While many publishers remain wary of the unlimited subscription model for digital books, consumers continue to vote with their smartphones, driving growth of subscription services to new heights.
Among the first to announce Q2 results in Sweden-based Nextory, founded in 2015, which saw new users up 58% in June and revenue almost doubled compared with Q2 2019.
The latest press release offers no detail of subscriber numbers, as per Nextory policy, nor a breakdown of how reported growth is spread across Nextory’s markets, but confirms the company’s claims to be the fastest growing of the Swedish digital books subscription services. We’ll have to take Nextory CEO Shadi Bitar’s word for it that Nextory is the second largest player in the Swedish market after Storytel.
Bitar said,
Despite a very challenging first half with new conditions and working from home, we have continued to grow at a furious pace. It is now clear that the summer is on and that the holidays have started. We can clearly see that the activity has increased in the app and that more people have started reading and listening to books in June compared to May.
At end 2019 Nextory launched in Austria and Switzerland, which with Germany, Finland and Denmark took Nextory’s European reach to 6 markets, although of course the Austrian and Swiss launches simply capitalised on existing content for the Germany market.
In March, as Bitar talked about ”fantastic growth”, Nextory picked up $6 million in new funding for its expansion plans.
