Audible has become a key presence within the #BookTok community on TikTok, where a proactive community management approach has driven engagement, traffic, and follower growth. Consistently centered on the pulse of culture, the brand continues to raise standards for how to engage with the right creators and celebrities engaging in the book world.
This strategy has generated authentic partnership opportunities. Naturally, when the popular rapper Yung Gravy joined in on the #BookTok world, Audible nurtured a relationship with the artist via TikTok comments.
Following overwhelming demand from audiences in light of this community management approach, Audible launched a partnership with Yung Gravy in March of 2025, producing an Original Bedtime Story. This was a collaboration designed by fans, for fans.
The goals for the collaboration were to drive consideration for Audible among Yung Gravy’s majority 18-24-year-old fan community; drive engagement on our social channels through original videos with the rapper to promote the new audiobook; and show #BookTok that Audible puts its money where its mouth is.
Yung Gravy (real name: Matthew Hauri) began posting videos on TikTok of him reading aloud from “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas, the fantasy romance series that had become a viral sensation for #BookTok and new readers alike. Yung Gravy’s public persona is marked for his sensuality (including a love for older women) and his deep voice, making him the perfect reader for smut books. Through these videos, he amassed a larger following on TikTok (7.4M followers) and became a mainstay of the book community of TikTok.
Audible was quick to engage with the rapper’s content through community management, earning tens of thousands of likes on comments. As the relationship between the brand and the rapper continued, there emerged a resounding sentiment from Yung Gravy’s followers: Could he please narrate something on Audible?
Several fans of the rapper even said they would subscribe to Audible just to listen to Yung Gravy.
Audible leaned into this audience request, taking the public messaging into private conversations with the rapper’s team to collaborate on an Audible Original project.
As Yung Gravy has a clear creative vision, Audible took the time to closely work with the artist on what audiobook we should use for the partnership. However, there was a key challenge of timing: If it took too long, fans of both Yung Gravy and Audible may no longer be interested in the content.
To expedite development, the teams landed on a public-domain title called “The Last Adventure of a Coquette," a cult classic 1847 short story by Thomas Mayne Reid. The audiobook was rolled out as part of Audible’s Sleep series, whose “purpose is to let you slowly fall into peaceful, restful sleep.” This aligned to the common sentiment among the rapper’s fans that they’d love for him to read them a bedtime story… or, just want to go to bed with him. As Audible wrote in response to one such TikTok comment, “You have to start somewhere.”
The promotion of the audiobook featured Yung Gravy half-clothed dancing around a glamorous home, ultimately ending up in a burgundy robe sprawled out on a velvet couch, with a microphone in front of him. “I’m ready, Audible,” he says. The main promotional video and other extensions were posted organically on TikTok and Instagram, with some TikTok videos posted as direct replies to commenters who were excited for the collaboration.
These videos differed greatly from other Audible promotional materials and those from competitors as they leaned into the rapper’s aesthetic and persona, rather than the brand’s. Audible enabled Yung Gravy to have his moment in the proverbial audiobook sun, offering fans a positive, authentic experience with the artist.
“There is something so soothing about reading aloud in an intimate setting that really elevates a story, and I'm excited to share this with all my people,” Yung Gravy told the media in a statement.
After reaching over 100,000 total likes on our comments engaging with Yung Gravy’s content, the launch of the official partnership led to engagement, reach, and traffic successes for Audible’s TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube handles throughout 2025.
Overall, content Audible created with Yung Gravy reached over 1.1M people across social channels and 465K video views. TikTok content drove the brand's top engagement for the launch month (March 2025) and accounted for nearly 40% of the month's Audible website traffic from the platform.
The partnership even earned media coverage from PR Week, Ads of the World, and Campaign Live.
Positive reviews of the Audible title said he “knocked it out of the park with an appropriate performance of such a scandalous work.” Naturally, another reviewer wrote, “He could read the dictionary to me and get 5 stars. Need more gravy options.”
Positive comments from fans of the rapper on Audible’s posts included:
