More people don’t listen to audiobooks than reading today. But there was never “A time where books were for reading [as opposed to listening to]”

People have been listening to books for millennia. And before books they were listening to the things we now put in books. If you go back far enough more people did listen to books more than read them. And if we reach that point again, it won’t be some newfangled idea it would just be something we’ve done for thousands of years becoming very popular again.