On February 27, Joël Dicker’s new thriller, A savage animal (Rosie & Wolfe), printed in 450,000 copies and its audio book, published by Lizzie (Editis group). The most surprising thing in this story is not the huge print run of the 7th novel by the Swiss Dicker but the fact that the audio book comes out on the same day. Simultaneity also for Maxime Chattam (The Soul of Evil), Tatiana de Rosnay (Blonde dust), Marc Levy (The Symphony of Monsters). All the publishers got involved, in fact. Thus, Audiolib (Hachette/Albin Michel) has already published Sarah Rivens (Lakestone, volume I), Julie Malye (Louisiana), Jean-Christophe Rufin (Gold and Jungle), Frédéric Lenoir (The Odyssey of the Sacred), When Listen to read (Gallimard) marketed the CDs of Murmur by Christian Bobin, by From the same wood by Marion Fayolle, by Sad tiger Snow Sinno, The dancer by Patrick Modiano, etc..
In short, the audio book market (CD or digital), still stammering a few years ago, is gradually gaining momentum. “Today we have a catalog of some 20,000 titles, all genres combined,” confides Laure Saget, General Director of Audiolib and President of the Audiobook Commission of the National Publishing Union. And, according to a study by Audible (the Amazon application), 31% of French people listened to a recording in 2023, compared to only 15% in 2021 and 7% in 2017.” But hey, we don’t get carried away, because, as Laure Saget points out, “the sector currently corresponds at 3% of the book market, we are still far from the American market which should, according to New York Times, represent 20% of the futures market”. The fact remains that all publishers believe in it, Média-Participations or even Charleston having just joined the long list of audio book creators in a dominated market by Audiolib (created in 2008) with 55% of CD market share, followed by Lizzie (born in 2018) and Ecoutez Lire (dating from 2004), with around 14% each.
And the authors play the game, some going so far as to record their text themselves, such as Pierre Lemaitre, Neige Sinno, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Michel Onfray, Christophe André, Mathias Enard…, the others preferring to entrust their words to members of the Comédie Française or to renowned actors like Marie-Christine Barrault, Pierre Arditi, André Dussollier, Daniel Mesguich, Guillaume Gallienne, Benoît Poelvoorde or even Denis Podalydès, a fan from the start, who willingly testifies to his enthusiasm: ” I experienced great hours of exaltation listening to André Dussollier reading Proust, Michael Lonsdale reading Beckett, Antoine Vitez, Claude Simon, Fanny Ardant, Duras. The audio book gives the text its truth. It unfolds all its images, frees its music.”
As for the platforms, they have entered the round: after Amazon, Spotify has just launched a subscription of fifteen hours per month. Also, the mute teenager next to you, earbuds connected to his smartphone, may not be listening to rap, but The dancer by Modiano…
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