Capturing the gossip at NINC, author and indie marketing expert David Gaughran highlights changes ahead for the digital audio market
Well-known especially among romance authors, the annual NINC Conference (a September gathering in St. Petersburg, Florida, of experienced commercial fiction authors who publish traditionally and independently) offers one of the most advanced business conversations available today. Membership in the organization requires at least two published novels and specific sales thresholds. Speakers at this year’s conference included Mark Dawson, Chris Fox, Dave Chesson, and Mark Lefebvre, as well as representatives from BookBub, Kobo, Draft2Digital, Vellum, Barnes & Noble, and more.
Author David Gaughran was also in attendance as a speaker and recently sent out a dispatch to his newsletter readers with focused takeaways on the audio market. We bring a shortened form of his insights to you here, with his permission. (We encourage you to sign up for his free weekly newsletter, in which he shares insights—particularly related to marketing—for all authors, all year long.)
- One of the big things everyone was chatting about was Audible. Not because of anything they have done, but because of what they haven’t done. The market is heating up, the competition is introducing all sorts of new tools and features, and Audible … Well, we’re waiting to see if they respond at all.
- BookFunnel announced the ability to deliver audio [lead] magnets. You can now use BookFunnel to deliver samples of your audiobooks up to 200MB in size—which should handle a few hours of audio.
- Findaway Voices have added a bunch of new markets, and everyone with wide distribution in audio was buzzing about the new retailers stocking indie audiobooks. Library services (Hoopla in particular) are attracting excited chatter, with some authors reporting they are making more from library services now than all other retailers combined, including Audible.
- Kobo Writing Life announced the full rollout of its own audiobook retailing arm, which is giving authors full pricing control. This has been in beta for a while, with authors reporting some interesting results, particularly the use of free as a price point on a series starter. Yes, you really can now do that. And you can imagine how readers respond to that with the historical price of audiobooks.
- Apple is excited about audio too and was making noises about pushing hard into that market, and it was great to get confirmation that they will most certainly be taking the feed from Findaway over Audible, which essentially means that if your audiobook is priced (by you) at $9.99 via Findaway and is priced (by Amazon) at $14.95 via Audible, Apple will take the version distributed by Findaway at $9.99—which is super important, as one of the key advantages of being wide with audio is that ability to control price, and you can’t do that if your Audible edition is taking precedence.
The key takeaway that Gaughran shared: Giving indies price control over audio will change things. He shared the following reasoning: “It gives indies the tools to actually market their books. … First out of the gate is Chirp from BookBub. … Chirp is already posting some stellar numbers from authors lucky enough to get into the beta. You’ll soon be able to run CPC/CPM ads for audiobooks too.” Obviously, he says, such marketing tactics can only be used by authors who aren’t exclusively distributed by Audible. If you are indeed exclusive to Audible, you can exit that agreement after one year unless you are on a royalty split with your narrator.
Bottom line: Gaughran concluded by writing (and we agree), “This is creating an interesting tension in the marketplace. All the opportunity seems to be wide with audio right now. Everything Audible is doing seems very negative (reduced royalties, the low pay in the subscription market, the controversial captioning program), so you would think they’ll roll out something positive soon, or else they will keep shedding authors. Some romance authors are feeling so negatively towards Audible right now they aren’t even distributing their latest books to Audible/Amazon at all. … I find this fascinating, as the dynamics which formed the ebook market have essentially been flipped. Indie authors were the (more-than-willing) battering ram for Amazon to take over ebooks, and wide retailers have grabbed that script and now given us the tools and freedom to drive down audiobook prices and help grow the market with our manic marketing stylings. And, for now at least, Amazon is sitting on its hands, defending the hill of higher-priced books. It’s a funny old game.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
