Publishers Weekly’s email newsletter just conveyed news that England’s V-Burny Audio Books website is stealing a page from NetFlicks:
- One orders an audiobook at the store’s website.
- The book, preloaded onto a Play2Go portable audio player, arrives at your door via Royal Post.
- You simply press a button to listen — no hassles with downloads or transfers onto iPod.
- When finished listening, the player is returned to V-Burny in the supplied pre-paid mailer.
To promote this new service, V-Burny is offering an incentive tied in with new Harry Potter book launch.
V-Burny executives point to the growing audience for podcasts as evidence that there is an emerging market for audio-books. Certainly the iPod generation is tuned in to such marketing. The company currently offers about 250 Player2Go titles, with many more to come.
Of particular interest to readers of this blog is V-Burny’s direct appeal to authors and publishers world-wide for new material, for distribution in either the Play2Go format or as online downloads.
Publishers Weekly also mentions the Playaway audiobook strategy, which we described in an earlier post. Playaway reports rapidly growing sales. And not to be forgotten is Audible.com, a major US marketer offering recorded materials for download. I’ve been downloading their books, periodicals, lectures and radio programs onto my desktop computer for a couple of years already — but just a few days ago, I fired up my new Creative Zen Player, with its installed Audible player software, in preparation for my upcoming international air travel.
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Comment by
Victor
22 Jul 2007
Hi Tom,
Just to add to your description that, the buyers also receive the audiobook as a download on their computer. They get both delivery: online and “offline”
Victor
Comment by
Jeff
3 Oct 2007
Nice article. I’m definitely addicted to audiobooks myself. Also as far as becoming a writer, I always think I’m gonna give it a shot, but its always next year, lol.