It’s over, tape worms. Audio Renaissance published its last cassette this year: Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen. Random House Audio reports a format breakdown of 85% CDs and 15% digital downloads, with tape sales negligible. Retailers don’t sell cassettes, duplicators don’t duplicate them, and publishers don’t produce them anymore. Audible.com, often considered the benchmark of the digital spoken word industry, continues to see major growth, with annual revenue of $82 million in 2006 up from $64 million in ’05 and $34 million in ’04. It took over ten years for consumers to make the switch from tape to CD, but it looks like the shift to digital won’t be glacial. “In the next five years, downloads will take over,” said Madeline McIntosh, SVP and publisher of the Random House Audio Group. “Initial digital growth came from new consumers who discovered audiobooks on the web. Now, CD consumers are switching to digital.” Indeed, digitizing miles of cassettes and CDs is no longer the seemingly insurmountable task facing audiobook publishers. Instead, they’re having to re-frame the audiobook as “downloadable content,” insinuate it into the digital mainstream, and hopefully attract some of the 600 million MP3 player owners worldwide. A tall order.
“We Don’t Do 99¢ Downloads. That’s Music.”
Digital spoken word audio borrows technology and a marketplace from its cousin, the music industry, but like all hand-me-downs, the fit isn’t perfect. “The biggest challenge is that consumers don’t understand how much it costs to make a master recording of an audiobook,” said Ana Maria Allessi, publisher of HarperMedia. “The 99¢ song creates a tough expectation.” Unlike music whose value can be extracted over and over again, audiobooks deliver it all upfront in a single, longer listen, making it virtually impossible to chunk and monetize fiction, the most popular audiobook category. “The music industry is a good place to watch for trends that might relate to us,” said McIntosh of RH Audio, “but music and audiobooks have totally different manufacturing economies.” With the near ubiquity of free podcasts and the consumer’s resulting unwillingness to pay for the spoken word, audiobook publishers either have to fit the mold or break it. In certain ways, they’re doing both.
To fit in, publishers release their own newsy podcasts for free on iTunes and elsewhere. Audio Renaissance has “Backstories: Tales from Behind the Mike,” 16 to 17 minute segments about the audiobook making process. Penguin’s podcasts focus on interviews, news, and excerpts that typically run between eight and 20 minutes bimonthly in an “enhanced format” for iTunes. RH’s are shorter book excerpts, usually between five and ten minutes. At the iTunes store, however, audiobook podcasts don’t exactly get face out treatment. In fact, it’s almost impossible to find one without scrolling through pages and pages of podcasts or inputting “the Penguin Podcast” into the search box.
If the newsy podcasts don’t snag new consumers, other shorter spoken word content could. HarperCollins recently partnered with iAmplify.com to get audio content in the hands of interested parties, whether they’re audiobook listeners or not. At iAmplify, customers browse both audio and video digital content across a gamut of categories that range from health/fitness to gaming/sports to personal growth. With a variety of subscriptions and “bundled” options, the customer can download, for example, a free ten minute guided yoga workout from a famous instructor and if s/he likes it, can then purchase a monthly subscription or a package of downloadable guides. iAmplify helped create the Digital Media Café on Harper’s site, and Harper supplies them with content.
“We’re going beyond the book, pushing content to the edge,” said Murray Hidary, co-founder of iAmplify. “These products are an experience that complements what’s written. We find categories where we can charge $100 or more. We don’t do 99¢ downloads. That’s music.” Hidary’s enthusiasm was greeted with skepticism by some at the Audio Publisher Association Conference last month where he spoke on the “Channel Panel.” The iAmplify ethos of driving up prices for more valuable bundles of digital content seems counterintuitive to publishers under pressure to keep price points down à la iTunes.
Nevertheless, several “major publishers” are joining the iAmplify roster this fall, according to Hidary who wouldn’t disclose specifics. Random House Audio is already on board with twelve hour-long Louis L’Amour stories ($7.50 each or bundled for $49.95) and has repackaged its popular Don’t Know Much About History into 52 weekly downloads for $19.95. The unabridged audiobook sells for $27.97 on Audible. “We’re just starting with iAmplify,” said McIntosh. “What’s interesting about them is they package content and then go after that market aggressively.” Once iAmplify has developed a subscription service or package around an author, it pursues already established websites that work in the same category. Its proprietary inSite software, essentially a flash player that can be embedded on any website by copying and pasting a few lines of code, plays a sample of the content and then leads the potential consumer to buy it at the site or back at iAmplify.
While Audio Renaissance has yet to join iAmplify or start a subscription program of its own, AR’s publisher Mary Beth Roche reports an active and optimistic attitude toward chunked digital content, even finding a way to bend an audiobook into the tough 99¢ format. It’s released ten podcasts from This I Believe, a book of essays from the eponymous weekly NPR broadcast, for 99¢ on iTunes. The unabridged version that includes 80 essays and lasts almost six hours goes for $18.95. “Podcasting is broadening the definition of what an audiobook is,” she said. “It opens possibilities for serialization as in Dickens’ day.”
Who Stole Moby Dick?
Though audiobook publishers are finding creative ways to chunk the unchunkable and beat pricing pressure, other digital worries continue to linger in the industry. Some doubt that the MP3 itself is the most appropriate file for spoken word content which, coupled with the perceived amateur podcast production style, could change the high-quality reputation of audiobooks and turn off longtime listeners accustomed to pristine recordings. “Podcasts present an inexpensive way to join the market,” commented Michele Cobb, president of the Audio Publishers Association, “but we have to make sure standards are upheld.”
Much like in the music industry, the DRM debate persists with audiobooks. Proponents fear that going DRM-free will drive paying audiobook customers to the library where unlimited borrowers could theoretically “check out” unlimited digital downloads of the same book. Currently, libraries offering downloads lend a limited number of digital “copies” that can only be accessed by one person at a time thanks to DRM. Piracy concerns many, especially those who watch the digital music industry as an estimated 90% of tracks are downloaded illegally. “There would be lots of piracy without DRM,” said Beth Anderson of Audible. “Historically, there was never a way to download music legally. There was just Napster. Audiobook customers have always had a legal way to download content.” Attracting and, at the same time, re-training the younger, more digitally savvy demographic presents one of the greatest challenges to the industry. No one has a solution yet.
But others think that for once the audiobook industry might be in a more advantageous position than its music counterpart. “Audiobook files are much larger which makes file-sharing difficult,” said McIntosh. “Also, since the demo-graphic tends to be older and more affluent, audiobook listeners put a premium on time rather than money, so they’re more likely to just buy an audiobook rather than spend the time figuring out how to steal one. On the whole, digital audio-book theft is a small factor. Even in the last six months, people in the industry seem to be more open to going DRM-free.”
The large-file argument, however, doesn’t convince everyone. “A lot of the top selling audio-books, the biggest revenue generators for publishers, are shorter files like The Secret and David Sedaris titles,” commented Anderson. “No one’s looking to steal an unabridged recording of Moby Dick.”
iPod on Wheels
Indeed, digital technology and the debate around it change from month to month, developing at an unquestionably faster pace than the infrastructure that supports it. Since the commute is the precious listening hour for the majority of audiobook enthusiasts (approximately 53% in the last APA poll) and MP3 players have reached critical mass, or 15-20% U.S. household penetration, MP3 car integration becomes a critical issue. In fact, there’s a website devoted entirely to listening and driving, tunevroom.com, and companies such as Griffin Technology sell all manner of iPod auto-related accessories, including TuneFlex, a charger that anchors the iPod in a sturdy holder and plugs into the 12 Volt accessory outlet. If listeners want to hear a digital audiobook, they have to deal with cigarette lighters, FM-Modulators, cassette adapters, and fumbling with a device while driving.
However, car manu-facturers are responding. Already, most new car models come with an auxiliary input jack for cell phones, PDAs, and music players. As more consumers demand more hook-ups, auto manufacturers realize the wide-mouthed CD player takes up too much room on the console. By 2012, the standard CD player could disappear completely according to a VP of Siemens at the Ward’s Auto Interiors Show this June as reported by the Detroit News. According to a survey released by Harris Interactive last year, 65% of adult vehicle owners who have an MP3/iPod player use an adapter to listen while driving. When it comes to buying a new car, 52% of them said they’re extremely or very likely to consider purchasing MP3/ iPod Audio System Inter-face technology. Steve Jobs even commented on MP3 car integration at a press event last September, saying that in the coming year 70% of all cars sold in the U.S. would offer iPod inte-gration, up from 40% nine months earlier.
Despite the myriad issues and fluctuating sentiments of the digital spoken word industry, growth remains the constant. Results of the 2007 Audio Publishers Association sales and consumer surveys will be released shortly and with the recent formation of the Association for Downloadable Media (downloadablemedia.org), solutions, or at least a more structured debate, are on the way. “Information is not going to be consumed in one way anymore. People are willing to cross formats according to their needs more and more,”said Harper’s Allessi. “During the summer and around Thanksgiving, people come to my office asking for audiobooks because of the long car trips coming up. Soon, people will have a hardcover on the bedside table and the same title as an e-book to read on the Sony Reader during their commute.”
