Audiobook walking clubs are emerging across the United States, turning a habit typically enjoyed alone into a low-pressure group activity. Participants walk together for about an hour, each listening to a book of their choosing through headphones, then gather afterward to compare notes, trade recommendations and often make plans to meet again.
The format functions as a book club without assigned reading and a walking group without competition. It requires only a book on a phone, a pair of headphones and comfortable shoes. At events run by Stephanie Pao, owner of the mobile bookstore The Fleuria, people typically spend about 30 minutes mingling before the walk. They then put on headphones and separate into faster and slower groups, each person absorbed in a different story.
Pao, who has loved audiobooks since the cassette-tape era, invited her social-media followers to join her for a walk in July 2025. She had no idea whether anyone would come. If five people showed up, she decided, it would be fun. Fifty appeared. At a later event in Long Beach, nearly 200 joined.
«Reading is often such a solitary hobby,» Pao said. «But readers want to meet other readers.»
Kelsey Bettis discovered the Fleuria Audiobook Walking Club through Instagram’s algorithm, which she suspects picked up on how many romance novels she was reading. Bettis had been looking for ways to be more social but was also struggling with anxiety and finding it difficult to connect with people. A walking club seemed manageable because she could talk if she wanted to or retreat into her book if she did not.
«The audiobook walks allowed me to be social in a way that didn’t require talking to other people if I didn’t want to,» she said. «I had the option.»
Bettis became part of a small army of women wearing headphones that gathers at least once a month, sometimes more often, on beaches and trails across Southern California. She ended up going for coffee with some of the women she met on her first walk and eventually began inviting friends.
In the Washington, D.C., area, Morgan Menzies runs a similar group called Pages on the Path. Menzies moved from New Jersey and wanted to make friends, so she started the group with one other person. Now around 30 readers typically attend its monthly outings. Participants have ranged in age from 13 to about 80, and new parents push babies in strollers or carry them strapped to their chests.
«There are like a thousand run clubs in D.C.,» Menzies said. But not everyone wants or is able to run. An audiobook walking club offers another route to the same destination: movement, fresh air and potential new friends.
Silently walking next to strangers while wearing headphones might sound antisocial. Yet for some, it makes socializing feel more natural. At Pages on the Path events, participants can talk with one another or simply press play and be in their own world. There are no forced introductions or icebreakers. Menzies sometimes asks what everyone is listening to, who their favorite author is or whether they have recently encountered a five-star book.
«It’s fun to hear when someone loved a book and a different person hated that book,» she said.
A group of women who met on one walk formed a text chain and began getting together outside the club. Menzies has watched similar connections unfold countless times. «I think the meaning of life is to form human connections,» she said. «Whatever that looks like.»
The rise of these groups coincides with a long-running audiobook boom. U.S. audiobook sales reached $2.43 billion in 2025, up 9% from the previous year, according to the Audio Publishers Association. «It’s not quite a rocket ship, but it’s pretty nice growth,» said Jim Dinegar, the association’s executive director.
Part of the appeal of audiobooks is efficiency: people can listen while driving, exercising, cooking, cleaning or unloading the dishwasher. Dinegar has also noticed that people are becoming more open about their enthusiasm. Listeners once admitted they loved audiobooks almost sheepishly. «It’s OK. It’s not a confession,» he would tell them. «You’re not alone.» Now, he says, those people are finding one another.