Listen Up

I've been saying this here since day one - which is almost two years now.

It's always nice when big media catches up.

Since we're talking about the future this week, my own prediction is that along with advertising changing - the audio book revolution is ripe to take off but we still have a ways to go.

Not because people don't want to listen. They do.

And not because the audience isn't big enough. It is.

More than 65 million iPods have been sold to date.

And that's just iPods.

65 million.

Think of how many people who listen and who don't read, we can get listening to books if we work it right and market right and price the damn downloads right.

Our industry must lower the cost of the audio books to the price of paperbacks and stop worrying about cannibalization of hard covers. We're not going to lose buyers of hardcovers its a difference audience. Early stats show that.  A few tests have proved it.