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Use listener data to drive audio growth, FutureBook hears
Delegates at The Bookseller’s FutureBook conference have been encouraged to innovate their audiobook models and make strategic choices based on listeners’ data.
Nathan Hull, chief strategy officer at Beat Technology, said potential audio listeners are being "blindsided by the lack of choice" in the current audiobook market. "It’s around the business model, the content we’re fed — [we’ve] one giant team feeding us a certain amount, and there’s such a wealth of content out there, but [companies are finding] getting your potential readers to find [new titles] is either costly or very daunting — we don’t have a clean experience in the UK".
Hull said publishers should be looking to tailor their listening experiences to consumer habits, taking into account popular times of day for listening and the length of time. "Forty-one minutes of audio a day are consumed by a listener on average," he said. "Why are people not acting more on the activities of the listener," he said, advocating serialised publishing for audiobooks, stressing it isn’t the sole domain of non-fiction and podcasts.
"Show a little bit more creativity, experiment and learn," he urged audio publishers.
He said the dearth of "highly personalised data-driven choices" holds audio back from making the same strides as it has in print, adding that "personalised recommendations are the easiest way to jumpstart a new [customer base].
Drawing parallels with the growth of the podcast industry, Spotify head of audio Nir Zichermann said the medium was perceived as reaching its full potential in 2015. "However, now in 2022 there are close to five million podcasts, 20 times what there was in 2015".
In order for audio to grow as dynamically as podcasts, Zichermann said audio companies need to "reach their casual listeners — but there is no one [type of] casual listener. You have to think about different business models and mediums.
"No medium has ever reached its true potential by piggybacking off another format," he added.
Michele Cobb, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association, urged cross-industry collaboration for audio publishing to cut through the market. "How can we work together, to say ’okay we’re all creating great content and we’re fighting for a share of entertainment and education’ — how can we do it together."
She added that the emphasis should be on how can companies can offer "great content that’s affordable and easy".
"What matters is whether they are listening and whether they want to listen to more".
