Innovative social sound platform Audioboo is poised to take the audiobook market in a new direction, through a partnership with crowd-source publisher, Unbound.
The deal will allow online audiences to listen to the first few chapters of an audiobook for free via Audioboo, before deciding to download the entire book for a competitive fee decided by the author. Audioboo and Unbound will follow Unbound’s existing business model, fulfilling the role of both a funding platform and a publisher and splitting a book’s net profit 50/50 with the author.
An initial trial of the model, with actor Robert Llewellyn's book The Man in the Rubber Mask which details his time on the BBC's Red Dwarf, achieved over 20,000 listens for each of the three chapters distributed so far. The second audiobook from Unbound will be Evil Machines, a new book of stories from Monty Python’s Terry Jones.
In a separate deal, Harper Collins has agreed to use Audioboo to deliver its catalogue of audiobooks to a social audience. The publisher will allow listeners to access the entire first volume of Conn Iggulden’s Ghengis Khan series, Wolf of the Plains over the next few weeks, leading up to the launch of the latest novel, Conqueror, on the 27th October.
"Audioboo is primarily a place where people share the spoken word and that's what differentiates us from competing platforms", commented Audioboo founder Mark Rock.
"Audioboo is primarily a place where people share the spoken word and that's what differentiates us from competing platforms", commented Audioboo founder Mark Rock.
“We’ve had a fantastic year so far, working with a number of newspapers, radio stations and broadcasters. I feel like now is the time to expand and see how social audio can work alongside other publishing industries.
We've spent a long time perfecting our payments platform and we intend to use it in as many creative ways as possible. It seemed a natural move to extend our model to audiobooks. We only need to put a K on the end of our URL, after all.”
John Mitchinson, co-founder of Unbound commented: “Audioboo is the perfect fit for us. They are innovative and proactive with a very active community of users. ‘To boo’ has already become a verb. Unbound is about bringing writers and readers closer together and you can’t get closer than listening to the author read their own work, wherever and whenever you want to.”
For more information about Unbound visit: www.unbound.co.uk
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