Transcript: Listening in: A conversation about the present and future of audiobooks
Go back to the main session page.
Tim Middleton: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m Tim Middleton, product manager at BookNet Canada. Welcome to Listening in: A conversation about the present and future of audiobooks.
Before we get started, BookNet Canada acknowledges that its operations are remote and our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi’kmaq, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, which includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa and the Potawatomie, the Métis, as well as the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh peoples, the original nations and peoples of the lands we now call Beeton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver, Vaughan, and Windsor. We encourage you to visit the nativeland.ca website to learn more about the peoples whose land you’re joining from today.
Moreover, BookNet endorses the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space making in the book industry.
And now, without further ado, let’s welcome our guests. First, we have Carlyn Craig. After working in the entertainment industry, Carlyn returned to university and completed a film degree. This led to her becoming the managing editor of BC Studies. When her son was still not reading at five, despite his love of books and large vocabulary, she turned to audiobooks to help her keep up with his reading needs. And as a happy side effect, audiobooks gave her time to read again. After just two audiobooks, she was hooked. Driven by a desire to combine her love of publishing with her love of producing, she launched Post Hypnotic Press Inc. in 2010. In the first few years, they published Gabor Maté’s first four books in audio, among others. Today, they still publish a small number of audiobooks each year, and they also work with other publishers and self-published authors from around the world to help them turn their books into audiobooks.
Next, we have Lisa Radha Vohra. Lisa is the director of collections and membership services at the Toronto Public Library, where she leads system-wide strategies to expand access to physical and digital collections, including audiobooks. With a focus on user experience, equity, and evolving reading behaviours, she brings a public library perspective on audiobook adoption, trends in borrowing, and how libraries are helping connect more people to audio storytelling in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
We’re also joined by Michelle Kaatz. Michelle has been working in audiobooks since 2013, including merchandising at audiobooks.com, co-founding Authors Republic, and leading publishing at Novel Audio and Rakuten Kobo’s original content department. She is currently a freelance producer through MK Audiobooks, and a course developer and lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, teaching audiobook publishing as part of the publishing certificate programme.
And finally, we have Pamela Campbell. Pamela is a 19-year veteran of audiobooks.com, where she anchors the company’s digital operations by managing publisher contracts, content ingestion, and detailed metadata for over 300 publishers. Living at the intersection of data and storytelling, Pamela pairs a meticulous eye for technical precision with the heart of an avid book lover, ensuring great stories reach listeners seamlessly. Thank you all for joining us.
Okay. Let’s talk audiobooks. I’m excited. I’m an old-school anti-audiobook person. I’m not anti-audiobook, but I am old. So, that’s my experience of audiobooks. So, my first question is going to be for everyone, and then I’ll just…maybe we’ll…I’ll start with Carlyn, and then we’ll go around to my right. So, for all, our Canadian Leisure and Reading Study revealed that the percentage of readers who prefer audiobooks continues to rise from 8% in 2020 to 16% in 2025. And 19% of the respondents said that their perception is that they’re spending more time listening to audiobooks. So, the first question is, what do you think is behind the increase in adoption of this format? Carlyn, you want to kick us off?
Carlyn Craig: Yeah. Okay. Well, I would say the number one reason is that Audible opened audible.ca in 2018, and started promoting more in Canada. So, we saw a big change there. Beyond that, I think it’s a combination of the convenience, marketing, and people being more comfortable with the technology that delivers audiobooks. Having a smartphone that you can play them on anywhere makes it just so much more convenient.
So, if you think about it, the main reason people start adopting audiobooks is the convenience. You can listen while you’re driving, while you’re gardening, walking the dog, doing housework. You can’t read while you’re doing that. So, that’s a big driver, but it doesn’t change the behaviour. It’s the marketing and promoting. Like you just said, you were a snob. I was a total snob about audiobooks.
Tim: I didn’t say that.
Carlyn: I was a huge reader, and I was an absolute snob. I wouldn’t listen to audiobooks. Finally, when my son was six and he had a serious eye tracking issue, that was why he wasn’t learning to read. We didn’t discover that until about then, but I couldn’t keep up with his reading needs. And so, we finally resorted to audiobooks, and then I had this total epiphany. I fell in love with them myself. I realised there were so many people who can’t read comfortably. They can read, they’re literate, but reading has so many things going on in your brain. Things can go wrong. So, my desire is to get more people hooked on audiobooks because there’s a lot of people who aren’t book people because of reading, and they think they’re not book people when, in fact, they’re book people. They just have maybe some dyslexia or some other thing going on. But I think it’s a combination of the convenience, but that promotion. The promotion really didn’t start to happen in Canada until after 2018.
Tim: Okay. Thanks. Lisa, did you want to?
Lisa Radha Vohra: So, to add on to what Carlyn has said, in the public library world, we track preferences by circulation. And so, as more and more content was available in audiobooks, we saw public library customers all across Canada devour the physical audiobook format, for sure. And then our huge shift came during the pandemic when, unfortunately, public libraries weren’t able to as easily lend physical formats, but that digital format of audiobooks skyrocketed. And we all started asking each other, hey, are you seeing the same trends? We thought, it can’t be everywhere, but it literally was everywhere. So, whether people were using it for preferences, many of the things that Carlyn spoke about, or whether it was because it was just easier than having a book and some noise, some company, another voice to have while many people were isolated. And as the pandemic of loneliness has increased, we definitely have seen audiobooks usage and preference also increasing.
Tim: Interesting. That’s really neat. Pamela, we’ll go down to you.
Pamela Campbell: Hi, everyone. Again, what Carlyn and Lisa have said is 100% true as well from the retailer side here. But it’s interesting to note that as more and more titles have become made into audiobooks simultaneous with the print, I think that’s a massive factor there. You can get the new release the day it’s in hardback, it’s in audio, digital audio as well. So, just the quick turnaround of getting the audio the same day as available. You don’t have to choose, you could get both. I’m one of those people. So, I think that, the availability, and that the publishers are also getting behind the audiobook format. That’s massive. It wasn’t always that way. But now, the audio side is working with the hardback print side in marketing, and making sure people are aware that the audiobook is an option. So, that’s what I’ll add to that.
Tim: Nice. Thanks. And Michelle, over to you.
Michelle Kaatz: Yeah. I mean, there’s so many factors, and everyone, I agree with everything that you guys have said so far. I think the improved sentiment surrounding audiobooks, Tim, you’re a dying breed, man. More and more people are coming over. And I think it’s in part also a byproduct of just a listening culture, like I am seeing on every news outlet that I visit. Click here to listen to this article. I see it on…like email newsletters sometimes have an audio version. Blog posts, medium posts have a listening version. And so, I think people are just incorporating listening into their lives in many ways. And so, audiobooks are going to follow from that.
And also, we cannot understate the impact that Spotify has had. I think, growth in the audiobook markets has always kind of been in lockstep with better access, better delivery mechanisms, more books. And Spotify’s model to a lot of people is going to feel free because they already pay for the service. And it’s not another app. It’s not another account. And they’re looking for something to listen to anyway. And they have seen some pretty serious numbers. And I think that that is definitely…a major part of very recent adoption is coming from them as well.
Tim: Thank you very much. And I do want to just qualify that I’m not a snob. I just can’t do audiobooks. My family does, my daughters. I just…
Michelle: Have we made this a hostile environment for you? I’m sorry. I’m just kidding.
Tim: I shouldn’t have led with that. Okay. I’m going to move on to the second question. Thank you. Those are all really insightful points. And our second question is looking… Again, for everyone, only this time, I’m going to go around reverse order. So, get ready. Looking back at the last 5 to 10 years, what has changed in how you approach audiobooks from your corner of the industry? For example, have your strategies to reach listeners changed over time? Michelle?
Michelle: Sorry. Tech glitch. Yeah. So, for me, from my perspective, one of the big things in the work that I do with publishers and with mostly independent authors right now is the question on distribution. And like Pam and Carlyn were literally around when we were having conversations about wide distribution like a decade ago. And it used to be a thing where Audible offered such a lucrative deal to be exclusive with them. And it was really hard to convince people to go… Maybe I’m overstating that it was really hard. But when you were having a discussion, it was always kind of like, do you want to make the most money possible or do you want to be in libraries, access different readers? And there were all these sort of soft arguments that you had to make. And just with the growth of the industry generally, new retailers coming into the picture, current retailers and libraries growing and growing like crazy, that conversation just looks so different. And it is no longer like the default is Audible exclusive. And here’s the reasons to consider wide distribution. I almost want to say it’s like 50/50, maybe even a little bit inverted, especially because people love libraries and they love… With Libro.fm, they love independent booksellers. So, that has been a really interesting change for me to see.
Tim: Pamela?
Pamela: Yes. So, being one of the competitors for Audible, audiobooks.com, we’ve always taken a thought process that books should be in as many places available, everywhere, for everybody to access. It’s more about making sure if you want to listen, you can find a place to listen. So, what I’ve been delightful, because I do deal with a lot of the publishers and work with publisher contracts, is we are seeing some of the smaller publishers reach out to us directly instead of going through either a distributor themselves or they’ve reached out and have said, look, I don’t have it in audio yet. I’m going to get it in audio. What specs do I need to have it with you? So, I love seeing that these smaller publishers or even authors are going about it, and just reaching out and trying to find a way to get their books in front of people. And that’s been really big to see.
And then just, too, we are seeing, like Michelle mentioned, the other big giant, Spotify. They are opening up doors for people to just know that audiobooks are a thing. So, while we haven’t really changed the way we try to reach our listeners, we just try to give them the best listening experience, and making sure we have as many different options available to our authors, to the publishers to find a way to fit their content with a contract that everyone’s going to win.
Tim: Lisa.
Lisa: I agree with everything that’s already been said. And from the library world, things that we’ve really changed is ensuring that everyone understands. And I’ll post a link into the chat, too, is that listening to audiobooks is defined as reading. There has been a little bit of a battle, as was the case also with graphic novels or other new formats or newer different formats. We have really pushed to help everyone understand, as Carlyn has said very clearly, audiobook listening is reading.
And then exactly what Pamela had said earlier, too, about really supporting the vendors and understanding that we do want on the same day that the print is available. Our customers want audiobooks available, too, and ensuring that we do that purchasing. Purchasing does continue to be difficult. Ten years ago, our average circ sat about $1.50. Right now, our average circ is sitting about $4 per audiobook. So, sometimes we intentionally have to choose solely the audiobook or the print book. So, sometimes those are difficult decisions.
And one thing, the last thing that I’ll say that we make sure that has really changed, but to ensure that there is awareness about this format, is that we specifically have curated lists, like listen and learn or hear me now. But even in our traditional book lists now, where in the past, I don’t think audiobooks were as intentionally always included. We always intentionally ensure now that that format is always included in a traditional book list, too, even if it’s not just a solely audiobook list.
So, there are a lot of things that have changed as the demand increases. But really, depending on those publishers, ensuring authors get paid fairly, is working with our publishing partners to make sure that the content that our customers are looking for is available. And our biggest barrier, whether it’s intentional or unintentional, is those Audible exclusives, because we continually do get asked for them at the library. And we do let our customers know why we don’t have access to that content.
Tim: Interesting. Carlyn?
Carlyn: Well, I’m agreeing with everything everyone said. It’s interesting because this question of Audible exclusive came up. And when I started out, I came from this scholarly publishing background, and just a book lover myself. And so, I always did non-exclusive with Audible for years. And we had…you know, I publish…my catalogue is fairly eclectic. I like nonfiction, the popular genres. I don’t have a lot of the popular genres. I have the popular genres, but they’re down the list.
And then we had an experience with a book that we published that just sold incredibly. And when I crunched the numbers three years later, it was 98% sold on Audible, even though it was non-exclusive, and it was available everywhere and in the libraries. And yet 99% of the sales was Audible. And I had to stop and think about my approach because of that. I didn’t like exclusive, I wanted to be everywhere. And I had to look at that and start, you know, just questioning whether I needed to do that for every book. I now often go exclusive with Audible because you can do that for 90 days. And then after 90 days, you can go non-exclusive. And you can take advantage of their promo codes in those 90 days, or you can leave it for a year or two, and then go non-exclusive. So, I’m kind of pushing back on the non-exclusive argument.
But I wouldn’t do that for every book. Lots of our books are really going to be more popular in the library than selling anywhere. And so, it really depends on the title. But I agree that just explosion in the ways you can get it. There’s also Storytel for Europe, which includes a lot of… You have to watch what you’re doing, because a lot of these guys have a lot of overlap in the conglomerate distributors. You don’t want necessarily be on INaudio and Authors Republic and…well, Storytel, I think you want to use Storytel in conjunction with one of those two. And then you can also put your books directly onto Spotify now. And authors can go and put their book directly onto Spotify. So, that, I think, does open it up and just make them more accessible for everybody.
Tim: Very interesting to hear all of that. Going to move on to our third question. And I’m going to just mix up the order. So, when I call on you… So, are there any trends in audiobook consumption that have stood out to you? I’m sure there are. Do you find, for example, that audiobooks from particular genres do better than others? And who wants to go first? We’ll start with Pamela.
Pamela: Okay. So, for us on our site, absolutely. We have certain genres that trend year round, specifically mystery thrillers, psychological thriller, mystery. And then what’s been trending for the last few years, romantasy. Now, we do see different trends at different times of years…of the year. Obviously, in January, there’s an uptick in nonfiction and self-help and self-development. But we do find — as always, I’m sure everyone else sees this, too — when a book is turned into a film or a TV show, it will bubble up to the top as well. And now, with BookTok influencers, that also does trend up.
But one thing, we are a relatively smaller team here at audiobooks.com. So, we can quickly adapt. So, we can quickly create book lists and add in the different genres that’s trending. We’re usually waiting on the publishers to update with new bisects to get those in…so we can fill in those trending genre listening there. But for us, it’s primarily fiction. Women’s fiction is doing actually really well recently. But, yeah, the psychological thriller domestic mystery is what we see a lot of listeners gravitating towards with us.
Tim: Thanks. Over to you, Michelle.
Michelle: So, the work that I do is a little bit less trend focused just because I’m working with what someone brings. So, if you’re a publisher that happens to have romantasy, great. If you just publish books about trees, then the trends are probably like a little bit less relevant to you. [inaudible 00:23:07] standpoint, there’s not too much like a good audiobook is a good audiobook. And so, the kind of best practices still hold. But one thing that’s interesting to me is that…
So, there’s a rule of thumb, typically, when you’re sort of forecasting how many books your…how many units your audiobook is going to sell. And you usually look at, if you’re doing backlist, like the print and ebook have already come out, between 5% on the low end to like 15% on quite the high end of whatever that total of print and ebook has sold, that’s kind of what you can estimate your audiobook sales to be. But as the audiobook market keeps growing and growing and growing, that number is changing. And so, the books in a publisher’s catalogue that are becoming more viable is growing again.
So, just across the board, it’s almost like…there is a period where there’s a lot of backlist, and then the backlist all got…all the economically viable backlist got acquired and produced and it’s out there. But as the market grows, it’s refreshing itself, and deeper and deeper layers of books are becoming good projects again. So, that’s the trend that I’m seeing.
Tim: Carlyn.
Carlyn: I would agree. I think there’s still a lot of interesting backlist stuff out there, but it depends. So, we’re a fairly small publisher and producer now, too. And we’ve always stayed small intentionally. It’s my company, I want to do what I’m interested in. So, I, again, don’t really look at the trends, but I do look at…I have bell hooks books, and they sell really well. And that took me a lot. I know Michelle’s like, I’m going to get those. Those are really great books.
And so, I do look at backlist titles for stuff that’s been missed, and it doesn’t have to be, for me, a top seller. I just want to make my money back and create a little profit. I’m not trying to become a top number one publisher. I just want to publish books I really love and I believe in. And so, I do still mind the backlist titles.
I really like self-development. I really like politics and history. So, I tend to follow…we’re actually just producing “The Dual State,” Ernst Fraenkel, which is interesting because that’s really been talked about a lot right now. There’s a bunch of articles about it recently because he was writing about how the fascists in Germany created a dual state in law. So, we’re just producing that. So, we will go for titles like that. Again, I really don’t watch the top ones. Also, to get into those top levels, you’ve got to either be lucky or you have to have deep pockets because they know what they’ve got, and the advances are steep.
Tim: Gotcha. So, I’ve left Lisa to last, thinking Toronto Public Library, you got to know.
Lisa: Everything that Carlyn and Michelle or Pamela specifically have said is completely reflected in my work of all of those trends and definitely the demand for the backlist. We are seeing a tiny decline right now in the demand for nonfiction, but I think it’s more reflective of the wider ecosystem of the world that we’re living in than as a sort of longer-term trend. So, we will continue to buy those nonfiction titles because we know people are going to circle back to them.
But when you look at the stats that have been posted in the chat for everyone from the ULC ebooks toolkit, which also includes audiobooks, but it’s about all digital content. It really is the importance of the backlist and the smaller publishers making content accessible to us. The big five content is there. It is always in demand, but we would rather ensure that we have a longstanding perpetual access backlist available because that is an increase in trend that we’re seeing, again, in addition to all the romantasy stuff and all the top trending stuff that Pamela referred to.
Tim: Thank you. That’s our first group round. We’re going to ask some individual questions for each of you. So, I have some here. The first one I’m going to start with is for Carlyn. I think you may have answered this already. Do these trends impact your decision about what books to acquire?
Carlyn: Is this better for volume?
Tim: That’s great.
Carlyn: Okay. No, not really, but that’s just because of the kind of publisher I am. Our production arm, we get to do a lot of other variety. So, you know, multicast, we’ve done some 3D audio. So, for us, though, in terms of acquiring rights, I’m going after things that I’m interested in. I’m on lists. So, I do see books coming across my desk that I kind of might go for, a lot of the time, the really good ones. Again, I can’t go high enough for the advance. So, it does affect us a little bit, but we are kind of an eclectic publisher. So, not governed necessarily by the same rules.
Tim: Our next question is for Lisa. How do audiobook borrowing trends impact the acquisitions process? Is there anything else you consider when deciding what to get for your library?
Lisa: Especially at Toronto Public Library, one of the biggest things that we’re always looking for is French, indigenous, and multilingual content. There is a huge demand for that content and a huge shortage of that content being available. We fully acknowledge the…and so respectful of all the work that everyone else on this panel does to make this content available to us. So, we acknowledge the cost of that material. But there is definitely an unmet need in non-English content.
And I would just go back to everything that Carlyn has said. Reading and learning English is a huge challenge, but there are many people in our community…especially in Toronto, we serve over 80 languages. Many people who are looking to learn further or deepen their knowledge of their first language or their second, third, fourth language that they work in or that they live in, and would love to have access to that content, too, in their libraries.
Tim: That makes a lot of sense. Pamela, this question is for you. What about the retailer side? Do trends play a role in choosing what to offer to customers and what to promote? What else plays a role in this process?
Pamela: One hundred percent, they play a role in what we promote to our listeners. We’re a retailer, we need to give people what they’re looking for. So, if you’re searching for something, we’re trying to get it in front of you the fastest, easiest way for you to find what you’re looking for. We work a lot with book lists, making sure we’re keeping up with, again, book to screen or if…FIFA is on right now. So, soccer-related stories, things like that. Whatever is trending outside, we have our eyes on it and are trying to decide, A, do we have enough books for that? Like Lisa said, there are certain trends that come out that we just don’t have the content to put in front. So, we wouldn’t. But, yeah, 100% what is trending outside of the audiobook world is also impacting what we’re promoting to our listeners.
Tim: Thanks. Michelle, when advising publishers who are new to audiobooks, how much do trends influence the first steps you recommend?
Michelle: I spoke too much in the first round. I gave most of my answers. Not too much, but you know, it might be a question of if you’re new and you’re establishing your catalogue, where you start. Maybe you want to start with books that are going to generate cash more quickly or maybe there’s a really opportune moment to pluck something out and approach that first. But, yeah, for the most part, it doesn’t affect my work that much.
Tim: Okay. This is a question for everyone, again. Has anyone noticed listeners’ tastes change over time? Who wants to start that out? Self-select.
Pamela: I’ll jump in. Just a quick note. Back when I did start in Audiobooks, there was a lot…the majority of the books were abridged, so, shorter content. And now, you are hard-pressed to find an abridged book. So, people are now used to listening to a longer title. So, definitely, I’ve seen the trend change in terms of listening time, how much people are willing to listen, to sit with the title. So, that’s been a quick, no pun intended, change that I’ve seen there.
Carlyn: I want to jump in on that because it’s really interesting. Audible were at the APAC meeting several years ago now. They were talking about trends in audiobooks, and they were pointing out that there was a trend towards shorter listens, which I thought was interesting because I’m always…I like 20-hour books. I mean, I want 25-hour books. And they were saying that there was this real trend toward books that you…in fact, they were talking about looking at how they could integrate car systems to tailor suggestions to your commute time. So, you got a half-hour commute, they would suggest a half-hour listen. Or if you’re doing a three-hour drive, they would find you a three-hour listen. But they said there was this trend toward shorter books. And some of the bestsellers we’ve had have been actually like three-and-a-half-hour books, which has mystified me because my tastes tend toward longer, more in-depth books, or even long classical fiction. So, it’s interesting that you’re seeing longer books. That’s reassuring.
Lisa: Yeah. I’ll jump in there, too. As a consumer, I’ve seen that trend in the consumer world, but in the library world, we are definitely not seeing that trend. And more aligned with what Pamela said, our customers want the full book. There was a couple of titles that did come out abridged recently, and we bought both the abridged and the full version. And it was the full version that has the high holds list. So, that’s what the customers are paying for. And I think some of it might have to do with the features that are available in the various audiobook players that people use. So, you can listen to it quicker. You can use the sleep timer. You can skip ahead. So, I think people are figuring out how to get the content they want, but they definitely prefer to have the capacity or the ability to have access to the full version.
Michelle: Pam, you don’t happen to have any listening speed stats in your back pocket, do you? Because I think there’s a collision of people’s attention spans are getting much shorter, but there is also, yeah, people listen to full-length books. But I also overhear people sometimes listening to their books out loud on the subway as you do. And it’s literally so fast. I’m like, that’s a 2.5 at least. Yeah. Do you actually have…not to put you on the spot there, but I am curious.
Pamela: I don’t have stats in terms of our listeners, but in terms of our staff, I can pretty much say no one listens at less than 1.4.
Michelle: We got places to be.
Carlyn: Yeah. Well, I find that…again, it’s an amazing thing. I want to listen to the performance, and especially if you’re listening to non-fiction and listening to it at two and a half, but that’s very popular. I understand that a lot of people for fiction and non-fiction, but why you would want to race through fiction, I just don’t get it.
Tim: There’s a very interesting stat to get a hold of. That would be cool. We better keep moving along here. It’s 2:35. So, our next…we have some more individual questions. Stats from our leisure studies show a whopping 84% of Canadian readers tend to prefer listening to a human narrator over synthetic AI narration. Yay. But the applications of AI are not limited to narration. As AI continues to evolve and as the industry continues to figure out how to approach it, Carlyn, is there anything in the audiobook workflow production and distribution that has changed or that you envision will change because of AI?
Carlyn: Well, I think that, obviously, there are going to be people using synthetic voices, but in terms of post-production, we’re exploring different ways to use AI to make post-production less expensive because audiobooks are expensive to produce. So far, I haven’t really found anything. I love Pozotron, but Pozotron doesn’t replace a human listening with a good set of headphones and a proper interface. It just doesn’t. We’ve been looking at Descript to see what we can do with it because it’s changed a lot. It’s really designed for podcasting, but we were looking to see, could it streamline certain things like, for instance, we produced a book recently with an author where they had a really poor internet connection. So, rather than doing…taking control of their computer and punching, we had to do a roll recording. So, we were looking to see if Descript would decrease the time to edit. So far, I still think humans are winning the game. In the end, we still have to go back to a human, and they have to do the actual work of listening and applying actual intelligence instead of the fake one.
Tim: Mm-hmm. Lisa. Libby, for example, implemented AI discoverability features. Do you envision AI becoming part of the patron experience in any other way?
Lisa: I think AI is great for things like accessibility, awareness, and availability. I agree with everything that Carlyn has said, and I think it’s so important that anything AI on any platform be an opt-in for our customers. At TPL, we have not received any good feedback on the Libby AI discoverability features, whether it’s from staff or from customers. So, again, exactly what Carlyn said, I think there are some workflow things that will provide greater accessibility, awareness, and availability. But our customers are definitely…our 4 million customers continue to definitely look for the human narrators and the human-validated features so that they continue to receive the high-quality service that they’re used to from our publishing partners and the library.
Tim: This one’s for Pamela. Is AI impacting the audiobook buyer experience? What role, if any, is AI playing in how you sell and promote audiobooks?
Pamela: The first thing I’ll say about AI is, if a book is narrated using AI or is written with AI, we need it labeled as such. It is a requirement from all of our publishers, big or small, that if it is, have any sort of AI in terms of narration or written, that it be flagged that way. We never want our listeners to feel duped or switched that they thought they were getting a human-narrated book and it’s not. So, that is something we take very seriously on our end and had even implemented safe checks on our side before the APA came out with all of their workflow for that.
In terms of recommendations and search, it’s not something we’ve fully explored on our end yet. Like both Carlyn and Lisa have said, there’s…nothing will beat a human or a personal recommendation yet. It is something I do see a lot of promise for some of the tools that are being explored. I think there’s great opportunity there. But for us, for what I deal with specifically, we just want to make sure everything is labeled correctly so that the listeners can choose. Do you want to listen to a digital narrator or not?
Now, they’ve come leaps and bounds in terms of what a digital narrator used to be. And now, I will sometimes listen to a sample to see if I can pick out an AI narrator, and it’s getting harder. But you still can. And I think some of the publishers are starting to dip their toe into it a little more. I do think there is the capability of what it can bring to bringing titles that otherwise would not get into audiobooks. I think is…what I think is the best thing about specifically AI narration is that it will have the opportunity to bring titles that might not otherwise be available in audiobook format to the listeners.
Tim: Yeah. Good point.
Carlyn: I just wanted to add something. Pamela, I was at a…IBPA did a thing on AI. And they said that their stats were showing that more people are going to ChatGPT and places like that to ask for book recommendations. And then those book recommendations…and also Amazon has changed the way it does its book recommendations. And so, before, where you used to get a whole host of choices, now you see one or maybe two. So, I think it’s impacting it negatively in some ways.
Pamela: It’s interesting because you can take the good pieces and then you get…what should be giving you more and opening up boundaries is somewhat closing in on itself in some areas of what I’ve seen in terms of testing and looking at things.
Tim: And then I think, Michelle, this will be our last question before we want to open it up to the audience for Q&A. So, this is your AI question. As a multifaceted audiobook professional who works with publishers in different stages of their audiobook journey, how do you recommend they approach AI?
Michelle: First off, this conversation will be different six months from now, a year from now. It was different a year ago. The tools are changing so quickly. The audience and the reception is changing. As part of my class, one of the modules, we listen to a whole bunch of AI. And there’s a bunch of bad AI voices, and there are a bunch that are really not that bad anymore. And I get the students’ opinions. And some of them are like, yeah, you know what? This isn’t terrible. Some of them are absolutely like, I would never listen to this, and a fair amount of them. And these are book people taking a book class. And they’re like, I could listen to this.
And the quality is going to continue to improve. And I think, much like any acquired taste, it comes through exposure, not intent. So, the more that we hear just in daily life on the phone, on websites, having ChatGPT read something aloud to you, it does start to change your ears. So, I wonder, in two or three years, as it gets incorporated into other aspects of life, how the user reception will be at that point. But for me as a producer, when I’m talking to authors or publishers about it, the first thing is like, no one has ever gone to an AI because it does a better job. It’s because it does a cheaper job. That is kind of the only reason to do it at this point, I think. I’ve seen in a few places…I can’t attribute it. I don’t remember where I read it first, but they said, if the AI auditioned, they wouldn’t get the job. They have a pleasant tone, but not really any performance behind it.
So, if you spin up your P&L, and it looks like you can make money doing a traditional production, to me, the discussion ends there because you’re going to make money and it’s going to be better. We don’t need to think any more about it. But where it becomes you have to start asking the harder questions is when you look at that P&L and you go, oh, I can’t pay 6,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 or however…you know, we were just talking about how much people like the long books. Long books are very expensive, right? So, then you have to start asking, you know, you’ve got your moral question of period…this software is built on stolen content, no consent, no compensation, period. So, to move forward, you have to reconcile that.
And then even on the business question, I think people are kind of…they’re not engaging with it because they don’t like it. And so, I wonder how many people have a real experience of using it. It’s not as cheap as a lot of people think that it should be. And it’s a lot more…there’s a lot more manual intervention. Like Carlyn, you were saying, you know, when you see a demo and it sounds relatively like performative and expressive, that’s because a human probably went through and curved all of the…you know what I mean? And did a lot of interventions. So, it’s not necessarily easier either.
That being said, I think it’s naive to think that there are no business cases where the only way to do it is with AI. And there’s an argument for access. There is an argument for using aggregate sales from lower-demand books to build a strong traditional audio publishing business as well. So, there’s a lot of ways to look at it. Ultimately, it’s not the kind of thing that I can…I wouldn’t advise someone directly on that. I just kind of bring them all the things to think about and then let them know. And I haven’t had a single person choose AI so far.
Tim: Very, very good points. And I do want to get to our Q&A now. So, I’m just going to keep going. I mean, I want to stop and talk about all this stuff even more. We’ll have to have more of these. So, first question that I have from our audience is, does anyone have tips to build a community to bring people closer to audiobooks? Let’s start with the library.
Lisa: I won’t go on for too long, but I feel like I’ve sort of already answered this. Curate, curate, curate. Yeah. So, either have specific audiobook lists, all your regular lists have audiobook contents. And then just because I’ve got three amazing content providers on the call, anytime that you can partner with a content provider to provide simultaneous use, the [One eRead] Canada programme, all the publishers in Canada participate to give English and French audio content for those titles for all libraries to access. Just making it available and being affordable for libraries is how we’re attempting to build that audiobook content. And then I’ll just repeat one other thing that I said, too. Just ensure that everyone understands that listening to audiobooks is reading, is literacy. It’s the same. And whether it’s your preference or whether that is your capability. So, that’s what I would say for that one. Thanks, Tim.
Tim: Very nice. Thank you. I just want to…if anybody has anything to add, go for it, but otherwise, I’ll move on.
Carlyn: No, I want to add to that. Because Lisa’s pointed out that audiobook, listening is reading. Listening can improve your reading skills. It can improve your retention. It can improve your vocabulary. But the other thing is in terms of building a community. In Germany, they’re crazy about audiobooks. They have shows where they’ve got the actors on stage and a Foley pit, and they’re performing audiobooks to 20,000 and 30,000 and 40,000 people in an audience. And I’d love to see that here. Those are so much fun. And they’ve been doing this for a long time. I can’t remember. The first time I heard about it was at least nearly a decade ago, and they’re still doing them. I looked it up recently for this conference. So, I think something like that, where you really have people going and enjoying an audiobook together in an audience. And that could…I don’t know. I guess they’re probably doing abridged books or shorter books, but it’s a real phenomenon there.
Tim: That sounds really interesting.
Michelle: Yeah. That sounds amazing, Carlyn. I just have one very quick point to add to this. If you want to talk about communities and audio, the romance audiobook community is such a dream community to publish for and engage with. And I think that was a very organically generated community, but it has definitely been…some gasoline has been poured onto it because the narrators are so…they engage so much. And there are these amazing events about specifically…I mean, I guess it’s about romance print and ebook as well, but really finding other ways where people can engage other than just buying the product. There’s such a lovely community to serve. And I would look at that as kind of like an ideal.
Tim: And Pamela.
Pamela: Yeah. Continuing on with what Michelle said there, once you find the narrators in the audiobook, they are celebrities in themselves. Often, people will choose a book based on the narrator. People will choose not to listen to a book based on the narrator. So, once you can tap into that, if you can get extra content, behind-the-scenes footage to give that, so you kind of make the listener feel like they’re part of even the process. Oh, wow, look, there’s Carlyn in her booth recording a book. How cool is that?
Carlyn: I don’t narrate.
Pamela: The audiobook listeners will fall in love with the narrator. And that is something that can build its own…build on itself and build its strength there.
Tim: That’s probably why Carlyn doesn’t narrate. She doesn’t want anyone to fall in love with her. I think we have time for a couple more. So, this one, I thought, was interesting. It’s for Carlyn. Do you have any insights into the latest licensing developments?
Carlyn: Okay. I guess this is talking about Audible in particular because they have a new royalty model that they’re rolling out. And it also is connected to their All You Can Listen programme. So, they started the All You Can Listen programme…do you know, Michelle? A few years ago. And those are free books. If you’re a prime member or even just a regular member, you can listen to the All You Can Listen catalogue. So, now, they have a new royalty model, which goes with that. And basically, it robs Peter to pay Paul.
So, for instance, if somebody buys my book for a credit, I get a royalty on that, and it’s not a very significant royalty. Now, they are going to take that… So, if, say, Lisa buys my book with a credit, but then she listens to a free book that month, they’re going to split the royalty from my purchase with the free book. And I ask them, well, what happens if somebody is listening to more than one free book a month? How is this going to end up being split up? And they’re like, oh, that doesn’t happen. Well, I’ll tell you, I’m an audiobook listener. I have 24 credits a year. I often renew early because I’ve used up all my credits. And I listen to tons of free books every month. I listen all the time. And so, I’m sure that there are other people out there like me and that that will grow as well.
So, I suppose what they’re thinking is they’re trying to move toward more of a Spotify royalty model where…because it is based on the proportion that people listen and stuff. But it does change. I don’t know how it’s going to impact our royalties. They’re selling this as like, it’s a real win-win. I don’t see how it’s a win for me. But that’s happening. And I don’t think there’s much…I mean, every organization has made changes like that over the years. What we see is we build our royalties up, they get to a certain point, then they make a change and suddenly they’re backed out for that, you know, and it takes a few quarters. Finally, maybe we build some of that royalty back up. They make another change and our royalties go down again. So, I don’t know. It’s the nature of the business.
Tim: Just looking at our…you answered another question in there. That was great. Just looking for our last one. No, maybe not. Maybe we have more…time for more. Okay. Are audiobooks on CD becoming obsolete?
Carlyn: Yes.
Tim: Yep. Everyone…
Michelle: Yeah, becoming obsolete.
Tim: Well, what about…I guess cars don’t need CDs anymore either.
Pamela: There is trends, though.
Tim: Told you I’m old.
Pamela: Going back to vinyl and CD for music. So, I wouldn’t count it out yet.
Carlyn: I haven’t seen any. We produced our CDs in-house because it was so much fun. We could do really fun packaging. We would actually do it like an album. We’d put liner notes on the inside of the insert and we…most of the CDs, when we started producing them, they were really plain. We would add images and the cover and maybe, you know, stuff to the actual CD. So, we loved producing those CDs. We gave up when we finally just…there were just no orders, and that was several years ago. And we don’t get requests for CDs ever. So, maybe they’ll come back, but maybe that’s also our catalogue.
Michelle: That’s what got Tim excited. He was like, liner notes. Oh, my God. Cool.
Tim: Well, I know that that is definitely the vinyl album, you know, appeal, right? Like you get the album art, you get the liner notes, you get it.
Carlyn: I love that, too. And I don’t think that other people…I mean, some people were doing that. You get some fancy CDs that might have a booklet and stuff. But a lot of the CDs, when they were producing them, were mass produced and pretty basic.
Tim: The quality was not great.
Carlyn: Yeah.
Lisa: I’ll just put in a plug, too, as a reminder. Not everyone continues to have access to the internet or the technology needed for digital audiobooks. And so, in the public library world, we are all about providing access to everybody. And so, if the technology existed, whether it be the CD player, the vinyl player, or however else we could physically offer audiobooks again, we are open to reconsidering that format. But for now, we don’t even have access to the option to buy physical audiobooks for most titles anymore.
Carlyn: Get in touch. We’ll sell you ours.
Lisa: But our physical DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, vinyl music continue to have pretty decent circulation.
Tim: Wow.
Michelle: Well, I think audiobooks face a unique challenge in the physical media space there. Like CDs, it’s even clunky to have a big thing with a bunch of CDs in it, let alone tapes are off the table. Vinyl is for the most part off the table, right? So, I think I…because I’m seeing a return to physical media in, you know, just anecdotal observation and people that I know, but mostly with relating to screen or relating to music. But, yeah, I think it’s…it doesn’t quite have the aesthetic charm to have this big, chunky, old tape, you know, 16 cassette tapes in a thing.
Carlyn: Yeah. Look. With MP3, though, you can get quite a large book onto one CD. And two CDs is generally enough for the longest audiobook. I think we maybe had one over the time that we needed three CDs to put an MP3 CD together.
Tim: Very interesting. I inherited a lot of CDs. My stepfather passed away a couple years ago. And so, I got all his CDs, but I have nothing to play them on. So, I need to find something. So, I think that’s how people are getting their CDs these days. And then we have two more minutes. Maybe a couple rapid fire. What is the cost to produce an audiobook? I know that’s going to be all over the place. But anybody want to throw out an average ballpark?
Carlyn: Well, we charge 650 per finished hour for professional talent. And it goes up if you want anything beyond that, sound effects and things like that. That sounds like a lot, but half of that’s going out the door to the narrator. And when you think about the work they do, they’ve got to prep the book, they got to read the whole thing and get ready and think about characters. Then they’re spending two to three hours in the booth for every finished hour of audio. It’s costly. You think about how much work went into making that book in the first place, and the number of people that are involved, right? It’s not just the author. There’s the editors and the substantive editors and the copy editors.
And it’s the same in audio. So, we do produce books with authors. The podcast mics have come a long way. So, we’re often setting up authors in their homes with a podcast mic, good quality. But it’s not the same as recording in our studio. You’re not going to get that quality, but it’s good enough for a lot of authors producing their books. And that tends to be nonfiction. And a lot of people love to hear the author reading their own book. So, that can be a little less expensive.
Tim: And if anybody else wants to jump in, otherwise, we’re gonna wrap it up. So sad. This is fun. Okay. Just thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. You haven’t converted me. I’ll check them out. No.
Carlyn: So, there were some questions in the question box. And Sean asked about literary fiction. I just wanted to mention, in terms of marketing, and we talked about the different romance and stuff. But the other key to any book, I think, these days is the author. If the author isn’t out there promoting their book, it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. If people want to know the authors for some reason, like in a way that wasn’t the case 20 years ago, or even 10, that author piece is so important. So, if you’re not out there, you’re not known, you don’t have a following, it’s going to be harder to sell your book. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. You just got to build that.
Tim: Yeah, very good point. Thank you for noticing that question. And before we go, we’d love it if you could provide feedback on this session. We’ll drop a link to the survey in the chat. Please take a couple of minutes to fill it out. We’ll also be emailing you a link to a recording of this session as soon as it’s available. Thank you very much, Carlyn, Lisa, Michelle, and Pamela, for your wisdom and your experience.
To our attendees, we invite you to explore the Tech Forum website, bnctechforum.ca, where you’ll find information about upcoming events and recordings of previous sessions. And lastly, we’d like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support through the Canada Book Fund. And thanks to all of you for attending.