Small Business Resource: Why the Audiobook market is about to explode

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November 27, 2006

Why the Audiobook market is about to explode

There's a hot new hot online business opportunity for Internet entrepreneurs: Audiobooks.

The audiobook market is about to go through the roof.

In 2004, the off-the-shelf audiobook industry (i.e. cassettes and CDs) was $800 million strong (Source: Audio Publishers' Association). By the end of 2005, industry estimates reported that audiobooks had become a $2 billion industry. That means it grew by 150% in just 1 year!

To give you an idea of the kind of money that can be made in this industry, consider this: The leading audiobook download company, Audible.com, generated sales of $65 million in 2005 exclusively from downloadable audiobooks. But that's only the tip of the iceberg since that's only a 3.25% share of the total two billion dollar audiobook pie.

That means the rest of the market share (96.75%) is up for grabs by any number of entrepreneurs -- like you -- who want to seize the opportunity.

But sales won't stop at $2 billion dollars a year.

Here's why:

People are busier than ever -- and time has become a dwindling commodity. Therefore, people are constantly looking for ways to make the most use of their "dead time" -- such as the time they spend commuting, jogging, gardening, working out, doing chores, running errands, etc.

With the rising popularity of MP3 players such as the iPod, people have just started to discover that music is not the only thing they can listen to while going about their day.

Now, people can "listen" to books, teleseminars, lectures and podcasts while they're on-the-go -- and when they don't have time to read.

And since today's selection of downloadable audio books is not limited to just fiction and literary works, but runs the gamut from how-to manuals to business books and self-help information, today's mobile society has found out that they can download an unlimited amount of information into their brain, learn a skill, enjoy a murder mystery or an epic romance novel -- and even increase their cultural literacy instead of listening to drive-time radio.

Audio books and other spoken word recordings have become brain food for the time-strapped multi-taskers of the world!

Posted by David at November 27, 2006 2:49 AM