Canongate partners with audiobook streaming distributor

Canongate has partnered with streaming service Zebralution to distribute its audiobooks on streaming services such as Spotify.

The independent publisher will make “hundreds” of its titles available for streaming this spring through the partnership with the German distributor.

Zebralution currently works with 80% of the publishers in Germany to distribute audiobooks to streaming services such as Spotify and Google, it said.

Joanna Lord, Canongate’s audio and online sales manager, said: “The audio market is so exciting at the moment, and it's great to see new players helping to improve access to, and discoverability of, audiobooks in fresh and innovative ways.”

At the same time, Zebralution has released its audiobook search engine app, Spooks, in the UK and the US. It shows the audiobooks available on Spotify Premium and plays them inside users’ Spotify apps. It also allows people to browse through various categories and recommendations, offering short summaries and notes on authors and narrators and has had 200,000 downloads in Germany, the company said.

Zebralution’s managing director, Kurt Thielen, added: “With our successful marketing tools like the DSP profiles and the pioneering Spooks app, which have made such an impact on the German market, we surely can increase Canongate's reach and turnover. Streaming attracts a new, younger audience which is difficult to reach and gives audiobooks an even brighter future than this exciting format already has.”