Kobo has simply launched an audiobook bookstore that sells audiobooks individually and in addition gives them on a subscription stage foundation. Their complete audiobook catalog is powered by Overdrive and that is the primary time they’ve ever been concerned in an audiobook subscription scheme.
Kobo Audiobooks will price $12.99 monthly in Canada and comes with a 30-day free trial interval. Clients will get one credit score a month with their subscription and they are often redeemed for any audiobook title on the platform. You can even buy Kobo Audiobooks individually and store with confidence with their Value Match Assure. As well as, readers earn Kobo Tremendous Factors on their month-to-month subscription charges or audiobook purchases. The Kobo audiobooks service is out there immediately within the US for ($9.99/mo), the UK (£6.99/mo), Australia ($12.99/mo), and New Zealand ($13.99/mo).
Kobo has up to date their app for Android and iOS and have introduced over a totally purposeful audiobook participant. You can also make purchases and hearken to your content material on Android, and with iOS you possibly can solely hearken to titles you will have already purchased or have used a credit score on. You can not make purchases straight in your iPhone or iPad.
“We now have extra books than time, all the time. Audiobooks let our readers match the books they love into extra elements of their day,” says Michael Tamblyn, CEO, Rakuten Kobo Inc. “Audio permits you to be in two locations directly—exploring the galaxy on the every day commute, fixing a criminal offense whereas doing the laundry, or wherever you need your favorite story to take you.”
Tamblyn continues: “Final yr, we constructed the Kobo Aura ONE eReader with the assistance of our greatest prospects, and our new providing isn’t any totally different. What we unequivocally heard was that they wished the perfect deal on audiobooks, and we’re happy to supply the bottom subscription worth accessible.”
Over the course of the previous three years the best rising section of publishing are audiobooks. The worldwide audiobook trade is presently evaluated at $3.5 billion {dollars} and america is presently the biggest singular market with $1.8 billion {dollars} in audio gross sales in 2016 and this was a 31% enhance from 2015. The Audio Publishers of America has acknowledged that yearly for the previous three years 36,000 audiobooks have been issued. When it comes proper right down to it, the retailers are those who profit from the audiobook revolution. The overwhelming majority of the businesses that spoke to Good e-Reader have disclosed that they’ve seen triple digit progress and anticipate this pattern to proceed into 2017.
Michele Cobb, government director of the Audio Publishers Affiliation, pointed to the “important” enhance in models and {dollars} that audio has seen previously few years; the large recognition of podcasts; and referenced affiliation surveys. Surprisingly, frequent listeners – of no less than 4 audiobooks a month – skew 56% male.
I’m actually glad that Kobo has leveraged their sister firm to offer an audiobook resolution for his or her prospects. I predicted final yr that Kobo would open up an audiobook retailer and even cited their relationship with Overdrive because the digital content material supplier. I really feel audiobooks was the lacking piece to the Kobo ecosystem and this might present a profitable stream of income for years to come back.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Publish and the New York Instances have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
