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Originally Posted by rem736
there is one mention of "digital audiobook". but there is not a single mention of "ebooks" or "digital books" in this article. even in this crisis, they still won't embrace ebooks. wow.
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Audiobooks and podcasts are reportedly down.
https://www.mediapost.com/publicatio...ing-due-t.html
Apparently the main driver of sales were commuters and with everybody stuck at home...
(Meanwhile, Netflix just reported double the new subscribers than expected: 15M instead of 7. They're not the only video streaming service to see big gains. The battle for entertainment eyeballs just took a tilt.)
Many tradpubs were counting on audio to grow indefinitely to balance out their (intentional) ebook decline. It wasn't going to happen before, and it's not going to happen now. Even after things start to slowly phase back to normality the economies of the world are going to be tight for a while and unemployment high. Price sensitivity is going to be higher than before. (Hence the gains for streaming subscriptions.)
If 2008 was bad for traditional publishing, the next few years are going to be worse. High unemployment and squeezed family budgets won't be conductive to greater pbook sales. Especially with a further decimation of b&m bookstores a likelihood.
So yeah, bad times a-coming.