on Jane Friedman Site:

Audio rights used to be the ugly stepsister of publishing rights, often thought of as throwaway rights to be included with a group of other secondary rights in a publishing deal. If you think back to when audiobooks made their big splash in the early 1970s with audiocassettes and Books On Tape, the market was small. Production costs were high. Even with technological advances, like the Walkman, audiobooks were still a lackluster investment for publishers.

It wasn’t until the mid-1990s with the Internet and huge advances in mobile technologies that audiobooks sales began to boom, transforming audio rights into the Cinderella rights of many book publishing deals.

At the end of 2019, audiobook sales were up 16 percent, marking the eighth year of double-digit growth in a row. 2020 is looking equally as promising. That’s a hot marketplace ticket. So, it makes sense that authors want to capitalize on that billion-dollar market.

Whether you’re an audiobook producer, a publisher, or a traditionally or self-published author in the market to produce your own audiobook, here’s a breakdown of the rights needed to bring an audiobook to market.