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Blackstone Audio

Audiobook publisher

Summary

Audiobook publisher

Field	Value
name	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
logo	Blackstone-logo-2017-padded.png
logo_size	200px
type	Private
location_city	Ashland, Oregon
foundation	1987
founder	Craig & Michelle Black
key_people
num_employees	250–300 (2019)
industry	Publishing
products	Audiobooks, print books, eBooks
homepage

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.

Blackstone has made deals with other audiobook companies where Blackstone manufactures physical CD & MP3 CD format media and distributes them to retail and library locations. Labels under this program include Naxos AudioBooks and Recorded Books.

In 2015, Blackstone expanded with Blackstone Publishing, an imprint devoted to print and e-books.

Corporate history

Blackstone was founded in 1987 by Craig and Michelle Black, originally under the name Classics on Tape. The company later assumed the name Blackstone, taken from an English literary magazine. The company's location in Ashland, Oregon was influenced by the proximity of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which Blackstone used as a pool for voice actors.

In August 2012, Blackstone launched an audiobook e-commerce/subscription website, Downpour.com, providing Blackstone audio titles as well as other publishers' titles to the retail market. In January 2013 the company was acquired by AudioGO for an undisclosed sum. Ten months later, in October of that year, AudioGO went bankrupt and sold Blackstone and its other US operations back to the Black family, with the UK arm of AudioGO ceasing business operations as it sought a buyer or investor.

In 2017 they bought the direct-to-consumer audiobook retailer AudioEditions, based in Auburn, California.

In January 2019, they announced a deal to exclusively distribute Naxos AudioBooks physical CD titles. And in September 2019 added Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Audio.

In November 2015, they expanded with Blackstone Publishing, a new imprint devoted to print and e-books. They launched with its first original hardcover, The Blood Flag, a thriller by James W. Huston, and rolled out paperback and e-book editions of four western novels.

In August 2020, Blackstone announced a deal with Recorded Books to exclusively manufacture RB's audiobook titles, more than 14,000 strong, on physical media (CD & MP3) and distribute to retail and library locations in North America.

Authors

Authors published by Blackstone Publishing include John Shirley, Orson Scott Card, Meg Gardiner, Matthew Mather, and John Altman. In 2018, Blackstone acquired the North American unabridged rights for print/e-book and world rights for audio to James Clavell's catalog.

Awards

In December 2011, Blackstone Audio's production of Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. In 2014 the company won two Audie Awards.

References

"Blackstone Audio - About Us". Blackstone Audio Inc..
"FEDLINK Services Directory: Blackstone Audiobooks". [[Library of Congress]].
"Blackstone Audio, Inc.". The Oregon Historical Society.
(2012-10-11). "First thoughts on Downpour: DRM-free and beta-testing (updated)". The AudioBookaneers.
(2013-03-06). "Downpour.com–an audiobook delivery system that just works". SFFAudio.com.
(2014-01-05). "Downpour.com". Download.com.
(January 4, 2013). "AudioGO Acquires Blackstone Audio". [[Publishers Weekly]].
(22 October 2013). "AudioGO suspends business operations". The Bookseller.
(23 October 2013). "Blackstone Audio buys AudioGO US arm".
"Blackstone Audio Buys Audio Editions".
"Blackstone Publishing to Be the Exclusive Manufacturer and Distributor for Naxos AudioBooks".
"BEA 2016: Blackstone Audio Expands into Print".
(August 18, 2020). "Blackstone Publishing to Manufacture, Sell, and Distribute Audiobook CDs Published by Recorded Books". Blackstone Publishing.
"Blackstone Acquires Publishing Rights to James Clavell Catalog".
(2011-12-12). "Blackstone up for Grammys". Ashland Daily Tidings.
(2014-06-12). "2014 Audie Award winners". Library Journal.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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