2020 Prediction Roundup

Forecasts range from fair (continuing upward trends for audiobooks) to stormy (the emergence of a challenger to Amazon’s dominance)

Unsurprisingly, just about every set of 2020 predictions touches on audio at least once, and most commentators are bullish on it. We also found a good number of wishful (sometimes realistic) predictions related to Amazon—mainly, that it will face some kind of large-scale pushback and/or that authors will better diversify their business to be less reliant on Amazon.

The audiobook industry will lead growth over the next one to five years
The head of a UK publisher, Dominic White, believes that voice tech (smart speakers) will be the next revolution, and audiobooks will be the direct beneficiary, especially given the inevitable improvement in voice-assisted discovery of books. Furthermore, because of AI text-to-speech capabilities, every book published will be made available as an audiobook.

Deloitte includes the rise of audiobooks and podcasting as one of its top predictions for 2020, writing, “Audiobooks and podcasts are outgrowing their ‘niche’ status to emerge as substantive markets in their own right.” The United States is currently the world’s largest audiobook market; second is China. They conclude by saying, “At current growth rates, audiobook revenues are on a trajectory to pass ebooks by 2023 or so.” Of course, that’s a measurement of the traditional publishing market and doesn’t include self-publishing activity.

One authority—Mark Coker of Smashwords—believes that audiobooks will disappoint and that self-publishing authors will forgo the opportunity. He writes, “Although there are interesting efforts afoot to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to bring production costs lower, I remain skeptical that these efforts will produce anything but subpar audiobooks.”

Publishing will grow faster in countries outside the US and UK
Orna Ross at the Alliance of Independent Authors points to specific platforms and distributors—such as IngramSpark, Findaway Voices (digital audio), Kobo, PublishDrive, and StreetLib—that are expanding their reach across the globe. Ross also expects Kobo to be bought.

Apple will become a more meaningful player
Bradley Metrock at Digital Book World offers five predictions for the decade ahead, including a meaningful return for Apple to the digital book market; Orna Ross mentions the same in her predictions. Metrock (like Dominic White, above) touches on voice tech driving discoverability, and he mentions consumer preference shifting to digital books over print.

What to watch for in social media
What’s New in Publishing posted predictions from Yuval Ben-Itzhak. They include: the rise rather than decline of influencer marketing on social; more ecommerce features for social media (like Instagram Shopping); and a potential shift of ad dollars from Facebook to Instagram, which is a more engaging platform.

Ebook subscription services will take hold in the mid-to-late 2020s
Our favorite prediction by far comes from industry consultant Bill Rosenblatt, who posted the following to a private forum; we’re running it here with his permission.

The main reason [subscription services] haven’t taken off so far is that most of the major trade publishers refuse to license into those types of services, primarily because contract terms with authors make it financially untenable.

Here’s how I think it will happen: Revenue among the major trade publishers will not satisfy investors or owners anymore. Increased investor/owner pressure will lead to increased appetites for risk. One way this will manifest itself will be willingness to license into subscription services on sensible royalty terms despite the fact that this would require renegotiating authors’ contracts. Publishers will decide to do this (at least to some degree) on the same “beg for forgiveness later” basis that Cengage has adopted in higher ed.

The publishers won’t decide to do this on their own. Instead, some big tech entity will prompt them into action, some company that has decided it wants to enter the ebook market or ramp up current activity. This company and big trade publishers will collectively decide that subscription services are a good way to do this. Both sides will be motivated to do something that puts Amazon at a competitive disadvantage, and publishers will like doing this with a major entity that has huge reach, as opposed to a startup. 

Who will this entity be? Here are some candidates: 

• Spotify, in search of content that helps it diversify its offerings and reduce its dependence on record labels, because growth in music streaming is tapering off. It’s doing this now with podcasting. 
• Tencent, as part of its further entry into Western markets.
• Walmart, expanding on its fairly successful VUDU streaming video subscription service and its recent deal with Kobo. 
• Apple, which will decide to get as serious about ebooks as it is about music (and for reasons similar to those for Spotify above). 
• Some new entity unknown to us now.

Depending on who the entity is, it may buy Scribd as a way of accelerating its market entry. In addition, the Big Five (or whatever number it is when this happens) will decide to license paid ebook downloads through this entity in DRM-free EPUB. Another way to differentiate against Amazon.

Bottom line: As far as Amazon is concerned, we don’t see 2020 playing out any differently than 2019, nor do we glimpse any meaningful punishments on the horizon. However, we expect greater competition and opportunities in audio and more challenges to Audible’s dominant position; see our next item for a deeper look.