Welcome to Episode 68 of Published. Today, I'm speaking with Madi Mullen, a product manager at Libro.fm, an audiobook company that splits profits with local independent bookstores. Madi will tell us about present trends in audiobooks, what the benefits and drawbacks are for authors making audiobooks available, and how hosting platforms impact authors differently.

00:41 – Welcome back to Published. In this episode, we're talking about audiobooks and how readers access them.

· Audiobooks saw a huge increase in popularity when they evolved from cassettes and CDs to digital downloads and they're now the perfect solution for commuters, people who have difficulty reading or focusing on text, and anyone wanting to squeeze in a little extra reading into their day.

· As popular as audiobooks have become many authors remain unfamiliar with the logistics of offering an audiobook and what their options are.

· Today, Madi will discuss how different audiobook platforms benefit authors differently, how offering a book in this format impacts sales, and what to expect for a return on your investment.

01:20 – Madi, welcome to Published. Why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do at Libro.fm and then also a little bit about what Libro.fm does?

· I'm Madi Mullen. I'm a product manager at Libro.fm.

· Libro.fm is an audiobook company that allows customers to purchase audiobooks through their local independent bookstore. So, the way it works is when a customer signs up, they select their local bookstore. And then from that point on any purchase they make through Libro.fm, whether it's their monthly membership payment, buying an audio book, as a one-off purchase, or buying a gift, any of those purchases, we split the profits with their local independent bookstore that they chose.

· And as a product manager, we're a tech company. So, we're constantly prioritizing what we're going to build next. We hear from customers that they want a certain feature, or we hear from bookstore partners that they would really like to see us do something new with our technology. And then we have our business priorities. All of those inputs really helped us decide what we're going to prioritize. And I really work with our team to prioritize those things and then communicate between the different teams and make sure we're all staying on the same page. So that's what I do at Libro.

02:31 – Speaking to the industry as a whole, where do consumers go currently to buy audiobooks and you kind of touched on it, but what makes you all different?

· There are subscription services like us, and there plenty in the market, and some of them are slightly different. The one that we have is, you know, you pay a monthly membership fee, and then you get one credit to use on the audiobook of your choice. There are also ones where you exclusively buy ala carte, you can also buy a la carte through Libro, but there are ones that are exclusively a la carte.

· But another place that people are going to get their audiobooks, is actually the library. I don't know if you've heard of Overdrive and Libby, but you can essentially check out audiobooks. And in that case, you don't have to go to the library. It's not books on tape, it's digital audiobooks, you're getting them on your device. And in that case, you don't have to pay for them, you might have to wait a little bit to get the one that you want, but that's a really cool option that a lot of people are turning to now is their library.

03:26 – We know that the audiobook category is booming. It's certainly one of the bright spots in the publishing business in terms of growth. For the lay person listening to this, what are some of the benefits for an author to turn their book into an audiobook?

· The number one benefit is the accessibility. There are plenty of people who audiobooks are the way that they read. And if you don't have an audiobook, then of course, you're not reaching those particular people. There are also people who read both print and audio, but audio makes up a significant portion of what they're reading. You always want to make sure that your book is as widely available as possible, and audiobooks are a way to do that.

· Another thing to think about and this is a little bit specific to Libro.fm, but we have our Bookseller ALC program. So, when a book is in the Bookseller ALC program, booksellers have access to that book and they can get it for free. And what we've heard from numerous booksellers is how much that has increased the volume of books that they are able to consume.

· A bookseller is someone who's putting your book into the hands of customers when they love it, right. You really want to make sure that booksellers are getting the chance to read that book, and they're able to read more through audio. If a book is available via audio and through our Booksellers ALC program, that's a big deal, because it's giving someone who's likely to hand sell your book access to it early in the process.

05:47 – Now, one of the contentions in the business about audiobooks is this imbalance, let's say, between the cost to produce an audiobook, and what is currently the dominant royalty structure, which leaves very little in terms of ROI for an author. So, can you speak to that? And is there anything that you know of maybe on the horizon being done to combat that on behalf of authors?

· Like you said, it can be expensive, right? I think it's $150 to $250, often per finished hour. So, for a 10-hour audiobook, you're looking at $1,500 to $2,500. And that's expensive. I think as far as things that are being done to combat that, one of the big things that's being talked about right now in the audiobook space is AI narrated audiobooks, and that technology is getting better. And it's being used to combat you know, the higher cost of hiring the narrator.

· At Libro.fm, we believe that AI isn't a match for human narration, but we realize how important it is for accessibility. And really, at the end of the day, if the choice is a book doesn't get made into an audiobook at all, or a book is made into an audiobook, but it's narrated by AI, it's, I think, always better to have an audiobook out there.

· Also looking at sort of the ROI question. With audiobooks, I think it's important to make sure that you're looking beyond just the revenue it's producing, because there are opportunities that it affords that aren't directly correlated to maybe the revenue that you're seeing from an audiobook.

· A good example is, like I mentioned our Bookseller ALC program, if you're reaching a couple of booksellers, who then champion, not just your audiobook, but your print book, that makes a huge difference.

· And it's a great way to market the print book, you can share, you know, audio clips on social media, or on YouTube. And you'll reach readers through platforms that you wouldn't otherwise connect with. At Libro.fm we only do audiobooks. So, if there's no audiobook, we don't have anything to market. Some of those are, I guess, intangibles, you might not see it directly reflected in the ROI of the audio book itself, but maybe you'll see it over in the print section.

07:51 – Good points. And what trends are you seeing amongst audiobooks, like what genres do particularly well?

· I have a little bit of Libro data and then a little bit of more sort of the broader Audio Publishers Association data. One thing that I thought was interesting from the APA was, according to them, the romance genre is experiencing a lot of growth, like 75% as far as revenue goes for us. romance is in our top five. But we see a lot of literary fiction, biography and memoir, fantasy, and mysteries and thrillers so that's sort of some of the top genres for us.

· One thing that I think is interesting to talk about is how different the popular genres in audiobooks are from the popular genres in print. A good example of this is celebrity memoirs. Those are ones that they're incredibly popular in audio, and it's often because the author is the one reading it. Matthew Perry's recent memoir, Gabrielle Union has a couple I think now. So that's sort of one that is, I think, probably disproportionately popular in audio versus print, and then nonfiction, which I think can probably be attributed just to the listening of nonfiction podcasts. It's not a huge leap from there to then go to reading nonfiction audiobooks.

· The other thing that might be interesting to your listeners is backlist titles actually account for a lot of the income. Most publishers make more than half their income from backlist. So, the tail of audiobooks can be really long when there's so much focus on the first couple of weeks of a book coming out. It's sort of a nice reminder that people continue buying often for a really long time.

09:49 – As we always tell our authors it's a marathon not a sprint. So yeah, that longtail is definitely important. We see it here to the backlist is really what drives book sales. The pandemic obviously had everybody at home listening to whatever they could get their hands on through digital downloads. How have you seen the industry change since the pandemic?

· We heard from a lot of people during the pandemic, that they were having a really hard time reading in print like they normally did, they were having a hard time focusing, they just didn't want to sit down and read, people were having a really hard time with that. And when that happened, they turned to audiobooks. And they were like, I can do other things. And I can be moving, and I can be still reading my book. So, I thought that was interesting, sort of an unexpected thing that we heard from more than one person over the pandemic.

· Another interesting thing, and this is, again, from the Audio Publishers Association, 61% of parents say their children listened to audiobooks in 2021. And in 2020, that was 35%. So that was a huge area of growth during the pandemic and can almost certainly be attributed to the fact that there was a lot of kids at home who were needing to read for school, or they just needed a way to be entertained throughout the day.

· I have a four-and-a-half-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old and kids love being read to. So, it's not really a surprise, but we're seeing that growth on our end where the children's genre is getting more and more popular, we're seeing more and more sales there. That's going to continue to happen, I think, to a large extent. Some people don't know too, that audiobooks are an option for their kids’ reading. But during the pandemic, the children's genre in particular seemed to grow rapidly.

11:31 – For our listeners, who are now convinced that they should go out and produce an audiobook, how do they go about doing that and making it accessible online?

· I'll start by answering with sort of a piece of advice, which is to make sure that whatever platform or service you choose to use to distribute the audiobook that the audiobook is going to be available widely. ACX, the audio book publishing service for Audible is one that I think a lot of people turn to because it's easy, but the distribution there is very limited. So, when you go that route, you know your book isn't available via Libro.fm, or even in libraries via Overdrive and Libby.

· I think it's important to just make sure that authors are educating themselves around which platform is actually going to make sure that my book is as widely available as possible. One that we get books from is Author's Republic. So that's one service I know that distributes fairly widely, any platform that's going to get your book as widely distributed as possible is the way you want to go.

· And another little tidbit, and this is again from the APA data for 2021 is just that people are continuing to prefer audiobooks that are read by a professional narrator versus an author. So, I think this is something that can be really tempting. It's like, I'll just save money to narrate my own audiobook. Yes, that will save money. But also, it's been shown that professional narrators are for sure professional for a reason. It's a craft, it's an art. If you've listened to any number of audiobooks, you know that it makes a huge difference. That might be a good spot to put budget towards getting someone who's going to just read your book beautifully.

13:31 – You've been very helpful today, any parting advice for our listeners who are thinking about dipping a toe into the world of audiobooks?

· The last thing I would say is just to sort of lean into the marketing opportunities that are afforded you by producing an audiobook. I know that we work with authors to try and help promote books where we can. And it's just a great opportunity to get your book into the hands of more readers, so I definitely recommend it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been really fun.

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ABOUT MADI MULLEN

Madi Mullen is a Product Manager at Libro.fm. Libro.fm is an audiobook company that allows customers to purchase audiobooks through their local independent bookstore. As a product manager, she's constantly prioritizing what new features Libro.fm is going to build next. She hears from bookstores and customers about what they would like to see and works on implementing those new ideas into their business. Madi works with various teams at Libro.fm and keeps them on task as they grow and innovate their audiobook selling process.