Readers, Listen Up: Amazon Is Shaking up the Audiobook Market

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From The Wall Street Journal:

When Olympic snowboarder Shaun White’s memoir lands later this year, readers will have to wait. That is because his book will be released as an audiobook a month before the hardcover and e-book editions.

The force behind this unorthodox rollout is Audible, Amazon.com Inc.’s audiobook subscription service. Audible paid for the lion’s share of the memoir to gain rights to the audio version, which will be published by its in-house studio. Audible said it would be the first time one of its audiobooks precedes a print book in coordination with another publisher.

With the help of its deep-pocketed owner, Audible is trying to extend its dominance in a fast-growing corner of the book business. It already accounts for about 41% of U.S. audiobook unit sales, according to researcher Codex Group LLC. Audible said Mr. White’s book is a blueprint for the sorts of deals it will pursue.

As a publisher of audiobooks rather than simply a retailer, Audible can develop exclusive audio content that differs from the print version, helping to lure subscribers and fend off rivals. In working directly with authors, Audible controls the content instead of traditional publishers, which normally own all rights to books and distribute audio versions through firms like Audible and Apple Inc.’s iTunes.

Audible is pitching literary agents on the benefits of using its services, saying authors will get a competitive bidding process that could mean more money in their pockets, and will get more attention and marketing for their audiobooks.

. . . .

In the first eight months of 2017, publishers’ revenue from audiobooks grew 20% from the same period a year earlier, while print books only rose 1.5% and e-books slipped 5.4%, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data reported by 1,200 publishers.

. . . .

Several major publishers, including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins Publishers, say they generally won’t buy a new book without audiobook rights, which may deter authors from signing deals with Audible.

“Authors are best served if they are published as a whole and marketed as a whole and in lockstep with our digital sales team and our print team,” said Ana Maria Allessi, publisher of HarperAudio, a unit of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp .

With Audible, the publisher typically gets a set fee for each audiobook download, part of which is passed on to the author. When Audible owns the audiobook rights, print publishers no longer get a cut. Typically, this means more money is passed on to the author.

“As e-book sales decline and hardcover sales flatten, publishers need audiobook rights to boost their bottom line,” said Robert Gottlieb, chairman of Trident Media Group LLC, a New York literary agency. “What’s different is that Audible is trying to get agents to sell them the audiobook rights before they go out with the other publishing rights.”

. . . .

Audible Studios produced a special edition of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” read by Claire Danes, with new material that extends beyond the end of the novel.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal and thanks to Suzie for the tip.

11 thoughts on “Readers, Listen Up: Amazon Is Shaking up the Audiobook Market”

  1. “Several major publishers, including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins Publishers, say they generally won’t buy a new book without audiobook rights, which may deter authors from signing deals with Audible. ”

    Or, it may deter the authors from going with the rights-grabbing BPHs and go with a less predatory tradpub or, gasp, go Indie for ebook and pbook.

    • I think this issue was exactly the reason Michael Sullivan broke it off with Del Rey Books. He originally made a point of selling audio first, to keep BPH’s from grabbing those rights. Del Rey picked him up, but he ended up dropping them because the overlords at Randy Penguin forbade any new contracts that didn’t include audio rights.

  2. This happened to me (as a reader) last year, when “Fight and Flight” by Scott Meyer came out on Audible months before the ebook. I waited for the ebook. It was not “in coordination with another publisher” because, apparently, Mr. Meyer is his own publisher.

    “Authors are best served if they are published as a whole and marketed as a whole and in lockstep with our digital sales team and our print team,” said Ana”

    (translation)

    “Authors are best milked if we get all the rights,” said Ana.

  3. It’ll be really funny if the BPH’s insistence on audiobook rights (which they admit to wanting only because they need more money that they don’t have to actually do any additional work for in order to survive because their current business model is just that bad) ends up resulting, not in fewer people taking Audible up on their deals but on more and more authors with great, marketable books deciding to go indie (and make audio deals separately), leaving even fewer great books for the BPHs. Their ever-increasing greed and desperation speeding their own downfall. It’s amazing to watch them not only continuing to dig their own grave, but to see how deep the hole’s gotten and respond by getting a bigger shovel.

    I’ve noticed more and more “Audible Originals” lately, where the paper/ebook has to wait a few months. I don’t mind it, but it would likely annoy me if I weren’t primarily an audio reader. It’s good to see Audible pushing back against the BPHs, but I’d like to see other companies pushing back against Audible’s dominion of the audiobook sphere. If the BPHs aren’t going to do it (and I think it’s pretty clear at this point that they aren’t), I hope some other companies do.

    • very astute wish, anon

      I’d like to see that too.

      Very iffy about signing with audible as they reduce their royalties on the amz platform. Not good for audio artists. Given the profound piracy of audible titles all over the place, including youtube, not sure audible ought to be only game in town re big pubs

      “but I’d like to see other companies pushing back against Audible’s dominion of the audiobook sphere. If the BPHs aren’t going to do it (and I think it’s pretty clear at this point that they aren’t), I hope some other companies do.”

  4. It would be interesting to see how many audiobook rights they’ve demanded (and got) vs how many of them they actually turn into audiobooks. (I’m betting it’s more to control the rights rather than actually use them – which would be bad for the writer …)

  5. And I’m wondering if Amazon/Audible isn’t coming up with new ideas because of Kobo’s new audiobook service and Draft2Digital’s partnering with Findaway Voices. Up until recently, Audible was pretty much the only game in town.

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