Las Vegas-based Central Recovery Press and Boston’s Beacon Press are the latest independent publishers to jump into the booming audio segment.
CRP specializes in titles focused on chronic pain treatment and recovery, addiction, and behavioral healthcare books. According to a company statement, developing the audio imprint provides CPR an opportunity to deliver vital information to readers via all available publishing formats, which is key to the publisher’s future growth.
CRP Audio will be producing its digital audio titles via Amazon subsidiary Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), a marketplace that allows individuals or publishers who are audio rights holders to connect directly with producers, voice talent, recording studios, and other production specialists. ACX-created titles are then distributed via Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.
CRP Audio’s inaugural audiobook list will include a mix of front and backlist titles among them Connecting in the Land of Dementia by Deborah Shouse and The Jaguar Man by Lara Naughton.
Beacon Press Audio launched this week, under the leadership of Cliff Manko, who has been named audio publisher and will also continue in his role as Beacon’s CFO, and audio director Melissa Nasson, who is also Beacon’s contracts director.
Beacon's move into audio was spearheaded by Beacon Press director Helene Atwan, who is an avid audiobook listener. In a statement, she emphasized that an audio imprint will allow Beacon the flexibility to keep pace with changing technologies and reinforce its efforts to provide accessibility. “Adding audio format versions of our titles allows us to ensure that more readers of varying needs and abilities will be served by the important work being done at Beacon,” she said.
The Beacon Press Audio list will blend new and key backlist titles. First out of the gate is The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult by Jerald Walker, which was released September 6 simultaneously with the print and e-book editions. Additional simultaneous releases are due this fall as well, including Michael Bérubé’s Life as Jamie Knows It: An Exceptional Child Grows Up (10/4), and Adrienne Berard’s Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools (10/18).
Previously published Beacon titles debuting in audiobook format include actor Martin Moran’s memoir All the Rage: A Quest (May), which he recently recorded. Beacon Press Audio titles will be distributed through Penguin Random House, which also handles Beacon’s print and e-book distribution.
