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Book Sales Dropping, Audiobook Sales Rising

Hey, there!

Some data recently emerged about book sales, and the news wasn’t good.

CNBC is reporting that ebooks, hardbacks and paperbacks dropped over $20 billion in sales last year.

But audiobooks?

That’s a completely different story – and great news if you are, or want to be, an audiobook narrator.

The numbers for the last year surveyed show a drop in traditional book sales from $165 billion to $145 billion. E-book sales are down 12.3%. Some areas of traditional publishing aren’t doing as bad, some are even worse.

But not for audiobooks.

In both sales and customer base, as well as time spent listening, the audiobook industry is booming.

According to the Association of American Publishers, audiobook sales are up 38.1% in the last year alone.

Membership numbers at Audible.com (according to Audible themselves) are up 40% year over year, and have been for the last 5 years.

But wait, there’s more.

Audible also says that the number of hours of audiobook content consumed by their members was up 33% in the last year: from 1.2 billion (billion!) hours to 1.6 billion hours.

Wouldn’t you like to be in a business like that?

(The fact is, you can. Most of my students are. Here’s where you can get in on the fun. We’d love to have you!)

In the comments below (or with an audio comment above, share with all of us whether you’re reading more or less from physical books, and if you’re part of the audiobook listener boom.

Hope this helps.

David

PS: here’s the whole CNBC article if you want to look at it.

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