From The Wall Street Journal:
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book opens with ominous sirens, planes droning overhead and a powerful explosion.
Unlike most audiobooks, which are offshoots of a traditional text manuscript, “The Bomber Mafia” was conceived first as an audio project. Only later, after there was a completed script, was it offered to a major publisher. The print and ebook versions, as well as the audiobook, go on sale April 27.
“The Bomber Mafia” is part of an effort by Pushkin Industries Inc., an audio company that Mr. Gladwell co-founded, to become a major provider of highly produced “original” audiobooks. Such projects sound more like podcasts than traditional audiobooks, since they often feature original scores, as well as archival and interview tape.
Industry giants including Bertelsmann SE’s Penguin Random House and Amazon.com Inc.’s Audible also produce high-production original audiobooks with sound effects and a cast of multiple actors, representing significant competition for Pushkin.
As a writer, Mr. Gladwell has been a star on the pop-culture circuit for more than two decades, thanks to such bestsellers as “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers.” His ability to look at popular subjects in fresh and unexpected ways has made him an arbiter of human behavior and social phenomena.
Mr. Gladwell later applied that approach to podcasting with “Revisionist History,” a show launched in 2016 that looks to shed new light on past events. When the company that produced the podcast exited the medium, he launched Pushkin with former Slate Group Chairman and Editor in Chief Jacob Weisberg to keep “Revisionist History” going.
Today, the company has 12 podcasts, including Dr. Laurie Santos’s “The Happiness Lab,” which focuses on the science of well-being, and Dana Goodyear’s “Lost Hills,” a tale of true crime, which recently hit No. 1 on the Apple Podcast charts. Ms. Goodyear, like Mr. Gladwell, is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine.
In a move likely to raise Pushkin’s profile, the company this week agreed to create an audio content subscription program called “PushNik” for a new podcast subscription service Apple Inc. is expected to launch next month. The offering will include ad-free versions of Pushkin’s various podcasts as well as a weekly news roundup and other exclusive audio content.
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Mr. Gladwell conceived the idea for “The Bomber Mafia” while recording the fifth season of “Revisionist History,” several episodes of which are about the life of Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay and the World War II bombing campaign against Japan.
“We were looking for some audiotape of Curtis LeMay, and realized that there were archives at the Air Force with audiotape of literally every major military leader involved in the air wars over Europe and Japan,” said Mr. Gladwell. “It was then I realized—I could do a whole book on this story.”
“The Bomber Mafia” will be Pushkin’s fifth audiobook. The first title it published, “Fauci,” came out about six months ago, and quickly rose to No. 1 on Audible’s nonfiction bestseller list. The title includes exclusive conversations with infectious-diseases specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady, as well as key colleagues and peers, archival recordings and an original score.
The budget for some Pushkin audiobooks can top six figures, significantly higher than the estimated industry average of $10,000 to make a typical title.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (PG apologizes for the paywall, but hasn’t figured out a way around it.)
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I listen to a ton of audiobooks and love Gladwell. However, his previous audiobook, ‘Talking to Strangers,” uses this device of original audio and interviews. The production was terrible. I reached for the volume knob constantly. Audible (and their publishing arm ACX) is highly stringent on audio quality and one of the few audiobook platforms that require a consistent decibel range for that very reason. I hope he corrects that for this work.