Brilliance to cease offering audiobooks as downloads
January 10th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
OverDrive announced in an email to library partners last week that Brilliance Audio is suspending availability of its audiobooks for purchase as downloads across all vendors. Here’s their official statement:
For U.S. libraries only at this time.
Changes to BrillianceAudio library lending
Effective January 31, 2012, as instructed by the publisher, BrillianceAudio will suspend the availability of all download audiobook titles for library purchase across all vendors. This change does not affect any titles currently in your library’s catalog. You will not, however, be able to add any additional copies.
If you have questions or comments, you can reach BrillianceAudio directly at AskSales@brillianceaudio.com or 800.648.2312.
Gary Price at INFOdocket noted connections with Amazon that may indicate this isn’t a brinkmanship move by Brilliance Audio that might end in a compromise solution as the Penguin Group ebook did in November.
Price notes that:
“Brilliance Audio was acquired by Amazon.com in May, 2007. Amazon also owns Audible.com, the popular audiobook download service.
A Few of the Many Possibilities That Quickly Come to Mind
- Brilliance Sells Access to Titles via Audible, No Need To Lend
- Amazon Will Add Some/All Brilliance Titles to the Their Amazon Prime Program”
Practicalities — what does this mean for the library today?
- Brilliance Audio talking books on CD aren’t affected by this development.
- Fewer audiobook offerings by popular authors such as Sandra Brown, Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz and others.
- Our current Brilliance Audio download titles will remain in the collection.
- We may have difficulty maintaining our holds to copy ratio of 5 to 1 for Brilliance Audio downloads.
Let’s hope this doesn’t become a trend.
posted by jim
