In our latest research study, The State of Digital Publishing in Canada 2017, we asked publishers about their digital publishing programs for the fifth year in a row. We share some highlights from the report in this month's podcast, exploring some of the recent trends in digital audiobooks (and audio content in general) and stressing the importance of providing accessible content for libraries.

If you'd like to learn more, you can read the whole report for free here. Or if you would rather check out our brief infographic containing some of the stats and highlights mentioned in the report, you can do so here.

(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)

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Transcript

Zalina: Hello. Welcome to the BookNet Canada podcast. I'm Zalina Alvi, the marketing manager at BookNet.

Kira: And I'm Kira Harkonen, BookNet's marketing associate.

Zalina: Earlier this month, we published the 2017 edition of our report on the state of digital publishing in Canada, which is available for free in its entirety on our site. So, we'll be sharing some of the highlights in this month's episode,touching on accessibility, ebook enhancements, and of course, digital audiobooks from the perspective of Canadian publishers.

Kira: The state of digital publishing in Canada research studies explore the size, scope, and production processes of the country's digital publishing landscape, and cover everything from digital revenue streams to accessibility features. For this year's report, we surveyed 54 publishers ranging from large multinationals to small-niche firms in a variety of sectors. And for the first time, we also included publishers' projections for how Canada's digital market may trend in the coming years.

Zalina: So, before we dive into the details, let's do a quick recap on the state of ebook sales in Canada. According to our quarterly surveying of Canadian book buyers, 18.6% of purchases in 2017 were for ebooks, which is an increase of almost 2% over the previous year. Though in 2015, ebooks accounted for 19% of purchases. So, the number has been fluctuating a bit over the last few years, but generally holding steady at just under 20%.

Kira: This is good news for publishers since the number of firms producing ebooks has increased since 2016. In this year's report, 94% of publishers reported that they're currently producing ebooks, which is up by 3% since 2016. We also found that in 2017, 30% of ebooks available in the Canadian market had no sales, while in 2016, 46% had no sales. Though we should mention that our methodology for tracking these numbers has changed slightly this year. And finally, 65% of publishers reported that their year-over-year sales have been growing, largely thanks to a combination of marketing efforts and a maturing market.

Zalina: When it comes to digital audiobooks, our report shows that Canadian production has been growing steadily over the past few years. In 2015, only 16% of publishers were producing digital audiobooks. In 3 years, the number has nearly quadrupled to 61%. At the same time, 73% of publishers expect their audiobook sales to increase in the coming year. And according to our surveying of Canadian book buyers, 20% of readers reported that they listened to an audiobook in the last year. As I've talked about before on the podcast, there are a few reasons for the growth of the audiobook industry ranging from the rising popularity of podcasts to people realizing that they can listen to audiobooks on their smartphones while they're walking the dog. Just this past week, the Audio Publishers Association in the States reported that total sales, south of the border, increased by almost 23% between 2016 and 2017.

In fact, "The New York Times" recently published an article about how there are more jobs than ever for voice actors due to the popularity of audio content like podcasts and audiobooks. So, predictably, the options for accessing audiobooks are growing as well. In the last year, Kobo jumped into the digital audiobook market in Canada and made quite the splash. Fifty-seven percent of publishers reported that they're now selling digital audiobooks through Kobo, while 70% are continuing to sell through Audible, and 47% are using Apple, keeping in mind that most publishers are selling through more than one retailer. Other popular options include audiobooks.com, Scribd, Simply Audiobooks, and Google Play. Meanwhile, the number of publishers selling audiobooks directly to consumers has dropped from 25% in 2016 to 13% in 2017.

Kira: So, how is audiobook production keeping pace with the increased interest from consumers? According to our report, 43% of publishers are producing their audiobooks in-house, 40% are using third-party producers, and 10% are using retailers. And, of course, as digital audiobooks become more popular, we're also seeing increased innovation from the publishing sector to create this content. With Audible's audiobook creation exchange, for example, the self-published authors and publishers are now able to produce and upload their own audiobooks to Audible. The ACX is essentially an online marketplace where authors, publishers, literary agents, and other rights holders can connect with producers, voice actors, engineers and recording studios. The Marketplace became available in Canada on June 1st, and there are already over a 1000 Canadian authors on board.

The catch is that a book must already be available through Kindle Direct Publishing. This is a savvy move from Audible because it forces anyone who wants to use ACX to make their titles available on more than one Amazon control platform. Michael Stover, Product Manager at Audible, discuss some of the different directions Audible is taking digital storytelling on the publishing allowed panel at this year's book Summit. He mentioned that Audible is also developing Whispersync for Voice, a technology that allows Kindle users to switch seamlessly between reading and listening by letting people pair select ebooks with Audible audiobooks for an additional fee. Essentially, Amazon is striving to turn all authors, publishers, and readers who are active on the Kindle platform into Audible users as well.

Zalina: We're also seeing audiobook distributors like Audible and Kobo starting to create their own original content with some interesting ramifications for things like audio rights traditionally managed by publishers. In another recent piece from "The New York Times," it was reported that Michael Lewis will be publishing his next book straight to audio exclusively with Audible, which begs the question, is an audiobook published straight to audio still a book? And what happens to publishers cut out of the equation altogether? The “Moby Lives” blog from Melville House wrote about this, and suggested that Lewis's project with Audible is more akin to audio long-form journalism. And really all of this is really blurring the lines between original audio content like podcasts and traditional audio books adapted from text, and how these things are owned, distributed, and consumed.

And on the other side of things, podcasts are starting to enter this sphere of fictionalized content more and more each day, as we see a resurgence in radio dramas and serialized storytelling, though, it's still a budding genre for the medium. With today's short attention spans, serialized content like podcasts cater to the busy listener with short episodic content that you can either binge or enjoy occasionally. "Welcome to Night Vale" was one of the first podcasts that specialized in episodic storytelling. And since then, we've seen even major celebrities lending their voices to fiction podcasts, though they're less episodic and more serialized. Catherine Keener and Oscar Isaac recently starred in the "Homecoming" podcast, and Kristen Bell was the lead actress in a serialized murder mystery drama called "Deadly Manners," which was very much inspired by the radio dramas of old.

Kira: Yes, the original fiction podcasts were the radio dramas that began in the early 1920s that became the most popular form of entertainment by the 1940s. They use dialogue, music, and sound effects to help listeners visualize stories in their minds, and relied heavily on the cast of voice actors to bring these stories to life. And this brings us back full circle to the modern-day audiobook. Take "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders, for example. The audiobook has 166 narrators, including Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Don Cheadle, Bill Hader, Julianne Moore, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon, Jeffrey Tambor, Keegan-Michael Key, and many more incredible voices. The final product won the 2018 Audio Award for the Best Audiobook of the Year. And "Lincoln in the Bardo" wasn't the first to try and merge radio dramas with literature. Molly Barton, co-founder and CEO of Serial Box was also a featured speaker on book summits audiobook panel, and she shared a few of the things that her company is currently working on.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Serial Box is a digital audiobook platform that publishes chapters or episodes serially. Their books are written by team of writers, and each week, just like your favourite TV crime drama, they publish a new chapter of whatever story you're subscribed to. And unlike most audiobooks, Serial Box adds thematic music and sound effects to the traditional narration. They offer a wide variety of different genres. And similar to Amazon's Whispersync for Voice, you can switch between reading an ebook or listening to the audio version. The first episode of every story is also free, so you can decide whether or not you like the story before you subscribe. There are tons of innovative new ways publishers and other creators are producing audio content for readers, for-non readers, and there's even Audible for dogs as a result of an interesting partnership with dog behaviourist, Cesar Millan.

Needless to say, audiobooks are no longer just books on tape. They are books online, on your phone, on your iPad, on your e-reader, and even on vinyl. For more on that, you can check out our January episode on audiobooks and audio-first publishing with Book*hug's Hazel Millar and Kobo's Nastaran Bisheban.

Zalina: Speaking of merging ebooks and audio content, we also found in our State of Digital Publishing Canada report that audio is still the number one enhancement being used on ebooks. One hundred percent of publishers who are using enhancements on their ebooks are adding audio, with 55% adding video, 55% adding a readalong feature, and just under 20% using interactive images, scripted animation or slideshows. This slice of the pie isn't all that large, though. Only 22% of publishers are producing enhanced ebooks, while 32% are either planning to or investigating the possibility. And these numbers have been fairly consistent over the last few years. Ebook enhancements are mostly popular with scholarly or educational publishers. And when they are used by trade publishers, it's mostly the big ones who are doing it. But for the publishers who are producing enhanced ebooks, more than half say that doing so has had a positive impact on their sales, which is up from 33% in 2016.

Kira: What is increasing, however, is the use of accessibility features in ebooks. When we surveyed publishers in 2016, 33% weren't including any in their ebooks, and this is down to 18% in 2017. While the use of navigational aids is still the top accessibility feature publishers are including in their ebooks, the number of publishers using them has dropped by 16% since 2016. At the same time, the use of embedded graphic, or audio, or video media has gone up along with enabled text to speech. These are very useful features for readers who are visually-impaired or who are print-disabled. But it should be noted that even readers without accessibility challenges use features like adjusting font sizes or spacing, night display, and changing text orientation or colours, which is something that we found in our consumer surveying of ebook buyers.

Zalina: That's a particularly important point for the 18% of publishers who reported that they don't use any accessibility features in their ebooks. If you're interested in learning more about these features, what they entail and how easy they are to implement, we recommend looking up BISG's Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing, and we'll include a link to this document in the show notes for your reference. We actually had a panel at Ebookcraft 2018, all about the use of ebooks in libraries, from production to circulation with Maria Cipriano from Toronto Public Library, Teresa Elsey from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Rose Donohue from OverDrive. They spoke about the importance of having accessible ebooks available to library patrons in particular. So let's take a listen to what they had to say.

Maria: I can't stress enough how digital lending has become a game changer for print-disabled people and for customers who are shut in. Elderly and disabled customers are often on fixed incomes and can't afford to buy all their reading material. They often read a lot, four to five books a week, and it's one of their main forms of their income. Digital collections have empowered these customers. They no longer have to rely on the monthly book delivery that we did through our Home Library Service where we selected the books, they are now empowered to select their own books.

Teresa: I love the fact that every ebook can be a large print book. I like a nice, big type when I'm reading. And audiobooks are great for people with print disabilities. Libraries have to comply with disability legislation, it is no joke. We must provide books in as many formats as possible, by law. And in my view, in a civilized, enlightened civilization, economic status or disability should not prevent you from reading a book. My view is no reader should be left behind.

Rose: The world is a much better place for me these days than it was when I first started doing the job. I have access to so much more content, it's great. But there's still room for improvement. We have really good access to U.S. content, but we still struggle to get Canadian and international content, which is really surprising. Many U.S. libraries have access to titles that are unavailable in Canada. We're talking Louise Penny, we're talking the audio version of "The Best Kind of People," we're talking "The Wonder." This doesn't seem right to me for a number of reasons.

Firstly, some of these books and authors received taxpayer funding through grants which I fully, fully support. But these books are not available to the same taxpayers through their library. Secondly, I have to comply with disability legislation. But I can't provide these books for people if they're not being sold to me in the first place. And the situation is dire for audiobooks. There's so many books that I would love to be able to get, but we can't get. You know, I know that there are subscription services, but some of...Audible, for example, if they have exclusive rights to Canadian books, that means no library or even Kobo or the retail side of things does not have access to these books. And this doesn't seem right. I would really love it if publishers could take back control again.

Kira: Thanks to Maria, Teresa, and Rose for having that discussion and letting us know about ebook usage and accessibility in the library context. If you want more from them or other speakers from Ebookcraft 2018, you can find videos of the talks on our YouTube channel, just search for BookNet Canada videos. And of course, we only skimmed the surface of the information in our State of Digital publishing in Canada report. So, if you want to find out more about digital revenue streams, ebook formats, library distribution, and lots more, you can find a whole report for free on our website at booknetcanada.ca. We'll also include a link in the show notes so you can read and share.

Zalina: I'd like to take a second now to give a little update on what's going on at BookNet. If you're listening, you're probably familiar with some aspect of our work. But people are often surprised by all the things that we do in the book industry. So, to give you an idea, we're currently working on a series of research studies that will be looking at social media use by Canadian book buyers, and that should be coming out later in the summer. Loan Stars are a project where library staff across Canada vote for their favourite forthcoming books each month, just entered its third year, and you can find the top 10 lists at loanstars.ca and published by Quill and Quire and the Toronto Star each month.

We've also started a bi-weekly tiny letter for retailers called "Let's Sell Some Books" with digestible nuggets of data and insights that you can find at tinyletter.com/booknet_canada. And finally, we're gearing up to play another season of Pub Fight, our fantasy publishing league that's open to anyone who subscribes to sales data, our sales tracking service for print books in Canada. You get to participate in a fake book auction, print copies for your fantasy publishing house, and either earn profit or cry over your poor printing decisions. It's a lot of fun, and we're still inviting teams to sign up before the game starts in late August. You can find links for all of these things in our show notes, so don't hesitate to get involved or get in touch.

Kira: And thanks to all the publishers who contributed to The State of Digital Publishing in Canada report, and to the BookNet Canada research team for putting it together. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada book fund for this project. And, of course, thanks to you for listening.

Podcast: Audiobooks, enhancements, and accessibility – Digital publishing in 2017

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