Simply Audiobooks Inc.

I found a blog entry at Pesky Apostrophe where the author lists a bunch of books they would like to read – a great personalized summer reading list. You can see our own summer reading list for kids here. Of course, our reading list is all available on audiobook.
The funny part is that Pesky comes right out and says that he or she doesn’t read audiobooks. And it doesn’t look like a defensive statement, as in “I don’t swim”, or “I fall down when I drink too much”.

I’d prefer, “I don’t ready audiobooks because they’re too expensive.” Or “I don’t read audiobooks because they’re too heavy to lift.” Just saying “I don’t read audiobooks” sounds dismissive and kind of ticks me off, as if there’s some sort of understanding that the reader would automatically appreciate whatever the reason is. Of course, I’m an audiobook bigot myself, so who am I to say.

But this does serve to illustrate something I’ve suspected for a long time. The more a person loves books, the less likely they are to love audiobooks. This is so counterintuitive as to be shocking. People who don’t like books don’t like audiobooks. People who love books don’t like audiobooks (generally). The logic is something like, if you have all the time in the world to read prodigious quantities of paper books, then you don’t need one of the chief benefits of audiobooks – listening while doing other things.

Thank god there’s a huge middle ground of people who like books and wish they could read more. Or they’re just plain bored in their cars and have the good sense to listen to a book on cd rather than yelling at the car in front of them, or talking on their cellphones (likely complaining about traffic).

It never fails, no matter how inexpensive something can be, someone’s going to want it for less. I stumbled across Jennie’s innocuous comment about audiobooks being expensive, and thought, “Hey, another audiobook fan!” And then I thought, “Wait, expensive? What about the library?”  Audiobooks go anywhere from free to really expensive, but it’s all about knowing where to get them.

Doing some research on pricing around the world last week, I discovered that the Harry Potter audiobooks are TWICE as expensive in the UK as in the US. Meaning over $100 for any given one (unabridged of course). Go figure. Captive audience? Most audiobooks there are the same price as here.  Now that’s expensive.

With the advent of digital download, prices for books keep dropping. Our own rental program brings the cost down quite a bit, but the program isn’t designed for getting specific audiobooks right at the moment you want them. For that you have to either download, with all the attendant hassles, or go to your neighborhood bookstore where they still might not have what you want, and would charge you an arm and your left eye to buy it anyway. No perfect solution. But I’ve been an audiobook fan for going on a dozen years now, and selection AND pricing are much better now than they’ve ever been in the past. How nice.

I stumbled on a new website yesterday, www.nextfavorite.com, that recommends movies and music based on your ratings of past titles you’ve enjoyed. I was surprised to see that they also do book recommendations. Not a good job mind you, but they try. I registered, went through and rated about 15 books, and then asked for recommendations. Every John Grisham book ever written popped up as ‘recommended’. Annoying because I’ve read every one of them, and even more annoying when I realized I couldn’t remember which ones had which plot and I kind of felt like rating every one of them a 3 or 4 (out of 5). Can’t remember the last time I read a Grisham book I REALLY liked, except for the first one, “The Firm”.

Some people, like Jon, think even less of Grisham than I do, but feel compelled to listen to his books anyway. Funny thing, habit. I have great hopes though for book recommendation services that actually work. Maybe this one will be it. It’s recommended ‘secret life of bees‘ to me, and although I’ve heard of the title, I would never have read the book. But now that some super-computer somewhere has recommended it, I’m off to my audiobook shelf to request it. Let’s see how good this recommendation thing actually is. If you try it yourself and it works well for you, please let me know.

We did a survey this week with our own customer base to see where people got their audiobooks from before joining Simply Audiobooks. The results were a bit surprising. We’re a commercial service of course, so we expected that most of our customers would previously have been a) online, and b) paying for their audiobooks. Our advertising strategy has always been along these directions.

Much to our surprise, we found that the single largest source of audiobook listeners for us is from the Library system. Libraries and retail bookstores (Barnes and Noble) each account for about 35% of total audiobook listeners, but our customer base has twice as many former library users as former retail purchasers. And internet based rental and sale were distant runners-up.

We’re still trying to figure out what this means. Are library users more dissatisfied with their source? Or are they such voracious listeners that they’re always looking for more? Regardless, it would appear that we should be targetting library users to get them to add Simply Audiobooks to their portfolio. Trouble is there’s no easy way to get to them other than standing in the library, skulking behind the audiobook carousels. A dilemma.

I just started listening to the audiobook Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I find it fascinating. And then I read this post that claims it’s all mumbo jumbo (I’m paraphrasing). Which reminds me that it’s the people who tell the best stories that are remembered, not the ones that are right.

Which isn’t to say that Diamond is wrong of course. And then we have Malcolm Gladwell’s story in “Tipping Point” about how the broken windows theory was part of the reason New York crime went down in the 90′s. And later Freakonomics author Steven Levitt says it was Roe vs Wade. I was surprised to see that Gladwell actually wrote a glowing commendation on Levitt’s dust cover. And they’re both good storytellers.

I guess I should just be glad there are lots of good storytellers.  And hopefully some of them even get the story right.

One of the biggest problems I have running marketing here at Simply Audiobooks is trying to figure out efficient ways to let people know how great audiobooks actually are. We’ve done qualitative research and conducted a survey that gives us overwhelming evidence that word of mouth is critical. There’s simply nothing as effective as getting a book from a friend and being told to listen to it.

But audiobooks aren’t inherently viral – unlike cellphones and bottled water, they are not consumed in public.  Another big non-visible product, 70% of Netflix customers come from word of mouth referrals (their statistic). About 15% of ours come from word of mouth. This sort of mirrors the overall market penetration of dvd movies and audiobooks, so it’s not terribly surprising. But it’s clear that audiobooks could do with a lot more show and tell.

We’re starting a beta program internally to promote word of mouth, and it’s not a simple extention of our current referral program. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll report on it later in this blog. Any suggestions people might have on  plans of action on this front (alerting people) would be MUCH appreciated. More people should listen to audiobooks. They’re ridiculously great!

How did you first get started on audiobooks?

A co-worker alerted me to the fact that there was actually a ‘best’ joke . I think it was pretty funny. What does this have to do with audiobooks? Pretty much nothing.

I’d been meaning to read this audio book, Tuesdays with Morrie, for ages, so when I opened my SAB mailer yesterday, I was excited to see that I’d received the book. And yes, despite my working at SAB, I still get the mailers as opposed to picking up the CDs at the office.

I’ve often gotten into an audiobook and enjoyed it so much that I find excuses to get in the car. But this was the first time I ever got the mailer and wanted to get into the car right away. I had to do some shopping anyway, so I immediately went down to the garage, got the car, loaded up my CD deck and happily went off. For the first 15 minutes or so, I was just enjoying the book and happy to be (about to be) getting some errands taken care of. Then I encountered one of the mixed blessings of audiobooks.

I got so into the audiobook that it kept making me think of things I’d like to ponder. So I’d ponder, and miss the next minute of dialogue. Then I’d rewind, overshoot, hit the same ponder-inspiring segment, and again ponder and miss the next couple of minutes. This went on with one particular section on remembering your favourite teachers, and I gave up, stopped the CD and put on music instead, which I can safely ignore while I ponder.

The good part is that I had a nice day/night remembering some of my favourite teachers, and being happy that I’d returned to visit many of them from high school and university. But of course not all, and not recently. A nice reminder to make a few phone calls.

I just read that a lady, RuthAnn Hogue, has written a book, Goodbye, Walter: The inspiring story of a terminal cancer patient. Unfortunately, no audiobook version. She mentions that the most frequently asked question – by far – from those who read “Goodbye, Walter,” is whether she had heard of Tuesdays with Morrie. I almost have!

Mr. Bischke over at Learn Out Loud listed 10 back in March, but now that I’ve stumbled across his list, I can really only agree with two or maybe three of his selections.

1) Bill Clinton, who’s used to speaking often and extemporaneously on a variety of subjects, could pull off a podcast. People would listen to him read a phone book and come back for more… his voice is so warm and soothing that it’d be irresistable. However, podcasting seems a bit informal for a former “Leader of the Free World.” If he said anything even remotely controversial it’d be all over everywhere online within minutes…. not an attractive possibility

2) Margaret Cho is a standup comic, so she’s got the vocal performance and snappy delivery down, but churning out sufficient entertaining content might be an issue.

3) Steve Wozniak… For interesting content, the guy’s had a crazy life, full of genuinely interesting anecdotes and experiences. I seem to remember a story about him meeting his wife through the dial-a-joke service he set up during college. That earns him a pass from me.

We have a new title as part of our free audio books download promotion. This month, you can get “The Art of Money Getting” by P.T. Barnum… who was something of an expert on the subject.

Barnum is pretty much one of the guys who invented the modern principles of advertising. He did stuff like taking out small classified ads in local newspapers before showing up in a town. But he wouldn’t take out just one ad… he’d make sure that every 10th ad or so was for his circus. This was the first time someone recognized that repetition has serious advertising value.