Kate Toon is the owner of Umina Beach Book Nook on NSW’s Central Coast and a self-published author herself. She spoke to Independent Publishing to share what she’s learned about publishing and bookselling since taking over the shop.

When did you take over Umina Beach Book Nook? Can you describe what the shop is like and what your goals are for it?

I took over the store in April 2024, but the store has been around for ages. My goal is to really make it an inclusive space, and more diverse. I want readers of all ages and all backgrounds. No snobbery about those who love a bit of romance or fantasy, plenty for kids, lots of great new releases and, of course, the strong literary prize winners. I want it to be a cosy and welcoming space for the community to connect in.

Can you tell us about your books and why you pursued self-publishing?

I’ve written five books now. The first three were self-published, but my last two were published with a traditional publisher (Major Street). Why did I go self-publishing? Well, really, because the publishing world feels like a closed circuit; you have to know someone. I did pitch a few publishers and wasn’t successful. So I decided to go it alone. But for my latest Six Figures series, my pitch was successful. I think there are pros and cons to each path.

Did you have any experience trying to get your self-published titles stocked in bookshops? What was that like, and how did that experience inform your approach to stocking self-published books as a bookshop owner?

With my kids’ book, I remember wandering around bookshops feeling very small and stupid and being rejected by most. Some shops accepted copies on consignment, and I literally never heard from them again: no money, no books back, nothing. It was totally gutting and humiliating.

Even in our store, when I took it over, there was a massive box of books that were taken ‘on consignment’; some had never even been put on the shelf. Most of the authors weren’t in the computer. There was no way to contact them. It was embarrassing, to be honest. You put your heart and soul into a book, and I think all authors should be treated with respect.

Now we have a dedicated area for self-published and local books, and we have a form for authors to fill out. We take three books on consignment and set very clear expectations. We also promote on socials and in our newsletter.

As a bookseller, how do you pitch self-published books to customers?

Obviously, booksellers are much better at selling books they’ve actually read and loved. It’s hard for us to read everything, so we have a Facebook community where we often get our customers to read and recommend titles. But we sell them just like other books, based on the readers’ likes and dislikes, and there’s an added edge that people love supporting local writers!

Are there any particular self-published books that are selling well, or that you’re particularly excited about stocking?

Oh, we have a few: The Maltese Web by Sean Richardson is going great, as are Poems for When the World Is Ending by Will Small and Welcome to Ord City by Adrian Deans. And we have more coming.

Since taking over the Book Nook, what have you learned about books and bookselling that you’ll consider while writing your next book?

I think there’s a big difference between writing the book you want to write and writing a book that will sell. It’s great if the Venn diagram crosses, but often it doesn’t. That book about pig raising in NSW might be your passion, and if you’re happy selling 100 or so copies, that’s great. But to really sell, it needs to be on trend or really unusual.

Honestly, it’s hard enough selling books by big, famous authors, let alone small self-published ones.

I also think that authors underestimate the amount of work they need to put in—on social media, their website, podcasts and events. Even if you have a publisher, they won’t do all that hard work for you. Look how many events Michael Robotham goes to; he works hard! You need to work hard, too.

What recommendations do you have for self-published authors looking to get their books stocked in bookshops?

Don’t wander in off the street with your books in your arms. Booksellers are often busy and might not have time to chat. I’d recommend emailing or ringing first and asking about their process, then following up with a visit in store.

Manage your expectations; we can only take three books at a time, because our shop is the size of your bathroom. And remember that the seller will need to add around 50% to your price to make it worth their while.

As audio has boomed in recent years, the ways a print title makes it to the audio format have changed. Whereas in the past, audio-only publishers such as Bolinda were the ones that largely determined if a print title made it into the audio format or not, nowadays traditional print publishers are more likely to hang onto audio rights.

‘About 2016, audio rights flipped from a right that publishers were not that invested in holding onto, to a deal-breaker right that they would not accept a deal without,’ said Alex Adsett of Alex Adsett Literary. ‘That’s remained the case for the last few years, but as audio rights continue to rise in importance, publishers are now facing having to either increase their advances specifically with an allocation for audio rights, or risk an audio-only publisher counteroffering on these rights.’

This is about more than responding to competition. As well as wanting to ensure that audio income comes their way, publishers are wishing to meet consumer expectations and demand for the format. But audio isn’t cheap, and publishers are still building the longer-term audiobook market insights already gained by Bolinda and other audiobook producers that have focused on the format for a lot longer, so it’s challenging to determine when and how to invest in this growing medium.

Not surprisingly, then, several local publishers have opted to produce some of their audiobooks in partnership with established audiobook publishers.

Australian audiobooks and co-publishing arrangements

Bolinda

Dominant audio-only publisher Bolinda is behind an impressive list of local audiobooks. ‘Bolinda has partnerships with a few of the big houses, and this for us is a testament to our capability as a producer of audiobooks and the channels we have built for the category over the last thirty years,’ Bolinda founder Rebecca Herrmann told Books+Publishing, which understands Pan Macmillan and HarperCollins are among the publishers to work with Bolinda in co-publishing arrangements.

Bolinda makes the audiobooks it produces in partnership with publishers available exclusively in libraries on CD (‘yes you read that right’, Herrmann said) and in a digital format through Bolinda’s BorrowBox app. Bolinda audio—along with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) Audio, to which Bolinda has the exclusive licence—are ‘the largest audiobook producers and publishers in Australia’, according to Herrmann, publishing ‘over five hundred audiobooks per annum for the consumer market throughout the world’.

Wavesound

The local arm of RBmedia, Wavesound has for several years been the alternative audiobook-only publisher to Bolinda in the local market. Following the acquisition of Vision Australia’s catalogue and after years of selling international content from sister company W F Howes in the UK directly into Australian libraries, Wavesound launched its Australian imprint in 2015. Wavesound has championed local writers including Jane Harper, Candice Fox, Christian White and Chris Hammer in audio. In 2019, it reported publishing 108 Australian audio titles per year, and now publishes over 156 Australian titles per year (alongside the wider company’s 8000 international titles) into the retail market. (Wavesound also offers distribution into the library market through a partnership with Overdrive, as well as a non-exclusive arrangement which sees the company’s titles also distributed across other vendors such as BorrowBox and Hoopla.)

In 2019, Allen & Unwin announced an audio publishing partnership with Wavesound that would ‘see the majority of Allen & Unwin titles produced as audiobooks’. More recently, Wavesound announced in 2021 that it had entered a co-production partnership with Ultimo Press to produce ‘at least 15 titles a year’, selected from the publisher’s list. ‘Audio is a fast-growing segment of the book market and it’s important we’re able to provide our authors’ work to readers in the format of their choice,’ said Ultimo Press’s then managing director James Kellow. Wavesound has also recently renewed an audio partnership with Affirm Press with the aim of producing the majority of the publisher’s titles in audio.

Allen & Unwin rights and international sales manager Sandra Buol told Books+Publishing that A&U’s aim when it went into partnership with Wavesound ‘was to get as many A&U titles into audio as possible, both through the partnership and through traditional licensing’, adding that beyond the partnership, A&U also continues to license titles to other audiobook publishers, such as Bolinda and Tantor, a US-based imprint owned by Wavesound’s parent company RBMedia.

Of the Wavesound arrangement, Buol said: ‘We initially co-published ten titles per year and have now increased to twenty a year.’ Buol estimated that A&U can now find an audio solution for approximately 80% of the titles for which it has audiobook rights, ‘bearing in mind that some of the ones we don’t do an audiobook for are fully illustrated or otherwise unsuitable for audio’.

Wavesound acquisitions manager Chiara Priorelli told Books+Publishing: ‘Our strong retail strategy and RBmedia’s unique leverage in this space has made us the preferred audio partner for the Australian independents who continue to be such a force in Australian publishing. These partnerships and our relationships across all the other independents have been a huge part of our continued success, which in 2023 included publishing the recent Miles Franklin award-winner Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (Shankari Chandran, Ultimo Press), the audio blockbuster Did I Ever Tell You This? (Sam Neill, Text) and winning the ABIA Audiobook of the Year Award with The Whitewash (Siang Lu, UQP).’

Increasing local output

These partnerships and rights sales attest to the specialised skills and knowledge of local audiobook publishers, built up during the years before the wider public started listening in droves. They also attest to the costs of audiobook production, and the editorial judgement being brought to bear in deciding which books justify those costs. (A recurring tale told in local audiobook lore is the acquisition—by Wavesound’s Chiara Priorelli—of audiobook rights to a then little-known book called The Dry. Priorelli acquired audio rights to not just The Dry but also to two subsequent titles by the then-unknown Jane Harper. Few think such a coup would be likely in 2023, or at least not on the same terms.)

But whether through in-house production, development in partnership with an audio publisher, the sale of audio rights, or a combination of these approaches, publishers are increasing their audiobook output. At Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S), Anthea Bariamis was promoted to the newly created position of commissioning editor of audiobooks in 2020, as part of moves to increase S&S’s output of local audio titles. ‘Our audiobook list continues to grow year on year, alongside our title count,’ said S&S managing director Dan Ruffino and Bariamis.

S&S is among the major publishers to produce its own audiobooks, retaining rights and outsourcing its audiobook recordings and post-production. Ruffino and Bariamis report that, when the publisher’s audio list started in 2019, S&S Australia produced 14 audiobooks. ‘In 2022, we produced thirty-one audiobooks, and in 2024, we are currently on track to produce thirty-five audiobooks—our biggest year yet.’

Ruffino and Bariamis believe that the skills required for audiobook production will, over time, be integrated into the standard editorial workflow. ‘Absolutely—audiobook production requires a different set of skills, and a different way of thinking when it comes to both editorial content and sound engineering. It is my hope that, as we continue to expand, we will be able to move more elements of the production in house, streamlining the workflow as our US colleagues have done.’

Increased audiobook production by publishers (as well as recent co-publishing partnerships between book publishers and audiobook publishers) speaks to the mainstreaming of audiobooks and to publishers’ efforts to respond by better integrating the format into their workflows. In the local market, given the high costs and relatively small audience (as well as the terms of any digital audio retailer), they don’t always speak to profit.

Aotearoa New Zealand and the cost of making audiobooks

A recent audio production and distribution guide produced for publishers in Aotearoa New Zealand (and distributed with a caveat that this is a fast-changing and somewhat opaque market) lays out the challenges a small market faces with the audio format.

The guide suggests a publisher must expect to sell a minimum of 1500 copies to (almost!) break even, or 3000 to make a profit, if an audiobook is produced in a studio. (An alternative, ‘DIY’ scenario, which assumes the narrator would perform free, suggests a small profit would eventuate from a more reasonable ‘print run’ of 500.) The guide states: ‘It is clear from verbatim interviews for this report that New Zealand publishers of all sizes feel painfully unable to create and publish audiobooks in any meaningful numbers because of cost and resourcing restrictions.’

The solution in Aotearoa NZ has been specific funding for an audiobook publishing seed program from the country’s Ministry of Culture and Heritage. The Publishers Association of New Zealand/Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) has undertaken research into local publishers’ needs and capabilities in audiobook production to produce and share the guide to audio production mentioned above. Penguin Random House New Zealand head of publishing Claire Murdoch said this was ‘to make the best possible use of the funding [publishers] get to make the best audiobooks they can, and in turn make the project as sustainable as it can be and launch as many audiobooks as possible’.

‘It’s a cool initiative that really will remove barriers and float a lot of audio boats for a diverse range of large and small NZ publishers and grow the number of audiobook listeners in NZ—including the non-traditional readers we all know audio can reach,’ Murdoch told Books+Publishing. ‘The base case for the PANZ funding was for one hundred new audiobooks in approximately eighteen months. Goodness knows NZ publishers and authors want and need this—balancing the cost and scale with our small population has really been an obstacle for most of them.’

In Aotearoa NZ, Penguin’s audio list is growing, according to Murdoch, who said in 2023 that the company will publish approximately 12 audio titles across all genres. ‘We have one dedicated audio producer and commissioning editor, the great and hardworking Grace Thomas, and we work flexibly out-of-house with a variety of professional studios, independent narrators and producers, and partner organisations to make our books—depending on the needs of each author and each title.’

Murdoch said that reliable data on the audiobook market in Aotearoa NZ was hampered by a factor that affects Australia too: platforms such as Amazon, Apple and Google protecting their data. But, in addition, Aotearoa New Zealand statistics were hampered by the fact these businesses treat the country as though it is part of Australia.

‘So while we can assume that, as in print and ebook, New Zealanders are ferocious consumers of books in all genres, who buy international and local books in great numbers per head of population, and are known to be early adopters of a lot of technology, we just can’t measure that accurately,’ said Murdoch. ‘Anecdotally, we have every reason to believe the demand is strong and that New Zealanders are consuming audiobooks in percentages that compare to other developed English-language markets, where audio editions are available.’

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