Poor Amazon. First the online books behemoth gets caught up in a feud with publisher Hachette that sees it cast as the villain, with world-famous authors calling it a bully in a full page ad in The New York Times, and the George Orwell estate accusing the company’s press releases of being “as close as one can get to the Ministry of Truth and its doublespeak.” Now Amazon is facing competition for Audible, its audiobook division. My Audiobook Library has launched a kickstarter campaign to “build an audiobook library of 55,000 titles and take on Amazon.”
With a goal of $12,000 (that’s right, $12K), the audiobook startup wants to break the hold that Amazon has on the audiobook market. “In over two and a half years, we have secured partnerships with 5 audiobook publishers and have uploaded over 2,000 audiobooks onto the website. Now, we’re in a ‘catch-22’. Our customers want to listen to the New Releases from the Top Authors as shown above, but the “Big Five” publishers are unwilling to partner with a company that does not already have a large customer base, and the kind of numbers they want, come from having audiobooks from the “Big Five” publishers. Thus, the ‘catch-22’. This is why Amazon has 90% of the audiobook market. It is extremely difficult for a new company to compete against Amazon in the audiobook market, and as a result, everyday people are stuck with the consequences of Amazon’s Monopoly.” The crowdfunding campaign was launched today and runs until September 9th.
