Digital audiobook sales continue to soar industry-wide, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade division will join the competition this fall, when the publisher will begin releasing its own audiobooks through the newly launched HMH Audio. To head the unit, HMH has hired Tommy Harron as executive producer.
According to the publisher, the audio imprint will publish editions of “many of HMH’s frontlist adult and young reader titles along with select backlist.” The group, which will operate out of a newly-built studio within HMH’s New York City offices, plans to publish about 75 titles annually.
Harron, who has been an engineer and producer at Hachette Audio, will report to HMH senior v-p and publisher Bruce Nichols. Harron will also hire a “small team” to launch the audio list, HMH said.
With the creation of HMH Audio and the previous launch of HMH Productions, the trade division has changed its name to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media. “We are thrilled to enter this market directly and to be able to bring our authors to their audiences across all print and digital formats,” HMH Books & Media president Ellen Archer said in a statement on the launch of the audio unit.
