Baen Books & RBmedia Announce Audiobook Publishing Partnership

Baen Books, one of the top independent publishers of science fiction and fantasy, and RBmedia, a global leader in spoken audio content, have announced an agreement to publish more than 170 audiobooks over the next three years. The partnership brings together Baen’s bestselling, award-winning content and RBmedia’s market-leading position as a publisher of sci-fi and fantasy audiobooks.

This agreement means publication of both frontlist titles–with a primary focus on alternate history and science fiction–as well as many titles from Baen’s extensive backlist, including classics from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Grand Masters and long-time fan favorites that have not previously been released in audio format. RBmedia will publish Baen Books titles across its family of imprints, including Recorded Books and Tantor.

Notable recent and upcoming RBmedia exclusive audiobook productions include:

  • In Fury Born by David Weber
  • The Council Wars series by John Ringo
  • The Belisarius series by David Drake & Eric Flint
  • The General series by David Drake, Eric Flint, S.M. Stirling, & Tony Daniel
  • The Domination (Draka) series by S.M. Stirling
  • SERRAted Edge: The Doubled Edge series by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis
  • The Witchy War trilogy by D.J. Butler
  • The Chronicles of Kencyrath by P.C. Hodgell The entire Technic History series

“Given the soaring demand for audiobooks, especially in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, Baen is thrilled to be entering into this partnership with RBmedia to make sure our rousing tales of adventure are available in all formats,” said James Minz, Director of Subsidiary Rights for Baen Books. “With this deal, Baen Books will have licensed as an audiobook virtually every available title on our extensive list.”

The first titles published under the agreement will be available starting this monthon Audible, iTunes, Google Play, Audiobooks.com, public libraries via RBdigital, and many other sites that provide digital audio. The remainder will be released over the next three years.

5 thoughts on “Baen Books & RBmedia Announce Audiobook Publishing Partnership

  1. Ok, Recorded Books is a class act. Assuming they’re picking the narrators and doing the production, this should be quite fine. I’ve got a folder on their server that they drop anything I want to listen into so I’ll give some of this content a listen once it’s up. The SERRAted Edge: The Doubled Edge series certainly will be well-worth listening to. Anything else I should listen to?

  2. A large percentage of my audiobooks are either Recorded Books or Tantor Audio. Yes, they do a quality job and this is excellent news.

    Do I have to clarify that both those imprints and several others are RBMedia?

  3. Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: BTW, have finally read all the [Kencyrath] novels. Enjoyed. Latest one felt a little weird, but not so much to put me off whatever comes down the pipe next.

    I thought that the last one, The Gates of Tagmeth, was extremely well done, but that this new one, By Gods Possessed, was kind of a hot mess. It didn’t seem like the author really had any idea where the story should go, so just strung together a random sequence of events and then tried to tie it up in the conclusion. I’m hoping that the next (and last, if I remember correctly) has a better sense of where it is going.

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