Thanks to a deal between Apple and Rakuten-OverDrive, the digital library app Libby is now compatible with Apple’s CarPlay in-car entertainment system. According to OverDrive the Libby app is now available from 90% of North American public libraries, and drivers with a library card and the CarPlay system can, select and navigate audiobooks with large, Read More …
The latest results from Storytel offer no surprises but also, sadly, no real detail beyond what we’ve come to expect. On target for one million subscribers by end 2019, Storytel hit 887,500 subscribers in Q2, an increase of 53,200 on Q1. The forecast was 800,000, and a predictable press release says simply, Storytel therefore surpasses Read More …
It’s one year since Storytel went head to head with Amazon’s Audible in Italy, and so far Storytel are keeping their consumer numbers quiet, but are more profligate with the catalogue figures. Having kicked off with just 1,300 Italian titles and “tens of thousands” of English-language titles it was clear Audible Italy was not going Read More …
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is no stranger to options. The graphic novel has been in line to become a feature film on a few occasions, reports The Hollywood Reporter, but none managed the distance. One reason was summed up by screenwriter Eric Heiserrer, who said in 2016, the best version of this property exists as an HBO Read More …
It will have surprised few that, for the second year running, the StatShot Annual Report of the Association of American Publishers has reported online retail exceeded bricks & mortar stores in delivering revenue to member publishers. And taking a step back, if we allow that most AAP member publishers have a lot of investment in Read More …
With just 50,000 titles Bonnier’s Bookbeat is no match for Audible or Storytel in volume terms, and we shouldn’t see the sudden leap from 4 to 28 markets as a gamechanger for CEO Niclas Sandin. Sandin himself concedes as much. The press release Sandin optimistically states, We believe that the audio book can become one Read More …
With a name like Boldwood Books one really wouldn’t expect anything less than a bold launch of a new publishing operation, and that’s exactly what Amanda Ridout has delivered. While many bigger publishers have chosen to window releases, eschew the benefits of POD, downplay ebooks and carry on with archaic territorial restrictions, Amanda Ridout’s Boldwood Books Read More …
After the launch in Singapore earlier this year, Storytel was widely expected to follow through with Brazil and then Germany. South Korea had been confirmed for end of year, and Thailand, while not yet official, the prime candidate for the fifth new market for 2019. Stefan Tegenfalk, Head of Expansion at Storytel, said in a Read More …
Variety reports this week that Marvel Entertainment has partnered with Dreamscape Media to turn some classic comic titles into audiobooks. If you’e thinking that’s a bit like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, join the club. But no, it’s not April 1st and it does seem this is for real. Dreamscape Read More …
StreetLib is the publisher behind The New Publishing Standard, and while TNPS is not a StreetLib promotional vehicle and we don’t routinely carry StreetLib news, StreetLib’s global expansion clearly falls within the TNPS global publishing industry news remit. As ever on such occasions, we re-print the StreetLib Press Release in full below without further TNPS commentary. Read More …
The rise and rise of audiobook and ebook subscription streaming across the Scandinavian countries has been mentioned here at TNPS so often it hardly needs rehearsing again. But this week the tremendous interest in digital reading in northwest Europe takes on new significance as we learn that video-streaming is still rising in these same countries, Read More …
We’ve known since late 2018 that Sweden-based Storytel would be launching in at least five new markets this year, and now all but one are confirmed. Storytel Singapore launched in April, and is known to have a Brazil launch due any day and a Germany launch set for the summer. Storytel launches in Singapore. Adds Read More …
Metro 33 author Dmitry Glukhovsky has made headlines in Russia recently for penning his latest novel direct for audio – not a paperback in sight – to launch Storytel Russia’s Storytel Originals in the country. POST is set in a post-apocalypse Russia where the Trans-Siberian Railway links what’s left of a divided country.The only thread Read More …
When it comes to publishing, while everyone understands the value of data, few publishers look beyond their own industry data when making decisions. And that perhaps in part explains why publishing has been so slow to grasp the global digital opportunity. Because publishing is so busy looking at what happened yesterday, and making judgment calls Read More …
When Jonas Tellander announced Storytel’s plan to moved from a fixed rate payout for publishers to a per-minute-consumed model there was understandable disquiet from publishers, many of whom believed the new model would see their revenue streams cut. And of course some did. Under the old model a one-hour podcast would earn as much for Read More …
Although it supports 89 languages, the social media platform VK is best known in its home country Russia, where you’re far more likely to find fellow Russians than on Facebook, and it is with Russian publishers that VK is working as it prepares to launch its audiobook subscription service. VK has 97 million monthly active Read More …
Germany’s Bookwire has launched its new operating system Bookwire OS across its core markets – Germany, UK, Spain and Latin America. Bookwire CEO Jens Klingelhöfer said, Bookwire OS offers a solution for all aspects of digital publishing of eBooks, audiobooks and print-on-demand products. In the coming months, we will launch new intelligent features for our Read More …
Headquartered in Stockholm, Kitab Sawti has since 2016 been working the Arab audiobook market, largely unnoticed by the outside world. It’s not alone – Dhad, Booklava and of course Storytel Arabia are among its rivals for the affections of Arab audiobook lovers, but it’s a telling point that whereas Storytel is expecting to hit the Read More …
The rebranding of online Arab marketplace Souq will surprise few. Two years after Amazon bought Souq it is now, for the UAE at least, rebranded as Amazon AE, and the previously reported January 2019 focus on opening up the Middle East to the US marketplace continues as expected. Middle East online bookstore Jamalon raises $10m Read More …
Flávio Osso’s Ubook has long had the Brazilian audiobook market to itself, with no serious interest from rivals within the country or beyond its borders. That’s about to change, with Storytel due to launch in Brazil at any time, and Amazon’s Audible said to be preparing for any entrance at some unspecified future date. But as Read More …
