The Frankfurt, Germany-based Bookwire GmbH is undergoing a rejig in its operations with the sole aim of making audiobooks and podcasts the center of its business operations, PublishingPerspective reported. The company said they are according greater emphasis on audiobooks and podcasts in view of the rising demand for the same in most parts of the world. In view of this, the senior business manager for audio at Bookwire, Christian Kessler who has been overseeing operations in the Deutschland, Austria, and the Confœderatio Helvetica, or Switzerland or DACH region will also be heading a team of digital marketing and distribution specialists that would be taking care of the company’s audiobook and podcast business.
Those who would be reporting to Kessler as per the new organizational setup include Benjamin Landgrebe and Felicitas Boos who will be serving as audio marketing managers, Daniel Ruh in publisher relations management, and Carmen Tanzer in publisher relations and services. Similarly, there is going to be Berry Kilb who would be working as manager of publisher relations and services and will also be looking at podcast distribution as well. Patrick Van Hecke would serve as the audio product manager while Holger Tuletz would be working as the head of product. A separate product owner position would be assigned later.
“Particular attention will be paid to our ‘Hörbuchwelten‘ [Audio Book Worlds] cosmos on Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and our own podcast, with regular audiobook tips and guests such as Cassandra Steen, Ivar Leon Menger, and Daniel Aminati,” said Kessler of the company’s new operational setup. “This enables us to guarantee optimal marketing for our publisher and label customers.”
The company had earlier launched what it described as the ‘We Audiobook You‘ or the WAY service which made available audiobooks to the masses with the use of text-to-speech technology. This is often considered controversial as AI-based audiobook production is often considered not up to the mark in comparison to audiobooks with human narrators. Bookwire however argues having human narrators onboard will only add to the cost and time of audiobook production and won’t help deal with the huge pileup of backlogs with the publishers.
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