What's so great about Audio?

Audio is an increasingly important, and high quality, part of our world not only as members of the publishing industry but as today’s consumers.

 Education in the field of audio is better, storage for it on our devices is better, technology to create high quality content is better and from books to Bose, from Audible to Alexa, audio is in the spotlight.

 Of course, the ability to listen to books on-the-go is appealing to today’s reader who now manages their entire life on their smartphone and likes to multi-task. But with more storage for audio books and podcasts on the phone and relatively cheap prices, you don’t have to be an identified ‘reader’ or literature-connoisseur to have a library on your device. It’s very easy to have a vast collection without stepping foot into a perhaps otherwise intimidating bookshop and without great knowledge of what authors you like, the technology will let you know.

 For publishers, this means that we’re reaching new territory, new audiences and new customers. We’re opening the doors to people who may find reading a printed book challenging or who previously have shown little interest. We need to listen to them and understand what they, along with our existing readers, want to hear. We need to consider the voices we use in production just as much as the marketing strategy and if we’re going down the route of using a high profile narrator, to consider which one will engage well with this audience.

 Audio books are often expensive to produce and can be cheap to buy. There are smaller, regional, production studios that can be a less costly option for the production but getting the pricing model right remains key. A subscription model is often preferred, giving a more stable income and regular touch points with the customer as they receive their free audio book per month, for example. However, the model goes way beyond the audio book itself. The book or podcast can be fantastic leverage and cross-sell to other products and live events. Just as a band might use their album to sell the tour, a comedian might use their podcast to sell a tour, a self-help author might use an audio book to sell coaching and courses. Interestingly non-fiction and particularly self-help are doing very well in audio.

Publishing is born out of a tradition of storytelling which is, by nature, all about sound. As people, we’ve arguably always relied more on sound than sight for survival and are naturally tuned in to what we hear. This relatively recent trend towards audio seems to be a perfect example of technology facilitating something that we as humans and readers want and it being ready for how we want it.