Another new audiobook publisher opened for business Wednesday: Iambik, which purports to be “different from traditional audiobook publishers.” The Montreal company headed by Hugh McGuire, who founded the free public domain audiobook project LibriVox, is partnering with print publishers and authors and working with audiobook makers around the world to provide online downloads. Its catalogue includes new and old titles “that have been overlooked by traditional audio publishers.” Iambik sells the audiobooks from Iambik.com and other sites, including Audible, Overdrive, and eMusic.
The company connects publishers with independent audiobook makers to produce and sell audiobooks. Its model is almost exclusively based on a revenue-share model between narrators, publishers/authors, and Iambik. Its group of advisors includes Richard Nash, Don Linn, Gene Quinn, Chris Goringe, and Dan Parsons; its “founding publishing partners” are Akashic Books, Biblioasis, Coach House Books, Coffee House Press, Cursor/Red Lemonade, Graywolf Press, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, Movable Type Literary Group, OR Books, Soho Press, and Tin House Books.
Iambik’s audiobooks are available in mp3 and m4b formats. So far there are 14 titles by 11 authors for sale on the site, priced between $5 and $10. Among the audiobooks are titles by Gordon Lish (including a selection of stories read by Lish); Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet; and some up-and-coming writers including Felicia Luna Lemus and J. Robert Lennon. The company doesn’t use digital rights management, since, as its Web site says, DRM “makes it harder for people to do many legitimate things they might like to do with audiobooks, like move them from one device to another.”
