Audio-first subscription services in the Nordics will be watching closely. So far only BookBeat of the Big 3 Nordic players (BookBeat, Nextory and Storytel) has attempted to break into a mature English-language market, and with little success.
From humble beginnings in the Netherlands, Kobo Plus, the unlimited subscription opt-in for Kobo customers, continues to set the pace for its Swedish rivals, launching in its second English-language market this week.
Australia joins Canada – and Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands – in offering the unlimited subscription package via the Kobo retail site.
Of key interest – but as yet unclear – is how many publishers are on board with the project in Canada and Australia. The English-language markets have been notoriously resistant to the unlimited subscription model, but as Scribd has found, some (most, perhaps?) publishers’ reservations are driven by the fact that Amazon dominates the digital books markets and so while Kindle Unlimited is persona non grata there is a willingness to experiment with unlimited subscription on other platforms.
Kobo also has the advantage of having a lot of independent publishers (indie authors) on board, many of whom will be opting into the Kobo Plus service for the extra revenue potential it brings.
Audio-first subscription services in the Nordics will be watching closely. So far only BookBeat of the Big 3 Nordic players (BookBeat, Nextory and Storytel) has attempted to break into a mature English-language market, and with little success.
BookBeat UK treads water, holding on but never mentioned in the quarterly glory sheets that show how well BookBeat is doing elsewhere.
Storytel is of course in India and Singapore, but the Big 5 English-language markets (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) for now remain off-limits.
That will change, not least because Amazon itself is slowly grooming consumers in those markets for an eventual pivot to unlimited subscription in those markets.
