Audible Is Releasing Audiobooks Of All 131 Titles In ‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ Series

Audible will be producing audiobook versions of all 131 titles in Ann M. Martin’s popular middle-grade series The Baby-Sitters Club. Actress Elle Fanning will perform the first five stories, all of which will be released exclusively from Audible on August 13. 

The book series is published by Scholastic and ran from 1986 through 2000, selling around 178 million copies in total. Other actresses who will be performing titles in the massive Audible audiobook series include Brittany Pressley, Ali Ahn, Emily Bauer, Lauren Fortgang, Bahni Turpin, Erin Moon, Stephanie Einstein, and Vanessa Johansson.

This will be the first time that the books have been produced in audiobook form, perhaps because the series — which retailed at around $4 per book and was, at it’s peak, published at the rate of a book a month — was once seen as ephemeral. Today, The Baby-Sitters Club is riding a heady wave of 90s nostalgia: It was brought back into print in 2009 at the request of “fans who wanted a comeback,” the New York Times reported at the time, and a ten-episode live-action dramedy adaptation is in the works at Netflix.

The audiobook adaptations are a smart move from Audible: In the increasingly hits-based publishing business, nostalgia is a safe bet, and The Baby-Sitters Club is also aimed at a valuable but historically under-served demographic, pre-teen girls.