Audio News Briefs

Through digital media distributor OverDrive's new Advantage Program, consortium member libraries sharing downloadable media catalogs can reduce waiting lists with access to additional copies of popular digital titles on the same shared web site to which their patrons are already accustomed. OverDrive currently offers its member libraries 200,000 digital titles, including the largest collection of iPod-compatible audiobooks available to libraries. More info at www.overdrive.com.

PoliPoint Press, which specializes in books on politics, culture, and sustainability, launched a new downloadable MP3 audiobook line with the recent release on audio of two of its print titles: Dean Baker's Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and Phillip Longman and Ray Boshara's The Next Progressive Era: A Blueprint for Broad Prosperity. Both are available through Audible. More info at p3books.com.

Newly available on CD, MP3-CD, and Playaway digital and as a digital download from Tantor Media: House Atreides, Bk. 1 in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's "Dune: House" trilogy, previously only available on cassette from Books on Tape, with Michael Prichard reading, and as an abridged Random House audio, with Tim Curry reading. Scott Brick, voice of the Dune series, narrates. Upcoming: new audio editions of House Harkonnen (Sept. 21) and House Corrino (Oct. 26.). More info at www.tantor.com.

Stay tuned for the September 15 webcast (2 p.m. ET) "From the Page to Your Ears: The Making of an Audiobook," featuring author Julia Spencer-Fleming, narrator Suzanne Toren (pictured), who has read all the books in Spencer-Fleming's Russ Van Alstyne/Clare Fergusson series, and a BBC Audiobooks America producer. Registration is free at www.libraryjournal.com/webcasts.

Results from Audio Publishers Association's 2009 Sales Survey show that while audiobook CD sales slowed in 2008, sales of downloads grew four percent, to 21 percent of the market, and preloaded audiobook devices increased from one percent to three percent of the market, where cassette sales currently stand. MP3-CDs stayed the same, making up one percent of total audiobook sales. Measured by publisher revenue, retail is the audio industry's strongest channel (36 percent), followed closely by the library channel (32 percent). More info at www.audiopub.org.