Audible launches new feature that allows you to read your book

“Now at Audible, you can read with your eyes too,” said Chief Product Officer Andy Tsao.

"Audiobooks count as reading ... Read & Listen gives book lovers the best of both worlds."

Tempting though it may be to dismiss this as another case of wheel reinvention, it turns out that Audible may be onto something here.

Research shows that this type of “immersive reading” supposedly boosts retention and makes it easier for people to absorb a book’s content, which can be useful for students and those learning a new language.

Audible’s own stats show that people who “listen and read at the same time are amongst its most active members,” reports Android Police.

The premise behind Read & Listen is basic: if you own both the e-book and audiobook versions of a title, you should be able to enjoy them together at the same time.

There are some similarities with the Whispersync for Voice feature in the Kindle app, which syncs your progress between the two so you can switch between reading and listening; however, now you can do both at once.

When a book is compatible with Read & Listen, a simple reading interface will appear, with a moving highlight that tracks which words are appearing in the narration.

For some readers, this may evoke childhood memories of tracing along the words as a parent read a bedtime story aloud.

The feature is launching with hundreds of thousands of titles in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French.

It’s not yet widely available, only being rolled out to select Audible users across the US; once it arrives, the app will scan which of the books in your collection has a compatible e-book, and give you directions to buy it directly from Amazon so you can read your book as it’s narrated aloud.

Audiobooks have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, and in 2018, University College London researchers found that listening to them had a greater emotional impact than watching films or reading the written word.

Scenes from eight top films and books were tested on subjects, including A Game of Thrones, The Girl on the Train, Pride and Prejudice and The Silence of the Lambs.

That research did not cover the emotional impact of reading and listening simultaneously, which will soon be offered to Read & Listen customers.

Audible is the largest producer and retailer of audiobooks in the U.S., and launched in 1995 before becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon in 2008.

Its current catalogue includes more than 200,000 titles, with everything from H. G. Wells to Prince Harry.