Within the music trade, three main labels generate the lion’s share of income: Common, Sony, and Warner. Within the e book publishing trade, the “large 5” publishers dominate: Penguin Random Home, Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins. 

The hundreds of different music labels and e book publishers are thought-about “unbiased” although, within the combination, they make up substantial shares of their respective industries’ income. In truth, for the reason that music trade’s shift from bodily to streaming, main label market share has constantly declined relative to unbiased label market share beneficial properties. With promising early figures on audiobooks from one of many large 5 e book publishers, is there something unbiased e book publishers can study from each these outcomes and music trade tendencies?

HarperCollins posts promising financials

HarperCollins’ internet earnings in This autumn 2023 was $183 million, in comparison with $94 million within the prior 12 months, whereas EBITDA grew 67% in line with dad or mum firm Information Corp’s newest monetary report. The report calls out audiobooks and the writer’s new partnership with Spotify as major drivers for this profitability, with digital gross sales rising 15% year-over-year. In This autumn 2022, digital gross sales comprised 19% of shopper revenues, half of which got here from audiobooks. In This autumn 2023, that 19% climbed two factors to 21%.

HarperCollins’ progress is reflective of the e book trade writ massive, the place from 2018 to 2022, digital audio income surged 71.7%, in the end accounting for 10.4% of whole US e book publishing income. Whereas a tenth of whole income sounds small, audiobooks not solely accounted for nearly $3 billion of 2022 income within the US alone in line with the Affiliation of American Publishers, however they’re additionally less expensive to supply and distribute than bodily books. Not solely this, however MIDiA knowledge displays that audiobooks attain a brand new shopper section totally. Reasonably than shoppers who learn bodily books changing to audiobook listeners (which might dent publishing income); audiobook listeners are a definite further section (which boosts income). To make issues much more promising, audiobook piracy is just not a difficulty the best way music piracy was for the music trade, suggesting that leaning into digital ought to be a no brainer for e book publishers.

Independents can discover digital success too

Some unbiased e book publishers have managed to leverage digital to make waves in their very own proper. Wolfpack Publishing, as an illustration, skilled a exceptional 67% progress in gross sales between 2019 and 2021 by publishing digital editions of out-of-print titles and growing an audiobook manufacturing wing of the corporate. North Atlantic Books witnessed a 14% improve in gross sales in 2021, with digital gross sales surging to account for 22% of the writer’s whole income. That progress was pushed by a 50% uptick in audiobook gross sales over a three-year interval, underscoring the writer’s dedication to adaptability in a quickly evolving panorama.

By leaning into digital, as HarperCollins has performed, these unbiased publishers turned a few of the quickest rising indies from 2019-2021. In newer years, unbiased publishers like Forefront Books and Microcosm Publishing have additionally made their names with non-traditional approaches, from licensing offers that enable authors to retain their mental property rights to radical monetary transparency and income distribution.

It’s a pattern the music trade is aware of all too nicely: in a transitioning trade, agile indies can thrive by filling the wants not being met by slower, conventional energy gamers. Because the music trade’s shift to streaming democratised music consumption, creation, and distribution, alternatives for indies to succeed in new audiences and capitalise on niches expanded. Via this, a brand new class of distribution developed, with music distributors offering unbiased creators with self-service instruments. As self-publishing grows, unbiased publishers ought to take into account additional diversifying their choices by offering self-service instruments for unbiased writers to create and distribute audiobooks, bypassing the gatekeeping of bodily distribution (usually additionally managed by the massive 5). If unbiased publishers keep forward of the curve and embrace the enlargement of books into digital audio, then audiobooks might very nicely assist the unbiased sector of e book publishing develop in a way much like the way it has grown within the music trade.