• by Colin Kirkland , November 26, 2024

As Spotify enhances its audiobook offerings -- with more than 300,000 titles currently on the streaming platform -- the technology company has decided to launch a new platform dedicated to authors and publishers uploading audiobook content.

In line with “Spotify for Artists” and “Spotify for Creators,” “Spotify for Authors” will offer authors and publishers a suite of tools and data designed to help them track insights and analytics related to the consumption of their audiobooks on the platform.

Expanding on the catalog management and royalty reporting currently offered in the platform's publisher portal known as Passport, Spotify for Authors also provides an array of promotional tools designed to help publishers enhance their presence on the platform and expand their listener bases. 

For audiobook authors, the new hub will deliver aggregated age and gender demographics to inform them who is listening to their content; redemption codes to share royalty-free copies of titles with reviewers, superfans, and collaborators; promo cards to generate professional and shareable social assets, and early access to author profiles to give fans more information about the writers behind their favorite audiobooks.

Authors will also be able to see which podcasts their listeners tune into, which could be useful information for deciding which podcasts to work with when promoting their books and running ads.

According to Spotify, the author hub will be available to authors and publishers of any size.

In addition, the company plans to expand Spotify for Authors in 2025, adding additional insights and tools surrounding consumers’ listening habits.

For example, authors will soon see the “follow-along” feature, which Spotify describes as “an immersive visual experience” that allows users to see time-synchronized illustrations, photos, and graphics as an audiobook plays.

The company is also planning to launch a new video feature that invites select authors and publishers to submit a short video about a specific title, such as an interview snippet, a backstage video from a recording session, an author-made video message etc.

The in-app experiences Spotify is designing around its audiobook category are building off of the company's recent foray into video and its expansion of audiobook access for Premium subscribers to markets outside the U.S.