Norstedts, one of Sweden’s largest publishing houses, had its best turnover since 2013 thanks to digital, which accounted for almost half, with 25% of that attributable to audiobooks.
Svensk Bokhandel has the details.
Here just to note that Norstedts was acquired by Storytel in 2016, meaning this publishing house has had no qualms about embracing digital, and in fact the group CEO Jonas Tellander is fully committed to exploring digital’s potential.
Yes, it helps that Storytel can give Norstedt’s titles an in-store advantage (as with Amazon and A-Pub), but there’s a bigger story here.
In the big US and UK markets publishers are wedded to a publishing model that sees digital subscription as a threat, not an opportunity.
And that in turn is driven largely by the cold reality that Amazon dominates the distribution of digital – both ebook and audio – in those countries.
Which means that for the foreseeable future publishers in Amazon countries will be wary of digital to an exceptional degree, balancing the obvious opportunities against the risk of further bolstering Amazon’s perceived leverage over them.
At the same time, those publishers in countries where Amazon has no serious interest will increasingly embrace the opportunity digital offers, and will reap the rewards digital brings.
