For Audio Publishers, Digital Media Is the Wave of the Present: APA President Anthony Goff on How Publishers Are Adapting
Extra: What factors, such as illegal downloading or the popularity of the Amazon Kindle, are exacerbating the decline in sales?
Goff: We look for illegal downloading, and we don't see a lot of it. ... It's really hard to gage how many people will be reading on their Kindle or listening [with the] text to speech [function] on their Kindle [instead of] purchasing audiobooks, because it's just so very different having a computer-generated voice versus a full-out production and sound effects, etc. ... It's not exactly what we do. We're all about the production value and what that brings to the entertainment of listening to a book. ... We [had] been seeing such fantastic growth over the last few years; it was really about a year, a year-and-a-half ago that things started to slow, and it was really in the last …, maybe, 8 to 10 months that things really seemed to get hit very hard. ... We do fully expect, as audio publishers, for things to come around … . People might be consuming in different ways, but we do anticipate a good bounce back. ... It's not doom and gloom right now. ... We're going to band together and do everything we can as audio publishers to really keep the format growing … . And there's been a bit of a tipping point with e-books now, so it's their time to shine. It's really a good time for digital, in general, and e-books and audiobooks will hopefully continue to prosper from that.
- People:
- Anthony Goff
- Heather Fletcher
- Places:
- New York City