How to Get Your Audiobook Discovered on Spotify (And What’s Coming Next)

Ferol Vernon (00:26.055)

Welcome, authors, to the Written Word Media Podcast. I am Ferol, as always, and today I have a very exciting guest. I have my friend Will Dages from Spotify Audiobooks with me. Will has been involved in audiobooks in one way or another for like the last 10 to 15 years. and we’re super excited to dig in today. Will, welcome to the show.

Will Dages (00:47.928)

Thank you. I’m very excited to be here and great to see you again.

Ferol Vernon (00:51.43)

Yeah, absolutely. well, like we have so much to talk about. Like I wanna get into, you know, promoting audiobooks on Spotify. I wanna get into creating audiobooks on Spotify. There’s all these cool new features, but I wanna just start, you know, maybe a little high level for our audience that’s not as familiar with how Spotify works. G give me a sense, like how does Spotify fit into this retailer ecosystem for authors? Like

Obviously the big name in the space is Audible and Amazon, but like where does Spotify come in?

Will (01:22.22)

Yeah. well Spotify’s been around for twenty years, but has only had audiobooks for a few years now. and we started off by selling audiobooks a la carte, so just one at a time. And then we launched a few years ago Audiobooks in Premium, which opened up the audiobooks catalog that we have to every premium subscriber who already pays for Spotify. And so as a as part of their subscription, they get access to our whole catalog of audiobooks, which means Spotify is

Putting audiobooks in front of many millions of of customers that are already showing up in our app every single day. That’s one of the things that’s so exciting about Spotify is we’re not this app where people open it to go buy an audiobook because they want to buy an audiobook. They open it because they open it every day to listen. And then they’re being introduced to audiobooks for the first time. So it’s like a really exciting way to get people to fall in love with audiobooks who maybe hadn’t tried them before and and really grow the market.

Ferol Vernon (02:20.89)

That’s really cool. So so let me jump around a little bit here because you mentioned something I thought was really interesting. I had I had a question about it later in the show, but let’s just get to it now. What when people open Spotify, and you know, I I use Spotify to like listen to my podcast. Some some of you listening right now are probably listening on Spotify. And but I’m let’s say I’m listening to a podcast about I don’t know, true crime or something, right? And then obviously all there’s also mystery and true crime books, audiobooks. How does Spotify think about?

you know, discovery from that standpoint. Like if if a listener is listening to, you know, content type A, how do they think about getting to listen to content type B?

Will (02:58.477)

I mean, we win when you listen to stuff that you love. So if we know that you love true crime, mystery, thriller, whatever, but from your podcast listening history, you’re just one person, in you know, in our algorithm, and we’re gonna match you with content that we think you’re gonna like. And we have a lot of books that we can match you with. So so we’re really thinking about how do we get you to engage with with content that you’re really going to love and matching you with content that you’re gonna enjoy listening to.

And so it’s great that we have music, podcasts, and audiobooks at our disposal to to match you with. So we’re absolutely taking those taste signals from from other formats and trying to introduce, you know, audiobooks where it’s appropriate.

Ferol Vernon (03:38.596)

Cool. And then let’s talk a little bit about the model because that’s a little different, right? Like we’re familiar with a la carte, right? Everybody’s bought an audiobook and you know paid a price for it. And then you know, Amazon’s Audible has been around for a really long time, so people are somewhat familiar with their credit system. But Spotify has this sort of hour-based listening program. Explain that for the audience a little bit. How does that work?

Will (04:02.646)

Yeah. So Spotify has free users and and premium subscribers, right? So if you’re a free user, this is our entire base of people who open up Spotify, they can buy books a la carte. If you are a premium subscriber and you’re paying for Spotify premium, then you get access to this audiobooks and premium catalog. And it depends on the market that you’re in. In the US, you get 15 hours of listening per month. Some markets are a little bit different, but you can listen.

To as much as you want up to 15 hours. You can skip around between books, you can kind of trial and sample things. You can listen to five three hour books. You know, you can you can kind of your listening habits can fit into those fifteen hours however you’d like. And then we of course have ways to get more hours. If you want to buy some top ups, you can add more hours on. We have other tiers of listening that gets you more hours if you if you’re a big reader and fifteen hours is not enough.

But the beauty of it is you can kind of you know, you don’t have to think about how long the book is, how how much value I’m getting for this credit. You you listen to whatever you want to listen to and it lets us put great books in front of everyone without really, you know, restricting what they’re listening to.

Ferol Vernon (05:19.382)

Yeah, that’s really cool. I think it’s a really interesting model, right? It’s like I can listen to whatever I want to listen to. And you know, you could put you mentioned like popping around, which is very different from, you know, there’s that like your hesitation when you’re about, am gonna burn a credit, right? Is this book worth burning a credit? Right. 

Will (05:35.018)

It gives a lot of opportunities to authors with shorter books as well. You know, like historically short books has has not performed very well in credit models, but on Spotify they’re on even terrain with everything else. And so we’re we’re seeing a lot of opportunities for authors with short books and kids’ content too.

Ferol Vernon (05:38.239)

Yeah, it’s a sample.

Ferol Vernon (05:51.019)

Cool, so what what do you mean by kids content?

Will (05:54.669)

Well, k children’s books, you know, really short books, those can also do very well here because again, they’re they’re maybe not credit worthy in some other bot mod models and and and yeah, it does really, really r well on on Spotify.

Ferol Vernon (06:02.868)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (06:09.377)

Cool. And then you know, obviously we understand how that works now from the listener standpoint. From the creator standpoint, our audience is mostly publishers and authors out there. They want to understand how does the payout work? Like how do I, as a creator, someone who’s got my audiobook on Spotify, and we’ll get to how that works in a minute. But let’s just say once I’ve done it, how do I get paid and how does that payout model you know compare to some others in the in the market?

Will (06:36.152)

Sure. So, I mean, let’s get tactical here. a la carte sales are 50% of your suggested retail price that you set. So, you know, just like another, this is very industry standard, but it it it’s, you know, if you set your book is worth $10, every time it sells, you’re gonna make 50% of that. Doesn’t matter if we sell it for $9 or $12, you know, if we discount it or whatever, you’re gonna get paid a very predictable 50% of your suggested retail price. And then on the audiobooks and premium side, when people are are paying for Spotify and consuming that.

Ferol Vernon (06:39.303)

Yeah, let’s do it.

Will (07:05.826)

15 hour allotment every month, you’re paid out of a pool. So there is a pool with a with a certain amount of money, and you’re paid based on the pro rata share of how much listening you drove. So the more people listen to your books relative to other listening, the more your payout will be. And that that does vary from quarter to quarter. a la carte sales are paid out monthly, audiobooks and premium sales from the pool are paid out quarterly.

Ferol Vernon (07:32.263)

Okay, great. And then if I’m an author, like what what can I expect to see in my sort of sales dashboard? Do I see how many minutes I was listened to or how many hours, or how does that sort of what what’s the currency, you know, for authors who are listening who are familiar with KU or KDP select, they’re familiar with this concept of like pages red is how much I get paid. What’s the similar thing in Spotify’s terms?

Will (07:57.891)

Yeah, we we report weekly on some insights. These are like non-official, not strictly royalty bearing, right? But they give you directional in insight every single week. We give you a listening report with listening insights. And in that, it’s all of the audiobooks and premium listening. And we break down the minutes listened and breakdowns for gender, age ranges, locations. So you can start to really understand your audience week over week and how it’s evolving and how you’re trending.

Ferol Vernon (08:05.01)

Sure.

Will (08:26.21)

kind of week over week. So there’s a report that you can download every single week to to get that really deep insight. And we really want authors and publishers to understand their audience on Spotify because it does differ from other audiences. And we are bringing a lot of people into being audiobook lovers here. So it’s not just about the trend on financials, but it’s about, male listenership on this book is like really up and I didn’t expect that. Or this is gaining traction with the eighteen to twenty four crowd. Those kind of insights we’re giving every single week, which is really

seen some like real cool stuff that people are doing with that in terms of translating that into ad targeting or like understanding writing to their audience a little bit more in their next book and understanding who’s finding them on Spotify.

Ferol Vernon (09:07.697)

Got it. Cool. So there’s some sort of demographic behavioral stuff that we get in addition to just sort of my minutes and sort of my payout royalties that I get.

Awesome. Cool. And then, you know, about the sort of back end Spotify for creators or Spotify for authors, which I know is something near and dear to your heart, how should authors think about that sort of on-ramp into Spotify? Like I, you know, I have the app in my phone, I think it’s cool, I want my book because my book’s awesome and I want to get it on there. Do I go through a distributor? Do I go through Spotify directly? Like what does that process look like?

Will (09:42.256)

Well, I would definitely recommend using Spotify for authors to get to Spotify. It’s that direct channel, right? It’s the way that you’re gonna get closest to us. You’re gonna be able to to utilize some features that you’re not gonna find elsewhere. If you’re using an aggregator or a distributor like Voices by an audio, that you can get your book to us that way too. Like we pretty much work with everybody. We want all the books, right? We want we want your book on Spotify. but the most direct way to get there where you’re gonna get to use as many of the features that we’re

we’re putting out is possible is by using Spotify for authors at authors.spotify.com. And that’s going to be that direct upload channel for us.

Ferol Vernon (10:20.484)

Perfect. All right, cool. And we’ll add all the links that that Will and I talk about will go in the show notes. So don’t worry about pulling over in your car if you’re listening to this and scribbling it down. We’ll make sure you get the information that you need. And Will, you mentioned sort of discoverability a few times as we’ve been talking. And I think this is one thing that, you know, our authors, they look to written word media really for marketing. And that’s where we help them the most. And I think what people often want to know about a given retail channel is how do I get discovered on that retail channel? How do I

you know, for lack of a better term, hack the algorithm or optimize for the algorithm. and there’s a lot of people that are trying to, you know, always reverse engineer what’s going on on Amazon, but on Spotify, you know, what are some things tactically that an author or publisher can do to make sure that their book gets discovered or to make the most out of the platform?

Will (11:08.643)

Yeah, great question. And and well, we really want to make discovery as natural as possible, right? We have all of these people coming to Spotify every day to listen. And maybe they’re not thinking they’re gonna open up to listen to an audiobook, but maybe we wanna put one in front of them today. And I know this is a little bit boring here to start with this, but like let’s talk about metadata for a minute, because metadata quality is so important. Okay, good. ‘Cause I can I can geek out on this all day long. But like I know some people are gonna glaze on metadata? That’s

Ferol Vernon (11:29.673)

well this is this is a safe safe space to talk about met metadata, this show. Yeah.

Will (11:38.83)

Look, this is like so much of what we have to go on in terms of understanding what your book is about, understanding how it links to other books in your series, how you know the description, the genre codes, all of that matters so much to us to really get a a grip on what your book is about so that we can do our job of matching it with the right person. So, you know, me you’re gonna hear a lot of times in your author career like focus on the metadata, but it’s so easy.

to just get complacent or or think, I already wrote that for my ebook and my print book or whatever. And I’m just gonna like copy and paste it over here. Like, okay, maybe it’s time to reconsider it and like really think about what is making your audiobook special that’s maybe a little bit different from your ebook or or or really thinking you know, deeply about how the categories are there. Of course, making sure there’s no typos, you know, if your author name is misspelled, it might not get on your author page. If your series name

is different from one book to the next. They might not get linked up in the right way. Like those basics are they sound basic, right? But they’re so important to letting us do the best job that we can with your content. So first and foremost is is metadata for discovery.

Ferol Vernon (12:52.405)

And and for an author who maybe I think you mentioned something really important is like they have their metadata, they’re, you know, they’ve set up their ebook on one of the major platforms, maybe they’re using a distributor, maybe they’re going direct, whatever. But like besides picking the right genre, like what pieces of metadata should authors be prepared for to get on Spotify? And what sort of practices can they use to make sure they have the best chance of success?

Will (13:17.707)

One thing that I that I see sometimes that doesn’t really help too much is like keyword stuffing in the subtitle. You know, I I I we don’t love that because it it really just muddies things up and like you’re not gonna get elevated search too much for that. Like it’s not it it seems like it’s a great hack, but but like make your subtitle your actual subtitle and and try to like really sell the book in the description. That is your free form text field where you can help get a listener really engaged and interested in the book.

Ferol Vernon (13:23.68)

Yeah.

Will (13:47.864)

And also feed Spotify information about what your book is about. So if you have some tropes that are important to your book, like make sure those are in your description. You wanna, you wanna just put yourself in the best light possible and be descriptive, but not like keyword stuffy descriptive, because you’re still writing this for a consumer at the end of the day. And that’s what we’re optimized for for looking at is like this consumer facing context, not a not a wall of keywords.

Ferol Vernon (14:12.799)

Yeah, I think, you know, something I always tell authors when we talk, and you know, I always talk to authors about marketing is like your blurb in the description of your book, this is not not the time to be bashful. Right. This is a time to go ahead and brag, go ahead and say how great your book is, go ahead and say what tropes are in it. and I think that’s, you know, it sounds like that translates pretty well to the Spotify platform. Yeah, cool. And so there’s your metadata. What are some other tools?

Will (14:23.172)

Mm-hmm.

Will (14:33.305)

Hundred percent. Yes. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (14:39.088)

In Spotify for authors that are gonna help me if I’m an author trying to figure out how to sell more audiobook copies.

Will (14:45.475)

We have a few tools built right into Spotify for authors that are really easy to use. One is promo cards. So it gives you like a really nice social asset with your book cover locked up in a nice, nice image with the Spotify logo. It looks really official and and legit. Like using those, generating those, and you can do different color combinations for what looks good and keep it fresh. Those are like that’s an easy win. We also have redemption codes, which is basically free giveaways.

Of your book for influencers, reviewers, friends and family, collaborators, your narrator, you know, whoever you want to like give it to. If it’s a giveaway on social, surprise and delight your email list, you can basically get a one-time use code that delivers the a la carte version of your audiobook for free to anybody in any of the markets that we’re launched in. And it’s really powerful because just about everybody has Spotify on their phones, right? So you’re you’re gonna give this away and you’re not gonna ask them to go download.

Some special app that they’ve never heard of before and your conversion’s going to drop off. Like it’s just available in Spotify. And then the beauty of that also is that now that person understands there are audiobooks on Spotify, and they their first interaction of that book may have been with your book, which kind of seeds the algorithm to what they listen to. And you’re probably pretty likely to get recommended and surface to them again on royalty bearing books.

Ferol Vernon (16:08.626)

That’s really cool. And on those redemption codes, how many of those do you get as an author? Is it per book? Is it per account? Like how does how does the limiting work on that?

Will (16:17.476)

We give everybody a hundred on those. and if you need more, let us know. if you run out and you have some really great ideas, if you want to do something special with us, let us know. You know, you you own the book. It it’s my philosophy. If you want to give it away, you’re more than welcome to. We want to set reasonable limits to make sure that nothing shady is going on. But if you have a cool idea for something you want to do that requires more than a hundred, please reach out to our customer support. Let us know what you want to do, and chances are pretty good we’ll

We’ll deliver those at your doorstep.

Ferol Vernon (16:48.561)

And everybody will we’ll drop whatever email address you want to hit up to hopefully it’s Will’s personal email address, right? That’s where you want everybody listening to email you.

Will (16:56.046)

Yeah, well let’s just give them my cell phone and they can just text me. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (16:58.779)

There you go. But we’ll make sure you have the contact information so you can ask for more codes if you need them. well, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about something that Spotify launched recently that’s very interesting. you guys, your recent partnership with 11 labs to introduce sort of audiobook creation tools into the platform. So I’m gonna give my understanding of it very briefly and then I’ll let you sort of explain it more.

But as I understand it, you’re able to upload your manuscript to Spotify and you’ll actually record using Eleven Labs technology, the audiobook so that you don’t have to hire a narrator. And how how close am I?

Will (17:39.301)

Yeah, that’s pretty close. Yeah, we partner with Eleven Labs for some really great voices that work really, really well. And we’ve focused on making a very simple flow so that if you’ve wanted an audiobook but it just hasn’t been in the cards for you, you have a new option in the market now. And so you can upload your manuscript. You can, you know, if especially if you have a book with some very uncommon names or places, you can set custom pronunciations so that it’s gonna come out right for you.

You get some jo choices on voices. Not every voice that Eleven Labs has. We’ve ki picked kind of our favorites and and whittled it down to like our you know, the best of the best, and just a a short list of about ten to choose from. but you can try all those out, see what fits for your book, hit go and it’ll be live to consumers soon.

Ferol Vernon (18:25.133)

And what does that cost me as a creator to to use that service with Spotify?

Will (18:29.954)

We are offering this for free. We want more books in the market. We want more stories to be told. We want to help reduce the barriers for anybody who’s struggling to make an audiobook. And so we’re we’re offering these tools for free.

Ferol Vernon (18:42.967)

And is that free forever or free for now? ‘Cause that’s a pretty incredible offer.

Will (18:48.261)

It is I’ll say free for now, and everyone gets five free books per account. If you need more, there a way to request more once we’re out of beta. but yeah, we we really want to help the whole industry make more books, and there’s a big delta between the number of ebooks in the world and number of audiobooks in the world. There’s a lot of stories that have been told that are great and they just haven’t reached all the audiences they could yet. So we want to do our part to help.

Bring those stories to life.

Ferol Vernon (19:18.242)

Yeah, so that’s an interesting question. We’re sort of migrating into sort of philosophy corner here, but who do you think this helps the most? I mean, obviously this is a really cool feature that Spotify has to sort of freely record an audiobook, but you know, what segment of the market of the creator market most benefits you think from from this new partnership that you guys have?

Will (19:42.373)

The way I think about it is I’m we’re trying to make more opportunities for people. So I think a lot of authors want audiobooks, right? But not everyone has been able to make an audiobook. So for those people, those authors and publishers who’ve really wanted an audiobook, but it’s just been out of reach, we’re trying to break down some of the barriers on cost and complexity to help get them into this market, to help get them understanding how great it is to have an audiobook. And I believe some of them will.

you know, hire a human narrator next for their next book once they’ve gotten a taste of this because you know and I I wanna be, you know, I wanna be clear that like there’s no replacement for a human narrator in a lot of books. Like that is a craft. It is an amazing art. And I don’t see that going away. But we want more authors to get a taste of the audiobook world so that they can understand and appreciate that. And we wanna you know, I think opening this door for more people doesn’t close any other doors.

Ferol Vernon (20:40.448)

Yeah, that’s really cool. And Will, I know you, you mean you have a lot of experience with human narrators and setting up systems for them from your days at Find a Way. Maybe you can speak a little bit about like, what do you see as the differences between, you know, something that was narrated, you know, through technology by Eleven Labs and your partnership versus the human narration? Like, what are some of the things where it’s like, like you said, I think there’s there’s no replacement, but obviously there’s a big cost difference.

Like what are some of the benefit differences that you see?

Will (21:08.145)

Mm-hmm.

You know, I think the depth of emotion, the the interpretability of the of the scene is gonna be very different. You you pipe in text and you get audio out in in the AI narration space. And it is good and it is getting better. But there is with a human narrator, they are reading the story, they’re internalizing the story, they’re putting their own it’s like having another character sometimes with a really good narration performance.

And it can make or break the audiobook. So, you know, sometimes it’s magical and sometimes it’s not. And that ma when the magic happens though, it’s irreplaceable. and and with with AI narration, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get some blips and beeps every once in a while. You’re gonna get

a misinterpretation of how this scene is supposed to go and you’re only gonna be able to direct it so much. So your your tools and controls are much more limited there. and that’s the difference between you know, a super premium product like a human narrated audiobook and and a more s mainline product.

Ferol Vernon (22:22.74)

Yeah. And I, you know, something it’s also there’s a discovery angle to this because I, you know, personally I, you know, I’m curious what you think, Will, but like I discover a book myself and then I decide whether I’m gonna read that on like an ebook or I’m gonna listen to it or whatever. I decide on the format second. But I have a lot of friends that list that, you know, discover audiobooks through narration, right? They say, Hey, I love this narrator, let me see what else they’re reading.

How does that how do you think about that in terms of like the discoverability network? Are people finding a a book first and then a format, or are people following a format and seeing if the book exists?

Will (23:01.765)

What a great question.

I think you’re you’re absolutely right. And I’ve heard this and experienced it for years in terms of I found this narrator and I love them and I would listen to them read the phone book. But there’s more than just their voice and how pleasing it is to you. It’s that that narrator, if they’re that good, probably has a huge backlog of projects. And they get to pick and choose the projects that they want to do, and they’re playing a curatorial role.

Ferol Vernon (23:12.871)

Right.

Will (23:32.183)

As well, because they’re picking up the projects they most want to do. And that’s that is curating a set of books for you. And so I think both of those things play together in a really cool way. And I think that’s a lot of why people follow narrators. So I think, you know, the digital version of that narrator’s voice is indiscriminate. It’s narrating whatever anybody wants it to narrate. And so you lose a little bit of that curatorial voice as well.

Ferol Vernon (23:35.729)

Mm. Interesting.

Ferol Vernon (23:47.28)

Yeah, absolutely.

Ferol Vernon (23:58.984)

Got it. And you know, this is just something that popped up while you were talking about that, but can authors use their own voice with a Spotify product or is are they picking from the sort of eleven labs curated voices to read their to read books?

Will (24:13.135)

Yeah, we’re not doing any voice cloning. We’re just picking kind of ten voices that we think are really solid from the eleven labs catalog.

Ferol Vernon (24:47.066)

so I want to talk about like some of the new things that Spotify has launched that are really interesting and that are somewhat related to creators, but I’d love to get your opinion on kind of what you think the impact of these things are gonna be. I wanna first talk about page match because I way before we scheduled this call, I used it myself just and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was like slugging through this really long book.

Will (25:03.183)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (25:15.501)

And was like, man, I really got to finish this because I had book club in two days. And I I realized I could do this. And I took a picture of it and it like scrubbed the audiobook to, you know, wherever I was 80%. And then I went in my car and listened to it. And I was just like, this is so neat. But talk to me about like page match a little bit. Like what how is that affecting listener behavior? you know, if I’m a creator and my book’s on there, what is happening on Spotify with PageMatch that might not be happening on other platforms?

Will (25:44.601)

I’m so glad you brought this up because I love PageMatch. It’s so magical. And so if if I can just back up and like explain the product for everyone listening who’s not not familiar with it, PageMatch is a product that we launched to help you stay in sync with a physical book and your audiobook. So if you have both and you’re switching back and forth, you listen in the car, and then you’re like cozy up at night with your book and and you want to like read it with your eyes, you can go back and forth with page match. And the way it works is.

Ferol Vernon (25:52.686)

Yeah, go for it.

Will (26:13.35)

When you’re ready to resume your audio, you bring up your Spotify app, it opens up a camera, you take a picture of the page that you’re on, and it immediately resumes your audiobook from that spot. And then when you’re done listening and you want go back to the book, you can hold up your phone to the book and it’ll say go forward a few pages or go back a few pages until you find exactly to the word where you left off and it helps you pick up really fast. And so what a great feature for people who use multiple books. A lot of us internally.

Wanted this, and that’s why it exists, right? We felt this pain of going back and forth and loving audiobooks, but not always wanting to listen to the audio version, or to like listen to the audiobook by itself and then listen and read both at the same time. And since since launching this, we’ve seen an uplift of 55% over a month when r eaders are reading PageMatch. And so

Ferol Vernon (27:09.357)

Wow.

Will (27:10.286)

It clearly resonating with the the audience out there and it’s encouraging people to read more. And that’s exactly the kind of feature that we want to bring to the industry.

Ferol Vernon (27:19.884)

That’s amazing. So are you seeing people just reading more, or is like the completion rate higher? Like are people more likely to finish a book, or is it just that you’re seeing increased reading?

Will (27:29.564)

People are reading twice as fast. They’re finishing books twice as fast, completing them twice as fast. And and and then they’re moving on to the next book. It’s amazing. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (27:41.002)

That’s really cool. yeah. So page match. I mean, you mentioned magical. I it was really a pretty cool thing. So if you haven’t checked it out, definitely do. the other thing I wanted to dig in a little bit, and this is, you know, near and dear to our audience’s heart, which is about selling selling books. you launched this partnership with bookshop.org, right? And so I want to understand, maybe you can, you know, kind of unpack it for us how it works a little bit and then talk a little bit about why they were the right partner.

and and what’s coming down the pike.

Will (28:11.6)

Yeah. So the way this works is now when you look up a book on Spotify and you’re reading through the description and scrolling through the page, you’ll find a link to go buy the physical version of the book, the paperback or the hardcover. And that link in the US and the UK leads to bookshop.org or bookshop.uk, the UK version of Bookshop. And then you can buy the book and and use PageMatch or or just

We know that we are doing a really good job at connecting people with books that they like. And we want to give them all the options to listen to it or read it how they want. And so that’s why this connection makes sense to us. Why Bookshop is the right partner is because they are so good in the industry with indie bookstores. And they’re so supportive of the industry. They’re doing good. They also have competitive prices and they ship fast and they’re just like doing everything in a really great way that makes them a

a a wonderful partner for us. And so they’ve been lovely to work with, lovely to integrate with, and we’re really happy with how this this integration is going. And just giving the people who discover books on Spotify one more option for how they might want to listen to it or read it. And then, you know, page match works even better when you have both versions of the book.

Ferol Vernon (29:31.636)

That’s really cool. And so, you know, one thing that I found interesting when I was researching this is that, you know, Spotify is really all about audio. It’s like you’re listening to songs, you’re listening to podcasts, you’re listening to books. And then the partnership with Bookshop is really sort of a little bit of a departure from that, right? It’s like allowing you to actually interact with the physical world instead of just digitally. You know, how much of this was driven by just, hey, we think it’s the right thing to do to let people buy the book, versus, hey, you know, we’re experimenting with.

products for authors that are, you know, one little baby step outside of audio.

Will (30:06.631)

I mean, I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s for us, it’s all about giving more opportunities to more people and getting people to fall in love with books who maybe hadn’t fallen in love with books yet. And so maybe somebody discovers a book with us and o and we you know, audio’s not for them. Well, we want to make sure that they have the option to try the book out in whatever format they want. And yeah, it’s it’s there’s some experimentation there about like, okay, how does this go? What like we we want to give people more options and opportunities, but also

To not just like stay in one little lane and not be thinking bigger and broader, because that’s not what’s made Spotify what it is today. Like we gotta think bigger, we gotta think broader, we gotta think about how we can grow this industry and make more people fall in love with books.

Ferol Vernon (30:52.126)

That’s really cool. And so for if I’m a creator and I want to make sure that my book, you know, I have a link on my Spotify profile that somebody can actually buy with Bookshop, what do I have to do to make sure that that integration works on my Spotify profile?

Will (31:07.525)

It should all just work. so if if the book is on bookshop.org and it’s available for sale, there should just automatically be a link from your book page on Spotify. We’re doing everything automatic. There’s nothing you have to like toggle on or opt into. It’s we’ve been doing the matching exercise with bookshop.org to help make sure that all of our products are matching all of their products. And if there’s not a match, that’s when something could not be linked there.

So you want to check to see if it’s available on bookshop.org and it’s actually in stock and able to be shipped.

Ferol Vernon (31:46.31)

That’s cool. Yeah. Keep it keeping in line with like magic, right? It just just kind of works. and then Will, you know, what can you share about like a little bit of the future? Like you’ve obviously been focusing, you know, Spotify for auth authors is a relatively recent, you know, past couple of years addition to the platform. a few of these new things, obviously there’s a focus on audiobooks. what can you share about like what’s coming next and what should we expect to see from Spotify in the next couple of years?

Will (31:50.705)

Exactly.

Will (32:14.705)

I think there’s some really exciting stuff ahead. I can’t like tease a specific thing, but what I can share with you is kind of the trends of what you’ve seen us launch so far and so you can kind of maybe project out from there. Right? so you’ve seen us launch these audiobook creation tools, which are like giving more access to this this audience and this this market of audiobooks to more people who have not been able to participate in this before. You’ve also seen us launch.

insights about your audience on Spotify and really like understanding who is listening on Spotify. And you’ve seen us launch some really innovative features like page match, like follow along, which we haven’t talked about. But follow along is basically much richer, more in-the-moment supplemental materials, right? So audio is not a visual format. A lot of times you have to bundle a PDF with your book and say like, go to page four of the PDF and look at figure three B.

Ferol Vernon (33:10.213)

Sure. Right.

Will (33:11.857)

Well, follow along is a way to take up an image from your PDF and just show it on the screen when it’s relevant. And we’ve been trialing this with publishers and there’s some great books like Culpability out there that have been doing some really cool things with that. Like when there’s a text message exchange between two characters, you’re seeing like the bubbles on the screen instead of the cover art. Those kind of things we want to bring access to more people, to more authors and publishers to get access to all of these innovative features and

There’s more that can be done with PageMatch too. And there’s there’s some things that we would love author and publisher participation on. So what you’re gonna see is this trend of more insights of your audience, more control over making your book stand out on Spotify, more you know, connections between the the Spotify app and your book through Spotify for authors.

Ferol Vernon (34:02.828)

Amazing. Okay, awesome. And well, like as we kind of close here, what, you know, I always ask our guests, like, what advice do you have? Because like the people listening, some of them are publishers who have hundreds or thousands of books in their catalog. Some of them are independent authors who, you know, maybe just finished their first book. What’s like one piece of advice you have for the creators of the world? I always like to end on on an advice and an uplifting note.

Will (34:25.063)

Yeah, I love it. I’d just say it’s never too late. If you feel like it’s like you’ve missed the boat on audiobooks, you haven’t. There’s still massive growth ahead of us. It’s never too late to get your book in audio and discover a whole new audience for your book.

Ferol Vernon (34:39.885)

Amazing. I love that. All right. Well, last thing, we we talked a lot about Spotify in a bunch of different ways. if there’s one place where authors can go to learn more about what Spotify can do for them, what should they do? Where should they go?

Will (34:52.787)

They should go to authors.spotify.com.

Ferol Vernon (34:56.085)

Awesome. Okay, so that is Spotify for authors, creators. I hope you join me in thanking Will for his time today. Will, it was a pleasure and when some of the new stuff comes out, maybe we’ll have you back on.

Will (35:08.261)

I’d love that. Thank you so much.

Ferol Vernon (35:10.199)

All right, awesome. That’s it. guys, that’s the pod. Go write something and we’ll talk to you next time.