Can the audiobook go indie?
Small press leads charge to get independent Canadian publishers a piece of the audiobook boom
André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogswas one of the bestselling Canadian books of 2015, a popular pick on best-of-the-year lists, and the winner of the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize. What it wasn’t: an audiobook, a fact that its publishing house was keenly aware of every time they got a call from a swaggering audiobook publisher south of the border. “It was a shame to not have an opportunity to make an audiobook in Canada with Canadian narrators and Canadian production,” says Coach House editorial director Alana Wilcox. “A homegrown version.”
But there was a problem: Canada’s audiobook production scene is virtually non-existent. “There’s no larger effort to produce audiobooks here in Toronto (even though) there is a plethora of recording studios, narration talent, as well as good content,” ECW co-publisher David Caron claims.
And so, in March, Fifteen Dogs, narrated by Alexis himself, became the first title in ECW’s newly created audiobook division, which aims to publish 100 books within the year.
Titles will come from fellow independent publishers such as Dundurn Press, Playwrights Canada Press and Inanna Publications. ECW’s second audiobook, Ken Reid’s Hockey Card Stories: True Tales from Your Favourite Players, will be published on July 1.
Patriotism may not be their only motivation. According to the U.S.-based Audio Publishers Association, global audiobook sales in 2015 totalled $1.77 billion (U.S.), after three consecutive years of double- digit growth: up 11.8 per cent in 2013, 13.2 per cent in 2014, and 20.7 per cent in 2015.
The popular online audiobook retailer Audible reports that membership growth has been “well over 30 per cent year over year.” As lucrative as the market can be, the costs can be prohibitive, especially for small publishers.
“It’s very expensive to create an audiobook,” says APA’s executive director Michele Cobb. “Not only are you acquiring rights to a particular title, you also have to then record the title.”
Beth Anderson, executive vice-president and publisher of Audible, says recording a 20-hour book could cost $10,000 (U.S.) or more.
Much more so than in print, the length matters. “It is roughly equivalent that a 12-hour finished audiobook is going to be double the price of a six-hour finished audiobook to produce,” Caron says, ac- counting for production, studio time and narration.
Even the most experienced narrators work two hours for every one of usable audio with a five- or six-hour day usually being the most their voices can bear. While success on the bestseller lists often predicts a successful audiobook, titles can get a bump just from the fame of their narrator, some of whom have followings that rival the authors’. The most popular narrators — Scott Brick, Barbara Rosenblat, Katherine Kellgren and George Guidall — are British and American actors.
Caron hopes ECW’s audiobook project can change that and make Canadian-produced books right here. “Our push is that all the books be narrated by Canadian professionals,” he says. “The fact that we push so much of the talent into the U.S. doesn’t seem right to me.”