S&S Vet Launches New Media Company
by Shannon Maughan -- Publishers Weekly, 8/9/2004
Gilles Dana, former president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio, has formed Gildan Media, a multifaceted publishing company. Gildan, an independent operation funded by Dana, will come out of the gate with titles in its Gildan Audio division early next year. Dana also plans to publish software and is considering branching into books and possibly video.
Gildan Audio will specialize in personal-development and foreign-language instruction programs released exclusively on CD. The Your Coach in a Box imprint will be home to personal-development titles by bestselling authors and popular speakers in the field, and the Dr. Blair's Foreign Languages in No Time imprint is the umbrella for a line of programs developed by Dr. Robert Blair's Power-Glide Corp.
"Going back to my time at S&S, I have always had entrepreneurial interests," said Dana. "After S&S's new media division was shut down, I thought if I were going to run an audio division, maybe it should be my own." Dana is working out of an office in his home in Queens, N.Y., supported by "an army of freelancers." As for full-time staff members, Tom Spain is publisher of Gildan Audio. Spain previously worked with Dana at S&S as editorial director and associate publisher of the audio unit.
Distribution will be through Time Warner AudioBooks, which will also handle all back-office operations. "It was the right fit," said Dana. "They do not have an existing personal-development or foreign-language program."
Gildan Audio will debut in January with six titles. First up: Living the 7 Habits by Stephen R. Covey, Master Strategies for High Achievementby Brian Tracy, Secrets of Power Negotiatingby Roger Dawson and Your Sacred Questby Joan Borysenko. All titles will retail at six CDs at $19.95 or nine CDs at $29.95. The two initial language releases, Dr. Blair's Spanish in No Timeand Dr. Blair's French in No Time,feature three audio CDs and a practice CD-ROM for $17.95. Dana emphasized that these prices will be the standard for the company.
Following the January launch, Gildan Audio plans to release two personal development titles per month and two language titles per quarter, a mix of new material and backlist titles.
