The main objective with this Master's thesis is to better understand the preferences and attitudes of audiobook users in Sweden who are also members of Swedish Facebook audiobook groups. In recent years audiobooks have risen to prominence, although their previously inferior status is still evident in the lack of available research. Development of digital technology together with our busy modern lives have facilitated this rapid growth. The data gathering method used was a self-completion questionnaire distributed via Swedish audiobook Facebook groups. I endeavored to answer the following research questions: Why, how and to what extent do members of Swedish Facebook audiobook groups consume audiobooks? What attitudes do these users exhibit towards audiobooks’ affordances? Uses and gratifications theory and McLuhan's laws of media were used as a theoretical framework. The study both supports and challenges previous findings. Users primarily audio read because they can do other things at the same time; thriller/suspense/mystery are the most popular genres; many listen to podcasts and read print books, but a substantial number also exclusively listen. The study also found that most audio read quite a lot and prefer to do it at home, while the car is not such a common location. The narrator is overall important, but not when one chooses an audiobook. Though most subscribe to a streaming service, a substantial number of users borrow from a local library.

The main objective for this study was to explore Storytel users’ selection of audiobooks to examine what search strategies and relevance aspects emerge in the relation to a digital book streaming service mobile application, and to examine how this application aids and influences its users in the search and selection of audiobooks. With the help of previous research on book selection and the concepts of search strategies and tactics, as well as the user-centered perspective on relevance and the concept of the digital paratext, five interviews with audiobook readers were analysed. The two major search approaches were known item search and browsing. The major difference compared to previous research on book selection was the new, additional component of the performing narrator. The narrator did not provide any new relevance aspects to the already identified in earlier studies, but rather, proved to be a component spread out on the already identified relevance aspects. Compared to previous research, the author of this study would, however, like to emphasis the relevance aspect of variation. The fact emerged that the readers used the book(s) read previously as a reference, but not necessarily as something they wanted more of or something similar to, but as something they liked something different from. In this desire for variation, the Storytel’s browsing and recommendations’ functions seemed to fall short and the context of the social world outside the app broke in as a helpful aspect of the audiobook selection.

Магистерская диссертация посвящена исследованию феномена электронного книгоиздания с точки зрения исследования рынка. Проведен аналитический обзор темы, дана характеристика специфических особенностей электронных изданий и каналов их дистрибуции, проанализированы статистические данные по российскому книжному рынку за 2021–2022 гг. На основании проведенного анализа выявлены тенденции, проблемы и перспективы развития электронного книгоиздания в России. / Master's thesis is devoted to the study of the electronic book publishing phenomenon from the marketing point of view. An analytical review of the topic was carried out, characteristics of the specific features of electronic publications and their distribution channels were given, and statistical data on the Russian book market for 2021–2022 was analyzed. Based on the analysis, trends, problems and prospects for the development of electronic book publishing in Russia were identified.