Audiobooks are the fastest growing segment in publishing and everyone within the industry is very bullish about the future of the format.  There are a number of new start-ups that are making waves and retailers are beginning to release that audiobooks are worth investing in.

The global audiobook industry is currently evaluated at 2.8 billion dollars and this is primarily due to the sheer amount of new titles that were produced in 2015. 43,000 new audiobooks were released this year, which is a slight increase from the 36,000 that came out in 2014 and a far cry from the 20,000 that were issued in 2013.

According to a recent report by the American Association of publishers downloaded audio had the highest growth in the first eight months of 2015. The number of audiobooks sold  increased 43.3% in August, compared to August 2014. This brings the year-to-date growth for this format to 37.8%, compared to the same timeframe in 2014.

Since the industry is generating so much revenue many companies that specialize in statistics are beginning to pay attention. For the first time audiobook and audiobook subscription services are being tracked by Nielsen StatShot.  20 publishers proclaimed that the subscription model for audiobooks are actually proving to be more lucrative than e-Books. Approximately 3.88 million audiobooks were downloaded in 2015 compared to the 2.47 million eBooks that were read.

New Digital Distribution Models

Publishers are willing to experiment with different models for audiobook distribution because they don’t abide by the same agency model that applies to e-books. Companies like Blackstone Audio, Gildan Media, Hachette Audio, HarperAudio, and Naxos Audiobooks have all committed themselves to audiobook subscription services and bundling.

Scholastic is one company that has been at the forefront of embracing alternative distribution methods and are willing to take risks. The company currently has over 400 audiobook titles, which is an overall increase by 32% over 2014. One of the big reasons why their catalog has grown is because production costs have decreased by over 50% since 2009.The audio editions that have proven to be the most popular in 2015 were movie driven titles such as the Hunger Games and Goosebumps series.

Linda Lee, VP, Publisher Scholastic Audio told me that "The traditional audio customer will find your titles wherever you offer them, however, many of these non-traditional distribution models are targeted to the non-traditional audio user and/or customers who have never listened to an audiobook before.  The hope is that through a subscription or bundling model, a non-audio user will be enticed to try and audio and become a convert.  Additionally, these types of models offer the chance to ‘sample’ your product – I.e. Offering the first few titles in a series – hoping to hook the customer, who will then go to a more traditional full price model to find subsequent titles in the series once they are hooked. "

The Audiobook Subscription model

It is hard to have a conversation about companies involved in the unlimited audiobook space and not talk about Amazon. Their Kindle Unlimited platform features over 2,500 audiobooks, which is fairly paltry compared to their competition, but they have made it work.

Kindle Unlimited has only been available for a full year, but the company already commands the largest market share. A survey report from Peter Hildick-Smith's Codex Group confirmed they have more subscribers than any other company.

The report also showed that Amazon's subscriber base grew by 10% between November 2014 and April 2015, while the customer base of its smaller competitors fell by an average of 30% over the same period.

Scribd originally launched as a document sharing service almost a decade ago and was one of the first companies that got into the unlimited e-book subscription space. In 2014 the company got bullish about audiobooks and they ironed out ...