My Dimbleby mission continues. Seriously, David, look over your shoulder and you will see me there…albeit with the need of the Hubble telescope.

I was invited to be a panel member for The Bookseller’s “Audio Revolution 2008” – a one-day Publishing industry seminar focussing on all things audio book-related.

My session was the last of the day and I must say that it showed in some of the faces but nonetheless Jo Henry chaired an interesting discussion about how audio books could/should be marketed.

I was representing the web marketing side of things, with Tony Lynch of Gospoken making an excellent case for the viability of audio books on mobile phones and Madeline Milne of e-Music discussing the success of their subscription-based download model.

It was difficult to do justice to this very broad topic in fifty minutes and I was very surprised at how few questions the panel got from the floor. I think this represented a general feeling that I got from the afternoon. No one was really talking about marketing audio books. By which I mean getting them out there and selling them.

I spent the afternoon thinking that audio books are like this little-known secret and it surprises me that the industry isn’t shouting about them more. I mean, they are really great!

I was speaking to one of our recent recruits at Chameleon Net – young, early twenties, bright – and, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, he said “I don’t like reading books, but I really like audio books. I wouldn’t read a book on the train but I just put on an audio book – it’s great.”

And there it was…a new market for publishers. So why, I wonder, isn’t the industry shouting from the rooftops about this amazing format that means people who don’t like reading can enjoy books? I mean, some people are just mainly auditory – that’s how they like to learn and that’s how they like to consume information.

Surely the industry should be running massive campaigns about audio books?! Publishers should be giving some away as tasters…get people using them!

I think if the publishing industry could unite, get over all the internal issues like audio book rights, royalties, investment in recordings, etc and just get the message of audio books out there, the response would be huge! Just get people aware of them, using them, liking them. There’s a market out there and most of them don’t think about audio books. And they are not all old women and travelling sales reps.

So, “quit your whingeing” I hear you cry “and do something to help”. Ok then, I will. Here are my top ten tips for marketing and selling audio books:

1.    Get all over social networks – they are still the fastest growing sites in the UK and your target market is using them every day. Sometimes for hours and often when they should be working. Create groups, use Facebook advertising, run competitions, give-aways (i.e. free downloads)

2.    Use ePR (or an agency that knows how to use it :)) to target key influential bloggers and get them blogging about you and your products. Credibility online is everything and all votes are not created equal. Make powerful friends and work together.

3.    Get all over search engines. By which I mean Google. They have nearly 90% of UK searches and 94% of people use it, all of whom are qualified as having an informational need (otherwise they wouldn’t be searching). Where else would you want to advertise? Do this by PPC ads and also by optimising for organic search results (see below).

4.    Optimise for natural search. This gets its own number coz it’s so important. It’s by far the best ROI when it comes to search engine marketing and every day that you don’t do it and your competitors do, the lower you will show up in the searches. In natural SEO, doing nothing just means you keep getting lower. More of this below….

5.    Use metadata: use target key words to describe your audio files and make sure they are on optimised pages: page titles, H1 tags, alt tags, copy, etc. SE’s can’t listen to audio books (yet…I’m not kidding, speech recognition software is getting better and Google may soon be able to index the spoken word) so give them lots of thematically-relevant content to help them.

6.    Think Accessibility. Audio books have a perfect market in people with visual impairments. Make sure your site works for screen readers. If you’re not sure, get an audit (“from us” is the answer to your next question).

7.    Speaking of sites…get a good one. There’s no point spending time and money marketing products if your site is rubbish at converting visitors to customers. You’ll lose sales and damage your brand in the process. Make sure your site makes buying mind-numbingly easy. Joyful even. People should leave your site happier than when they arrived. If not, your site is letting you and them down. I mean, nobody likes to be made to work hard to buy something – it’s just not polite.

8.    Don’t worry about DRM. There are so few audio books out there that there is not much of a market in illegal copies 9unlike music). It’s about creating the market at the moment – better to have a million audio books out there with 10 per cent buying them than ten thousand with 100% of them buying. DRM can always be adopted later.

9.    Create added-value content. Like extras on DVDs…publishers can offer something more than the retailers…exclusive interviews with the author, an introduction, an otherwise unpublished epi/prologue, etc. This will really help the ePR and build buzz.

10.    Sell ‘em direct. Find out what your customers like and talk to them about it. Don’t let Amazon have all the fun.


Of course audio books are part of a seismic shift in the Publishing sector that is happening in order to adapt to digital content and multiple delivery platforms and formats.

For an excellent analysis of these changes, I recommend Sara Lloyd’s insightful article “A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century”.

If you are a publisher and want to know more of our thoughts on this and other Publishing-related topics, you may want to attend our free seminar: Quick Web Wins for Publishers, on Tuesday 25th November at London Chamber of Commerce, EC4. There’ll be exclusive content and an opportunity to ask us questions.