Amazon?s new Audible baby

Published by neil on February 4th, 2008

It’s all over the publishing pres - Amazon last week announced it would cough-up a not insignificant $300 million for commercial audiobook publisher Audible.

Not a particularly surprising move as Amazon have been clearly inching into the audio download market since adding mp3 downloads to its online operations. I wonder why it took them so long to get their hands on Audible as it is a much better match than the significantly more competitive music mp3 space.

Amazon’s odd little e-book reader the Kindle, will benefit from greater access to audio books, though at this time adding audio to the kindle requires a download via PC then upload again to the Kindle. I suspect we will see audiobook availability directly to the Kindle just as one can directly download e-books to the device right now. Audible also gives Amazon a direct relationship with Apple iTunes as Audible drives the content behind iTunes’ commercial audiobook store.

Audible has a nice, comfortable, traditional publishing underpinning the way it does business, which enables it to reflect the international and regional structure of the global publishing business. There are boundaries and controlled releasing of products across the world, with specific audible stores dedicated to particular countries. This fits perfectly with Amazon, of course, and provides an appropriate and familiar form of controlled distribution for the publishers.

Audible has been a great success in marketing, largely down to strategic associations such as the supply of content for iTunes. Much of Audible’s content is very poorly produced and from a producer’s viewpoint, excessive fees of up to 80% of the price point in royalties popping straight in to Audible’s pocket, could make this form of publishing a tough decision to make.

Will the new wave of new media driven independent audiobook producers be able to break the back of companies such as Audible? Perhaps not break the back, but certainly irritate their preconceptions of how the market wants to consume a product and become an increasing thorn in their side with authors discovering the online world provides them the direct power to maintain complete control and ownership of their product and still reach a global audience.