Rich Fiscus
22 Oct 2007 11:00
eMusic's bid to compete with iTunes in audiobook sales suffered a setback when Penguin Audio, one of five publishers initially signed to provide audiobooks, backed out and withdrew 150 titles that were to be available. According to Dick Heffernan, publisher of Penguin Audio, the problem is DRM, or more accurately eMusic's lack of it.
Heffernan said “At this moment we’re not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated.” He indicated that while he had originally approved the deal as an experiment, it was rejected by his superiors.
“We wanted to take a chance and see how it would work out, and our very senior management at this moment decided that we didn’t want to do that,” Mr. Heffernan said. “We hope to possibly come to some kind of agreement down the road.”
But according to Random House Audio publisher Madeline McIntosh piracy hasn't been a problem so far. she said a piracy monitoring firm has yet to find any eMusic copies of their audiobooks on file sharing sites.
eMusic CEO David Pakman says the site is already beating projections for audiobook sales, despite no plans to advertise them until December.
Source: New York Times