The 2024 Guadalajara International Book Fair will host a one-day forum focused on audiobooks on December 3, Foro Audio FIL, organized by the FIL, Audible, Mexican audiobook publisher Audiolibre, and Spain-based digital-publishing-focused portal Dosdoce. At the forum, Dosdoce founder Javier Celaya will present a keynote on the international trends in audiobook production with data from the second annual “Map of the Audiobook Industry in Spanish,” published earlier this year. Among Dosdoce's findings: the Spanish-language audiobook industry, including Spain, Latin America, and the U.S. Hispanic market, has seen 75% growth compared to 2023, with 740 audiobook producers active, compared to 423 last year.
Dosdoce identifies Spain as the largest contributor to Spanish-language audiobook production, accounting for 40.2% of the total, while Latin America’s production accounts for 37%, with audiobook production in the region having grown significantly in 2023. But it is the U.S. and Latin America that are driving growth in audio for Spanish-language publishers, Celaya reports. “For Spanish publishers, the U.S. market now represents about 10% of their total digital sales.” In all, the global Spanish-language audiobook catalog now numbers around 25,000 titles.
Within Latin America, audiobook growth has been strongest in Argentina, where the number of audiobook producers has increased by 24.8% over 2023, followed by Mexico (21.76%) and Colombia (19.85%). Spanish-language audiobook production in the U.S., meanwhile, grew by 11.3% year on year, accounting for 15.7% of total global production, with Spanish emerging as a major driver of growth in an audiobook industry that saw revenue grow by 9% in 2023 to $2 billion, according to the Audio Publishers Association. The APA’s 2024 consumer survey also found that 52% of U.S. adults have listened to an audiobook, which translates to nearly 137 million total listeners. The growth of audiobooks globally was also recently highlighted during the International Summit of Audio Publishers, held in New York City on September 3.
Also on December 3 at the FIL, Javier Aceves, founder of the Mexican edition of BuzzFeed, along with Spain’s Marina Penalva, in charge of audiovisual rights at literary agency Casanovas & Lynch, and José Hamad, a Spain-based editor at Mexican publishing house Sexto Piso, will participate in a panel discussion on the processes of buying and selling audiobook rights. The panel will also explore issues including original production contracting, and the monetization of content.
Fernanda Álvarez of Hachette Livre Mexico, René López Villamar of Storytel, and Mauricio Sánchez, codirector of Mexican nonfiction publisher Gris Tormenta, will discuss the creation of an audiobook catalog in a discussion moderated by Bookmate’s Ana Sofía Saucedo Fuentes.
Also at the FIL, Audible’s Mexico country manager, Anasofía Sánchez, will present a keynote on Spanish-language audiobooks, while Audiolibre’s cofounder Álvaro Ortiz will moderate a panel on the processes of creating audio from text, with the participation of Estefanía Rosas-Priego, CEO of Mexico-based audiobook production studio Chicas Ruidosas; Manuel Meza, of publishing house Santillana; and Eric Dabdoub, CEO of John Marshall Media LATAM, a leading audiobook producer in Latin America.
In addition, on December 7, Eugenia Bascarán will participate in an event as part of the FIL young-people’s programming entitled “Your Voice, Your Story: How to Publish Your Own Audiobook,” with Flor Silva, a critic at AudioFile magazine who has been a judge for the Audie Awards and SOVAS Voice Arts Awards. Also participating will be Mexico’s Eddie Rojas, founder of audio production company Sound by Image Studios and voice-casting agency SBI Voices.
