Page 52 - Southern Oregon Magazine Fall 2022

neck of the woods | in the biz

BLACKSTONE

PUBLISHING

a big business in a small town

lynn leissler
provided by blackstone publishing

udiobook readers may know the company as Blackstone
Audio, but there’s a lot happening on three acres in Ashland,
both in physical space and scope. For one, they are now
Acalled Blackstone Publishing. Greg Boguslawski, Executive
Vice President, led me on a tour of the facility, with each corner we
turned revealing another facet, another surprise. Greg is proud of the
company, a place he’s called his work home since college graduation
almost 20 years ago.

It all started in the mid-1980s. Craig Black was an avid reader with
little time to indulge his pleasure. He confesses to slyly reading while
stuck in Los Angeles traffic – and to having a few fender benders, but
only at 5 mph. A concerned friend gave him an audiobook on cassette
tapes and he was hooked. Fast forward a few years, and in a late-in-life
renaissance, Black decided to become an audiobook publisher. He and
his wife Michelle sold their home and moved to Oregon. In 1987, they
started the business in their garage in Medford, eventually moving the
operation to Ashland.

In the early days, readers rented the books. A large book such as Atlas
Shrugged (recorded on 35 cassette tapes), would have cost $200 to
purchase. When cassette tapes were relegated to the remember-when
past, CDs took their place, then books for MP3 players were added,
and eventually streaming options became available.

The Blackstone campus has three recording studios. Local readers uti-
lize these studios, and on occasion an actor passing through will stay
a few days to record a book. Others are recorded at studios in New
York City or Los Angeles. Thirty duplicators simultaneously produce
audiobooks, which are then checked, labeled, and placed in sleeves
inside a case. The recordings are thoroughly checked for accuracy in
text and pronunciation, for consistency in voice. Most of these books
go to stores like Barnes & Noble, directly to consumers, or to libraries.

Over their long history, they have developed and maintained good
relationships throughout the industry, allowing them to readily step
in when some longstanding big publishers downsized their audiobook
production. Blackstone currently produces 90-95% of the audiobooks
for Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Scholastic, Disney,
Recorded Books, and more. Your next audiobook listen might contain
one of those names, but the physical production may well have hap-
pened in the Rogue Valley.

50 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | fall 2022