Audio

In December, Audible began testing in-app vertical videos for book promotion. Select publishers can trailers, author interviews, and more to drive audiobook discovery. The feature is now in beta, available to about half of Audible users.

Norton has entered an exclusive audiobook partnership with RBmedia, expanding the companies’ existing partnership. Norton audiobooks will be published across a number of RBmedia brands, including Recorded Books, Tantor, Dreamscape, HighBridge, and Ascent Audio, and available for download on leading audio platforms. “Audio has become essential to the way that readers discover and engage with books, and we are thrilled to expand our reach via this unique partnership,” said Elisabeth Kerr, Norton’s director of content and business strategy, in a release. “RBmedia and Norton have had an exceptional working relationship for years, and this new agreement deepens that collaboration—expanding awareness […]

Spotify announced that its audiobooks feature is now available in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Monaco. The company writes in a release, “Listeners in these markets will now have access to more than 300,000 audiobooks as part of their Premium subscription, including a robust mix of local-language and English-language titles featuring both independent publishers and major partners such as Bonnier.” They have also created a subscription option called Audiobooks+, which is “a recurring monthly add-on that provides additional listening hours” beyond the allotted fifteen hours.

Spotify has rolled out a new audiobook feature called Recaps, offering “short audio summaries that help listeners seamlessly return to an audiobook they’ve already started, without needing to rewind or re-listen.” Recaps become available after a user has listened to 15-20 minutes of the book, and cover the segment of the book the user has heard. The company writes in a release, “When a listener returns to a story after a break, they can tap the Recap button at the top of an audiobook page to hear a tailored summary of what’s happened so far.” They also note that the […]

Simon & Schuster has launched its audio imprint Simon Maverick in the UK, following its January 2025 US launch. The imprint is focused on self-published authors. Titles include Lauren Palphreyman’s romantasy Wolf King series, BookTok personality Jaysea Lynn’s For Whom the Belle Tolls, and I.V. Ophelia’s The Poisoner. Alice Twomey has been promoted to audio publisher, audio & Simon Maverick and the company is hiring for a commissioning editor and an assistant editor.  The imprint will be acquiring self-published UK authors across “a range of fiction genres, as well as non-fiction.” Twomey, said, “We’re really excited to be expanding this […]

Judith Curr was on the Open Book Podcast, in a wide-ranging conversation about her publishing career. After 17 years working in publishing in Australia (“There was sort of like a ceiling that was there. Any other company at that time would just feel like for me exactly the same thing, but just a different address.”) she moved to the US to become editor in chief of Ballantine. “I went to Simon & Schuster and then Simon & Schuster decided to have a reorganization,” she says, “and they wanted to bring somebody else in to run Pocket Books and bring it […]