In recent years, the tech-savvy 18-to-24 crowd has discovering audiobooks via digital downloads – a potential threat to the traditional audiobook industry, though CD audiobooks remain the backbone of the industry, partly because of massive sales to libraries.

An estimated 10,000 audiobook titles appeared last year (compared with 316,480 traditional print titles), and sales totaled about $900 million in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. Yet a full 95 percent of published books never see the inside of a recording studio.

Why?

“Do you really want an audiobook of the latest math text?” said Janet Benson, vice president of audiobook retailer Audio Editions and outgoing president of the APA. —Book lovers are listening to literature as never before – KansasCity.com.