Audiobooks are booming, but how long will that last?

The audio companies have driven not only innovation but also spending, bidding aggressively on unsold rights (i.e., those not retained by print publishers). One big agent says Audible paid twice as much for one of his client's audio rights as a print publisher paid for the rest. "The Big Five will not relinquish the audio rights," the agent says, "so the only way Audible is going to get their hands on brand-name authors is to throw down an eyebrow-raising amount of money, in hopes that the agent will be willing to sell it to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt or Norton," two larger independent publishers without their own audio divisions.