Audiobooks have been reigning for a while now in the publishing industry as the new popular trend. Despite having been around for a while now, the sales boom does not seem to be slowing down any time soon as the sales numbers have just come out for the first quarter of the year and they have gone up.
Also of note, eBook sales have been steadily decreasing. Publishers don’t seem to be too concerned as of yet, as the decline is minimal and the increase in audiobook revenue more than covers than what eBooks don’t make anymore.
Despite declining sales, this is a good thing for the publishing industry. There are simply different book formats now, and people have the opportunity to try them all out and see which one they prefer best. With now many ways to sell books and more streams of revenue, publishers don’t have cause to worry as much if sales start to dwindle with one of the book formats.
They only should start worrying if sales go down everywhere but another technological improvement will be born from that and a new way to experience books. Perhaps it’ll have something to do with Augmented Reality (AR), as Publisher’s Weekly recently theorized.
See the specific sales numbers and more details at the Good eReader.