The market for audiobooks in Spanish is undeniably booming. According to a 2024 report from German digital distributor Bookwire, Spanish-language audiobooks saw an eye-popping 37.8% growth in sales last year over 2023. Meanwhile, the total catalog of audiobooks in Spanish worldwide is expected to top 50,000 this year, with annual revenue from Spanish-language markets estimated at $41 million–$58 million, including revenue for both publishers and streaming platforms.
Adoption of the format in Mexico, however, has been notably slower than in Spain and the United States, the other two leading markets. While those two countries have Spanish-language audiobook market shares of 57% and 27%, respectively, Mexico makes up just 9% of the market, per the Bookwire report.
Javier Celaya, founder of Madrid-based publishing consultancy Dosdoce, sees this as a missed opportunity. He proposes three changes that he believes would contribute to audiobook growth in Mexico. First, he says, more audiobooks should be produced domestically, as is the case for most audiobooks consumed in the U.S. and Spain.
Second, Celaya says audiobook subscription services should adapt their fees to Mexico’s economic reality, where consumers have comparatively lower purchasing power and services such as Netflix compete for their pocketbooks. Subscription services accounted for 88% of global Spanish-language audiobook consumption in 2024, according to Bookwire, compared to 10% for individual purchases and 2% for library lending.
Third, Mexico’s public libraries should lend audiobooks, according to Celaya. “Libraries need to invest in the format and attract both readers and nonreaders,” he stresses. “And the government’s cultural authorities also need to promote the format as a way of broadening access to audiobooks.”
Carlos Rojas Urrutia, head of Spanish-language content at German digital distribution company Zebralution, argues that publishing houses, bookstores, and libraries in Mexico need to be more involved in the audiobook segment. “Publishers need to find partners that can share their knowhow and allow them to be part of the production, distribution, and sale of audiobooks,” Rojas Urrutia says, highlighting two erroneous perceptions in Mexico: that audiobooks should be sold to one platform exclusively, and that streaming services such as Spotify are bad for authors and publishers because they “cheapen” the content.
Despite audiobooks on vinyl and cassette first appearing in Mexico during the 1980s, digital audiobooks didn’t become available there until 2014, when Penguin Random House launched 16 titles in the region, signaling the importance of growing the genre in the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country. Since then, other publishers have followed suit, making their audiobooks available on such platforms as Audible, Bookmate, Everand, and Storytel, which pay publishers for audio rights.
“This model is why many audiobooks by small and medium-size publishers only exist on those platforms that acquired the rights,” Rojas Urrutia says. “Over time, all of those platforms, with the exception of Audible, have begun to explore other routes that allow them to distribute those audiobooks through other channels in a bid to recoup the investment they made in those productions.”
In recent years, the format has received a boost from music-streaming platforms such as Spotify, which Rojas Urrutia says “allow audiobooks to reach people who have already gotten into the habit as listeners.” He notes that it has long been common in the region for publishers to sell audio rights to audiobook producers for an advance against royalties, but adds, “Selling rights to content and losing control of that content is not a viable option in the long term for any format.”
As for Mexican booksellers, they are “only just beginning to find digital solutions to promoting and selling books,” Rojas Urrutia says. “Bookstores do not give priority to nontraditional formats, partly because that requires understanding the digital side of their business, optimizing metadata, and launching digital marketing for a consumer that is different from those who purchase in a physical store, and there’s still a long way to go on that road.”
Mexico’s three largest bricks-and-mortar bookstore chains—Gandhi, Porrúa, and El Sótano—all currently sell audiobooks online. But Fondo de Cultura Económica, the country’s state-owned publisher and bookstore chain, has yet to add any audio titles to its online or physical inventory.
Meanwhile, libraries in Mexico pose a more complex problem, according to Rojas Urrutia. “The region’s library infrastructure is rickety,” he says. “Even thinking about offering digital content is seen as a long way off, although doing so would solve fundamental problems, such as quickly being able to offer new titles and attracting a new public for whom libraries were not a part of their daily lives.” He adds that libraries should be given “priority as an outlet for audiobooks,” pointing to Overdrive’s licensing of Spanish-language audiobooks to U.S. libraries as an example to follow.
The Producers
The situation is much brighter on the production side. Over the past several years, independent audio production companies have gradually emerged in Mexico, where production is dominated by such large publishers as Penguin Random House and Planeta. Leading the pack is Mexico City–based Audiolibre, whose title Medea me cantó un corrido by International Booker Prize–nominated author Dahlia de la Cerda recently won the Audio Publishing Association’s 2025 Audie Award for best Spanish-language audiobook.
Audilobre was launched in 2023 by Álvaro Ortiz, a former PRH audiobook producer, and Elena Bazán, an author, professor, podcast producer, and former account manager at Bookwire Mexico. Their approach to the industry has been audio first, with the goal of creating original productions and targeting Spanish speakers in the U.S.—though the Audie win has also showcased their skill at adapting existing books.
Bazán believes that the Audie recognition opens doors to independent audiobook publishers in Mexico, noting that four of the five prize finalists were produced by multinational publishers. “Part of the mission of Audiolibre is to create a market and professionalize the industry,” Bazán says. “The fact that an independent Mexican audiobook producer won is very important.”
The award, Ortiz agrees, “opens doors for us.” De la Cerda, he notes, was the first author Audilobre approached for audio rights, after spotting what he saw as her work’s “great potential for an audiobook.”
Last year, Audiolibre co-organized the inaugural audiobook forum at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. The forum will return to this year’s fair, which runs November 29–December 7. The 2025 edition of the Buenos Aires International Book Fair, held this past April, also featured an audiobook forum for the first time.
De la Cerda notes that in her native Mexico, audiobooks lack “visibility.” “Many people would love to listen to books, but they don’t know where to start or they don’t have access to platforms,” she says. “There is also a certain prejudice, as if listening were not reading. But there is also a very rich oral tradition in Mexico; we tell stories, in the street, in songs, in gossip, in legends. Audiobooks could connect with that, with people who have never even entered a bookstore but who have a fine ear and narrative sensibility.”
For that to happen, De la Cerda adds, “more doors need to be opened so that audiobooks come out of their intellectual niche and take those voices to where printed books don’t reach.”
Adam Critchley is an English writer and translator based in Mexico City.
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