Amazon has introduced Audible, its audiobook platform, to the Brazilian market. With an extensive collection of over 100,000 audiobooks, the service has kicked off in Brazil with 4,000 titles in Portuguese, 1,500 of which were recorded in the company’s studios. With this expansion, Brazil became the 11th country worldwide to host Audible’s operations.
The initial offering includes well-known titles narrated by famous Brazilian actors. George Orwell’s “1984” is narrated by Globo’s Otávio Muller; “Dom Casmurro,” by telenovela legend Marcos Palmeira; “Pride and Prejudice,” by comedian Denise Fraga, among others.
To entice potential subscribers, the service offers a one-month free trial for non-Amazon Prime members and a three-month trial for Prime subscribers. Once the trial period ends, users can subscribe for BRL 19.90 (roughly USD 3.90) per month.
Amazon does not disclose figures, but according to an estimate by the market data platform Statista, specializing in market data, the company dominated half of online book sales as of 2019, and 80 percent of ebook sales in Brazil.
The audiobook market in Brazil is currently small, accounting for only 1 percent of the BRL 131 million in digital book revenue in 2022, according to a survey conducted by the National Syndicate of Book Publishers and the Brazilian Book Chamber.
Digital content, which includes both ebooks and audiobooks, represents only 6 percent of the overall book market in Brazil, as reported by the National Syndicate of Book Publishers (Snel) and the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL), with data provided by Nielsen. Ebooks dominate the digital segment, accounting for 98 percent of the 10 million units sold in 2022, while audiobooks constitute a mere 2 percent.
To better understand this potential market, Audible partnered with Kantar. Among the findings of a survey, 90 percent of respondents reported listening to audio content, 81 percent believed audiobooks could help reduce their screen time, 50 percent listened for relaxation, 27 percent while performing household tasks, and 27 percent while cooking. Additionally, an impressive 95 percent believed they could consume more books by listening to audiobooks.
The arrival of Audible in Brazil coincides with a crisis period for two major national bookstores. Facing financial difficulties, Livraria Cultura and Saraiva have gone bankrupt. The former had its bankruptcy declared in February by a São Paulo court. However, in June, the bookstore obtained a temporary injunction from the Superior Court of Justice to suspend the bankruptcy declaration and proceed with its judicial recovery plan.
Operating under judicial recovery since 2018, Saraiva closed all its brick-and-mortar stores this year and laid off all the employees working in them. Now, its operations will be exclusively online.In aggregate, the revenue of the book market in Brazil is 0.39 percent higher in 2023 than in 2022, but the sales volume has decreased by 5.39 percent, according to data from the Retail Panel of Books in Brazil.
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