Bookshop has been very busy of late. We ended last week with two significant stories related to the platform that lets people buy globally and support local bookstores. And we start this week with the biggest story of the trio.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
It's also a massive story for another of our regulars, Spotify.
The story is simple. Spotify has announced that listeners will be able to buy physical copies of their favorite audiobooks from within the Spotify platform. And they can do so thanks to a delivery partnership with Bookshop.org.
Within the next few months, initially in the US and the UK, it will be possible to buy in-app a physical copy of the audiobook you're listening to from Bookshop.org, supporting local bookstores in the process.
Page Match Bridges Formats
And that's not the only digital/analog tie-in that Spotify announced last week. Page Match is a feature that allows you to switch between formats without worrying about losing your place and endlessly scrolling or flipping to find where you are if you get off the bus and into the bath or come in from your run and want to curl up on the sofa with a physical copy of the same book you've just been listening to (or vice versa). By pointing your camera at the page in your paperback, the audiobook will skip straight to the line it's just scanned.
Both of these developments demonstrate that Spotify is committed to books and committed to making it as easy as possible for readers to engage with what they love. And by partnering with Bookshop, they have made it as easy as possible for indie writers to join the party. Spotify itself, as its press release makes clear, continues to see itself as a driving force in expanding the reading market as a whole, rather than simply carving itself out a piece of a static pie.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
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