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To ensure that the Audible sales engine would have sufficient titles, under Amazon they formed a production company called Audio Book Creation Exchange that operates as a production vehicle connecting independents with the talent needed to make audiobooks.

Mike Shatzkin • The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Michael Dauria

@mikewdauria

That includes the narrator’s recording time, editing time, and then quality control. What is significant is that the cost of production for an average unabridged title has come down from an average of $25,000 in the ’70s and ’80s to between $2,500 and $5,000 now.

Mike Shatzkin • The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Mike Hostetler

@mikehoss

On Information

the past, present, and future of how we find, monetize, and relate to information.

sari and • 126 cards

Retailers and other sellers, like mail order or web catalogs, who sell books as a sideline to other merchandise that is more central to them, are increasingly important accounts, particularly to nonfiction publishers.

Mike Shatzkin • The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

I regret that second step: I want to believe that companies that produce truly great content will have negotiating power with Aggregators, because customers will want what they have to sell. And, in very limited cases, that may be true. Anything beyond the very best of the best, though, risks a Wirecutter-type fate: yes, the investment in content p... See more

Stratechery • Amazon Cuts Affiliate Marketing, Google Versus French Publishers, Streaming Services and Movies

Around 20 to 25 percent of the readers, the heavy readers, account for 80 percent of the revenue pool of the industry of what consumers spend on books. It’s the really dedicated readers. If they got all-access, the revenue pool of the industry is going to be very small.

Nonetheless, trade book returns generally are 20 to 30 percent of a publisher’s shipments. That’s an average. When it happens that very high sales expectations are met with a lack of audience interest, an individual title’s returns can be much higher than that.