To be clear, PRH has not banned the audiobook in Swedish outright, but without revenue from the unlimited streaming services Storytel, Nextory, BookBeat and Bokus Play the audiobook version in Swedish simple isn’t financially viable.
In the first big backfire of the decision by Penguin Random House back in January to prevent its titles being streamed on unlimited services, Barack Obama’s almost-guaranteed Christmas bestseller A Promised Land will struggle to top the charts in Sweden as the audiobook is not being published in Swedish.
Isa Widerståhl, publisher at Albert Bonnier’s publishing house, which is handling the Swedish edition, told Boktugg:
The audiobook will unfortunately not be published in Swedish as we do not have the rights to sell it in the streaming services as a result of PRH’s new policy towards these.
Boktugg explains:
The press release does not mention anything about a Swedish audiobook edition and there was a reason for that. That Penguin Random House has declared that none of their titles may be released to the subscription services that offer unlimited listening. This is despite the growing interest in reading and listening via subscription services such as Storytel, Bookbeat, Nextory and Bokus Play .
An unabridged audiobook, read by the author himself, is published in digital and physical format by Penguin Random House Audio in English. It is already available at Audible (29 hours and 10 minutes long). In French, it will be released (according to Audible) on December 19. However, the English audiobook is also unlikely to appear in the Swedish subscription services.
To be clear, PRH has not banned the audiobook in Swedish outright, but without revenue from the unlimited streaming services Storytel, Nextory, BookBeat and Bokus Play the audiobook version in Swedish simple isn’t financially viable.
Digital streaming makes up around 60% of the Swedish book market –
and Jonas Tellander said this month he expects audiobooks alone to account for 50% of the market by end 2020.
Speaking at Futurebook this week Tellander rammed home the point, arguing that publishers need to embrace unlimited subscription to remain relevant.
PRH is big enough not to worry too much about that just yet, and speculation remains that it is planning its own subscription service.
But for audiobook lovers in Sweden who want to hear Obama’s book it’s a massive blow, and a major consumer backfire for PRH.
