Two reports on how many audiobooks are published. First, according to this report published in American Libraries, there’s been a hefty number of youth titles over the past year:
According to “Table 6 / Audiobook Average Per-Volume Prices, 2008-2011,” on pages 526-527, the 2011 number of children’s audiobook titles published is 968 and the 2011 number of young adult audiobook titles published is 960.
Compare that with the numbers for print title below, and you’ll see that nearly nearly twenty percent of YA books are sold in audiobook format! But the children’s numbers point out all too well that there’s a much smaller number of audiobook titles for younger listeners each year. Note to producers: there’s a HUGE need for short chapter book audios for intermediate readers!
According to “Table 1 / American Book Production, 2007-2011,” on page 515, the 2011 number of children’s titles published is 20,127 and the 2011 number of young adult titles published is 4,905.
For the complete picture, you can check out BookStats, featuring net unit and dollar sales for the full U.S. publishing industry from 2008 through 2011 here.
To get a handle on how Amazon (owner of the Audible download company and Brilliance Audio) has made inroads on capturing audiobook publishing through actor/producers royalty stipends and actual bounty payments to authors, read this enlightening interview with Jason Ojalvo, Amazon’s VP of Content Creation. Dave Courvoisier interviewed Ojalvo for his Voice Over Blog, focusing on the first year of Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange initiative. Here’s just one interesting snippet:
What other statistics can you share that show the growth and success of ACX?
Ojalvo: About 50 audiobooks go into production every week on ACX. And that number is continuing to grow. Many hundreds of titles are currently in production, and that number continues to swell every month.
And I’ll soon have numbers from the Audio Publishers Association on the growth of the industry as a whole. But one things clear: #JIAM2012 June is Audiobook Month is a great time to celebrate that listeners are consuming more audiobooks than ever, and the increasing production has only heightened the desire more more great titles!
Free webinar for fans & librarians Tuesday June 12 – perfect for #JIAM2012 June is Audiobook Month. I love that Booklist’s webinars are archived, so that those interested can view any of the past webinars here. And if you can’t take part in real time at 2pm Eastern on Tuesday, sign up here anyway – you’ll get an email with a link to the video of the archived session as soon as it’s available. Here’s the complete scoop:
Celebrate National Audiobook Month this June with Booklist! Representatives from AudioGO, Books on Tape/Random House, Dreamscape, Recorded Books, and Tantor Audio will discuss the latest audios and upcoming trends in this hour-long, free webinar. Don’t miss the opportunity to connect with audiobook experts and get a preview of summer and fall listening titles.
Make your opinions heard – sound off so that publishers will know what the buyers and consumers need and want from the audiobook producers! This first open forum on a current topic of interest in the audiobook community arose from a conversation with BBC Audiobook America’s Marketing Director Michele Cobb. We pondered the constraints that libraries are forced to operate under in these times of tight budgets, and what this means for publishers who provide library edition audiobooks. Will libraries forgo the heavy-duty packaging and free replacement of damaged CDs from a company that has a strong library sales force and instead purchase lower-cost trade editions? Is it possible that titles that aren’t mega-blockbusters won’t be cost-effective without the income from solid library edition sales, and that a deep backlist might dry up to a few big sellers? Read Michele’s comments below. You can sound off on the topic by taking the following survey, targeted toward those who purchase for schools & libraries – I’ll post the results soon. If there are any other publishers that would like to climb onto the Forum soapbox to see what readers think of your burning issue, email me using the contact info on the blog sidebar!
Library media collections have long seen fantastic response to and correspondingly fantastic circulation in their audiobook sections. Over the past few years, a lot has changed in the world of audiobooks – more non-publisher distributors have entered the marketplace, digital downloads have been added to library collections and, well, the economy hit a bump or two in the road (maybe you’ve heard that).
For audio only publishers who don’t have a direct pipeline of print books as source material, the new world order is creating some interesting challenges. The big costs for any audiobook’s creation lies in obtaining the right to record and then actually producing the recording. Those costs are constants, even if the title is available digitally only or there is no retail edition. Questions arise as we try to balance the rising costs and shrinking budgets with the addition of more vendors and more formats in the library marketplace:
-Will libraries continue to support low volume titles with a corresponding higher price point in the hard goods?
-Can publishers continue to support quality recordings across a wide and diverse range of titles?
-Does the sturdier packaging, free replacements and top of the line customer service offered by library edition publishers provide enough value to counteract the lower prices of retail versions?
-Are libraries narrowing the list of titles they are interested in carrying or interested in maintaining breadth of collection?
As we struggle for the answers to these questions and others, I can only say that as a listener, I certainly hope library edition audio continues to have a place in the market. So many of the titles I’ve enjoyed on many a day of commuting or longer travel are from new, emerging authors. Will libraries continue to act as a marvelous breeding ground for lesser known authors in many formats? I’m hopeful and curious to see what the future brings.
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