ICYMI: Audiobooks are making a comeback.
Having shed their clunky cassette and disc casings and re-emerged in digital format, audiobooks have been making the news. In June (a.k.a. Audiobook Month), we saw a flurry of articles on the small but noticeable climb in audiobook sales. And since we're noted audiophiles—we have our own podcast—we were especially interested in this phenomenon.
Zalina Alvi hits the streets for the BookNet podcast to talk to some of the industry players involved and find out how the audiobook got pushed down the road to reinvention, what the availability of multiple formats does for sales and bundling, and how the Canadian-produced audiobook fits in to all of this.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Transcript
Zalina Alvi: Have you listened to an audiobook lately? If you have, you're in good company. Across the board in Canada and internationally, from libraries to subscription services, the audiobook market is on the rise, and has been for a while. Two years ago, when we surveyed Canadian consumers to learn about their book buying and reading habits, we found that audiobooks made up 1.3% of book purchases in Canada.
In 2015, while numbers for print and eBooks were either relatively flat or on a slight decline, audiobooks were up to 2% of the market share. Meanwhile, the Association of American Publishers recently reported that sales of downloaded audiobooks in the US increased by almost 40% in just a year. So we thought we'd spend this month's episode talking about the resurgence of the audiobook, where it's coming from, how it's being experienced by different players in the industry, and where the format may be heading next. Over at Scribd, head of marketing, Jen Singerman, has some thoughts on why people may be returning to the audio format.
Jen Singerman: The reason that people love them so much is that they can read a book while doing something else. So, with most of the new cars having Bluetooth in them, they can listen on their commutes, having a smartphone, where you can download the book for offline listening, you can really do anything and still read a great book. We've seen a healthy increase in audiobook consumption over the past couple of years. We're seeing a lot of the major publishers investing in audiobooks, just because it really is the fastest-growing segment in the industry right now.
Zalina: The digital audiobook does seem like the perfect format for our on-the-go, multitasking world. And the booming popularity of podcasts has probably played a large role in driving up renewed interest in audiobooks for those same reasons. If you've listened to a major podcast lately, you've probably heard an ad for Audible, which isn't a coincidence.
So, to start things off, we're gonna talk with a Canadian author working at the intersection of podcasts and audiobooks, followed by a publisher on a mission to produce and highlight homegrown Canadian audiobooks, and we'll cap things off with someone who's been working to advance the audiobook format through technology and the internet for the last 10 years.
Terry Fallis is a Canadian author who's probably best known for his award-winning debut novel, "The Best Laid Plans." But you may not know that Terry podcasted that book for free, chapter by chapter, on his own equipment, before it was picked up by his publisher. And he's been doing the same thing for all of his books ever since.
Terry Fallis: When I finished the manuscript, I did what most writers do when they want to be published. I sent out, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of plot synopses and sample chapters and query letters to literary agents and publishers around the country, and down into the United States. And then in my wildest dreams, I sat back and I waited for the feeding frenzy to ensue over my debut blockbuster novel.
And that feeding frenzy never, it never happened. I didn't even make a big enough impression on the traditional publishing establishment to get a, you know, an automatically generated rejection letter. I didn't get rejection letters. So, maybe that was because I'd written a satirical novel of Canadian politics. So, when I got no response, I decided to try self-publishing the novel just to get it out there. And while I was going through the self-publishing process, which took many months, I podcast the novel, chapter by chapter, one chapter each week, until it was finished, and gave it away for free, just as an experiment in this emerging world of social media. At least it was back then. That was 2007 when I did that.
And it went very well. People seemed to find it, and they seemed to like it, and I'm not sure I ever would've self-published had the response to the podcast not been as positive as it was. So, I felt pretty fortunate.
Zalina: Were you at all concerned that giving it away for free would cannibalize future sales?
Terry: Well, the thought did occur to me, and many people raised that issue with me, and I never would've given it away in print form for free. But my thinking was, if you change the format, give it away in a different format, in my case, the audio format, and people listen to it and enjoy it, chances are they are going to go and buy a copy, if not for them, for their friends or family or birthday presents, Christmas presents, that kind of thing. And I think the anecdotal evidence I've had over the course of five novels is that that is in fact the case. I'm quite convinced we've sold more print copies because of the free audio podcast version.
Zalina: Do you know of any author doing the same thing, or are you, as far as you know, the only one?
Terry: Well, I don't think I'm the only one. I think I was the only one in Canada doing it at the time I started, back in January of 2007. But I got the idea from a thriller horror writer in the U.S. by the name of Scott Sigler. And he couldn't find a publisher, and he started podcasting his novels, just as a sort of an experiment.
And legions of listeners subscribed to his podcast. And on the strength of a growing audience, he landed a publishing deal and has been a New York Times Bestseller after that. So, I read about that in "The New York Times," and I thought, well, I know how to podcast, and I'm not finding any traction with my first novel. Why don't I try it? And it seems to have worked pretty well for me.
Zalina: Have you ever had a, I don't know, anyone, the publisher or anything raise any concern or say, "I don't know, Terry. Maybe we should not do that?"
Terry: Right. Now, that's a good question. When I was picked up by McClelland & Stewart, after my first novel came out as a self-published novel, they picked it up. And I, of course, asked them, you know, or told them at least about the podcast, and they knew about it already. And they have given me permission, and it's in my contracts with McClelland & Stewart ever since, that I can podcast my novels and give them away for free. So I hold those audio rights.
Zalina: Are your books available as audiobooks?
Terry: No, not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, anyone can download it for free from iTunes, so I don't know that there'd be a huge market for an audio version of it. And I still feel some loyalty to my podcast listeners, who really helped, I think, make me a writer, in a way, or at least helped me break into the publishing world.
So I think I will continue to use the free model in the hopes that it will help drive more sales of the print version. But I have read these reports that audiobooks are on the rise, and that's, you know, that's an interesting take. Maybe it's because we're consuming so much media these days that maybe some people are finding reading by listening is easier. So, I'm watching that with interest, and I'll continue to podcast my novels. But I think I'll stick to the free model.
Zalina: Do you think that's something that, I mean, would you recommend that model to other authors?
Terry: Well, it's obviously a choice they have to make on their own, but I think the results can be very positive. I mean, a few things have to come together. You have to be able to read it and produce it effectively, so that the quality is high. Not all writers, I think, read very well, and I'm not even sure I do, but I work at it, at least, to try and make it sound more than just a flat monotone, particularly when you're in dialogue with different characters.
Makes it a bit challenging to change your voice to make sure that they're distinctive. But I think it is something, if you're having trouble building an audience for your writing, podcasting your work is certainly one way, and then promoting the podcast, that's one way to find an audience.
Zalina: So, you touched on this a little bit, but I'm actually curious about the nitty-gritty details of you actually producing your podcast. I mean, had you had any experience with audio work before you sat down to do this, or did you just learn as you went?
Terry: I have had...I did have experience before I started it. In 2005, you know, a year and a half before I started podcasting my novels, I created, with a colleague, the first podcast in Canada about public relations, which is my day job. And it was called "Inside PR," and it's still around 10 years later. The podcast is still going strong, although I'm no longer on the mic, but I did four years of it, weekly episodes. So, nearly, you know, 250 episodes, or 400 episodes, or something like that. I've lost track. Maybe it was 250 episodes.
So, I knew how to do it. I knew how to produce it. I knew how to edit. I use Audacity. I knew how to get good sound quality, how to put music on the front and music on the back, and upload it to our podcast host, and get it out there. So, it's almost second nature to me now. But it took a while to get into it at the beginning. But it takes me, probably, the episodes are about half hour in length, of my novels, and it probably takes me maybe two and a half hours in total to produce it, because I'll read it, and then I'll edit it, and gotta write the notes for the blog and all of that. So, it takes some time, but I think it's worth it.
Zalina: There's a lot of truth in what Terry says about the different formats going hand in hand. More and more, people are consuming the same book in multiple formats, often simultaneously. In our 2015 report on audiobook usage in Canada, we found that 36% of audiobook users listened to a book they'd previously read in another format. But in that same report, 33% of listeners also said it's sometimes difficult to find a book they want to listen to. So, this audiobook fairy tale is not without its challenges, which we'll get to next.
If you want to listen to an audio book featuring Canadian content, that's produced by Canadian talent, you may find the list of available titles a bit wanting. That's where David Caron, co-publisher at ECW Press comes in. He's on a mission to make sure Canadian-produced audiobooks from Canadian publishers are plentiful and discoverable.
So, when did it first come about? Where did the idea start, and who kind of got it moving?
David Caron: You know, it's kind of been brewing for a while, when you think about sort of what the elements are, the fact that, you know, we have all this capability here to do it. And there's been various companies that have tried to do some things over the years, like Hugh McGuire did LibriVox, which was more of a sort of voluntary... But, you know, sometimes more, but voluntary, or author reading stuff that Hugh would distribute through LibriVox. There's Post Hypnotic Press in Vancouver, that does some stuff, and Carlyn's been great at what she's done there. There is Podium Publishing and Newmarket, you know, which often does its production in the U.S., but it's based here in Canada.
So, there's been, you know, things brewing in the audiobook world here in Canada. But really, the moment was at a meeting of the ACP, with the Association of Canadian Publishers, in January of 2015, when we had a panel of librarians talking to us, and one of them said, "Wow, you guys in audiobooks." Like, you know, "We need audiobooks. We got people coming into our libraries all the time saying, 'I want more audiobooks,' and there just isn't enough Canadian-authored audiobooks available, and there should be."
And I was thinking, "Yeah, but there is lots of Canadian-authored audiobooks out there." And I was sitting beside Alana Wilcox from Coach House Books. And I was like, "There's a lot of Canadian-authored audiobooks out there. Like, I know we have over 100 titles that are licensed to Audible, and we have more that's licensed to Recorded, and various publishers, and," you know...
But the problem is, is I know the problem is that libraries are generally using Overdrive, for instance, to get access to their audiobooks or Midwest Tape, on the physical side of things. And it's not easily identifiable maybe that these are Canadian authors. And I said, "We should just do something. Like, why don't we do something to make it more available? And why don't we actually do something to produce more stuff here?" Because, you know, we were all talking earlier about the fact that the number of, the amount of licensing had gone down since sort of the initial flurry back around five years ago.
And Alana said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah". We were just, like, getting excited about this idea. And then, from there, grew the idea, "Why don't we just do it ourselves?" And, "How can we, you know, figure out how to do it and budget for it," and, you know, what do we do in terms of getting some seed money to, you know, make sure that we can afford to do this, and have some financing to do it the first time around? That kind of thing.
Zalina: So, what was done exactly on the side of promoting existing audiobooks, specifically, with or to OverDrive in libraries?
David: Yeah. So, we're in the middle of that right now. And I'm asking all publishers to send me lists of the Canadian-authored audiobooks that they already have in existence, the stuff that they've licensed, and who they've licensed it to, so that we can, you know, present those kind of lists to Canadian libraries. And part of the problem is, is, that I've discovered since sort of making that statement, is things like the fact that Audible isn't available to Canadian libraries.
So, it depends on who you license the stuff to that would determine whether or not your books are actually available to Canadian libraries or not. So, I'm asking publishers to give me that information now, and these are lists that I wanna keep sending out to librarians, so that they know what's available. And as we produce stuff, that's gonna, you know, form a big part of, a core part of that list. And, you know, we're making sure that those titles are available to Canadian libraries.
Zalina: In terms of producing some new Canadian audiobooks, what are the plans right now, if you can share, in terms of actual, like, actual titles or publishers that you're working with, and projects that are kind of on the go?
David: Sure. Yeah. I mean, the biggest obstacle at this point is just publishers finding the time to engage in something, which is, you know, it's the norm of what they do. You know, we had to struggle with finding the time and resources to include eBooks into our production, and, you know, we figured out how to make it an integral part of it, so that now that doing, you know, now, for everybody, doing eBooks is just a part of publishing.
You know, we're in that stage now with the audiobooks, for publishers to find some time to figure out, okay, I gotta... Because there's, you know, I've gotta figure out which books to do, and do some casting, and then to get into the studio with the narrator. Like, all that stuff takes some time. So, a number of publishers are already working on it.
So, Coach House and ECW have already been in the studio. Playwrights Canada Press is getting ready to go in the studio. Between The Lines is getting ready to go into the studio. Guernica Editions is getting ready to go in the studio. Coming up, I know that Wolsak and Wynn will be doing it, Inanna Publications will be doing it, Dundurn will be doing it.
And a number of other companies have said, yeah, we want to be doing this, whether it's House of Anansi or Second Story, you know, a number of companies has said, yeah, we want to do one, two, three multiples of getting some audiobooks done. So, yeah, I mean, so, in terms of titles, having André Alexis read, and getting out Fifteen Dogs, was the first thing that we did. So that is out there.
From ECW, we've been already recorded, Cordelia Strube's "On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light." We've recorded Cynthea Masson's, "Alchemists' Council." Braden Wright just finished doing Nathan Whitlock's "Congratulations on Everything." I know that André is gonna record "The Hidden Keys," which is the next book in the series after "Fifteen Dogs."
Actually, I think he's already done that and they're already working on the post on that one. So, yeah. There's a number of titles that are in the works. Playwrights Canada Press is gonna go into the studio soon for Jordan Tannahill's "Age of Minority." This initiative is based on the fact that for years, Canadian-owned publishers have been licensing books to other publishers, to mainly audiobook publishers, like Audible or Recorded, to do the audiobook versions of titles that they publish.
And those companies are all based in the States. And sometimes they use Canadian narrators, and, but more often than not, they don't. And that's not the way that the larger publishers, the big five, and Scholastic, operate. They produce their stuff themselves. They view audiobooks as a primary thing that they publish, much in the same way that they view eBooks.
So, if you see, like, ads for books that they do, titles that they do, you'll see, you know, "Available now in print, ebook, and audio," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's just how they view it. And the thought definitely was, well, we have the narration talent here. We have the studio, you know, facilities, the studio talent here. Why can't we work collectively to achieve the same thing, to look at it in the same way? That's the idea behind the project.
Zalina Alvi: I mean, you mentioned that there are already, you know, lots of Canadian audiobooks out there, but with this big push, do you think it'll be, that's another, like, we'll be doubling the number of Canadian audiobooks, or just putting a few more out there to add to what's already a large number? I mean, what is this going to add?
David: Yeah. So, our goal is 100 books over 12 months. So, in a year, 100 books. And from there, I mean, we picked 100 books because, you know, we figured two a week, that was a pretty ambitious thing to do, and go for that. And also, it would give us a good indication of, across the board, of the kind of response that we'd have to it, the kind of revenue we can expect.
I mean, one of the things that I'm hoping to see happen is that this, because this just becomes the start of something, that this happens year over year. And as publishers, one of the things we need to know is, okay, great, what can we expect in terms of revenue from this, so we can figure out, you know, what kind of costs are justifiable for making this happen?
So, 100 books was this target that we thought, okay, that won't be dependent then on one title or a sort of a small group of titles. A hundred is a pretty broad section of titles that the revenue that comes from that, it can be translatable into future years, in terms of projections. How it compares to what's out there? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I mean, since Audible did a fair number of the licensing, and that's not what's available to Canadian libraries, that's what we're trying to figure out is exactly how much out there is currently available to Canadian libraries. And if we add in 100 books, what does that mean? Does that mean we double it? Does that mean something else? I don't know the answer to that yet, because I'm still trying to get lists from people. I mean, right now, in terms of stuff that's available that's not from Audible, we don't even have 100 on the list, but I don't have the list from a lot of publishers yet, so it's hard to say.
Zalina: I've heard a little bit about... So, I just wanna kind of address, I guess, technical challenges for producing audiobooks. So, I've heard a little bit about the cost involved. Can you talk a little bit about what it actually costs to produce a full-length audiobook?
David: Yeah. So, the major costs are the talent to voice it. And then the studio time...sorry, studio production time, to make the audiobook. So, you know, first of all, you've gotta pay that professional narrator, because they're bringing, like I said, they're bringing something special to the project, and that's the sort of, that's the first cost there that you have to work out.
And then, from there, the production side of thing. You know, not only you're talking about an engineer to record it in a, you know, a good, decent studio, but then that engineer has to do a lot of work to edit that audio, to take out the little clicks, you know, that can happen with the voice and to make it that enjoyable listening experience, rather than just a sort of raw recording.
Then, from there, after that, you've gotta proof it. And just like any book, you know, you've gotta do your quality control. You proof it, you figure out, oh, there's words dropped, or there's a little mouth noise there we gotta fix or, oh, that got screwed up, you know, and then you're talking about getting the narrator back into the studio to do the rerecords. You gotta, then, another round of editing to have those incorporated into the final version.
And then another proof again. So, an audio proof is obviously somebody listening to it from beginning to end, to make sure that it's good quality. So, that whole process, that's, you know, an iterative process between record, edit, proof, record, edit, proof, until you get it right.
Zalina: It does sound pretty expensive.
David: Yeah. And that was our, you know, like I said, we had this idea in January 2015, and then, you know, we didn't, you know, the first recording of "Fifteen Dogs" happened, you know, near the end of January 2016. You know, and what happened in that year is we really took a look at these costs, and tried to figure out how we can get them to be as reasonable as we can, given that we're, especially that, you know, we're trying something out that we don't know.
We can't really judge what our revenue's gonna be because of what we've licensed to Audible, because there are pieces to our marketing that Audible won't be doing. On the same token, we're not, you know, like, we're not Audible... We're distributing the books to Audible to have in their service, but we're not Audible, as a publisher. And there may be other things that, other revenue pieces that we don't get in terms of sales, that Audible is able to get. We don't know. What we have to do is we have to find out.
So, keeping the costs reasonable across the board, and keeping the costs especially reasonable in this first year, is something that we spent that, you know, that 12 months doing, in terms of talking with ACTRA about what an audiobook contract would look like, and talking with studios, and talking with, you know, potential producers, or brokers of studio services here in Toronto. Like, that, it took some time to get those pieces into place to try and make those costs as reasonable as possible.
Zalina: So, I mean, a lot of these existing audiobooks that seem to be successful are, you know, for big, best-selling, blockbuster books, or celebrity memoirs. And, I mean, "Fifteen Dogs" was a huge book last year, and is still a huge book, so I'm sure it will find an audience. But for smaller books, I mean, does the cost of producing an audiobook, will it match up with what's gained if the audience for those other books are fairly small?
David: Well, see, that's the nature of publishing, though, and that's the nature of, like, of what we, as Canadian-owned publishers know. We realize that, you know, in terms of... You can look at publishing in one way, you can kind of see that that top 1%, and see the blockbusters, and say, "Oh, that's publishing," but that's not. Right? Publishing is all the books that we do, as well as those blockbusters, so we know that there are books that do quite well, even though they're for a niche market, or whether they're for a regional market, or whether they're for, you know, a particular genre. All of those things, we know that the book market is diverse, and that readers are there for all sorts of kinds of books. And, you know, if you just take that quick view, you see the blockbuster, and that, you know, what I think is true is that's the case for the audiobook market as well.
That if you take a quick look at the audiobook market and see, oh yeah, the top sellers are these, they're all genre fiction, or they're all, you know, bestselling literary fiction. What you don't get to see, because you don't get to be, you know, ensconced in the numbers, is how much is selling of other books. We can see that a little bit as publishers, in terms of those of us who have licensed a fair number of books, that we can see, "Oh, yeah. No, this memoir actually has done quite well." Or this, you know, mystery book by, you know, we have mystery book by, mysteries by, you know, Anne Emery and John McFetridge and things like that, who have an audience. You know, it may not be a blockbuster audience in the terms of, you know, a national bestseller, but they have a good audience, and they sold well as audiobook. So, that's the thing that we know. And we're looking to see that just transfer itself in terms of the audience for an audiobook.
Zalina: Someone who's no stranger to experimenting with different models is Hugh McGuire. In 2005, he founded, LibriVox, an online library of free public domain audio books, produced by an army of remote volunteers. Since then, he's founded a few other projects, including Iambik, an audiobook production company based in Montreal that partners with publishers, authors, and narrators to produce books that have been overlooked by traditional audio publishers.
So, you've been involved in the market for quite a while now, at least since 2005, right?
Hugh McGuire: Yes. I guess it depends a bit how you define market, but yeah, I've been doing audiobook stuff since 2005, for sure.
Zalina: Do you have any thoughts on how perception or use or demand for audiobooks has changed in the last decade? From your perspective, what have the changes been over the last 10 years?
Hugh: Yeah, I think that when we started working on LibriVox in particular, and I guess I still get this, but people say, "Oh, books on tapes," or, "books for the blind." And I think the change is driven largely by podcasting, which has sort of altered the landscape of this notion that we can get access to all sorts of different kinds of audio. And Audible, of course, has been a big advertiser on podcasts for many, many years.
And so, I think it's just a lot easier for people to experiment with audiobooks and, you know, I think the compelling use case for me is that driving, you can't be reading a paper book while you're driving, but you could be listening to an audiobook. And so, I think that notion is just a lot more present than it was 10 years ago, largely because of both the new technology of smartphones, but also the access to different kinds of audio. And so, I think, certainly, the perception's changed considerably in the last decade.
Zalina: So, as things start to shift more towards audiobooks and we've seen increases in demand of fairly large percentages over the last two years, do you think there are any current challenges facing the industry, specifically publishers and distributors and creators of content, when it comes to adapting to that kind of shifting marketplace and producing more audiobooks for people?
Hugh: Well, I think one big challenge is that the, if you want access to the digital audiobook market, there's effectively a monopoly with Audible. And so, it means you have really one channel to negotiate with, and Audible is a big, giant, Amazon-owned company that is not necessarily so easy to get good terms with. And so, I think that's a real challenge that no one else has managed to make much of a dent in the audiobook market, beyond Audible as a delivery platform.
And so, that poses a big challenge of just the... You know, it means you have one person to negotiate with, and that's always not the best situation to be in. There are other channels, of course, but in my experience, they're very small, and bordering on insignificant. And then, I guess the other thing is just that the process of making a good audio book is time-consuming and expensive, and so it automatically kind of makes a lot of the more niche content...you know, it becomes harder to make that commercially viable in audiobook than it might be in print or ebook.
Zalina: We can't really come up with just one solution right here, right now, I suppose? But any ideas about, I don't know, what an ideal landscape would look like, or something that can make a difference?
Hugh: Yeah, it's a good question. It's a very tough one. I think that, you know, what we did at Iambik, and that got elaborated, I think, in a lot more powerful way by Audible's platform, ACX, where it was kind of a marketplace exchange for creators and publishers, that helps bring out a lot of content that might not come out otherwise. I think the fact that the market is growing is great, and that will provide opportunity for new entrants to do different kinds of things. But it's one of the, you know, general challenges of the digital marketplace is that when there's a really powerful incumbent, it's hard to challenge that.
And I guess... So, yeah, having solutions, and I'm not quite sure what the solutions are. But I think that, you know, publishers being engaged with audio is helpful, and it means that more people will be thinking about it as an opportunity, for sure.
Zalina: So, another issue that's been around a little while is the issue surrounding how people listen to books, in terms of whether or not text-to-speech is enabled in e-readers. So, yeah. So, the larger issue is people with visual impairments, they can have books they've downloaded read aloud to them, but there's a copyright issue around there for publishers, and they prefer people buy audiobooks, but, you know, there's a very small percentage of books that are made available as audiobooks. So...
Hugh: Yes. Well, I have a radical position on that that publishers should do everything they can to make it easier for people to read more books, and whatever that means. And to me, you know, if you're not enabling text-to-speech on a ebook, then it means that when someone could be getting further along in that book, and finishing it, and buying a new one, they're not, because they can't be reading it at a particular time. And I think it's a little bit bizarre as well, the notion that you would buy an ebook and then expect someone to also buy the audiobook.
And if, you know, audiobooks can't compete with text-to-speech, then I think we should all re-evaluate the value of making professional narrated audiobooks in the first place. What I mean is that a professionally narrated audiobook should be a much more pleasing experience than text-to-speech. And if it's not, then what's the point of spending that money to do it? And the reason is that people are going to choose that format over another. And I don't think text-to-speech would have any impact on audiobook sales. But my opinions on copyright and how publishers approach things hasn't often been embraced very fully by the publishing industry. So...
Zalina: Audiobooks still make up a fairly small section of the pie in terms of preferred format among readers. Do you think readership will ever be evenly split between print, eBooks, and audio, or...
Hugh: No. So, I think that it's a very different format, used for very different purposes. I know that some people prefer audio almost exclusively over other formats, but that's gonna be, I think that'll always be a smaller percentage. I think what's, you know, the bigger story, for me, has been the plateauing of ebook sales, which I didn't expect, you know, five, six, seven years ago.
So now what I think, you know, the people have spoken so far, anyway, and that print remains the preferred format. ebooks are a second format, and I gather that audiobooks are starting to grow faster. And I suppose I could see audio taking over ebooks, because, in a way, audio provides a totally different mechanism to be reading, whereas ebooks are the same mechanism, just in a slightly different presentation. So, you know, audio has the possibility to fill a whole other market, I think, that is totally different than print books, in a way that ebooks are sort of a replication of print books. So, yeah. I think there's a huge upside to audio, for sure.
Zalina: If you'd like some more analysis and dissection of the audiobook market, you can find more information in the BookNet Canada blog around the first week of August. A big thank-you to Jen Singerman, Terry Fallis, David Caron, and Hugh McGuire for joining me on this month's podcast. If you'd like to learn more about what we do, you can visit booknetcanada.ca. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
