Joe Abercrombie tops our author ranking at 4.5 across ten reviewed audiobooks. One row below, Brandon Sanderson displays 4.4 across sixteen. And just outside the table, Robert Jordan's nine reviewed audiobooks display 4.6. What separates them is not the score. It is the entry rule: a spot in the ranking takes at least ten reviewed audiobooks.
That makes the edge of the table a useful place to start. A ranking can help you find an author to explore, but its entry rule also decides which names you won't see.
These scores come from published reviews produced by AudiobookSoul's AI-assisted review pipeline. They describe how the reviewed audiobooks scored on this site—not listener votes or a claim that a human heard every recording end to end.
Who makes the table?
Our published reviews cover 5,018 author entries. Only 126 meet the ten-review threshold: about 2.5% of the names. Those authors account for 2,556 of our 10,184 reviews, though—about a quarter of the reviewed collection.
So this is a small share of the authors, but a much larger share of the reviews. It leaves plenty of names outside the ranking, including authors whose reviewed audiobooks score highly.
Each author's average pools the scores of their reviewed audiobooks, including different recordings and narrators. It isn't a separate grade for writing craft. The ten-book bar is a coverage bar, not a consistency test.
The authors at the top
| 1 | Joe Abercrombie | 4.5 | 10 |
| 2 | Brandon Sanderson | 4.4 | 16 |
| 3 | Matt Dinniman | 4.4 | 24 |
| 4 | Neil Gaiman | 4.4 | 11 |
| 5 | Pierce Brown | 4.3 | 37 |
| 6 | Taylor Jenkins Reid | 4.2 | 33 |
| 7 | Andy Weir | 4.2 | 21 |
| 8 | Karin Slaughter | 4.2 | 11 |
| 9 | Sarah J. Maas | 4.2 | 45 |
| 10 | Donna Tartt | 4.2 | 15 |
Abercrombie's lead rests on the smallest sample the rule allows: exactly ten reviews. Sanderson and Matt Dinniman both display 4.4, with sixteen and twenty-four reviews behind their scores, and Neil Gaiman also displays 4.4, across eleven. The averages are rounded to one decimal; matching numbers on the page don't establish an exact tie.
The top ten runs from 4.2 to 4.5, compared with 3.8 across all published reviews. Sarah J. Maas has the most reviews in this group: forty-five, averaging 4.2. Taylor Jenkins Reid and Donna Tartt also appear at 4.2.
Treat these as names to explore rather than ten places you must work through in order. Small differences in these averages aren't proof that one author is better than another.
Five names outside the ranking
| Beverly Cleary | 4.4 | 7 |
| Don Winslow | 4.5 | 5 |
| Elena Ferrante | 4.6 | 5 |
| Max Brooks | 4.3 | 5 |
| Robert Jordan | 4.6 | 9 |
This is the highest-scoring five of the 219 authors with five to nine reviewed audiobooks. Robert Jordan and Elena Ferrante display 4.6, Don Winslow 4.5, Beverly Cleary 4.4, and Max Brooks 4.3.
Jordan's displayed average is higher than the table leader's—and he still isn't ranked. The displayed scores rest on different amounts of evidence: five reviews behind Ferrante, Winslow, and Brooks, seven behind Cleary, nine behind Jordan. None has reached the ten-review threshold. That is the reason they are here instead of in the main table, not a prediction about where they would land with more reviews.
If you came looking for a new author, this list belongs beside the top ten. Jordan's profile, for example, lets you explore the reviewed titles behind his average. Being outside a ranking doesn't make those books less worth considering.
What the lower averages mean
| 117 | Terry Goodkind | 3.4 | 11 |
| 118 | James Patterson | 3.3 | 70 |
| 119 | Laurell K. Hamilton | 3.3 | 23 |
| 120 | Joseph O. Meyer | 3.3 | 10 |
| 121 | Various Authors | 3.3 | 38 |
| 122 | Joanne Fluke | 3.3 | 19 |
| 123 | Danielle Steel | 3.3 | 39 |
| 124 | Stuart Woods | 3.2 | 49 |
| 125 | Anna Katharine Green | 3.2 | 13 |
| 126 | Robert T. Kiyosaki | 3.1 | 10 |
Robert T. Kiyosaki closes the ranked set at 3.1 across ten reviews. Various Authors, at 3.3 across thirty-eight, needs a different reading: it is a collective credit, bringing different writers together under one label rather than describing one person's work.
These rows also help separate coverage from score. James Patterson has seventy reviews averaging 3.3; Maas has forty-five averaging 4.2. Here, more coverage doesn't come with a higher average. For either author, the individual audiobook review is the place to look for what went into the score.
The genres behind the top ten
Science Fiction & Fantasy accounts for 20% of the genre labels attached to the top ten authors' reviewed audiobooks, compared with 6.6% across all reviews. Fantasy accounts for 19%, compared with 4%. Fiction & Literature sits slightly below its site-wide share: 13% versus 14.6%.
These percentages count genre labels, not books or listeners, and leave out the catch-all label Other. One audiobook can carry several labels, including both Science Fiction & Fantasy and Fantasy. The comparison shows those labels taking a larger share here than across the collection; it doesn't show that either genre makes an audiobook better.
Before your next credit
Use the tables to find a name, then open the author's profile and look at the books behind the average. The count tells you how much we've covered; the individual reviews tell you about the recordings you're actually choosing between.
Then sample the edition you're considering. An author average combines different books and voices; your next listen will be one particular pairing of the two.
Abercrombie leads the eligible table on its smallest possible sample. Jordan sits outside it with a higher displayed average. Both are worth a look—the ten-review rule organizes the ranking, not your listening list.
