iPod
Nation
Sleek, Digital
Audio Players
Could Be 'Cable TV for Books'
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (APRIL 2004)
The
book-on-tape is a dying breed. But another analog-era
ending is no tear-jerker for the audiobook industry,
according to publishers and retailers who are witnessing
an array of new audio formats such as MP3 CDs, digital
downloads, and even satellite radio feeds that are swiftly
supplanting the hoary cassette format — and bringing
new readers in the bargain. Streaming Al Franken’s
Best-Spoken-Word-Grammy-winning Lies, and the
Lying Liars Who Tell Them (HighBridge Audio)
to their iPods with one click, while downloading
the new Nora Jones album with another, the headphone-clad
masses are helping propel the audiobook’s popularity
forward at a rate that puts the paperback or hardcover
to shame. While sales of adult hardcovers slid 2.4%
in 2003, net sales of audiobooks rose more than 12%,
according to the Audio Publishers Association
— a growth rate that has held steady since 1997.
Indeed,
while Apple’s sleek devices and other portable
audio players take the music market by storm, audio
publishers are hoping to lure a vast new audio-rabid
demographic on over to preview, say, The Da Vinci
Code (it’s iTunes’ #2 spoken audio title, after
an improv comedy performance featuring Seinfeld)
and smack the “Download This” button. iPods, which boast
“robust support for spoken word content” and can hold
up to 800 audiobooks, now have access to more than 5,000
audio titles via the company’s iTunes site. Moreover,
the installed base of iPods and other digital audio
devices is exploding. More than 3.8 million MP3 players
were shipped to dealers in 2003, jumping 121% compared
to 2002, according to the Consumer Electronic Association,
and that number is expected to soar again in 2004 to
more than 5.1 million units. Meanwhile, more than 2
million iPods alone have hit the stores and upwards
of 50,000 have sold since its introduction in October
2003, according to an Apple spokeswoman. It’s no wonder
Random House’s Richard Sarnoff recently
dubbed the iPod “cable TV for books.”
“Our
customers tell us they can consume three books a month
now via Audible.com, where they used to struggle to
read three books a year,” explains Donald Katz,
CEO of online audiobook provider Audible, where
half of the customers have never tried an audiobook
before. Audible’s partners, which include many big houses
as well as periodicals like the Wall Street Journal,
offer content in exchange for a share of the revenue
from sales via Audible’s download site. Audible reported
that its 2003 sales jumped 55.6% to $19.3 million, with
content sales up 68.2% to $18.5 million. It finished
the year with 311,000 customers, over 100 public library
clients, and many deals with MP3 player vendors to ensure
plenty of Audible-friendly devices. “And as many of
our publishing partners know, the quality and quantity
of great audiobooks is clearly part of the story,” adds
Katz. “The more compelling our collection of literate
listening, the easier it is to create habitual life-long
purchasers of digital audio.”
Not
Just for Dyslexia Anymore
Indeed,
the ample growth of the audiobook market should be cause
for joy — and not charges of trade-book-market cannibalization
— among traditional publishers, emphasizes Mary Beth
Roche, APA President and Publisher of Audio Renaissance.
“The big thing that we need to stress to our publishers
is that the audiobook consumer is the most avid book
reader,” Roche says. “Some publishers totally get it,
but many still think, ‘Oh, audiobooks are great for
the elderly or people with dyslexia.’ And they are.
But that’s not the core business. As more and more consumers
test the format, they find it’s a fabulous way to stay
on top of all the books they want to read but don’t
have time to read.” Granted, the audiobook demographic
still has a way to go before it hits the Justin Timberlake
sweet spot. The average audiobook listener remains middle-aged
to older, well educated, and relatively affluent. According
to APA stats, audiobook listeners are 76% female, with
an average age of 45 (the average male is 47). And,
more telling than any other trait, the average listener
does so while driving. New York and Northeast New Jersey
drivers spend an interminable 7 more hours stuck in
traffic than they did in 1996, according to the Texas
Transportation Institute, while overall each American
spends 25 minutes each way commuting to work.
It
doesn’t take a highway surveyor to see that as the auto
industry loads new models with CD players instead of
tape decks, all that grid-lock is money in the digital-audio
bank. Some publishers report that the sale of CDs has
shifted into overdrive, and many say it’s only a matter
of time before cassettes go the way of the Edsel. Ana
Maria Allessi, associate publisher of Harper
Audio and Harper Childrens Audio, said her mass
merchant clients are “very closely to solely” asking
for CDs now. “If you asked me this literally three months
ago, I would have said cassettes were a little stronger,”
she stressed. “The advent of MP3 players is going to
have a very positive effect as well. Whether you actually
listen to it or not on an MP3 player, the awareness
of spoken word will increase. A lot of people are going
to go to MP3 for music first, and spoken word is next.”
Incidentally, Allessi notes that the independent bookseller
must not get lost in the streaming audio mix. “We really
want to keep the bookstore model for this,” she said.
Though Harper has an arrangement with Audible.com for
downloads of its titles, Allessi wants to work with
the bigger independent booksellers, such as Powell’s,
so they can offer downloads as well. Though it’s hard
to predict the future, she said, “much further out”
we may see in-store download kiosks, enabling customers
to leave the store with their iPods full of books, much
as film developers adopted self-help digital photo kiosks
with the shift to digital photography.
Audio
execs aren’t expecting to see the final nail in the
coffin of old-school analog any time soon, however glorious
the future may be. “We keep expecting cassettes to die,”
says Maja Thomas, VP of Time Warner AudioBooks
and VP of the APA. “But we have an older demographic
as a core of our business, and they’re holding on to
their cassette players. As long as the consumer wants
them, we’re going to keep making them.” The core cassette
market sometimes means one title in four formats — abridged
and unabridged on both cassette and CD — especially
with popular authors such as James Patterson,
Thomas said. Notably, however, Time Warner’s David
Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall is currently the No.
3 best-selling spoken audio download on Apple’s iTunes
site.
Now
Stream This
But
the times they are a changin’, said Jim Brannigan,
President of BBC Audiobooks America, which primarily
buys the audio rights from publishers for sales and
distribution to libraries. He said he is seeing a “pretty
rapid migration” to CD and MP3 CDs. While the ratio
of cassette to CD sales is still about 1-to-1 on new
releases from the company, the high-compression MP3
format could eventually mean major cost savings for
the consumer. Whereas a library-packaged audiobook on
eight cassettes would cost about $80, that same book
on 10 regular CDs would be $94.95; however, the book
could fit on a single MP3 CD and only set the library
back $29.95. BBC reported a 20% to 25% increase in sales
in 2003. “We aggressively compete for rights. We’re
out there bidding for exclusive library rights and exploiting
them,” Brannigan added, naming Janet Evanovich
as one of his prided titles. Within its deals, the publisher
retains the rights for retail. As for the library market,
Brannigan thinks MP3 CDs are an even better answer than
downloads. Fewer disks means less packaging and less
room for destruction. Also, “it fits into their traditional
distribution model, which is loan and return — it’s
not download and destroy,” he pointed out.
Nonetheless,
Daniel Walters, chair of the Public Library
Association’s Technology In Libraries Committee
and the Executive Director of the Las Vegas–Clark County
Library District, said it’s only a matter of time —
say, 18 to 24 months — before most libraries offer digital
downloads of books. Because libraries don’t have budgets
to experiment with new formats, the majority are waiting
for a proven format and loan method before they jump
on board. “Right now [ebooks and digital audiobooks]
are just a blip,” he said. “But once there’s a good
model in place, people will move very quickly to it.”
In terms of the mix in his district, Walters said about
75% of the current audiobook budget is spent on CDs
and 25% on cassettes, but he expects cassettes to be
nearly nil in a year.
It
seems only a matter of time before an audiobook will
await you at every turn. The APA’s Roche said publishers
are in constant negotiations with airlines and car rental
companies to offer stories for the weary traveler. But,
all deals are pending, with the exception of the “strictly
promotional” Listening Library (a Random House imprint)
offerings on Continental. For the early adopters among
us, there’s this new nationwide audiobook venue: the
burgeoning satellite radio biz, which includes competitors
Sirius and XM Satellite Radio. The latter
boasts 1.5 million subscribers and has a 24-hour channel
devoted to audiobooks and contemporary radio dramas.
Called Sonic Theater and located at 163 on an
XM tuner (it’s all explained at www.xmradio.com),
the channel includes everything from The Odyssey
to Sherlock Holmes to The Best Man by
Gore Vidal — and, rest assured, plenty of Louis
L’Amour.
©2004
Publishing Trends
