While the end of year results are not yet known, audiobook revenues doubled in Finland up until September 2018, standing at 2.5 million euros ($2.8 million) and accounting for 3% of total book sales.
Market leader Bookbeat, part of Sweden’s Bonnier, as reported here recently had 150,000 subscribers at end 2019, and Finland’s M&M says 70,000 (47%) of those were in Finland.
Sweden’s Bookbeat grew 163% to 150,000 in 2018. Targets 250,000 subscribers by end 2019
Sari Forsström, Head of Business Development at BookBeat, told M&M,
Last year’s growth was tough. At Christmas, we sold thousands of gift cards. There have been a lot of new downloads in the early part of the year, there are both new customers and gift card redemptions..
Bonnier-owned Adlibris said Christmas sales in Finland did not grow as expected. Adlibris Nordic Sales Vice Predident, Sakari Luovo, explained,
The growth of audio book services has partly affected the demand for other products. People are experimenting with new digital services, some sort of change is going on. We also have audio books for sale, but many prefer to buy monthly subscriptions as individual gifts.
But Bookbeat’s Sari Forsström does not believe that rise of audiobooks is at the expense of print or ebooks, and will often be listened to at times when reading a book in any format is impractical.
Via M&M Finland.
