This is illegal right?

[Hirudov]

I don't think any serious or big creator will risk their channel taken down on copyright grounds. Most probably they have all the necessary rights and pay royalty fees to the publishers of the books if the videos are not made by the publishers themselves. It's easy to obtain rights, see for example this site - voices.com/blog/audio_publishing_rights/
On the other hand there are literally millions of books and fairy tales that are in the public domain, so you can start reading them right away without the fear of getting a copyright claim, but.... if you read a new print of a book, be sure to check if there isn't something altered to the original that may fall under copyright.

 

[Seansie]

I actually ran into this same question a few years back when I saw a bunch of little kids books were being read and the illustrations of the book shown. Seems a bit unfair for the author if they don't know this is going on. I was wondering if this also applied to people who do sort of an audio book style YouTube video series and read a chapter per video?

 

[Realm Unknown]

Yeah I think it gets a little iffy, since like video games, movies or shows, there are so many layers to this stuff behind the scenes; authors, editors, publishing companies or people who simply just run promotion for a specific author, its sometimes extremely specific one who has what control over the property. So, probably I would say, its like video games, where you can look into their own terms and conditions when it comes to handling commentary or gameplay of their properties. I'm sure different companies may handle things differently than others though too.