This Dove’s a Hawk in the Spoken-Word Audio Field : Media: Beverly Hills firm remains a strong independent in an industry increasingly dominated by behemoths.

Ex-record producer Michael Viner never won a Grammy for his work on behalf of performers such as Sammy Davis Jr. But his luck improved when he changed professions.

Viner and his wife, actress Deborah Raffin, captured their second spoken-word Grammy this week as the heads of Dove Audio. The award for “Audrey Hepburn’s Enchanted Tales” was the latest in a series of successes for Beverly Hills-based Dove, the largest independent producer of spoken-word tapes and compact discs in the country, with $22 million in retail sales.

Industry watchers say it’s largely because of Dove’s aggressive style that spoken-word audio has grown in this decade from a publishing sideshow known as books on tape to a mainstream media phenomenon that is expected to reach $1 billion to $1.4 billion in sales this year.

“Michael is an idea man like I’ve never known,” said audio publisher Jessica Kaye, who founded Publishing Mills after working as Dove’s vice president of business affairs. “He went out there and made a lot of noise about it while everyone else was clearing their throats.”

Spoken-word recordings have existed for decades, but it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the market mushroomed. Major New York publishing houses such as Paramount’s Simon & Schuster, Bertelsmann-owned Bantam Doubleday Dell, Advance Publications’ Random House and News Corp.’s HarperCollins launched audio divisions, and independents such as Dove began to spring up.

National retail sales of spoken-word audio have grown exponentially since then, rising 37% in 1992 and 40.3% last year, according to the Connecticut-based Audio Publishers Assn.

Dove, founded in 1988, has grown apace--though some wonder how long the growth can continue as competition increases.

Dove is 63%-owned by Viner and Raffin, with the rest held by private investors, including their friend and international best-selling novelist Sidney Sheldon. Sales have risen an average 25% annually for the last few years, Viner said, adding that profit has averaged in the “mid- to high six figures.”

Viner, who is also a film and television producer, and Raffin are known for bringing a sometimes bruising Hollywood approach to a fairly mannered industry.

Viner says he still uses lessons learned in the record industry.

“As with recording artists, we care more about the relationships with the readers (who narrate the books) and, of course, the writers,” he said. “And we will promote much harder than anyone else in the business.”

In one demonstration of that aggressiveness, Dove quickly snapped up the audio rights to Robert James Waller’s “The Bridges of Madison County,” which was published by Warner Books and was a potential hot property for Time Warner’s 8-month-old Audiobooks division.

The book, narrated by Waller, went on to become Dove’s biggest seller, at about 190,000 copies to date. The digital two-cassette recording sells for about $17.95. The book, by comparison, has sold more than 4 million copies.

At $24.95, Stephen J. Hawking’s four-cassette release of “A Brief History of Time” is the company’s star earner, generating nearly $4.5 million in retail sales.

Viner says Time Warner tried to buy Dove when it re-entered the audio book business last June (after selling off a unit in the early 1980s). Time Warner declined to comment. While Viner said he is not interested in selling Dove now, some observers say companies like his will eventually have to sell out as multimedia behemoths such as Time Warner vie for a bigger share of the business.

One way Dove distinguishes itself is in its close ties to Hollywood celebrities. Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman are among those who have narrated books for the company. In one of its most ambitious projects, the company recently hired Gregory Peck to read the Bible. The 12-cassette edition is due out soon.

Last year, Dove added about 100 titles to its library of more than 800 fiction and nonfiction offerings. The list includes literary classics, children’s books, compilations of National Public Radio shows, comedy, self-help and educational material, as well as more than 100 works in Spanish.

In spite of its rapid expansion, the industry is still young and relatively small. A widely predicted “explosion” has yet to occur. Observers say one key to growth is a movement into music and video stores. For that to happen, Viner said, books on tape will have to evolve into books on CD.

Dove was the first audio publisher to make its products widely available on compact disc. It distributes limited editions of its bestsellers--Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance” and the 1994 Grammy-nominated “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge,” read by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward--to Wherehouse Entertainment, Tower Records, Blockbuster Music and Musicland stores.

Some bookstore owners caution that because CDs themselves are such a young market, the venture is too risky for audio publishers. Viner concedes that CD sales remain slight. A bestseller on CD means 3,000 units, compared to 180,000 or so for a best-selling cassette. “We hope to break even on CDs at the moment . . . but they are the future,” he says.