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São Paulo. Six months after making the service available abroad, Google launched its audio book service in Brazil this week. Google Play Books has existed since January in 45 countries, where it competes with Amazon's similar platform, Audible. The service opens in Brazil with 2500 titles and, says Google, more than 100 publishers.
Available titles include books such as Paula Hawkins' "The Girl in the Train" (Record); "Anxiety – How to deal with the evil of the century" (Saraiva), by Augusto Cury, and "A Legacy of Spies" by John Le Carre, among others.
The time spent listening to each book varies not only with the number of pages, but depends on the reading of each narrator – and there is still a feature that allows you to speed up or delay it. Le Carré's book, for example, has 252 pages and 11 hours of audio. "The Girl on the Train", in turn, with 378 pages, takes 10 hours 59 minutes.
The service works on both Android and iOS phones (used on Apple devices). The first was via the Google Play app or Google Play Books. On Apple devices, only with the second – but you can not make purchases in the application itself. The user has to choose his books on the computer and use the application to download them.
Still small in Brazil – and running on small startups like the Ubook – the audiobook market has surprised the United States. According to the most recent data from the Audio Publishers Association, audiobook sales in 2017 generated revenues of $ 2.5 billion, an increase of 23% over 2016.
Andrea Fornes , director of Product Partnerships for Google News and Books in Latin America, explains why the Brazilian service was not released early in the year, with other countries: "The publishers are still starting to work with this language.He did not have a very large catalog, we expect the number to increase to be able to offer a more attractive offer. "
He indicates that for the second half year, the catalog is expected to grow as it rose from January to here. To make the catalog available, Google is negotiating mainly with aggregators that have been working for several years on this segment in Brazil – the case of Ubook and Tocalivros. These two companies have their own services, but offer only audio books on subscription – it is not possible to buy individual works on their platforms.
An American trend that Google imagines itself to repeat here is the use of smartphones to listen to books. On the outside, according to figures from the Audio Publishers Association, 47% of users say they use their phones for this – 22% in 2015.
At launch, the audio book catalog will have works which will cost less than $ 5 – then, with normal prices, the average price is about $ 20.
Amazon has already prepared the Audible arrival in the country for at least two years, when the job offers for the service were announced in Brazil – a request on the website of the company with job offers shows that they are no longer open, suggesting that they might have been filled.
Flash
Market. Established in 2014, the Ubook is the largest streaming audiobook app in Latin America. There are more than 15,000 titles in the catalog, including books, magazines, podcasts, courses and lectures.
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