The recent climax of Series Four of the resurrected ‘Doctor Who’ turned otherwise normal people, myself included, into raging sci-fi geeks. Aside from the simple joys of Daleks speaking German, multiple explosions and every star in every universe evaporating one by one, geekiness was needed to cope with the criss-crossing, looping timelines of every character. [...]

Back when I was in high school, perhaps as some kind of tactic to get a bunch of dis uninterested first-generation slackers excited about literature, our English teacher spent several lessons discussing ‘Shakespeare’s Bawdy’ — the dirty jokes Shakespeare built into his plays to coax roars from the lower-classes (and maybe a few of the [...]

For more than five years I was an overworked and underpaid book editor at Simon & Schuster. And I loved every minute of it. Truly. So it thrills me that a bunch of titles from the S&S audiobook catalog are now available on eMusic. You can find some of the most notable titles here. In [...]

Dudes like romance novels. That’s what an audiobook publisher told me recently. Apparently, men make up a vast percentage of the audiobook download market, but sales of downloadable romance novels are flourishing. One theory: it’s way easier to enjoy a guilty pleasure when nobody can see what it is you’re reading. Men (and women, too!), [...]

Jonathan Ames, celebrated author and literary man-about-town, has just scored himself a deal with HBO! Ames’s TV show is based on the amazing noir detective story, “Bored to Death,” that he narrated on McSweeney’s Field Recordings. Remember that?

Last week I flew out to LA for Book Expo America, an annual convention for publishers and booksellers. While my former colleagues from Simon & Schuster were preparing to rub elbows with the likes of Diddy and Cameron Diaz at Prince’s book party (Held at his home! And he performed!) I was doing something nearly [...]

Some stories are so vibrant, so dramatic, so engrossing, that they just seem made to be read aloud. Luckily for us, it turns out that the archives of McSweeney’s are filled with tons of such stories. So when the indie publisher mailed a microphone to five of its most audacious writers to record pieces for [...]

When we decided to launch audiobooks last year, we immediately began brainstorming how to make them more “eMusic,” if you will. Discovery, independence, prestige — these are the qualities that we prize on the music side. How could we maintain those same characteristics with books as well? One name kept coming up: McSweeney’s, the incomparably [...]

This past week has been a busy one for me. As eMusic’s resident librarian, I’ve had the pleasure of sifting through the nearly 600 audiobook titles that are newly available on the site. I’m especially pleased to see offerings from some of my favorite authors ever: Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, and Junot Diaz. Find your [...]

“Yes, a lot of weird sh*t went down. I don’t expect people to understand. You have to understand my generation was fed up with what the audiobook scene had become. We were ready to take it back. When I checked into the studio, I didn’t care who came out alive. Including myself, man.”
–Dan Kennedy, author [...]

Around this time of year, our corner of the eMusic office tends to see a spike in foot traffic. Everyone says the same thing: they were just “in the area” and wanted to “swing by” to ask about something, but that imaginary “favor” always gives way to the same request: “I’m looking for some romantic [...]

By way of introducing our second book club pick, The Devil in the White City, I thought I’d begin with a quick lesson in Book Proposal Writing 101. Most good proposals contain a comparative title list in which you identify other (successful) books that are similar to yours in subject matter or tone. For the [...]

This has been a long time in the making, but today we’re happy to feature a piece by National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen on eMusic today. We approached Jonathan with a list of books we thought he might like to write about, but he suggested a different possibility to us: Christina Stead’s semi-obscure [...]

The second eMusic Book Club pick is…
The Devil in the White City.
Erik Larson’s 2003 bestseller is a potent combination of history and true crime that reads (and sounds!) like a novel. For plot details, here’s a blurb from the publisher: “Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson’s spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true [...]

It’s only December 20th, but it’s not too early to jumpstart one of my New Year’s resolutions: It’s time to put the Scanner Darkly book club discussion to bed. Let it die with dignity, no teary farewells or long goodbyes.

Confession time: Books are my profession and music is my obsession, but television is my most crippling addiction.

Shall we get this eMusic book club going?

Drum roll please: The first selection for eMusic’s brand new, sure to be stimulating book club is…

It’s just about time to kick off the first eMusic book club. Yay! I’ve narrowed down our choices to four undeniably dark but incredibly juicy books–two are science fiction and two are true crime. None are what you’d call light reading (or listening, as the case may be), but I think their profundity will make [...]

Wow, it feels a little bizarre (in a good way) to be posting on a blog that I’ve been reading for so long. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind — getting settled in my new job as Audiobooks Store Manager, learning new eMusic lingo, finding the coffee machine, preparing for launch. The normal [...]