Audiobook - Distribution and Popularity

Distribution and Popularity

Recent technology has encouraged the proliferation of free audiobooks that take works from the public domain and enlist volunteers to read them. Audiobooks also can be created with text to speech computer software, although the quality of synthesized speech may suffer by comparison to recordings by a human voice. On the other hand, computer-voiced reading enables the proliferation of more works faster through automation, than if read by humans.

Audiobooks in the private domain are also distributed online by for-profit companies. Until recently, major audiobook publishers required that their works be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), when sold as downloads, but this is no longer the case. Companies such as Apple Inc. have licensed their proprietary FairPlay DRM system (for DRM protection of iPod files in the .aa file format) to only one company. Because of the long-standing major publishers' insistence on DRM, this effectively created a monopoly in the sale of the works of major publishers to iPod users, who make up the majority of the portable audio market.

Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than hardcovers because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of scale in high "print" runs that are available in the publishing of printed books. Downloadable audiobooks tend to cost slightly less than hardcovers but more than their paperback equivalents. Market penetration of audiobooks is substantially lower than for their printed counterparts despite the high market penetration of the hardware (MP3 and WMA players) and despite the massive market penetration achieved by audio music products.

However, there are certain economies of scale that favor downloadable audiobooks. Downloadable audiobooks do not carry mass production costs, do not require storage of a large inventory, do not require physical packaging or transportation and even if "returned" do not require a cost of physical return or destruction/disposal. If such economies were passed on to customers, unit profit margins would be reduced but sales volumes would increase. It is not known what effect this would have on book sales in other formats.