Recorded Books: Standing the Test of Time

In the late Seventies, a Maryland-based traveling salesman named Henry Trentman posted an ad at a local theater seeking an actor to read him a book on tape he could play in his car. One Frank Muller responded to the call, and Recorded Books, LLC (RB), among the leading publishers and distributors of unabridged audiobooks, was born. (Muller, whom LJ dubbed "the first true superstar of spoken audio," went on to record some 150 titles for RB. He died in 2008.)

With Trentman long retired and the cassette format on which his business hinged now near-obsolete, RB operations might have ended there. Yet—despite legal disputes, the financial restructuring of its parent company, a growing base of formidable competitors, and an economy driving librarians toward cheaper formats and packaging—the company continues to thrive.

Today, RB publishes 600 audio titles annually and has 6000 active titles in its catalog available in formats including cassette, CD, Playaway®, and digital download. Imprints range from the newly formed educational line ITK (In the Know) Audio to regionally focused lines like Lone Star and Southern Voices. Additionally, the company distributes music titles, nonfiction films on DVD, and video games to educational institutions and libraries.

A Storied Catalog

RB president Scott Williams attributes the company's steadfastness and growth to its catalog of quality titles; recent releases attest to that claim. In 2009, RB published on audio four of the five National Book Award fiction finalists, including the winner, Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. Also that year, two of its titles won Audie Awards (Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen's You: Staying Young and Arthur Herman's Gandhi & Churchill), and two others were named LJ Best Audiobooks (Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying and Jodi Picoult's Change of Heart).

"There is pressure in some quarters of the audio industry to reduce production costs," Williams tells LJ, "and we haven't taken that route." To illustrate his point he notes that the New York City studios from which RB conducts its recordings is staffed with a full-time linguist who collaborates with authors and librarians alike to help RB narrators tackle the vast array of challenges any given audiobook can present—from determining a word's correct pronunciation to locating an obscure song melody.

This investment in production value, together with other economic realities of audio publishing—paying authors royalties and advances and actors and narrators what Williams pointedly calls "a living wage"—ultimately translates into higher costs for libraries. Still, Williams remains confident that, even in the face of budget struggles, "librarians will vote with their dollars to support companies like [ours] that work to sustain audio publishing."

In the meantime, RB continues to invest in its technology infrastructure. In January, it appointed its first chief technology officer. Late last year, complementing its Pimsleur Language Programs, it partnered with Transparent Language Inc. to offer the online language-learning system Byki®. And in the second quarter of 2010, it will launch a new web site integrating customized MARC records and electronic data interchange.

For the foreseeable future, its mission remains the same. "Five years from now," Williams says, "we will still be focusing on great stories told well, creating quality productions, serving our library customers, and helping them build and manage their collections."