Introducing Ask a Question and Recaps: New Ways to Engage with Audiobooks on Audible

At Audible, we’re always exploring new ways to help listeners connect more deeply with the stories they love. Today, we’re excited to announce the expansion of Ask a Question and Recaps, two listening features designed to help audiences explore stories and easily pick up where they left off.

Informed by early conversations with publishers and initially introduced as a limited beta on select public domain and Audible Original titles, these features are already showing promising results. Early data shows listeners who use Ask a Question complete more listening sessions and engagement days than non-users.

Beginning today, Ask a Question and Recaps are expanding to a select set of additional English-language titles in the US. We are planning to roll these experiences out more broadly starting in December.

• ACX creators have a choice before the December rollout. If you prefer these features not appear on your title(s), you can opt-out starting today ahead of the December expansion. See more details below under “What Creators Need to Know.”

Ask a Question: Deepen Listener Engagement

Listeners naturally have questions as they listen, whether about a character, plot point, or historical reference. Ask a Question uses AI to help them find answers without interrupting their listening experience or searching elsewhere. By letting listeners ask a question directly within Audible and receive contextual answers grounded in the audiobook and where they are in the story, the feature helps audiences better understand and engage more deeply with your stories. The feature only uses content from the audiobook as a prompt, which is not retained by or used to train the underlying AI model.

Recaps: Keep Listeners Coming Back

Returning to an audiobook after time away can be challenging, especially when listeners struggle to remember key characters, events, or plot points. Recaps makes it easier to pick up where they left off by providing a brief AI-generated audio summary of the story up to their current listening point, without revealing any spoilers or what happens next. By helping listeners seamlessly return to the listening experience, Recaps encourages them to stay engaged with your stories and continue listening.

Both of these features are only available to customers who have already purchased the title or have access to the title as part of their Audible membership.

Collaborating with Creators to Expand Access

We’ve taken a phased approach to introducing these experiences, beginning with a limited beta and implementing feedback from providers as we prepare to expand availability. Beginning in December, we’ll expand availability to additional English-language titles in the US.

What Creators Need to Know

• Opt-out opportunity. If you do not want these customer engagement features enabled on your title(s), creators can request to opt-out title(s) from Ask a Question and Recaps beginning today ahead of a broader December rollout. For more information on how to submit opt-out requests, please visit the ACX Help Center.

• Honoring opt-outs going forward. We’ll continue to honor opt-out requests for these features as we expand availability and share additional updates with the creator community.

Looking Ahead

This is an early step in building more engaging listening experiences. Ask a Question and Recaps are designed around simple listener needs: helping people stay immersed in a story and making it easier to return when life pulls them away. As we expand these experiences, we’ll continue to learn from listener engagement, and welcome creator feedback to help shape how these experiences evolve.