While the temptation for many industry players is to focus on expanding into new territories, BookBeat CEO Niclas Sandin says he is committed to making the most of the opportunities already in front of them in Europe.

By Jaroslaw Adamowski, Contributor

Swedish audiobook service BookBeat expanded its revenues by a solid 13% in the first half of 2026, with Germany serving as its strongest-performing market, and Poland contributing the largest number of new users. And the key to future growth, says CEO Niclas Sandin, is staying focused.

“BookBeat is available across much of Europe, with localized services in Sweden, Finland, the DACH region, so Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and the U.K.” Sandin told Publishing Perspectives. “We still see substantial untapped potential in every one of those markets. Because of that, our strategy isn’t to keep adding flags to the map. It’s to build deeper positions where we already have momentum.”

In the CEO’s view, the temptation for many industry players is to keep looking for the next market into which to expand their operations. But Sandin says he is committed to making the most of the opportunity that is already in front of them in Europe.

“We’d rather stay focused,” he said. “Germany is Europe’s largest audiobook market, while Poland is one of its fastest growing. Together, they represent an enormous opportunity for publishers, authors, and for BookBeat. They will play an important role in our long-term growth, but their value goes beyond revenue. Building BookBeat across markets with different cultures, reading habits, and competitive dynamics forces us to become better every year.”

Polish market observers note that the growth reported in Poland’s audiobook market segment has been relatively strong for several years, driven by subscription-based services. And Sandin said that the lessons BookBeat is learning from its activities in the German and Polish markets will help make the platform stronger across the Nordics, just as the service’s experience from the Nordic states has helped BookBeat build its business across much of Europe.

As Publishing Perspectives reported earlier this year, BookBeat—which is backed by Bonnier, one of Europe’s largest publishing groups—has made major strides over the last decade, closing the gap on market leader Storytel. And in the first half of 2026, the gains continued.

The number of paying users continued to grow at a double-digit rate, the company reported earlier this month. And last month BookBeat set a new record when 10,931 people signed up to try the service on June 14, marking the first time the company exceeded 10,000 registrations in a single day. In addition, BookBeat recorded “the highest customer loyalty in the company’s history during the first six months of 2026,” BookBeat reps said, “measured by the share of users who chose to cancel their subscription.”

BookBeat says that one of the factors behind the service’s growth has been the continuous rollout of new features. Last spring, the platform introduced a number of new functionalities centered on book discovery, ease of use, as well as personalization. “It’s not only about attracting new users,” Sandin observed, in sharing some of the company’s mid-year numbers. “We also want to be the best service for those who have already made audiobooks part of their everyday lives.”

Asked about BookBeat’s plans for 2027, Sandin said that as competition in the European audiobook market becomes increasingly diversified, the platform’s response will be to become even more focused.

“Focus matters. And our only focus is to take leadership in books,” he says. “We’re not agnostic about what we want people to do when they open BookBeat. We want them to discover books, spend more time with them, and keep coming back for the next one.”

For BookBeat, that means building “the best experience for discovering, listening to and reading books, becoming the strongest launch platform for authors and publishers, and giving them the insights they need to grow their audience,” Sandin told Publishing Perspectives. “That isn’t achieved through one breakthrough feature. It’s the result of hundreds of improvements for our users, large and small, that hopefully together will make BookBeat a little better every day the next couple of years.”