Audio download chart: June

Hear hear

The very top of the first edition of The Bookseller’s Audio Download Chart, created with data supplied by Audible, does not vary much from the physical book charts. E L James and Paula Hawkins, the two big publishing stories of 2015—until Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (Random House) was released this week—are comfortably ensconced in first and second positions.

Yet further down the list there is a broadening of the download market which diverts sharply from print, with deep backlist titles, strong showings from bespoke audio publishers and original content. The chart represents audio downloads through Audible.co.uk for June 2015. It encompasses both single purchases and downloads made through Audible’s subscription (one audiobook for £7.99 a month, or two for £14.99 a month). Single purchase costs vary greatly, but the current selling price for the top 10 titles averages out at £24.61, ranging from £13.99 for George R R Martin’s A Game of Thrones (HarperCollins) to £54.69 for Brilliance Audio’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

Scene and heard

After years of being on the cusp of a breakout, the UK digital audio market seems to have arrived. According to the Publishers Association’s Statistics Yearbook 2014, sales of digital audio last year were just over £10m. This is still a small part of the overall digital market, but it is growing: last year’s figure was 24% up on 2013’s total, and represented a rise of 170% since 2010.

Looking across the breadth of the top 20, there is a robust challenge to traditional publishers from both audio specialists and Audible itself.

US-based Podium Publishing, for example, was launched in 2012 to exclusively produce digital audio. Its first product was Andy Weir’s The Martian, for which Podium acquired world audio rights when Weir’s book was still a self-published title (it is now published in print and “e” by Del Rey). Its fourth place in the chart is partially down to the buzz around the release of the trailer to the film adaptation starring Matt Damon, but also because of word of mouth. Audio sales have built slowly, particularly after it won Best Science Fiction Book at the 2015 Audies, the US “Oscars for audiobooks”.

Audible’s production arm, Audible Studios, claims four spots in the top 20. It has been producing audiobooks almost from its inception in the US in 1998, buying rights but also producing titles for big publishers in the early days of days of downloads (13th-placed Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is one such example).

An interesting trend is Audible’s move into own-brand, audio-only content—mirroring the model of Netflix and Audible’s sister company Amazon Prime, with TV shows like “House of Cards” and “Vikings”. Two of Audible titles (Slaving Away and Working for the Big Man) are essentially BBC Radio 4-esque comedy shows; they were among five programmes débuted during Audible’s June “pilot season”, the most popular of which will be made into a full- length series.