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Audiobook Growth Is Going Global

Audiobook Growth Is Going Global

October 2024

Of Interest to the Information Community

More Details Here

Quoted From The Report

  • According to the most recent data, published in June 2024 by the Audio Publishers Association (APA), the audiobook market in the United States continues to grow steadily, with revenue growth of 9%, reaching $2 billion in 2023.
  • Deloitte’s Center for Technology, Media and Telecommunications Research Report6 indicates that 270 million people worldwide will listen to audiobooks in an average month in 2024— representing an increase in listenership of 15% year over year. As audiobooks increase in popularity, Deloitte also predicts that audiobooks will account for approximately six percent of total book sales worldwide, representing a 26% increase in sales year over year.
  • “Books have a high perceived value with a proven potential to reach a broader audience spending their time and money on it through audio. The biggest opportunity is to build on these factors and continue to create and sell books that the users love rather than diluting what we are doing by just pushing out audio of all sorts”  -- Quote contributed by Niklas Standin, CEO, BookBeat. 

Spotlight on Princeton University Press' Audiobook Offerings

Quote Regarding Princeton's Audiobook Work

It is now standard to issue audiobooks essentially unabridged â€“ although non-essential footnotes and appendices, as well as acknowledgements, bibliographies and indexes, are often dropped. Prior to recording, the team at Sound Understanding and similar companies go through the text in detail and propose minor cuts such as lengthy lists, complicated fractions it would be cumbersome to read aloud or sentences that make sense only in written form (for example, one about variant spellings). They decide where to include the kind of boxed material that is sometimes just plonked in the middle of a page in the hard copy, and they might invert parentheses for ease of listening.