UK Audio Publisher CSA Word Enters U.S.

by Kevin Howell -- Publishers Weekly, 7/17/2008 8:59:00 AM

Independent British audiobook publisher CSA Word will break into the U.S. market in August with distribution through Publishers Group West. Without any ties to large book publishers, the audio publisher has produced a backlist of nearly 400 classic titles since its founding in 1989.

The company will release four audiobooks each month, with 24 titles scheduled through February 2009. The first four releases are: Ian Richardson’s unabridged reading of Machiaveli’s The Prince and abridged recordings of Robert Grave’s I Claudius (read by Derek Jacobi), Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (read by Hugh Laurie) and  Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (read by Richard Dawkins). Future releases include abridged recordings of Evelyn Waugh’s Bridehead Revisited, E.M. Foresters’ A Room With a View, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and various works by P.G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, James Hilton and Henry James.

“PGW and CSA Word teamed up since they happened to be looking for an audio publisher with a strong reputation around the same time that we were looking for representation/distribution in the U.S.,” said CSA Word’s design and marketing manager Rebecca Fenton. “PGW was the perfect distributor for a company of our size and we knew that they had a good knowledge of audio after working with Audio Partners in the past.”