Storytel is best known globally for its digital books streaming service, now covering eighteen markets, and with big plans for further expansion in the next decade. But CEO Jonas Tellander is a big fan of the hybrid print and digital model, as his press release reporting the acquisition of Gummerus for an undisclosed sum makes Read More …
The joint StreetLib-TNPS bi-weekly newsletter Publish MENA – the digital advantage released its third issue today. Publish MENA is a bi-weekly review of the Middle East North Africa Arab publishing scene across all formats, but with an unashamed tilt towards the digital opportunity unfolding.
It may be run from Mexico, but in a few days time Storytel will formally launch in Colombia, its second Latin America market, and one of three now planned for this year. It was back in May 2018, some fifteen months ago, that TNPS broke the news of Jonas Tellander’s Latin America ambitions. Back then Read More …
The problem with the subscription model is, for publishers, remuneration rates. In an all-you-can-eat model as offered to consumers by Sweden-based global digital books subscription service Storytel, paying a fixed rate per download or portion of a title read or listened to is never a viable long-term option. The USA’s Oyster famously collapsed because payments Read More …
Storytel has added 200,000 new subscribers since the start of 2019, taking it across the one million subscriber threshold as of today, August 12. In a press release marking the occasion Storytel CEO Jonas Tellander said, I am extremely moved and very thankful for the fantastic response Storytel receives every day from people all over Read More …
A report in Bulgaria’s Investor this week notes audio is now the fastest growing sector of Bulgarian publishing. The OP is, appropriately, in audio, and of course Bulgarian, so I’ve not been able to decipher much from the commentary, but the news gives pause for thought as to where Jonas Tellander will venture next with Read More …
At the start of this year Storytel changed its remuneration model for publishers, from a fixed payment per unit consumed to a rate per hour of consumption. Under the old model Storytel paid publishers between $1.81-$2.13 per book consumed, which disproportionately rewarded shorter works and penalized longer ones. It’s a debate we are all familiar 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 …
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 …
When it comes to identifying publishing opportunities in the emerging African markets one can do worse than watch the telcos. Telcos potentially provide the ideal connection between consumers and publishers in countries and regions where traditional ink on paper publishing faces insurmountable challenges, and that the mainstream digital book operators have deemed not worthwhile. Telcos 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 …
It’s so counterintuitive it needs to be read twice, but in the battle between Sweden’s biggest streaming service, Storytel, and Sweden’s biggest publisher Bonnier, which also happens to own Sweden’s second biggest streaming outfit, Bookbeat, it seems both companies are making more money by having less content available. But is that the full story, is 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 …
Back at the Cairo International Book Fair earlier this year Storytel announced its plans to launch the Harry Potter books in Arabic as audiobooks, and the first audiobook is now available to download. It’s a huge boost for Storytel Arabia and likely to bring to the platform a lot of new subscribers. A press release Read More …
One of the biggest gripes about Amazon’s ACX, the self-publishing arm of Audible and very much the go to place for indie authors to distribute their audiobooks, is that Amazon calls the shots on pricing. Among the many appeals of new kid on the block Findaway is that the author has a semblance of control. Read More …
This is a translation of an original article by Daniel Kotliński, which can be found here. An entertainment platform, not a bookstore with a subscription option. Prospects and plans for the development of the Storytel brand. Like storytelling itself, audio has limitless possibilities. Does an application for audio materials that has been out on the Polish market Read More …
It all seemed so implausible at the start of this decade. Ebooks had officially arrived, thanks to Amazon’s Kindle store breathing life into a format that had been around since long before. But it was just a digital extension of the status quo retail model. It was printed books on a screen, not remotely exploring digital’s Read More …
