“Five years ago, we still had not launched our beta app and now, just a short distance into the journey, we are approaching 400,000 paying users.”
Bookbeat’s Q3 results show the company to be on target for 400,000 subscribers by end of year in what for now at least seems an endlessly expanding European digital market.
From the BookBeat press release:
During the first nine months of the year, Bookbeat’s revenues increased by 69 percent compared with the corresponding period in 2019. Growth in 2020 means that revenues on a full-year basis (the last 12 months, including the fourth quarter of 2019) now exceed SEK 450 million ($51 million).
Bookbeat is forecast to pass SEK 500 million ($56.8 million) in full-year revenue in 2020 and the milestone of 400,000 paying users before the turn of the year.
Sandin said,
With each passing month, our fantastic team succeeds in getting more people to discover BookBeat and make us a natural part of their everyday lives. Five years ago, we still had not launched our beta app and now, just a short distance into the journey, we are approaching 400,000 paying users.
Sandin added,
When it comes to subscription services, not just for audiobooks, the concepts of churn and retention are important. It is simply a matter of how many of the users renew their subscription – or how many cancel it.
Here, Bookbeat had good news: During the third quarter, the highest customer loyalty ever was noted among the paying users in BookBeat’s three largest markets, Sweden, Finland and Germany. In September, the first broad-based launch campaigns were also launched in Denmark and Poland.
BookBeat is in fact in six markets, the missing mention being of BookBeat UK, where the company has made little impact, mainly because UK publishers have been unwilling to take the unlimited subscription model seriously.
BookBeat Insights for publishers
Back in June BookBeat launched a new data-sharing tool for publishers – BookBeat Insights. Too soon to know if that had any impact on publisher engagement, but in theory it could lead to more content on BookBeat, which will be a win-win for all parties.
As September finished Boktugg reported that BookBeat had poached Storytel’s Victoria Vatanskaja to lead a push into original content to add value to the BookBeat platform.
Storytel itself has just published its Q3 2020 results. Details here.
