When publishers and content creators decide where to invest their time and resources, one question matters above all: How long will this content continue generating revenue?
In traditional book publishing, the answer is sobering. Most books follow what researchers call an “early peak, slow decay” pattern – a brief surge of sales followed by a steady decline into obscurity. But location-based audio content tells a dramatically different story.
I joined VoiceMap after 10 years in the podcast industry, which follows a similar distribution pattern to books. The longevity of VoiceMap audio tours was a welcome surprise to me, with many delivering increasing revenues year after year. It’s not just podcasts; YouTube videos and social posts also have very short lifespans – and many peak in just hours or days.
Publishing once and monetising over the long term is really attractive – especially when you consider that creating a VoiceMap tour doesn’t require a lot more effort than producing a single scripted podcast episode.
VoiceMap’s revenue is seasonal but consistent
The graph below tracks the sales performance of VoiceMap’s top 50 bestselling tours in 2025, showing how much they’ve earned each month since 2023. Rather than the steep decline typical of other media, these tours show something remarkable: consistent revenue year after year.
The pattern shows predictable seasonal fluctuations – peaks during prime tourist seasons and quieter periods in winter months – but the underlying trend demonstrates sustainable, long-term revenue generation. These aren’t one-hit wonders burning bright and fading fast. They’re evergreen assets that continue delivering value to both creators and travellers season after season.
Traditional publishing’s 30-day window
The contrast with traditional media couldn’t be starker. Research analysing bestselling books found a universal pattern: most bestsellers reach their sales peak less than ten weeks after release. In fact, books can secure as much as 50% of their lifetime sales by release day, with publishers typically giving a title a 30-day window to prove itself.
Think about that: half of a book’s lifetime revenue in a single day, with the remainder trickling in over months or years. Publishers operate in a hit-driven model where each new release must justify massive upfront marketing investment within weeks.
Your average traditionally published nonfiction book sells about 250-300 copies in the first year, with most of those sales concentrated in the initial launch period. Only about 4% of books surpass 1,000 total sales, and only one in 10,000 books breaks 100,000 copies.Backlist book titles are valuable to publishers because they sell with almost no overhead or marketing costs. VoiceMap tours follow this same principle, but with even less maintenance – no warehouse costs, no remainders, no print runs to manage.
Publishers often see sales growth over multiple years
Several VoiceMap publishers have seen their revenue increase over time – a pattern almost unheard of in traditional publishing. As they’ve built catalogues of multiple tours in complementary destinations, they’ve created portfolio effects where each new tour helps promote their existing work.
Take Annie Sargent for example, whose first tour, Le Marais: the Paris neighborhood that has it all!, was published in 2019. She’s seen continued growth year on year: 2024 saw a 21% increase on 2023, and 2025 has seen a further 14% increase so far. Annie has now published a total of eight tours on VoiceMap.
Annie’s experience isn’t unique. It’s the pattern we see consistently with publishers who create quality tours.
Publishers who’ve launched five or more tours typically see:
- Network effects, with travellers often buying a second tour after their first
- Portfolio discovery, with users finding older tours because of new releases
- Seasonal diversification, with different destinations peaking at different times
- Compounding reputation effects because positive reviews of one tour drive discoverability and trust across all their tours
This mirrors one of the few successful patterns in traditional book publishing: authors need to publish at least one new book per year to keep backlist titles selling. The difference? VoiceMap tours don’t require annual releases to maintain sales. They generate consistent revenue on their own, with new tours acting as accelerators rather than necessities. Best of all, VoiceMap is an open platform and you can start your first self-guided tour today.
