Kobo has simply launched an audiobook bookstore that sells audiobooks individually and likewise offers them on a subscription degree foundation. Their complete audiobook catalog is powered by Overdrive and that is the primary time they’ve ever been concerned in an audiobook subscription scheme.
Kobo Audiobooks will value $12.99 per 30 days in Canada and comes with a 30-day free trial interval. Prospects will get one credit score a month with their subscription and they are often redeemed for any audiobook title on the platform. You may also buy Kobo Audiobooks individually and store with confidence with their Value Match Assure. As well as, readers earn Kobo Tremendous Factors on their month-to-month subscription charges or audiobook purchases. The Kobo audiobooks service is out there immediately within the US for ($9.99/mo), the UK (£6.99/mo), Australia ($12.99/mo), and New Zealand ($13.99/mo).
Kobo has up to date their app for Android and iOS and have introduced over a completely useful audiobook participant. You can also make purchases and hearken to your content material on Android, and with iOS you possibly can solely hearken to titles you’ve gotten already purchased or have used a credit score on. You can’t make purchases instantly in your iPhone or iPad.
“We’ve extra books than time, at all times. Audiobooks let our readers match the books they love into extra elements of their day,” says Michael Tamblyn, CEO, Rakuten Kobo Inc. “Audio allows you to be in two locations without delay—exploring the galaxy on the every day commute, fixing against the law whereas doing the laundry, or wherever you need your favorite story to take you.”
Tamblyn continues: “Final 12 months, we constructed the Kobo Aura ONE eReader with the assistance of our greatest clients, and our new providing is not any completely different. What we unequivocally heard was that they needed the perfect deal on audiobooks, and we’re happy to supply the bottom subscription worth out there.”
Over the course of the previous three years the best rising phase of publishing are audiobooks. The worldwide audiobook trade is presently evaluated at $3.5 billion {dollars} and the US is presently the most important singular market with $1.8 billion {dollars} in audio gross sales in 2016 and this was a 31% improve from 2015. The Audio Publishers of America has acknowledged that yearly for the previous three years 36,000 audiobooks have been issued. When it comes proper all the way down to it, the retailers are those who profit from the audiobook revolution. The overwhelming majority of the businesses that spoke to Good e-Reader have disclosed that they’ve seen triple digit development and anticipate this development to proceed into 2017.
Michele Cobb, govt director of the Audio Publishers Affiliation, pointed to the “vital” improve in items and {dollars} that audio has seen up to now few years; the super recognition of podcasts; and referenced affiliation surveys. Surprisingly, frequent listeners – of no less than 4 audiobooks a month – skew 56% male.
I’m actually comfortable that Kobo has leveraged their sister firm to offer an audiobook resolution for his or her clients. I predicted final 12 months that Kobo would open up an audiobook retailer and even cited their relationship with Overdrive because the digital content material supplier. I really feel audiobooks was the lacking piece to the Kobo ecosystem and this might present a profitable stream of income for years to come back.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Put up and the New York Occasions have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
