As audio has boomed in recent years, the ways a print title makes it to the audio format have changed. Whereas in the past, audio-only publishers such as Bolinda were the ones that largely determined if a print title made it into the audio format or not, nowadays traditional print publishers are more likely to hang onto audio rights.<\/p>\n
\u2018About 2016, audio rights flipped from a right that publishers were not that invested in holding onto, to a deal-breaker right that they would not accept a deal without,\u2019 said Alex Adsett of Alex Adsett Literary. \u2018That\u2019s remained the case for the last few years, but as audio rights continue to rise in importance, publishers are now facing having to either increase their advances specifically with an allocation for audio rights, or risk an audio-only publisher counteroffering on these rights.\u2019<\/p>\n
This is about more than responding to competition. As well as wanting to ensure that audio income comes their way, publishers are wishing to meet consumer expectations and demand for the format. But audio isn\u2019t cheap, and publishers are still building the longer-term audiobook market insights already gained by Bolinda and other audiobook producers that have focused on the format for a lot longer, so it\u2019s challenging to determine when and how to invest in this growing medium.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, then, several local publishers have opted to produce some of their audiobooks in partnership with established audiobook publishers.<\/p>\n
Australian audiobooks and co-publishing arrangements<\/strong><\/p>\n Bolinda<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Dominant audio-only publisher Bolinda is behind an impressive list of local audiobooks. \u2018Bolinda has partnerships with a few of the big houses, and this for us is a testament to our capability as a producer of audiobooks and the channels we have built for the category over the last thirty years,\u2019 Bolinda founder Rebecca Herrmann told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/em>, which understands Pan Macmillan and HarperCollins are among the publishers to work with Bolinda in co-publishing arrangements.<\/p>\n Bolinda makes the audiobooks it produces in partnership with publishers available exclusively in libraries on CD (\u2018yes you read that right\u2019, Herrmann said) and in a digital format through Bolinda\u2019s BorrowBox app. Bolinda audio\u2014along with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) Audio, to which Bolinda has the exclusive licence\u2014are \u2018the largest audiobook producers and publishers in Australia\u2019, according to Herrmann, publishing \u2018over five hundred audiobooks per annum for the consumer market throughout the world\u2019.<\/p>\n Wavesound<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The local arm of RBmedia, Wavesound has\u00a0<\/i>for several years been the alternative audiobook-only publisher to Bolinda in the local market.\u00a0<\/i>Following the acquisition of Vision Australia\u2019s catalogue and after years of selling international content from sister company W F Howes in the UK directly into Australian libraries, Wavesound launched its Australian imprint in 2015. Wavesound has championed local writers including Jane Harper, Candice Fox, Christian White and Chris Hammer in audio. In 2019, it reported publishing 108 Australian audio titles per year, and now publishes over 156 Australian titles per year (alongside the wider company\u2019s 8000 international titles) into the retail market. (Wavesound also offers distribution into the library market through a partnership with Overdrive, as well as a non-exclusive arrangement which sees the company\u2019s titles also distributed across other vendors such as BorrowBox and Hoopla.)<\/p>\n In 2019, Allen & Unwin\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0an audio publishing partnership with Wavesound that would \u2018see the majority of Allen & Unwin titles produced as audiobooks\u2019. More recently, Wavesound announced in 2021 that it had entered a co-production partnership with Ultimo Press to produce \u2018at least 15 titles a year\u2019, selected from the publisher\u2019s list. \u2018Audio is a fast-growing segment of the book market and it\u2019s important we\u2019re able to provide our authors\u2019 work to readers in the format of their choice,\u2019 said Ultimo Press\u2019s then managing director James Kellow. Wavesound has also recently renewed an audio partnership with Affirm Press with the aim of producing the majority of the publisher\u2019s titles in audio.<\/p>\n Allen & Unwin rights and international sales manager Sandra Buol told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/em>\u00a0that A&U\u2019s aim when it went into partnership with Wavesound \u2018was to get as many A&U titles into audio as possible, both through the partnership and through traditional licensing\u2019, adding that beyond the partnership, A&U also continues to license titles to other audiobook publishers, such as Bolinda and Tantor, a US-based imprint owned by Wavesound\u2019s parent company RBMedia.<\/p>\n Of the Wavesound arrangement, Buol said: \u2018We initially co-published ten titles per year and have now increased to twenty a year.\u2019 Buol estimated that A&U can now find an audio solution for approximately 80% of the titles for which it has audiobook rights, \u2018bearing in mind that some of the ones we don\u2019t do an audiobook for are fully illustrated or otherwise unsuitable for audio\u2019.<\/p>\n Wavesound acquisitions manager Chiara Priorelli told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/em>: \u2018Our strong retail strategy and RBmedia\u2019s unique leverage in this space has made us the preferred audio partner for the Australian independents who continue to be such a force in Australian publishing. These partnerships and our relationships across all the other independents have been a huge part of our continued success, which in 2023 included publishing the recent Miles Franklin award-winner\u00a0Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens<\/em>\u00a0(Shankari Chandran, Ultimo Press), the audio blockbuster\u00a0Did I Ever Tell You This?<\/em>\u00a0(Sam Neill, Text) and winning the ABIA Audiobook of the Year Award with\u00a0The Whitewash<\/em>\u00a0(Siang Lu, UQP).\u2019<\/p>\n Increasing local output<\/strong><\/p>\n These partnerships and rights sales attest to the specialised skills and knowledge of local audiobook publishers, built up during the years before the wider public started listening in droves. They also attest to the costs of audiobook production, and the editorial judgement being brought to bear in deciding which books justify those costs. (A recurring tale told in local audiobook lore is the acquisition\u2014by Wavesound\u2019s Chiara Priorelli\u2014of audiobook rights to a then little-known book called\u00a0The Dry<\/em>. Priorelli acquired audio rights to not just\u00a0The Dry<\/em>\u00a0but also to two subsequent titles by the then-unknown Jane Harper. Few think such a coup would be likely in 2023, or at least not on the same terms.)<\/p>\n But whether through in-house production, development in partnership with an audio publisher, the sale of audio rights, or a combination of these approaches, publishers are increasing their audiobook output. At Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S), Anthea Bariamis was promoted to the newly created position of commissioning editor of audiobooks in 2020, as part of moves to increase S&S\u2019s output of local audio titles. \u2018Our audiobook list continues to grow year on year, alongside our title count,\u2019 said S&S managing director Dan Ruffino and Bariamis.<\/p>\n S&S is among the major publishers to produce its own audiobooks, retaining rights and outsourcing its audiobook recordings and post-production. Ruffino and Bariamis report that, when the publisher\u2019s audio list started in 2019, S&S Australia produced 14 audiobooks. \u2018In 2022, we produced thirty-one audiobooks, and in 2024, we are currently on track to produce thirty-five audiobooks\u2014our biggest year yet.\u2019<\/p>\n Ruffino and Bariamis believe that the skills required for audiobook production will, over time, be integrated into the standard editorial workflow. \u2018Absolutely\u2014audiobook production requires a different set of skills, and a different way of thinking when it comes to both editorial content and sound engineering. It is my hope that, as we continue to expand, we will be able to move more elements of the production in house, streamlining the workflow as our US colleagues have done.\u2019<\/p>\n Increased audiobook production by publishers (as well as recent co-publishing partnerships between book publishers and audiobook publishers) speaks to the mainstreaming of audiobooks and to publishers\u2019 efforts to respond by better integrating the format into their workflows. In the local market, given the high costs and relatively small audience (as well as the terms of any digital audio retailer), they don\u2019t always speak to profit.<\/p>\n Aotearoa New Zealand and the cost of making audiobooks<\/strong><\/p>\n A recent audio production and distribution guide produced for publishers in Aotearoa New Zealand (and distributed with a caveat that this is a fast-changing and somewhat opaque market) lays out the challenges a small market faces with the audio format.<\/p>\n The guide suggests a publisher must expect to sell a minimum of 1500 copies to (almost!) break even, or 3000 to make a profit, if an audiobook is produced in a studio. (An alternative, \u2018DIY\u2019 scenario, which assumes the narrator would perform free, suggests a small profit would eventuate from a more reasonable \u2018print run\u2019 of 500.) The guide states: \u2018It is clear from verbatim interviews for this report that New Zealand publishers of all sizes feel painfully unable to create and publish audiobooks in any meaningful numbers because of cost and resourcing restrictions.\u2019<\/p>\n The solution in Aotearoa NZ has been specific funding for an audiobook publishing seed program from the country\u2019s Ministry of Culture and Heritage. The Publishers Association of New Zealand\/Te Rau o T\u0101kupu (PANZ) has undertaken research into local publishers\u2019 needs and capabilities in audiobook production to produce and share the guide to audio production mentioned above. Penguin Random House New Zealand head of publishing Claire Murdoch said this was \u2018to make the best possible use of the funding [publishers] get to make the best audiobooks they can, and in turn make the project as sustainable as it can be and launch as many audiobooks as possible\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s a cool initiative that really will remove barriers and float a lot of audio boats for a diverse range of large and small NZ publishers and grow the number of audiobook listeners in NZ\u2014including the non-traditional readers we all know audio can reach,\u2019 Murdoch told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/em>. \u2018The base case for the PANZ funding was for one hundred new audiobooks in approximately eighteen months. Goodness knows NZ publishers and authors want and need this\u2014balancing the cost and scale with our small population has really been an obstacle for most of them.\u2019<\/p>\n In Aotearoa NZ, Penguin\u2019s audio list is growing, according to Murdoch, who said in 2023 that the company will publish approximately 12 audio titles across all genres. \u2018We have one dedicated audio producer and commissioning editor, the great and hardworking Grace Thomas, and we work flexibly out-of-house with a variety of professional studios, independent narrators and producers, and partner organisations to make our books\u2014depending on the needs of each author and each title.\u2019<\/p>\n Murdoch said that reliable data on the audiobook market in Aotearoa NZ was hampered by a factor that affects Australia too: platforms such as Amazon, Apple and Google protecting their data. But, in addition, Aotearoa New Zealand statistics were hampered by the fact these businesses treat the country as though it is part of Australia.<\/p>\n \u2018So while we can assume that, as in print and ebook, New Zealanders are ferocious consumers of books in all genres, who buy international and local books in great numbers per head of population, and are known to be early adopters of a lot of technology, we just can\u2019t measure that accurately,\u2019 said Murdoch. \u2018Anecdotally, we have every reason to believe the demand is strong and that New Zealanders are consuming audiobooks in percentages that compare to other developed English-language markets, where audio editions are available.\u2019<\/p>\n To read the rest of the article, visit<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and subscribe<\/a> to <\/em>Books+Publishing<\/a>,\u00a0Australia\u2019s number-one source of news about the book industry, keeping readers up to date with the latest book industry news, events, features, interviews, opinion, personnel changes, job advertisements and classifieds. <\/em>Books+Publishing is also the only source of pre-publication reviews of Australian and New Zealand books, publishing an average of 30 pre-publication reviews per month.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As audio has boomed in recent years, the ways a print title makes it to the audio format have changed. Whereas in the past, audio-only publishers such as Bolinda were the ones that largely determined if a print title made it into the audio format or not, nowadays traditional print publishers are more likely to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"category-newsletter"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3617"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3654,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions\/3654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}