The UK audiobook market accounts for some £214m in annual spending, with 278m audiobooks sold in the UK in 2023 alone (Nielsen, 2024). Developments across the decades have been driven by the move of recording media towards portable – from vinyl to cassette to CD to digital file. These wider societal developments have given a sense of progress and improved experience. But innovative approaches from within the publishing industry still have an opportunity to emerge.
The publishing industry has had a rocky and uncertain relationship with technology development, at times. Digital has represented a disruptor to established working patterns and approaches. It has at times been heralded as the harbinger of wholesale changes to the sector.
One interesting perception around the outcome of the arrival of eBooks, eReaders and digital books not resulting in the entire overthrowing of print media is that parts of the sector view digital as an entity to be defeated, a battle to be won, a foe that can be slain, rather than a positive force for change and a transformative power.
This has led to some reticence and slow adoption of technologies. This has included generative artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and voice recognition technology. Other sectors have been more proactive in exploring these new tools. And they have been adopted widely across the consumer landscape.
Personalised audiobooks represent a safe space for the sector to explore the application of voice technologies to their catalogues of publications. Personalised audiobooks can open up a fresh new market. Each personalised audiobook represents a new product, backed by a fresh rights approach that requires careful refinement to optimise.
Personalised audiobooks allow people – their friends, their families, their communities, those they rely upon – to make recordings of their own voices which are used to create bespoke versions of meaningful stories and narratives.
Trained voice actors and beloved celebrities bring polish and elegance to the world of audiobooks. Personalised audiobooks weave a more home-spun charm. They are the personal touch, the home-cooked delight you dream about when you’re far from your homely setting, the comfortable slippers that bring more warmth and healing because they were a gift from a treasured relative.
Personalised audiobooks are for sharing. They are the ideal personalised gift. They bring enlightenment, spread joy, and offer a new frontier in accessible communications to explore.
There are a range of customer groups for personalised audiobooks. These include parents making recordings of favourite stories for their children to listen to, elderly relatives living far away who can use voice recording to transcend distance, writers keen to share their work in open and accessible ways, or any number of people keen to harness the power of voices to open up conversations.
With each new product, we create a fresh, new version. These can be a personalised spin on a treasured tale, a bespoke telling of a message best transmitted by voice not written characters on the page, a personally tailored work that can live on as an important landmark for family and friends to come back to and enjoy, again and again.
Personalised audiobooks represent a new innovative frontier where the publishing industry can take the lead in shaping the next generation of technology. There is the opportunity to better respond to the needs of their valued customers. Together we can build greater and more appreciative audiences. Personalised audiobooks represent the most important new development for the sector to take ownership of, refine and perfect in the coming decade.