Studio City Firm Taps Into Growing Market for Best Sellers on Tape

A year ago, Michael A. Viner read “A Brief History of Time,” a recent book about the universe by Cambridge scientist Stephen W. Hawking. And where Hawking saw stars, Viner heard the sound of money.

“I thought it was going to be a big hit, no one else did,” Viner recalled. The hard-cover version of Hawking’s book was published by Bantam Books, but Viner’s Studio City company, Dove Books on Tape, stepped in front of Bantam and other publishers and bought the audio rights to record the book on audiocassette tapes for a $2,000 advance.

A month later, Viner had a six-hour, four-volume tape version of Hawking’s book for sale--retail price $24.95--in bookstores nationwide.

Viner’s hunch paid off. Hawking’s book was one of the most popular nonfiction books of 1988, and has spent the past nine months on The Times’ best-seller list. As for Dove, it’s sold 40,000 copies of the tape version of the book, making it Dove’s biggest seller since Viner started the company four years ago.

Picking Winners

Most of Dove’s success, in fact, rides on Viner’s sixth sense about what new books will be big sellers and popular with the burgeoning audio-book market, while moving nimbly to get the rights to those books.

Dove, which is two-thirds owned by Viner, also banks on its ties with some well-known authors, including Viner’s close friend, best-selling fiction writer Sidney Sheldon (“Master of the Game,” “The Sands of Time”) to supply raw material for its tapes. Sheldon also likes the books-on-tape idea and is a part owner of Dove.

The market for books on tape is now roughly $100 million and growing by 25% to 50% a year, industry executives estimate. Although a limited number of audio books had been around for years, sales began surging in 1985 after Dove and the major book publishers jumped into the market to take advantage of the 300 million audiocassette players Americans own.

Dove’s sales this year will hit $4 million to $5 million, nearly double last year’s $2.5 million, while its unit sales may double to 600,000 taped books, Viner said.

The company, with 17 employees, has a catalogue of 140 taped books for sale that it’s produced and has about 30 more in production. The eclectic author list ranges from Howard Cosell to Charles Dickens. Dove also distributes an additional 50 to 60 titles that were produced by other companies.

It helps that Viner, 45, who also is a movie and TV producer (Sheldon’s “Windmills of the Gods” for TV), has close ties to the entertainment world. For the past 14 years, he’s been married to actress Deborah Raffin (“Death Wish 3”), who has also narrated and produced some of the tapes. Viner’s Hollywood links have helped attract such stars as Roger Moore and Roddy McDowall to narrate Dove’s books for a modest $2,000 fee, plus royalties. He contends that Dove stands apart from the competition by using higher quality tapes and production.

Tough Competitor

Dove’s rivals naturally disagree that Dove’s tapes are superior, but Dove looks for any edge it can find. The audio-book market has several competitors, notably publishing giants Simon & Schuster, a unit of Gulf & Western, and Random House, a subsidiary of Affiliated Publications.

Daniel Roth, vice president of Simon & Schuster’s audio division, claimed that his company and Random House are the biggest players in audio, while Dove is among the largest independent competitors. For Dove, Simon & Schuster and Random House are formidable foes simply because of the huge marketing clout they already have with bookstore chains.

“Our ability to cross-promote our audiocassettes with the hardcover division or the paperback division is a considerable advantage,” Roth said. “That’s very appealing to an author. Your product comes into one house and is marketed successfully in three different venues.”

Even so, Simon & Schuster and Random House also distribute some of their audio books through Dove to reach a wider audience.

Audience on Wheels

Much of that audience listens to books in their cars. “Americans drive over 2 billion miles a year,” and 70% of U.S.-made cars are now sold with cassette players, Roth said. When stuck in a traffic jam, drivers can forgo the news and listen to Joan Rivers reading her autobiography, “Enter Talking,” or Terry Southern reading his book “The Magic Christian.”

The major bookstores, such as Waldenbooks and B. Dalton/ Barnes & Noble, have racks devoted to audio books. Most of the books are condensed to fit on two 90-minute cassettes, which are sold in one package that retails between $9.95 and $14.95.

Taping a book can certainly add to an author’s bank account, although it pales compared to possible six-figure paperback rights. A best seller on tape can earn an author such as Hawking or Sheldon an extra $30,000, but the payoff more often is $5,000 to $15,000, Viner said.

But getting the books out to the public on tape involves lots of production and financial steps.

Once Viner or one of his staff has selected a book for tape, Dove must purchase the audio rights.

“Publishing houses have about three-quarters of the rights themselves,” Viner said, while the most popular authors have kept the oral rights to their works. “The Sidney Sheldons, the Tom Clancys, etc., will be selling them through their own agents,” Viner said.

To land the rights, Dove must pay an advance and a royalty on sales. The advance can range as high as $10,000, with royalties typically at 10% of the tape’s wholesale sales for a veteran author. Viner said the average wholesale price for a twin-cassette book is about $7.50, so an author might pick up 75 cents per copy. A big-name author, though, can command up to 10% of the tape’s retail price in royalties, he said.

Although Dove has used many celebrity readers, such as Academy Award winners Paul Scofield and Julie Andrews, sometimes it signs the book’s author. Most readers, Viner said, need several hours to compensate for pronunciation errors and other mistakes. One exception was sportscaster Howard Cosell, who read a three-hour version of his own book, “I Never Played the Game,” in three hours and 6 minutes. Viner said Cosell “made seven mistakes in the whole tape and updated his book while he read. It was the most phenomenal reading I have ever seen.”

After the master tape is produced, Dove sends the tape out to be mass-produced and distributed to the bookstores.

Costs, Profit

So the $7.50 average wholesale price of a Dove tape probably would include 75 cents to the author, 20 cents to the reader, and $4.50 in production, advertising and overhead costs, Viner said, leaving him about $2.05 in gross profit.

But Viner said some of Dove’s top bookstore customers get a hefty discount on the price for big orders, so that the $7.50-per-tape average--and Dove’s profit--is actually less. Bottom line: Dove tries to earn an average pretax profit of $1.50 per tape.