34 Audible Productions Named as Finalists for 2014 Audie Awards®

Audible.com’s two production arms, Audible Studios and ACX, received 34 nominations for the 2014 Audie Awards, which honor outstanding audiobooks and other spoken-word performances. Audible finalists featured in 17 different categories. Winners will be announced by the Audio Publishers Association at the Audies Gala on May 29, 2014, in New York City.

“We are very proud of the outstanding performances that distinguish all of the Audible titles recognized this year,” said Audible.com founder and CEO Donald Katz. “As Audible continues to cultivate and encourage the art of performing literature, we also seek to bring exciting original content to our listeners, so we are thrilled to see our efforts in original audio among the finalists this year.”

Among the highlights of this year’s Audie finalists for Audible:

• Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which has become one of the all-time bestselling titles for Audible Studios, is a finalist in the “Classics” category. In 2013, Audible sold six times the number of units of The Great Gatsby as it did in 2012, driven largely by Gyllenhaal’s stunning new interpretation.
• Former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens’s performance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a finalist in two separate categories, “Classics” and “Solo Narration – Male.”
• Ender’s Game Alive, an original dramatization of one of the best-selling works of science-fiction of all time, Ender’s Game, is a finalist in the “Original Work” category. Conceived and produced in the vein of a classic radio play, the recording includes a full cast and sound effects.
• METAtropolis: Green Space, a collection of science-fiction stories and the second sequel to the Hugo-nominated shared world audio anthology, METAtropolis: The Dawn of Uncivilization, features an all-star cast of award-winning narrators and is a finalist in the “Original Work” category.
• Also among the “Original Work” finalists, Rip-Off! features 13 of today’s best writers of speculative fiction, including John Scalzi and Jack Campbell, creating an entirely new short story based upon their favorite opening line of a classic work of fiction; narrators include Wil Wheaton and Scott Brick.
• Seven of Audible’s 34 finalists this year were produced and/or distributed via the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), an online audio rights marketplace and production platform launched by Audible in 2011. 15,000 audio titles have been made available via ACX since launch.
• Humorist and author John Hodgman’s bravura performance of Robert Sheckley’s science-fiction classic, Dimension of Miracles, is a finalist in the “Solo Narration—Male” category. Dimension of Miracles was personally selected and produced by Neil Gaiman on ACX as part of his “Neil Gaiman Presents” label. Three “Neil Gaiman Presents” audiobooks are finalists this year.

In 2013, Audible Studios won nine Audie Awards, including Audiobook of the Year, for Colin Firth’s performance of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, and the award for Distinguished Achievement in Production, for its multicast dramatization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With this year’s finalists, Audible Audie finalists total 104 over the last three years.

Audible, which invented and commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, has been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. In 2013, Audible members downloaded an average of more than 17 books a year. With Audible Studios and ACX, Audible.com is the largest producer of audiobooks in the world.

Audible is the exclusive provider of downloadable audiobooks to Apple’s iTunes store, which means that customers can access these finalists as well as tens of thousands of other award-winning audio titles at iTunes.

The Audio Publishers Association’s release, along with a complete list of nominees, can be found here: http://audiopubblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/19th-annual-audie-finalists-announced-in-twenty-nine-categories-winners-announced-at-the-audie-awards-gala-in-new-york-city-on-may-29th/.

ABOUT AUDIBLE, INC.
Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible’s mission is to establish literate listening as a core tool for anyone seeking to be more productive, better informed, or more thoughtfully entertained. Audible content includes more than 150,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is also the preeminent provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes® Store.