The stunning growth of the audiobook sector not only opens up incredible creative opportunities for professional voice talent, but also gives publishers and content creators the chance to express themselves across an increasingly popular medium that’s capturing the imaginations of millions of listeners across the globe.

A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.

We recently came across an ad via YouTube for Amazon’s Audible service, with the late Christopher Lee narrating a passage from The Lord of the Rings. Beyond acting as Saruman in the film trilogy, Lee’s unmistakable voice breathes passion, intrigue and menace into the passage he’s reciting.

Only 30 seconds long, it’s incredibly captivating and a compelling advertisement for Audible, showing first-hand the sheer hold and power selecting the right voice talent for an audio project can have over an audience.

Enhancing the power of your audio content with a voice talent agency

Recently, Kobo has announced that it’s integrating an audio player into the company’s free apps on iOS and Android to take on the growing popularity of audiobook services such as Audible and others. Similar to Audible, Kobo is offering a 30-day free trial for the service with users across the globe able to access its enormous catalogue of audiobooks.

It’s not hard to see why Kobo has relented. Audiobooks represent big business; the medium was the fastest-growing format in publishing last year, with Nielsen Book Researching highlighting that 59% of audiobook consumers in the UK only adopted audiobooks over the last two years. 42% of a growing UK market only started to listen to audiobooks over the last 12 months.

Across 2015, total audiobook sales increased by 18.2% according to the Audio Publishers Association, representing an estimated $2.1 billion in sales overall. This is where the real opportunity lies for content creators and voice talent professionals. Audiobooks aren’t just stories and novels being recited from their material counterpart.

Far from it in fact, as shown by RB Media which focuses on audiobooks and has recently bought a controlling interest in GIldan Media; Gildan produces audiobooks in niches in training, education, personal development and business, which are enormously popular categories in the audiobook sector. It’s not just story books that are flourishing via this new trend but immensely helpful personal development tools, too.

Introduce your content to new listeners with a voice talent agency    

With the right content creation, outreach and voice over strategy, businesses producing their own commercial material on a regular basis could compile their efforts into audiobooks to produce something truly unique and relevant for a growing audience of interested, targeted listeners.

As well as producing content for different industries and regions across international territories, working with a professional and creative voice talent can keep listeners engaged, entertained and informed, helping to potentially improve the reach, appeal and ‘shareability’ of your content; create something worth sharing and you’ll open up your content to whole new audiences.

At the same time, working with international voice talent and adopting a localization strategy can help you to repurpose your content for new audiences in select regions. This will help to save you money on content production, as well as ensure you are engaging with relevant target prospects in foreign areas, growing your reputation, capturing leads and building a strong audience.

Want to produce audiobooks or need existing content narrated by a creative professional but aren’t sure where to begin? Voice Talent Online is a voice talent agency that can help you refine and perfect your audiobook strategy to enter into an expanding market of audiobook lovers.

A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.