Programs

Throughout the year Washington Publishers (WP) sponsors about half a dozen evening programs, plus occasional brown-bag lunch discussions and tours. WP also holds a holiday party and book gift exchange in December and a ceremony and reception to announce and honor winners of each year’s Book Design & Effectiveness Awards.

Program Resources

Audiobook Know-how
November 1, 2017
East City Bookshop
Presented by Robin Sullivan

Slides: .PDF and .PPTX

Notes:

• 1997 is the year that Audible launched and the audiobook market started changing.
• What’s happening in the audiobook market now mirrors the consolidation that the traditional print publishing industry has experienced.
• Audio readers consume 40% more content than print readers.
• If you are selling the audio rights to your content, you need to be careful. Many audiobooks are produced as both abridged and unabridged. Be sure that if you sell the rights, that your contract includes the right to review any abridgments to your content.
• Recorded Books dominates the library market for audiobooks. But 98% of audiobook sales are through Audible. It might seem like a monopoly, Audible was the first on the scene to really develop the technology and build out their retail system.
• Self-publishing is available for audiobooks. There are several services (including ACX) that pair up authors with narrators.
• Audiobook rights values have skyrocketed over the last five years. Traditional publishers are scrambling for audio rights because they’re very lucrative.
• It’s impossible to predict how this will play out. Ebooks buoyed the industry around 2010 and that market experienced rapid growth. But now that ebook sales have leveled off, audiobooks are where the growth is. Will that growth continue? Will some other type of tech come along to rival audio in the publishing space?