This April, McGraw-Hill Trade, a division of McGraw-Hill Education, is set to launch McGraw-Hill Audio, a licensed audio line created as a joint venture with Redwood Audiobooks of Mendocino, Calif., and Burlington, N.C.-based American Media International. The co-publishing arrangement will marry the content of McGraw-Hill's top-selling print titles in such areas as business, health and personal investing with the audio production expertise of Redwood (which is a subsidiary of 14-year-old audiobook publisher Audio Scholar) and AMI (long known for its cassette duplication services).
Plans are to release 25 McGraw-Hill Audio titles per year, with studio work to take place in "various cities, depending on where the readers live," said McGraw-Hill Audio co-publisher Margy Bauman, who will be handling editorial functions and book trade relations for the new line. (Bauman is also publisher of Audio Scholar.) All recordings will be abridged and available on three cassettes ($24 at retail) or four CDs ($28). Among the eight inaugural titles to hit store shelves April 1 are How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O'Neil, The Fat Flush Plan by Ann Louise Gittleman and The Rumsfeld Way by Jeffrey A. Krames.
Philip Ruppel, v-p and group publisher of McGraw-Hill Trade said the audiobook extension gives his company "yet another venue [in which] to provide consumers with valuable information." Bauman estimates that there will be three or four dedicated McGraw-Hill Audio employees. Dr. Jerry Platt, dean of the College of Business at San Francisco State University, is currently working as a consulting editor for the line's business titles.
McGraw-Hill Audio will be distributed by National Book Network, headquartered in Lanham, Md.
