Sleek, Digital Audio Players
Could Be ‘Cable TV for Books’
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 Norah 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 Jerry 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.
