Audiobook News

Audible has just added 100,000 podcasts to its network and they are all available for free. These podcasts are already available on other streaming platforms, but it’s good news for people who are already invested in the Audible ecosystem.  Included in the new lineup are top podcasts like “Pod Save America,” “You’re Wrong About,” “This American Life,” “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” and “FiveThirtyEight Politics.” The podcasts are available in the Audible app for Android and iOS and there is also a new podcast landing page.

The Australian audiobook market is emerging and there is room for growth from new and established players. I think in order for it to go to the next level, Austrian publishers and self-published authors have to focus on converting their backlist and front-list to audio editions. The overall revenue pales in comparison to the United States, which generated $1.31 billion in revenue in 2019, a 15.9% increase over 2018. In the five-year period from 2015-2019, downloaded audio grew a total of 143.8%.

Audible is the leading audiobook company and they abide by the subscription model, where every month you are a paid member, they give you 1 credit, which you can redeem. Some plans are more expensive and give more credits per month. Audible has just opened up a Spanish branch and they are doing something different, instead of credits, they are offering a true unlimited model.

Audible Escape is a standalone subscription package for Romance audiobooks. The program…

Famed science fiction writer Cory Doctorow has been publishing books for over a decade, and his new title is going to be release next month, called Attack Surface, but he won’t be selling it on Audible. Instead, Doctorow is selling the recorded version of the book through a Kickstarter campaign, and it will also be available through non-Amazon vendors like Google’s Play store and libro.fm. This is because all Audible audiobooks have DRM, there is no way for authors to shut it off.

RBMedia has been in the news lately, primarily due to them selling their library unit to Overdrive and the company is now just selling audiobooks directly to users through their network of retailers, such as Audible and Apple Books. Today, RBMedia has announced they signed a business deal with Mainframe, to produce and distribute four new audiobooks from renowned and award-winning author Brandon Sanderson.

Dinlebi is a new audiobook provider in Turkey and content is delivered via their own apps for Android and iOS. They have thousands of audiobooks from over 20 leading publishing houses in Turkey and are offering an attractive business model that would generate them more revenue

Audible has just launched a new subscription tier called Audible Plus. It will provide subscribers access to 68,000 hours of content from more than 11,000 original productions, audiobooks, and podcasts. The new offering will be available for $7.95 per month. They are also are changing their Audible Gold program and are now calling it Audible Premium Plus, which costs $14.95 per month.

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline is going to be coming out at the end of November of this year. This is the sequel to Ready Player One that basically lived on various bestseller lists for years. Wil Wheaton narrated the original audiobook and he has just confirmed the narration of Ready Player Two.

Kids are going to go back to school soon. Some schools are opening their doors to students, while others are going to be doing distance learning. English classes tend to have classic books in their curriculum and Penguin Random House has developed audiobook study guides for titles such as Studying Dracula, Studying The Great Gatsby, Studying Wuthering Heights, and Studying Tess of the D’Urbervilles. They contain unabridged audio narration of the novels and supplementary material written by teachers. The material features in-depth analysis of characters, themes, structure and form, in addition to chapter summaries and useful quotations.

Don Katz founded Audible in 1995 and turned it from a scrappy startup to the biggest audiobook retailer in the world. He sold the business to Amazon in 2008 for $300 million and remained CEO until January 2020. Bob Carrigan took the reigns, but he had big shoes to fill. One of his first hires was Brad Schwartz, who became chief content officer and who would oversee Audibles big push into original audio series, which are more like podcasts or old radio dramas than books. The company has already spent millions of dollars to produce shows with the likes of civil-rights activist Colin Kaepernick, rock star St. Vincent, and actors Riz Ahmed and Christian Slater. In less than a month on the job, Schwartz was fired. According to Bloomberg News, Audible employees found a sexual harassment lawsuit filed in February 2018 against Pop Media Group, Lionsgate and CBS by one of Pop TV’s sales VPs. Schwartz was not listed as a defendant but was included in a series of alleged incidents of misconduct experienced by the plaintiff at the network. The lawsuit accused Schwartz of demeaning a female sales executive when she objected to a press release sent by the network that included the headline “Pop Puts Out.” He was also accused of yelling out, “I may or may not have slept with her in college!” in reference to a keynote speaker at a national women’s empowerment conference.

George Romero wrote a novel before he died in 2017 and it…

Andy Serkis was the voice of Gollum in all of the Lord…

Audible has signed a huge deal with bestselling author James Patterson for…

Digital audiobooks continue to be the fastest growing segment in publishing.  Not…