BPN 1198 Audio books become popular in The Netherlands

The holiday season is a great season for print books. However it is also a good season for audio books, according to a survey by the audio book publisher Luisterrijk. No less than 60 per cent of 300 audio book buyers bought and downloaded copies especially for this purpose; 53,5 per cent listen to the books on their way to the holiday destination, while 73,3 per cent listen to the books at their destination. Other favourite places to listen to audio books are the car, the couch and the bed.

The audio book has been long around as a cassette book, a CD-ROM and now MP3. Yet by facilitating to download an audio book a new audience has been discovered. No less than 7 per cent of the audio book buyers have gotten acquainted with audio book in the last two years.

Audio books in the category courses and self development like language trainings are popular during the holiday; most likely people like to improve themselves for their jobs and for moving around in the country where they spent their holiday. For their holiday people also buy audio tours and audio books for children (to keep them quiet for the trip to France or Germany). Yet the most requested audio books regardless of the season are novels, literature and thrillers.

Interesting is the response to the question whether people buy less print books in favour of audio books. A majority of 80,7 percent says that the audio book is a supplement to print books. Only 20 per cent sees it a replacement. This indicates that the audio book is no longer the exclusive domain of people with a reading disability.

In The Netherlands more than 500 audio books in Dutch can be downloaded. By the end of the year 650 audio books will be available for MP3 downloading.

Audio books are mostly downloaded to MP3 players. Only 18,1 percent burn the books on CD-ROMs, most likely to be played in the car. The majority of respondents indicate to buy and download more audio books. Buying CD-ROMs is on the way out.

By November a new way of publishing audio books will be introduced in The Netherlands by the publishing company Cossee. The publishing House a catalogue of more than 50 titles and has sold more than 300.000 copies of audio books since its foundation. Books will become available on SD cards, so that they can be listened to on a mobile, laptop or on their gps-navigation system. The first audio book on SD card will be The Reade by the German author Bernhard Schlink, a novel which has been translated in 41 languages and has attracted millions of readers worldwide.

Blog Posting Number 1188

Tags: audio book