Queen tells reading campaign that listening counts too – and the publishing industry increasingly agrees
Q
ueen Camilla has met many disreputable characters in her time as a royal, but her encounter this week with two celebrity reprobates was at least for a good cause. The queen has appeared in the Beano alongside its celebrated bad boy Dennis the Menace and his dog, Gnasher, as part of a campaign to promote reading.
It wasn’t the cartoon Camilla’s waspish waist that captured the headlines (“I wish,” she said of her comic strip avatar), but what she had to say while encouraging the tween menace to “go all in” for reading: “Comics and audiobooks count too!”
Audiobooks have boomed in popularity in recent years – the revenue they generated for UK publishers rose by almost a third in 2023-24 – becoming an increasingly central part of the industry. But do they truly count as “proper” reading? Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to read it?
