<\/p>\n
For Mara Wilson, who played the plucky schoolgirl heroine in the 1996 film adaptation of Roald Dahl\u2019s \u201cMatilda,\u201d audiobook roles scratch her acting itch while enabling her to qualify for SAG-AFTRA health insurance. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t have to deal with the nonsense and scrutiny of Hollywood. I feel like they don\u2019t know what to do with someone in their 30s, Jewish and LGBTQ,\u201d says the Los Angeles actor, who has narrated some 60 titles over the last four years and won a 2025 Audie (the Oscars of audiobooks). <\/p>\n
\u201cI can play a queer tattooed ex-punk nun,\u201d she says of the roles available, \u201cbe a demon, a fairy, an old woman, a little girl, a murderer, a victim or both sides of a love affair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bronson Pinchot \u2014 the master of accents known for scene-stealing turns as Serge in the \u201cBeverly Hills Cop\u201d film franchise, Balki in ABC\u2019s \u201cPerfect Strangers\u201d and the chef Didier on Netflix\u2019s \u201cThe Residence\u201d \u2014 has tackled an even greater variety of roles, having voiced more than 450 audiobooks so far. Recording from his home in Pasadena, he has played men and women of all ages, races, nationalities and abilities, as well as \u201cpostapocalyptic people living in trees and empresses of fictitious planets,\u201d he notes. <\/p>\n
No matter the book or its characters, Pinchot says, \u201cit\u2019s the one performative art where an actor can focus more on the narrative intention than their own gender and ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair are just two of the many actors vying for audiobook roles at a time when the talent pool is expanding and casting is becoming a growing topic of debate. U.S. audiobook sales revenues grew 13% to $2.2 billion in 2024<\/a>, according to the Audio Publishers Assn., rivaling and in some cases surpassing e-books in popularity. <\/p>\n \u201cAudiobooks are the darlings of publishing,\u201d says Robin Whitten, founder of AudioFile magazine, which reviews narrator performances. \u201cListeners who find a voice they like will listen to books they hadn\u2019t considered before because they want that narrator to tell them a story.\u201d <\/p>\n But this bounty isn\u2019t shared by all. Performers such as Julia Whelan, a former child actor and author of \u201cMy Oxford Year,\u201d and Edoardo Ballerini, who played Corky Caporale on \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d have developed robust audiobook careers and entrepreneurial offshoots \u2014 in 2024, Whelan founded Audiobrary<\/a>, a publishing company that pays royalties to narrators and distributes titles including Ballerini\u2019s own productions of public domain classics by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Fyodor Dostoevsky.<\/p>\n Most audiobook actors, however, face a multitude of challenges: The wages are lower than other voice gigs; they may be paid, for instance, between $2,000 and $6,000 for a book with a 10-hour listening time, no matter how many hours it takes to record. They face increased competition from SAG-AFTRA members, non-union and even amateur performers who may check desired demographic boxes. And household-name-famous actors are also entering the industry in multi-cast productions such as Audible\u2019s upcoming Harry Potter series with Hugh Laurie, Matthew Macfadyen and Riz Ahmed, due in November. <\/p>\n Worst by far, for the journeyman performer, is the looming specter of AI-generated narration.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now AI sounds artificial,\u201d says David Aaron Baker, who has narrated works by sci-fi masters Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. \u201cYou can tell it\u2019s a robot.\u201d <\/p>\n Advances in home recording technology along with COVID-19 shutdowns and the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike (from which audiobook work was exempt) spurred narrators and wannabes to set up home studios. This reduced costs for production companies while saddling actors with overhead and the need to engineer and direct their own recordings. (The learning curve, says actor Bahni Turpin, \u201cgave me so many headaches and meltdowns.\u201d) Despite this, the number of performers has grown exponentially larger, more geographically dispersed and more diverse. As a result, publishers and authors now have a greater ability to cast authentic voices, creating both opportunities and limitations for narrators.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always strive to cast voices that reflect the ethnicity, race and sexuality of the main character or the author,\u201d says Jeff Tabnick, head casting director at Recorded Books, which produces 1,200 titles each year and is the only major production company that offers residuals to audiobook narrators. \u201cAnd if the text doesn\u2019t seem to need a specific race or ethnicity, we consider people from all races and ethnicities.\u201d<\/p>\n Turpin, a Black actor who narrated \u201cThe Help\u201d and \u201cThe Hate U Give,\u201d has worked almost exclusively on projects with Black authors and protagonists in her 20-year audiobook career in addition to acting with the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and appearing on \u201cNCIS.\u201d \u201cI have done a series of books by Stacia Kane,\u201d she recalls as an exception, \u201cwhere the lead character was a white witch.\u201d<\/p>\n