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Anthony Rose: Hello, I’m Anthony, founder at SeedLegals and every day I talk to amazing founders on SeedLegals and I’m here to help them share their story. And today I’m talking to Kate from Spiracle Audiobooks. So I guess the title says it all. Tell me what you do.
Kate Bland: Well, hello, I’m Kate Bland and I’m founder of Spiracle Audiobooks, which is a new platform, an e-commerce platform selling audiobooks through our own platform and mobile app.
And we launched in 22. And in a nutshell, we’re sort of what Mubi is to Netflix, we are to Audible. We’re a selected collection of audiobooks.
Anthony Rose: Okay, so audiobooks are growing massively, right? It’s a huge market. And the problem, of course, is you’re spoiled for choice. You’ve got too much choice. So you’ve got a smaller curated selection. How many audiobooks do you have?
Kate Bland: Currently, we’re at about 1,200. They’re also available, I’ve got to come clean, on other platforms. Apart from those that we co-publish with the best publishers in Britain actually, the smaller and independent publishers who are, I would say, where we’re hearing Nobel Prize winning authors come from. They’re the ones who are taking the most risks, but they weren’t taking part in the audiobook market.
So one of Spiracle’s sort of shining lights is to make sure the best books are coming into the audiobook market.
Anthony Rose: So you’re commissioning the recordings, finding someone with a decent speaking voice to do the books?
Kate Bland: Always.
Anthony Rose: So you’ve got very cool, you showed me before, very cool cards you can send. So I love buying cards for my wife, but now I can buy her an audiobook card. So you open it, you scan it, and now you get a subscription, this is seriously cool. Tell me bit more about these cards.
Kate Bland: Well that for us, it’s actually a solution because we feel absolutely certain there’s a way that the audiobook business can be better, that audiobook experience can be better. You know, we’ve balanced something which is the love of books, we enjoy the tangibility, you know, so we’ve made something which you can buy in bookshops, which is the card, the audiobook and the card.
Our big effort is to change where you find audiobooks, to open that out, to make a new place to discover them. You might find it in bookshops. Next year you might find an audiobook and a card on your hotel pillow.
Anthony Rose: Right. I like the concept of just aiming your phone at a QR code and then suddenly you’ve got an audiobook playing. So what got you out of bed one day to go, I want to do an audiobook company?
Kate Bland: I was producing, have been producing for 20 odd years, radio and audiobooks. And in particular, there was a spate of fantastic books, including, for example, Olga Tokarczuk She won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. So I said to Fitzcarraldo the publisher, how’s it going? There it was on Audible. And they hadn’t really sold any.
And it just seems so mad to have such amazing books really not finding an audience because those platforms are really geared to volume and the algorithm swoops away at the best sellers. And if you’re something more or different or more complex or more lesser known if you like you just don’t get picked up so that really did push me and my co-founder Leigh Wilson we thought there’s got to be a way for these publishers who are making such wonderful books to find an audience in this this in this sector, in the audiobook sector.
Anthony Rose: Okay so I love the idea that you saving me doing a lot of work by you doing the hard work first so any preferred genres or audience for Spiracle audio?
It’s not people looking for car mechanic guides, it’s looking for…
Kate Bland: I would say the term is literary books, not to be put off. They’re just original writing, really memorable, exceptional audiobooks. Ones that you, you know, even if you sort of felt yourself kind of disturbed by them, at least you know you’re reading something that you won’t forget. You will remember it through the rest of your life.
Anthony Rose: All right, fantastic. So where do people find Spiracle Audiobooks and where do they find you?
Kate Bland: Well, they find us online, spiracleaudiobooks.com and we have a player app to go with your, whether you buy a one-off audiobook or your subscription, but you will also find us now in bookshops. So Audiobook in a card will be in all good bookshops. Make sure yours has got one in there.
Anthony Rose: That is amazing. Thank you so much, Kate. And my wife’s going to love your audiobooks as well. Thank you.
Kate Bland: Thank you.
