Moat building at it's best. Amazon has been buying the rights then doing the production for audiobooks for years. They have the data and they have the will to

Moat building at it's best. Amazon has been buying the rights then doing the production for audiobooks for years. They have the data and they have the will to bring audiobooks to market that the publishers either don't care about or don't know about. In this regard their initiative to buy rights before publication is nothing new. What is new is that other retailers are wise to audio being the only place in the industry where there is growth. * Rakuten bought Overdrive — an audio provider for public libraries — then used that catalog to launch audiobooks at Kobo. * Google has launched audio * Apple has redesigned their books app to better serve audio (which is serviced by Audible) * All magnified by smart speaker popularity It sucks when agents/publishers sign exclusive agreements with Audible so that their books are kept off competitors' platforms. It also sucks that once DRM-free audio platforms like Downpour.com and libro.fm have started to add DRM... this is presumably a 'level-playing-field' measure in their contracts likely brought about by the above interest in audio... this should be illegal IMO... but kudos to Audible for protecting their business. Another great example of how Bezos' initiatives from 15 years ago — namely to start Audible productions — are paying dividends in other areas, like Alexa, today.