about those authors whose first novel got a ton of critical acclaim but then did not make that jump to being more well known? Not making that jump does not make them less worthy of being read; in fact, that debut novel may be the hidden gem titles your patrons will love.

Great debut novels are something many readers search for, but remember, they don't have to be the debuts of right now. You can find excellent debut novels, many of which your patrons would never find without your help pointing them out through a suggestion, list, or displays.

Please use the links in the header of this post to learn more about how Awards Lists can be your best RA Tool.

It's Hot Outside, So Put Up Some "Chilling Reads" Displays

It is very hot outside in a lot of places. 

Thanks, Becky, for stating the obvious.

Look, I know it is obvious but are you scrapping whatever planned displays you have up right now (big or small) to help your patrons deal with it? We do this when an author dies, so don't tell me you don't react to current events with your displays.

When you put up displays that show your patrons that you are flexible and reacting to what is happening, they pay more attention. They see that you understand them and are ready to help them. You are showing them you are thinking of their needs over all else.

So we need to put up some "Chilling Reads for Hot Days" displays ASAP. BUT (and it is in all caps for a reason, this is a bog BUT), do not just put out books set in the old and/or snow. 

No, we need to think broadly about what makes something a "chilling" read:

• Cold and winter setting books
• Genres that thrill and chill-- thriller, suspense, psychological suspense, and horror
• If you can include nonfiction-- paranormal investigations, adventure in cold places, true crime

You can find all of these titles using your own catalog by searching for keywords and/or genre tags. I promise you, you will not run out of title options. 

Think broadly, mix up genres, and do not include those big name authors (your patrons know those books and our displays should promote the books people cannot find without our help). This is also an easy display to make diverse because the barrier for entry to be included on this display is so low.

Now, if you do not have one big display space, make a bunch of small signs that say. "Chilling Reads for Hot Days" or just "Chilling Reads." And spread the titles out wherever you have space. Just make sure you have mixed up the options. 

The key here is to stop thinking so literally with your displays. "Chilling" is not just cold. Lots of things give people chills and you are serving lots of people. The more definitions of "chilling" you have, the broader your display options are. The broader your titles on that display, the more readers who will look at it and find something for them. The more people who find something for them on one of your displays, the  more people who feel the library "gets" them. They will return. They will tell their friends.

You can take it one step further and make the display interactive by using my Conversation Starter to Display post/handout.

Add a question at your display, at every service desk (because this is an all ages questions, even the AV area can participate), in your online spaces, and put a bookmark with it in every books on the hold shelf (again details on how to do this is here).

Ask people, "What is your favorite 'chilling' read?" The key to all successful conversation starter to display questions is to make them as broad as possible so as to encourage a wide range of results that represent the wide range of readers who use your buildings (not just those who use it the most often). And if your examples are broad, then their answers will be too.

So please take a deep breath. I know I just told you, on a Monday, to scrap your plans and change out the display, BUT, I promise you, it will be worth it. Everyone coming in will be hot, and to see this display in the library will ring very true with their current experience. They will feel a connection to you even if they do not stop to check one of the the titles out.

Please make sure you have this display in every service area, so the whole family can enjoy their favorite chilling reads for hot days.

Coming Next Month: Actively Anti-Racists Readers' Advisory Services with Robin Bradford and Me!

Robin and I are back with our updated Actively Anti-Racist Readers' Advisory Services class coming August 20 and 21. You can take this class live or view the recordings on your own time.

NEW: Does your state not allow CE funds to go to ALA events? I have been told that you can contact them  at ce@ala.org or at 312-280-5100 and someone will help you. You can also always contact me to help as well.

Please go here or see below for all of the details, including pricing, to reserve your seat now.

Actively Anti-Racist Readers’ Advisory Services

Register

A two-part webinar series taking place on Wednesday, August 20 and Thursday, August 21, 2025 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific.

Increasing the collection and circulation of titles written by underrepresented authors is not just a trend. Providing robust readers’ advisory service that values equity, diversity, and inclusion principles is essential to all library services.

Moving from being a neutral, well-meaning library where systemic racism is acknowledged to an actively anti-racist organization involves in-depth work, some of which can be challenging. In this program you will begin that work and learn tangible skills to help build enthusiasm for reading and strategies for diversifying your materials. You’ll learn how you can strengthen your RA service through thoughtful discussion of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging principles in all interactions with leisure readers and how to be a steward of the anti-racist mindset for your organization.

In this two-part series, collection development and readers’ advisory experts Robin Bradford and Becky Spratford will move your team from talk to action. You’ll learn how to help your entire organization craft an actionable plan to seamlessly incorporate the values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging into your regular RA practices. 

Through your participation in this program, you will learn:

• The distinction between not racist and anti-racist. 
• How to identify more diverse titles to add to your collections.
• How to use anti-racist principles in your displays, book talks, and organization of titles.
• Promotion strategies for diverse titles and authors.
• Basic strategies to address politically motivated requests to remove books from your collection.

Robin Bradford has earned a BA and MA in English, an MS in Library Science, and a JD, but has found a home in building reader-focused, popular collections in public libraries. She was recognized as RWA’s 2016 Librarian of the Year and Emerald City Library Conference's Librarian of the Year in 2022. She is addicted to books and dedicated to helping others discover a love of reading. She has worked with authors to help get their titles into these collections and wrote the Readers’ Advisory Guide to Romance Fiction to further help libraries with their romance collection. She also worked with libraries to push for equal treatment of genre fiction and worked with readers so that they can find their favorite authors on their library's shelves.

Becky Spratford [MLIS] is a Librarian in Illinois specializing in serving patrons ages 13 and up. She trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She runs the critically acclaimed RA training blog RA for All. She writes reviews for Booklist and a Horror review column for Library Journal. Becky was a 24 year locally elected Library Trustee and a former Board member for both the Reaching Across Illinois Library System and the Illinois Library Association. Known for her work with Horror readers, Becky is the author of three text books for library workers, most recently, The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021] and the forthcoming Why I Love Horror [Saga Press, September, 2025]. She is on the Shirley Jackson Award Advisory Board and is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, currently serving as the Association’s Secretary and Co-Chair of their Library Committee. You can follow Becky on Bluesky @raforall.bsky.social

This event will be hosted in Zoom. Automatic captions will be enabled for this event. This event will be recorded, and registrants will receive access to the recording within a day after the event ends.

If you have questions or requests regarding accessibility, contact us at ce@ala.org or at 312-280-5100.

Register