Simply Audiobooks Inc.

A fellow audiobook industry member, Evo Terra at podiobooks.com, as an unintentional stumbler (self proclaimed) into the audiobook business, states that (paraphrased) the audiobook industry is moribund, dinosaurish, and fearful of change. I must agree! I’m not sure what I’m agreeing with, since there’s been so much innovation in the space lately, what with our own unlimited rental model, the throwaway Playaway, audiobooks on SD chips from Audiofy, and of course the whole download thing.

Oh wait, are those all distribution innovations? I guess they are. What’s Evo’s talking about then must be the publishers who, while being really nice people, are prone to thinking primarily about intellectual property and royalties, not so much about increasing consumption. My belief is that the only reason audiobooks exist is because they have a higher profit margin than dead-tree books. Downloadable books (another “innovation”) have an even higher profit margin. And the most recent innovation, “e-books”, have an even HIGHER profit margin. You can see where this is headed. Pretty soon we’ll have no books at all, and the profit margin will be astronomical.

The thing we all have to do is make audiobooks more accessible to more people. Half the public has no idea what they are, and 75% of the public has never listened to one. With nearly all new releases being available as audio books, but only 8% of the overall book industry being audiobooks, there is tremendous upside. The benefits of listening versus reading are enormous in the right circumstances, and it’s a shame more people aren’t being made aware of it.But the innovators are coming! Tally Ho!

Well one of the people ruining America would have to be the author of this “book”, “100 people who are ruining America and #37 is Al Franken”.  The problem with this audio book is that it’s neither funny, nor enlightening. It’s just a series of rants against people Goldberg (the author) doesn’t like, sometimes for the silliest of reasons.

I’m not complaining about the opinions expressed, although I disagree with about 50% of the people on the list. It’s that regardless of whether I agreed or disagreed, it just wasn’t entertaining. I disagree with Rush Limbaugh all the time, but damn, the guy is entertaining. Goldberg is a conservative, but he does try to balance his list with some extremist conservatives included. I don’t think Goldberg is particularly hateful or particularly liberal or conservative. Just not entertaining. For entertaining, listen to Jon Stewart’s “America”. He’s a liberal, but if you can get past that, it’s great stuff.

I had a conversation today with Carl Amari, a man who has done a great deal in the area of radio dramas, including founding the Radio Spirits line of audio dramas (he is no longer affiliated with the company). I discovered that the old Twilight Zone TV series is being converted into a series of radio dramas, narrated by Stacy Keach, which we happen to carry in our own books on cd inventory.

This is pretty close (with a lot more production work) to the TV shows converted to audio books idea mentioned in this blog before. We’re thinking about throwing some promotional effort behind the series on our own website, and going after more TV based content in the future. This is the beginning of a trend in audiobook publishing I think.

No, it’s not a rant about global warming – it’s me complaining about the lack of snow in Toronto and here we are only 10 days from Christmas. When I lived in San Diego a decade ago, of course this was an annual problem. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. My next door neighbor, bless his heart, would lay out a giant carpet of thin white cotton on his front lawn every holiday season. It looked remarkably like snow, even though conversion into snowballs wasn’t possible, at least I was one step closer to a proper (according to television and movies) Christmas.

Even though I hate malls, and most especially parking lots, I do enjoy this time of year. I love the songs, the TV reruns of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and I love the getting of gifts that have been carefully thought out and matched to my personality, unlike my own gifts to others.

But where’s the snow? When mother nature doesn’t cooperate, it’s time to take things into my hands. I think I’ll go close all the blinds, turn off the furnace, and listen to some Christmas-sy audiobooks. Maybe the temperature will fall 20 degrees in the next couple of hours and we’ll get some snow. Just my luck it’ll still be sunny.

For the past month or so, I’ve had 3 audiobooks in hand, listening to “Meet you in Hell” in the car, “The Google Story” when exercising, and having “100 people who are ruining America…” sitting in the car as backup. I was feeling pretty good the whole time, thinking about how much great audiobook listening I was getting in.

Then yesterday I finished the first book and mailed it back, and started “100 people…” and pretty much hated it. And all of a sudden, BAM, I’ve got no audiobook in the car. Aaagh. I hate it when I hate an audiobook. And the reason I refuse to listen to it is that I disagree with about 1/2 what the author is saying, and on those of the 100 people, I get frustrated. And here I am listening to audiobooks to take my mind off the commute and relax me.

Today the highway was totally clear, and I was listening to music, until I got to a normally uncluttered part, and all of a sudden things slowed to a crawl. I would’ve just switched to the audiobook, but I didn’t want my heart rate to go up, so I just seethed. After 15 minutes of this, we passed a flipped over 18 wheeler, on the ramp coming to the highway. The traffic was all because people were stopping to look. I seethed some more.

It took all my self control not to run into our inventory room when I got to the office and grab 50 or 100 titles so this wouldn’t happen again. But my returned book got to the warehouse today (1 day!) and I’ll have a replacement Monday. I’ll live. But only if I lock myself in my apartment with The Google Story and don’t come out for 48 hours.

Have a great weekend.

I just finished listening to the audiobook on CD of Meet You in Hell, about the lives of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, partners in the steel industry in the US at the turn of the century and by the end of the book (and their lives), bitter enemies despite both becoming massively wealthy. In addition to learning that Carnegie is pronounced differently than I thought, I was reminded of just how much emotion can enter into what should be rational business dealings. And how much money matters, despite the fact that it can do very little to enhance one’s life, past a certain point. And both Carnegie and Frick were well past that point.

At one time, Carnegie was the wealthiest man on the planet, with buying power that far exceeded that of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett today. And yet they behaved in the most petty ways on many occassions. There are lessons to be learned here about what makes people happy – lessons that we all know to be true, but being reminded by real life stories always helps. I won’t proselytize here on loving thy neighbor, even though I really want to. Just read the book for its value as history. It’s fascinating. Just one note – every time they mention a dollar figure, multiple it by about 500 to get some sense of what that $ figure means in 2006.

We’ve always felt a bit conflicted about the downloadable audiobook business. On the one hand, it is unquestionably the future. On the other hand, nobody has ever made money from it. One of our un-named competitors (name rhymes with inaudible) has spent close to $200 million proving that so far, there is no profitable market. While this will change, it’s anybody’s guess as to when.

Now comes along an article based on a Forrestor research report, that indicates the rapid growth in the download market (music and audiobooks) is perhaps already at an end, and future growth will be much slower.

Andrew Orlowski in the UK’s Register  reports that download audio content sales are FALLING, forget about growing incredibly fast. Downloads account for about 7% of the overall audiobook market, and most people expect that number to grow at 50% per year or more, but now that mp3 player penetration is already so high, perhaps the only factors affecting growth will be demographics, as internet and download awareness grows. In that case, growth will be much much slower. I hope that’s not the case, but in the meantime, CD sales are skyrocketing, so audiobooks are still all the rage!

Ok, even I think we’ve gone a bit overboard on the gift promotion on our home page. Today we added gift buttons down the right side of the page and a banner across the top promoting audio books gift certificates, gift wrapped books on tape or CD, and general merriment during the season (which I gather comes from buying things, mostly gift certificates).

I think I’m going to ask them to turn down the volume. Our CEO asked me today if we sold gift certificates, because he couldn’t tell by looking at the home page. I was horrified, then realized he was being sarcastic. We’re still an audiobook service, not a gift certificate company. Although this time of year, the two aren’t that different.

I was quite excited a few days ago when I got my audio book of The Google Story in the mail. Google is a fascinating company, and its “invention” of search advertising via pay-per-click has allowed a whole generation of online businesses to be successful (including our own).So I was quite surprised to find myself plodding through descriptions of their parents, some speeches they did at high schools, and their attendance at some event called “The Burning Man” – a sort of hippie/geek/creative sojourn in the desert every year… none of which had much, if anything, to do with the incredible story of Google’s ascendancy.

It wasn’t until an hour or so into the audiobook that the author began talking about their time at Stanford, the inspiration behind their better search results. The neat revelation that “Pagerank” was derived as much from Larry Paige’s name as from a website being called a page, and other fascinating tidbits.

It makes me wonder how much of biographical work is self-important and self-congratulatory. Reading stories about Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, there is a real focus on relevance to the reader, not superfluous information on what Steve’s dad did for a living. Gates’ family was already wealthy and philanthropic prior to Bill’s achievements – that’s important. Gates and Ballmer being college room-mates – that’s interesting. But I have no idea what Steve Jobs’ dad did for a living.

The Burning Man thing is what really annoyed me. It sounds like a really fun event, and gee, maybe I just became aware of something that will become relevant to me (unlikely, but possible). But what does it have to do with the Google story? It’d be like me talking about the time when I was 21 and got so drunk at my birthday party that… Well, yes, there were elements of that story that shaped me as an adult (I also swore off Rum and Coke, thereby putting a dent in Coca Cola’s profits for a generation to come). But really, I don’t need to know about every party that Larry and Sergei went to while they were stumbling onto the secret sauce that makes Google one of the highest market cap companies ever.

And that’s the really interesting part of the Google story. I won’t give it away here. But much like the accidental discovery that iPod’s white headphones led to much of the rapid spread of Apple’s musical hardware, the story behind Google’s advertising money machine is not as straightforward as I thought.

Overall, a fascinating listen. Good thing, because I’m supposed to be doing a lot more walking these days (good for the heart).

I’m shopping for a house right now and find myself in the awkward position of choosing between my daily audiobook fix, and living closer to the office. I know it doesn’t sound like much of a dilemma, since I can always listen to audiobooks while exercising or something, but it’s coupled with the fact that house prices in the vicinity of our office aren’t cheap. So moving closer to work means overpaying for a house AND cutting my audiobook time from 90 minutes a day to 30 minutes. Not pleasant prospects.

It’s complicated further yet by my fiancee preferring to stay where I am now (downtown) because it’s more fun. Of course, she’s not the one with the 1.5 hour daily commute. I know that’s not a long time by the standards of many of our members, but it’s still a lot more than I’d prefer to spend on the highway.

When I first moved downtown I had a similar decision. I could have moved closer to the office then, but chose the fun downtown lifestyle. It was a great decision. The commute wasn’t a problem because I had audiobooks, and downtown IS a lot of fun. People actually drop in to visit. But the commute’s gotten worse, and many of my fun friends have gotten married and moved to the suburbs. Seems to be an affliction of some sort.

Unfortunately, I’m as afflicted as everyone else. I think I’ll be moving soon. Shame about the audiobooks, I don’t really like exercising.