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Are your books available audibly? If not, you may be missing out on significant sales!

ABIBLIOPHOBIA exists! – even with audiobooks

Abibliophobia "The Fear of Running Out of Books to Read" - Poster for Libraries, Librarians - Schools, Classrooms, Teachers, - Elementary, High School, Grade School CPS006

The Voice Technologies Powering Amazon’s Alexa (often referred to as “voice assistants”) Are Ushering in a New Era of Storytelling and an exciting Platform for Authors to Reach More Readers.

Authors can use this new platform of voice technology to increase their readership (aka listener-ship) and to increase book sales.

Audiobooks 

Voice Assistants are increasing the popularity of audio-books more than ever by making easily accessing them with voice commands and hands-free listening while the listener drives, washes dishes, knits, cleans, rake leaves, cooks, bakes bread, or takes care of the laundry.

Some audiobook-o-philes say that after listening to an audiobook that they enjoyed while multi-tasking, they noticed such a huge improvement in getting those daily tasks completed that they incorporated the habit regularly and always have the next audiobook lined up. Audiobookophile clubs are popping up every where to share favorites with other likeminded individuals.

In fact, some tell me they get nervous knowing that they don’t have the next book or series lined up. I understand that! The thought of taking a trip without several books available to makes me twitch! There’s that abibliophobia again!

Here are five reasons why your books should be available as audio-books.

Click on this link to read more about them.

  1. Audiobooks are the Busy Booklovers Friend!
  2. The Oral Tradition of Listening to Stories and the Spoken Language
  3. Increase and Develop Vocabulary and Spoken Syntax
  4. Hone Listening Skills and Critical Thinking Skills
  5. The Growth of Audio-Books is corelated with the Increase of Use of Voice Assistants.

Hands Free Reading with Audiobooks

The major reason for audiobook listeners is to be able to multi-task in this age of never enough time to get everything done.

Alexa and other voice recognition services makes accessing audiobooks easier than ever before.

People (aka readers aka listeners) listen to audiobooks while driving, folding laundry, cooking and washing dishes, while walking (getting those 10,000 steps in), cleaning, and other daily tasks that may be mundane but we all need to do.

Listening to audiobooks while doing these daily tasks makes them much more enjoyable and creates good habits!

10,000 steps

  • Publisher’s Weekly reports that audiobook sales have shown a double-digit increase every year for the past ten years and are not showing any indication of slowing down.

  • The global impacts of COVID-19 continued to significantly affect the Audiobook Service market in 2020 with global sales of more than 3.3 billion USD – and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 24.4% over the next several years. (Grand View Technologies, San Francisco, Calif.)

  • 2021 Audiobook sales in America increased by 25%!

  • June 7, 2022 report shows 1.6 Billion dollars in audiobook sales in 2021.

  • The USA is the biggest consumer of audiobooks at 1.6 billion in sales of the global market’s 4.8 billion dollars.

Audiobooks are awesome. There is no doubt about that!

Audiobooks honor the time-old traditions of storytelling with the latest in digital technology!

Storytelling-a time-honored tradition

Why are audiobooks important to authors and their book promotion marketing strategies?

They are important because they continue to connect your works with more readers/listeners.

Also, put some short stories out there to hook new readers.

Robert Dugoni does this with his series. He makes a short audiobook available to hook you into his Tracy Crosswhite crime fiction series. Here is the link to get the free audiobook download on Amazon.

The Last Line: A Short Story (Tracy Crosswhite) by [Robert Dugoni]

Short stories can hook new readers because they allow readers to sample your work without investing the 8-10 hours required for the average reader to read a 110,000-word novel.

And most of us can read faster than we can listen to an audiobook. The average 110,000-word novel would take about 12 to 13 hours of listening time.

However, most of us do not have the 8-10 free hours to read a book each week especially if we have other hobbies or interests. BUT, listening to a book or a story while we go about our daily tasks will enable most of us to reconnect to books!

And for “readers” (aka listeners) to connect with your stories!

We’d love to hear from you! –Kiffer

Looking for an awesome audiobook to listen to:

Try Chanticleer’s award-winning author Janet Oakley’s action thriller series that takes place in Norway during World War II. Espionage, spies, romance, and betrayals!

You can find The Jossing Affair and The Quisling Factor narrated by Chris Humphreys available on the following audiobook-selling platforms: