A tweet from Andrew Rhomberg of Jellybooks confirms Storytel Italy will be launching “in a few months.”
TNPS broke the story of Storytel’s Italy plans back in December –
Storytel dots the ‘i’s with an Italy launch pending, having just opened in India
– but when Jane Friedman an Porter Anderson of the Hot Sheet asked Jonas Tellander for comment Storytel declined to confirm the story.
Four months on, with plans now well-advanced, Andrew Rhomberg has had better luck, and we now know Storytel Italy will be launching this summer. Leading the show is Marco Ferrario, best known for BookRepublic.
Before the Italy launch will be Turkey, which Storytel confirmed to Publishers Weekly will be next, and the second of five country launches this year.
Iceland kicked off the 2018 Storytel expansion, and with Turkey and now Italy confirmed, it leaves Bulgaria and Dubai as the likely candidates to round off the 2018 plans.
Late last year Storytel acquired D&D Factory, Bulgaria, the operation behind the Bulgarian audiobook service Audioknigi, and we know Swedish agents are selling Bulgarian audiobook rights to Storytel, so the only question is when Storytel Bulgaria will launch.
Based in Dubai, Storytel’s Middle East ambitions seem broad, with Ammar Madawi heading the show under the provisional name Storytel Arabia.
Storytel Arabia was set up in July last year, but indications are it will be after the summer before this project is ready to go live. More news on this story as it comes in.
