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Audiobook sales are the fastest-growing sector of publishing by far.
But first, a little background.
Then came smart devices, which all but killed the CD, and then came streaming.
But Audible was the bigger mistake.
We chose not to be in the fastest-growing category.
Thats a bad business decision.
But the real game-changer was Audibles ACX platform, launched in 2011 to help authors produce audiobooks independently.
Now all the major publishers have their own audio divisions, and areexperimentingwith audio-only and theater pieces too.
So Audible which is also a retailer of all audiobooks is looking for the next competitive advantage.
Audiobooks accounted for about 5 percent of last years trade publishing revenues.
But theyre all thinking market share.
(Fiction makes up 70 percent of audio sales, with genres predominating.)
(And before Amazon opened bookstores of its own.)
But now e-book sales are falling, while growth is slow in print.
Will audiobooks follow the same trajectory?
We dont see any signs of it slowing down.
