xigxag

How do we bring the digital into real life? 🪄 At xigxag, it starts by bringing together an amazing team of people with creative, ambitious ideas. It's a delight to be working with Sarah Hawkins again, who recently developed our latest in-store audiobooks gift card concept. Our customers love our digital audiobook platform, but the challenge is tapping into bigger audiences who like to buy in different ways, and allowing UK retailers to realise the exciting growth opportunity that audiobooks pose. Sarah's vision for bridging the digital and physical divide was the Audiocard - our first foray into the world of physical products! Sarah worked tirelessly to deliver on this ambition, diving into the deep end on digital design, title curation, printer selection, variable print layouts and file prep, x-book operations and so much more. Welcome to startup life! 😂 Our Audiocards offer customers access to bestselling audiobook titles from leading publishers, sold via individually printed cards with secure QR codes inside. They’re 100x more space efficient than physical book displays and yet just as compelling, with the covers, the authors (and us!) doing all the hard work for the retailer. Our audiocards are already getting rave reviews - and our partners are identifying more and more use cases for them: accessible and sustainable gifting; giveaways for book launches, competitions, festivals and events; pop-up promotions; pre-travel impulse purchases; gift companions for physical books. We could go on... We’ve signed up our first wholesale customers and promotional partners for the Audiocard offer already. If you’re a retailer or event manager and want to tap into the exciting growth of audiobooks - the fastest growing segment of books for over a decade - please get in touch. If you’re a books buyer at WHSmith, Waterstones, or John Lewis & Partners then keep an eye out for a gift box arriving in your office postbox from us! 😊

Up next at #KidsConf, Carla Herbertson (Small Wardour), Rebecca Lundgren (Voxblock), Kelli Fairbrother (xigxag) and Jessica Tarrant (Yoto) addressed how the book trade can capitalise on audio 💡 Our panel discussed: 🖍️ The size of the children's audiobook market in the UK 🖍️ How children's audio is a shared family listening experience 🖍️ Pricing models 🖍️ How audio is unlocking new audiences and much more! Stay tuned for more insights from our Children's Conference throughout the day 💡

Come see us at the Children’s Conference! 💜 Visit the xigxag stand to check out our new audiobook cards for retailers and publishers and experience the listen-and-read x-book®️. Thanks to The Bookseller for putting on another brilliant event - with a lovely view of Big Ben in the background. And I’m so happy to spend the day with Karen Powell and George Walkley! 😊

Come see us at the Children’s Conference! 💜 Visit the xigxag stand to check out our new audiobook cards for retailers and publishers and experience the listen-and-read x-book®️. Thanks to The Bookseller for putting on another brilliant event - with a lovely view of Big Ben in the background. And I’m so happy to spend the day with Karen Powell and George Walkley! 😊

Reading something you enjoy can help you relax and boost your mood. That’s why we are inviting your organisation to take part in our #Take10ToRead campaign this #WorldMentalHealthDay. Try reading for 10 minutes, at 10am on Thursday 10 October and see where it takes you. As part of our three-year strategy, we are working towards the mission of every young person, wherever they grow up, leaving school with literacy skills for life. Children who see adults reading at home are more likely to enjoy reading themselves. By promoting our campaign and the benefits of reading for pleasure, you are supporting our goal to empower children with these vital literacy skills. We have over 100 organisations on board to take part already, do you want to join in? For more information on Take 10 or to pledge your support, head over to: https://lnkd.in/enPmd5tN

Accessibility can be expensive - but publishers no longer have a choice. That said, actually unlocking those funds in an organisation takes some work and the right pitch. Check out my new article on BookMachine on making a business case for accessibility: https://lnkd.in/eJxy8-pA #Accessibility #AccessibilityInPublishing #Publishing

Dream Team! 💭 So excited to meet some of my favourite xigxag colleagues in person for Day 1 of The London Book Fair. Olympia was buzzing with energy and people. We had a great day of meetings with existing and prospective publisher partners. What are we taking about? We’re excited to 💜 mention all the progress we have made with our app user experience & catalogue 📈 highlight the strong organic customer growth we’re delivering 🫶 share the progress we’re making with bookseller partnerships 💻 show off our First Listen solution, enabling publishers to securely distribute pre-release audiobooks via the xigxag app. If you’re at LBF this week and want to chat, let us know! We’d love to hear from you. Karen Powell George Walkley Sarah Hawkins #lbf2024 #audiobooks #innovation #londonbookfair #publishing #publishingindustry #startups