Media Decoder Blog: Stars Will Read Amazon Unit’s New Audio Book Series

Would you listen to a recording of “The End of the Affair” that lasted hours? What if Colin Firth were reading it?

Audible, an audio book division of Amazon.com, said last week that it would introduce a line of audio books read by famous actors, including Naomi Watts (“Summer,” by Edith Wharton), Dustin Hoffman (“Being There,” by Jerzy Kosinski), Annette Bening (“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf), Samuel L. Jackson (“A Rage in Harlem,” by Chester Himes) and Kim Basinger (“The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin).

The actors helped select the books they will read, making choices because they wanted “to inhabit a character that has always fascinated them, show a different side of themselves from what audiences have seen on camera or tell a personally beloved story,” said a statement from Audible. More books in the series are expected to be introduced throughout 2012.

Sales of digital audio books have boomed in recent months, industry statistics show. In 2010, sales of downloaded audio books totaled $81.9 million, a 39 percent increase from $59 million in 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers, an industry group.

Some audio books that have sold especially well have featured a celebrity behind the microphone. Little, Brown Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, published “Bossypants,” a memoir by Tina Fey, who read the audio book.

The audio book has sold more than 150,000 copies, said Anthony Goff, the publisher and director of Hachette Audio. Ms. Fey’s reading of the book — and the intimacy of spending hours one-on-one with a celebrity — have played a huge part in its success, he said.

“Celebrity narrators are great for bringing new fans to the format, never mind if they talk the audio up on their publicity tours,” Mr. Goff said in an e-mail. “That can really move the meter on sales.”

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