Yes, the eBook market hasn’t reached the levels many had hoped for (yet) but there is one digital market that is booming: the audio book market.

The UK’s Financial Times in their article Audio books open a new chapter in digital age talks of a boom in the digital audio book market…

Driven by iPod, MP3 and smartphone users, a new market for audio books has been created. Audible, the leading provider of audio book downloads, says the majority of its customers – who number close to 900,000 worldwide – have never before bought a traditional audio book on tape or CD.

Even though eBooks sales are lagging the audio market is booming…

While e-books still account for less than 1 per cent of print sales, digital downloads more than doubled to 6 per cent of the $800m audio book market in 2004. Audible says its own sales have grown by more than 80 per cent since then.

For the the independent information publisher, this is a sure sign that professionally produced audio products sold over the internet is a viable option. I know with my publishing firm - after discussing the industry with various audio authors - I am going to focus strongly in this area from 2007 and on.

The audio book as an information product is a natural next step from the eBook (in fact, they can compliment each other and increase your margins), and with the general public getting a good taste of podcasts over recent times, the independents should have no trouble going to that next step: producing quality info audio products.

Here at ePublishingDaily, I’ll be talking quite a bit about audio products, how to produce them and how to get the most out of them for your information publishing business.

Views on this market are welcomed in the comments, of course…