| Parent company | RBMedia / KKR |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1978 |
| Founder | Henry Trentman |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Prince Frederick, Maryland |
| Distribution | Blackstone Publishing, [1] Ingram Publisher Services [2] |
| Publication types | Audiobooks |
| Official website | www |
Recorded Books is an audiobook imprint of RBMedia, a publishing company with operations in countries globally. Recorded Books was formerly an independent audiobook company before being purchased and re-organized under RBMedia, where it is now an imprint. Recorded Books was founded in 1978 by Henry Trentman, one of the pioneers in the audiobook industry. [3]
Recorded Books was founded in 1978 [4] by Henry Trentman in Charlotte Hall, Maryland. [5] Trentman was a salesman who spent a lot of his time driving and listening to the radio and he believed there was a market for better quality recorded books on cassette tape targeted to commuters. [6] Unlike other audiobooks sold at the time, which were usually abridged to 2–4 hours long, Trentman envisioned unabridged productions of 20 or more tapes which could be rented mail-order, and that would be of high quality sound and professional narrators. [6]
The company's first recording was in 1979 as The Sea-Wolf by Jack London narrated by Frank Muller, a local actor at Washington DC's Arena Stage. [6] [7] Muller remembered "this traveling salesman who had a crazy idea about recording books onto cassettes and marketing them to commuters." [6] Muller would remain one of Recorded Books' most prolific and popular narrators over the years. [6] At first, the book titles were in the public domain, such as Jack London. However, after Recorded Books picked professional stage actor Alexander Spencer to narrate books, they began branching out into copyright works. [8]
For the first six years, Trentman worked at Recorded Books part-time since the company did not generate enough revenue to justify his coming on full-time. [4] Later, as the company grew during the 1980s, it opened a new recording facility in New York City near Times Square. [5] [8] [9] According to The New Yorker (2012):
In the 1980s, the company established its headquarters in Prince Frederick, Maryland. [10]
In the 1990s, it created an in-house sales department and a department to focus on schools and education. [10] In 1997, Recorded Books began selling directly to the U.K. and by 1999 the company had launched W.F. Howes Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary in the U.K. [10]
Recorded Books was acquired by Haights Cross Communications in December 1999, where Recorded Books operated as a division of that company. [10] In 2002, Haights Cross acquired Audio Adventures, a brand established in the truck stop market to tie in with 650 rental kiosks in truck stop centers Recorded Books previously had. [10] In January 2014, it was announced that Haights Cross sold Recorded Books to Wasserstein & Co., an independent private equity and investment firm in New York and Los Angeles. [11]
In May 2014, Recorded Books acquired HighBridge Audio from Workman Publishing. [12] HighBridge Audio was initially founded by Minnesota Public Radio in the early 1980s to produce and distribute recordings of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion . Since then, HighBridge produced approximately 45 titles a year in the forms of spoken word audio cassettes, CDs and downloadable audio books. The company was best known for publishing public-radio related titles, as well as Oprah's Book Club titles. HighBridge made use of two readers in its audio book production for works primarily involving two main characters. [13] Other popular titles published by HighBridge included The Time Traveler's Wife , Water for Elephants , Life of Pi and Across the Nightingale Floor .
In January 2015, Recorded Books announced its acquisition of Tantor Media [14] Later in 2015, Wasserstein sold Recorded Books to Shamrock Advisors, a private equity firm. [15]
In April 2017 the company reorganized. The new company name is RBMedia and its imprints include Recorded Books, HighBridge Audio, Tantor Media, ChristianAudio, Gildan Media, W.F. Howes (UK), and Wavesound (Australia). [16] It would sell or distribute titles directly to customers through audiobooks.com, through libraries and resellers such as Audible.
As of 2017, Recorded Books operates as an imprint of RBMedia.
In June 2020, Recorded Books announced a deal for Blackstone Audio to exclusively manufacture, sell and distribute their physical media audiobook titles (CD & MP3) to consumers, retail, distribution and libraries in North America. [1]
Although Recorded Books is not a public company, they have released some operations and sales figures over the years that provide a sense of the company's growth and size.
According to a 2004 article, most of Recorded Books' 330 employees were based in Maryland, with 15 staff in New York, 15 in the United Kingdom and a number of sales representatives around the United States. [10] Studio director Claudia Howard who had been with the company since 1984 oversaw operations. [10]
In a 1989 newspaper article, it was reported that Recorded Books had about 450 titles in its catalog, versus about 2,500 from its main competitor Books on Tape (BoT), but that Recorded Books focused more on the quality of its sound recordings than BoT did. [5] Six years later in a 1995 article, it was reported Recorded Books had produced 1,600 books. [4] In 2004, it was reported that of Recorded Books' 800 new unabridged titles per year, 650 are released to libraries/schools/mail order/rental. Fifty of those 650 titles are made available for the retail sales market. Of the 800 new titles, 150 titles are sold only into the U.K. market. [10] First quarter 2004 had more than $16 million in net sales. [10] In January 2014, a press release said Recorded Books had over 13,500 audiobook titles. [11] In January 2015, after the acquisition of Tantor Media, Recorded Books a catalog of more than 22,000 titles. [14] In August 2015, after the acquisition by Shamrock Advisors, the company reported publishing 3,000 new books annually with catalog of 25,000 titles. [15]
 |
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips, the Compact Cassette was released in August 1963.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. The book, released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.
An audiobook is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Audible is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer. The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.
GraphicAudio is an audiobook publishing imprint of RBMedia. Its tagline is "A Movie In Your Mind". The GraphicAudio format includes a full cast of actors, narration, sound effects and cinematic music. GraphicAudio has published over 1,600 action-adventure titles and over 180 series in the fantasy, science fiction, post-apocalyptic, comic and western genres.
Frank Muller was a stage and television actor, but was most famous as an audiobook narrator.
The Deptford Mice is a trilogy of children's dark fantasy novels by British author Robin Jarvis. The first book, The Dark Portal, was published in 1989 by Macdonald & Company in London, followed that same year by The Crystal Prison and then The Final Reckoning in 1990. The trilogy tells the story of a young mouse girl named Audrey Brown and her friends as they fight Jupiter, the evil living god of the sewer rats in the London borough of Deptford.
Florence A. "Flo" Gibson was an American narrator of audiobooks. She has also been in many radio dramas as well as appearing on stage. She graduated from New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She died of cancer in 2011.
Flo Gibson was a familiar voice to listening audiences during the golden years of radio, an actress in the E.T.O. during World War II, and she performed in Equity Library Theater in New York. After retiring to raise a family, she returned to her career 20 years ago. She recently celebrated recording her 1,000th book for the Library of Congress and seven commercial companies. Her narration has won national acclaim, four times on the American Library Association’s "Notable Recordings for Children" lists and three times as the recipient of the Parents’ Choice Award. She was also named "Best Female Narrator" in the Audio Awards article in Book World.
Scott Brick is an American actor, writer and award-winning narrator of over 800 audiobooks, including popular titles such as Washington: A Life, Moneyball, and Cloud Atlas. He has narrated works for a number of high-profile authors, including Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Michael Crichton,Clive Cussler and John Grisham.
Blackstone Audio is an independent audiobook publisher in the United States, offering over 25,000 audiobooks. The company is based in Ashland, Oregon, with five in-house recording studios. Blackstone distributes directly to consumers via their subscription e-commerce site, Downpour.com, and to the library market with titles from Blackstone, Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins, Brilliance, BBC, and Disney Press.
Assistive Media, Inc. is a nonprofit Internet-based reading service to serve people with visual and reading impairments.
AudioGO was a British publisher of audiobooks and a range of spoken word and large-print titles. It was majority owned by AudioGO Ltd, and minority owned by BBC Worldwide. It was formed in 2010, when AudioGO purchased a majority share in BBC Audiobooks, and traded until it went into administration in 2013.
Hoopla is a web and mobile (Android/iOS) library media streaming platform launched in 2010 for audio books, comics, e-books, movies, music, and TV. Patrons of a library that supports Hoopla have access to its collection of digital media.
The Audio Publishers Association (APA) is the first and only not-for-profit trade organization of the audiobook industry in the United States. Its mission is to "advocate the common, collective business interests of audio publishers." Membership is open to "audio publishing companies and allied suppliers, distributors, and retailers of spoken word products and allied fields related to the production, distribution and sale of audiobooks." Activities include national consumer surveys, gathering of industry statistics, trade-show exhibits, a newsletter and an annual conference.
Books on Tape is an audiobook publishing imprint of Random House which emphasizes unabridged audiobook recordings for schools and libraries. It was previously an independent California-based company before its acquisition by Random House, in 2001.
RBMedia is an audiobook publishing company with sales globally. Headquartered in Landover, Maryland, it claims to be the largest audiobook publisher in the world.
David Frederick Case, alias Frederick Davidson, was a prolific English narrator of over 700 audiobooks, primarily in the 1980s and 90s when the commercial audiobook industry was maturing. He was one of the first inductees into the "Golden Voice" hall of fame started by the trade publication AudioFile.
Grover Gardner is an American narrator of audiobooks. As of May 2018, he has narrated over 1,200 books. He was the Publishers Weekly "Audiobook Narrator of the Year" (2005) and is among AudioFile magazine's "Best Voices of the Century".
Simon Vance is an audiobook narrator and actor who performs contemporary literary works as well as classics, children's books, and nonfiction. He has won 16 Audie Awards since 2002. Specializing in single-voice narration, he was named the American Library Association's Booklist Magazine Voice of Choice in 2008, and has earned AudioFile Magazine's Earphones Award for more than 60 performances since 1998. He has also narrated audiobooks under the names of Richard Matthews and Robert Whitfield. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Recorded Books and Books on Tape, pioneers in this new sound recording format, recorded unabridged versions of books on cassette.
| International | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
