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Made in Sweden
Pioneers in audiobooks, with a love for stories Storytel is a pioneer in audiobooks, but also a major player in e-books and traditional publishing. Above all, the company wants people to appreciate the power of stories, in all formats. By Malin Norman |
Photos: Storytel
Swedish company Storytel is one of the largest streaming services for audiobooks, with more than one million titles globally. “Our vision is to make the world a more empathic and creative place, through stories that can be appreciated and shared by anyone, anywhere, anytime,” says Ingrid Bojner, acting CEO. It all started with an idea for audiobooks on mobile phones by Jonas Tellander in 2005. However, at that time, phones were small in size and had limited storage and battery power, so business was slow. It was not until Tellander appeared on 46 |
Issue 144
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July 2022
Swedish SVT’s adaptation of Draknästet (Dragon’s Den) in 2009, that things started to take off, when the founder was able to secure investments to grow the company. The audiobook boom that followed,
and continues to grow, has boosted and vitalised the entire Nordic book industry. In 2021, the Swedish Publishers’ Association reported a record five billion Swedish kroner in book sales – audiobooks, print and e-books included. Storytel has around two million customers around the world, of which half are located in Scandinavia. The streaming service is available in countries on six continents, with literature in over 30 languages. Today, audiobook subscriptions generate more revenue on the Swedish market than printed books in the fiction category, and every twentieth adult person in Scandinavia has a Storytel subscription. “With the humble beginnings in 2005, who would have thought that streamed books would engage such a vast audience today? And in a media
