One of the elements facing audiobooks is who owns the rights. Many books and ebooks often become free after a certain number of years. Publishers often sell the rights to books to other companies once they have monetized it to the best of their abilities or if they face bankruptcy. “I thought this was a no-risk business: to use unused audio rights that were just sitting in filing cabinets. When you have content rights they should be used.”
Don mentioned that the success of Audible was fully reliant on piracy. He mentioned that “Piracy helped Audible take off because it taught everyone how to download!”
Currently, Audible rolled out new marketing tools and author services, allowing authors to embed samples of their works on their websites and blogs. They also added social media functionality to promote your works on Facebook. The company is giving $1 for every book sold, in addition to their normal service of helping to encourage indie authors to convert their books to an audio format.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
