Given the widespread success of books on tape, are on-the-go readers ready for books on bits?
Audible.com thinks so, and has created an online newsstand with digital versions of popular books, newspapers, radio programs, and other spoken-word materials for sale. With the explosion of new portable digital audio players, the company thinks the market for spoken word content is ripe.
"I think we're right on the edge of a lot of devices being available. We obviously work well within and in conjunction with what MP3 is doing, and are adding in spoken word," said Dan Scheffey, the vice president of communications at Audible.
On Wednesday, Texas Instruments said it would support Audible's speech format on its programmable digital signal processors (DSPs) that are used in portable audio devices.
Audible also recently announced an exclusive deal with Amazon.com to feature Audible content on the bookseller's site. Under the agreement, Amazon.com will make an investment in Audible and acquire 5 percent of the company. In exchange for promotion of audible.com content and services, Amazon.com will receive $30 million over three years.
Audible uses its own audio compression format for delivering the books, newspapers, radio programs, and other materials that it sells on its site. The sound quality is "somewhere between AM and FM radio," said Jonathan Korzen, media relations manager at Audible. One hour of Audible audio takes up 2MB of space on a hard drive or portable device, and downloads in about 10 minutes over a 56K modem, he added.
Audible's content store ranges from popular publications to speeches, lectures, language lessons, and on-demand radio programs such as Marketplace, Car Talk, and *Fresh Air. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times,and * San Jose Mercury News are among the newspapers available, and books by Stephen King, John Grisham, Jon Krakauer, and Jane Austen are sold as well.
A number of Windows CE handhelds currently use Audible's speech format -- Compaq Aero, Casio Cassiopeia, Hewlett-Packard Jornada, and Philips Nino, among them -- and the Diamond Rio 500 MP3 player will add support in the next few weeks.
These devices cost between $150 and $200 each. Audible also supplies an adapter so listeners can plug in to car stereos.
Scheffey said Audible books are priced at about half the cost of books on tape, or about $10-$20 for most titles. Newspapers like The Wall Street Journal cost $1.95 per day, which includes a morning and afternoon broadcast. A year's subscription costs $49.95.
Jupiter Communications estimates that 33 percent of all Internet users listen to Internet-delivered audio on their personal computers. When spoken word and music files can be downloaded to the same portable player, Jupiter said sales will likely accelerate.
Distributing spoken-word content over the Web is still a first-generation business, and a number of companies, such as Audiohighway.com, are getting into the game. When handheld vendors such as Palm and Handspring, and cable-modem and DSL companies add the capability to their products, consumers can expect to see books and other media marketed for a number of different formats and devices.
Companies like RealNetworks and Microsoft will have something to say in this market, too, but they are primarily focused on promoting their technologies RealAudio and Windows Media to media distributors like Audible.
Michael Aldridge, product manager for the digital media division at Microsoft, said that Audible uses Windows Media as an alternate format to distribute some of its publications, and he doesn't view them as a competitor.
"We're a technology platform company, not a media company. Audible is like the Lauch.com of the spoken world," Aldridge said.
"In the case of a book, you need to be able to store a lot of audio, and Windows Media format can offer a file that is half the size of an MP3 with the same amount of content."
With more than 20,000 hours of copyrighted material for sale, Audible has had to implement a system to protect its content from redistribution. So when a client buys an audio file, software in the file prevents it from being played on devices that are not registered by the purchaser with Audible.
"One of the things that was the impetus for the establishment of this company was to advance and protect the rights of the content creators, and so it's important for us to maintain the security of what we're sending out," said Scheffey.
