THE thriller writer Jeffery Deaver has released an original work called “The Starling Project” as an audiobook — only it’s not what we think of as an audiobook: a printed book read aloud that you can listen to on your laptop or phone. Featuring 29 actors in more than 80 speaking roles combined with “state-of-the-art sound and music design,” Mr. Deaver’s “book” was conceived as an audio drama for Audible. There are no plans to turn it into a traditional text-based book, either on paper or digitally.

That was fast. First we went from books to e-books, and now we’re going from e-books to no-books. What’s next? Books embedded in a chip that delivers “content” directly into our brains?

Is such an innovation even necessary? When you think about it, that’s what audio does now. Listening is more efficient than reading: When we read, we absorb print with our eyes and translate it into “meaning,” a cumbersome process that requires us first to see the words, then to make sense of them, and finally to employ our imaginations to conjure up events and sounds and characters that aren’t there. Reception by aural means is more direct: All you have to do is listen. Not only that, you can multitask, driving to work or walking the dog.

The simplicity of audio is turning out to be a big advantage for those who love telling stories. To produce a show — or a non-text-based book — is relatively cheap. All you need is a writer, a studio with tech support, a few characters and, before you know it, you have “Serial.” More people have listened to this wildly popular podcast (nearly five million downloads per episode) about a teenage murder trial than have read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Proust-length memoir or Elena Ferrante’s trilogy.