BookBeat is entering Italy and Spain

BookBeat, one of the leading services for audiobooks and e-books in Europe, has now launched its service in Italy and Spain. Spanish and Italian users can choose between three packages ranging from 20 to 100 hours, starting from 6,99 €.

Spain and Italy are BookBeat’s 11th and 12th core markets, and the launches are occurring only eight months after its launch in both the Netherlands and Belgium. BookBeat has already secured agreements with important Spanish and Italian publishers, and users in both markets have access to more than 700 000 audiobooks and e-books.

Both markets have demonstrated extensive growth for audiobooks in the last few years. According to recent statistics, the sales growth for audiobooks in Italy was 94% in 2020 compared to the year before, and for Spain, this number was 137% (source). Considering the high growth numbers in both markets, launching in Spain and Italy was a natural move for BookBeat.

- Italy and Spain have been on our radar for quite some time now, and we’re happy to have officially launched. The potential in these markets is great and considering their high growth in the audio format combined with relatively few audiobook listeners right now, we have a positive outlook on what the future holds, says William Jakoby, Head of Expansion & Business Development at BookBeat.

BookBeat has a long-term ambition to step by step continuing to build the two markets together with local publishers, giving the users access to an always expanding catalogue of both frontlist and backlist titles.

- One of our ambitions is to build the market together with publishers by increasing the demand and extending the market of digital audiobooks. We don’t want to focus on trying to reinvent the wheel by building a large catalogue ourselves - that is already the core business and passion of our publisher partners. For Italy specifically, we also estimate that a fragmented market with a lot of exclusivities has stopped the market from reaching its full potential. Publishers are missing out on revenues as their books are only available on one platform, and we do not believe that benefits users either. Our focus should rather be on the offer to users and improving the discoverability of the service, says Niclas Sandin, CEO at BookBeat

Sandin finishes by commenting: “We aim to be a complete platform by working with all publishers and promoting the books we think and see that our users enjoy listening to. We look forward to learning more about Italian and Spanish users listening habits now that we’re available with our local platform in both markets”.