![]() Some expressed that they are not interested in changing the way they write to make their books fit as audiobooks, while others said that a good text does not require adaptation to become a good audiobook.īoth perspectives are valid, depending on how we define audiobooks. The authors had a mixed view of audio books. ![]() Dahlgren.)īut DN’s post was not just about royalties but had a wider agenda. (Bold text reflects correction after advice on translation from Mr. One of the interviewees does not have any audiobook at all at Storytel. (Although, for example, Mats Strandberg and Malin Persson Giolito have books that have definitely been listened to diligently). In other words, DN has not interviewed any of the authors who belong to the winners. None of the interviewees are (what I could find) among the most listened to at Storytel, Bookbeat and Nextory last year. Most surprising, however, was the selection of authors. The conclusions therefore surprised me when I first read the DN post, because there was a negativity about subscription that generally does not come across in the debate about subscription in the Nordics.ĭahlgren’s local knowledge was able to pinpoint why: The DN post interviewed 22 authors, quoting 14, so two-thirds, and from that we might reasonable expect some valuable insights into the state of author-subscription relations in Sweden. That’s a feeling anyone who reads the UK’s The Guardian’s coverage of the publishing industry will share, but let’s stick here with the DN article. Shed light on different aspects of the audiobook discussion (but that) felt a lot like a tired repetition and that we did not really get that much wiser. The Boktugg post offered insights that helped clarify my understanding of the DN post, which Dahlgren summed up as trying to, First a more general discussion on the nature of author compensation, where again I can draw on Boktugg’s Sölve Dahlgren, who kindly ran a summary of an article published by Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter (DN) which carried dissenting voices from the Swedish author community. Obviously we cannot make direct comparisons with publisher payouts in Sweden compared with say, the USA, but the broad narrative is instructive.Ī look at those Storytel numbers shortly. That matters because Sweden is, by far, the largest unlimited subscription market for books on a per capita basis, and Storytel is not just the largest operator in that market, by far, but also the mostly globally engaged, actively operating in 26 markets as this post goes live. The classic anti-subscription argument conjures up microscopic payouts such as we see from music subscription services like Spotify, always conveniently overlooking the fact that a typical music download may be just a few minutes long, while a book may run to hundreds of pages or many hours of listening, making meaningful comparisons all but impossible (not that the anti-subscription brigade ever let rational argument get in the way of a faux narrative!).Įarlier this month Sweden’s trade journal Boktugg revealed the Q4 payout numbers for Sweden-based Storytel, the world’s leading unlimited audiobooks subscription operator, and with that we have fresh insights into how much publishers (and by extension authors) might be getting, at least in Sweden. In the world of unlimited digital book subscription there’s much speculation about how much a publisher will earn from a read or listen, and a general consensus is that said read or listen will generate less revenue than an à la carte sale.įor some this is enough to decry subscription as a negative force in publishing, but all too often the negativism is either ill-thought-out or simply self-serving, coming from parties with vested interests in models created and sustained in an era before digital subscription was viable. Author and publisher compensation varies according to platform, audience reach, production costs, which country the sale is in, and a host of other factors. The idea that there is, or could ever be, one set royalty for all formats is a fantasy perpetuated by industry outsiders who have little idea how the business of publishing operates.
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