If you follow the publishing industry at all—and I’m assuming you do at least in passing if you’re reading this blog—you know that interesting things are happening in the audiobook industry right now.

And given our modern-day need for continual entertainment, it’s none too soon.

Who’d have thought one day we’d be able to read a book while waiting for an oil change and then keep listening to that book in the car on the way home without missing a beat?

Well, book platform developers, for one. And book sellers, for another. Particularly ebook and audiobook sellers.

And it’s that advance in technology, among other reasons, that WMG is moving full steam ahead with audiobook versions of our authors’ books.

Within the next year, you can expect to be able to find a number of our titles available in audiobook form, from nonfiction titles such as the Freelancer’s Survival Guide and Surviving the Transition to fiction titles long and short from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kristine Grayson, Dean Wesley Smith and others. In fact, you’ll even be able to hear the authors reading some of their own work!

We’re excited about this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is our company mission to provide readers with our authors’ works in the format the reader wants to buy. And although audiobooks are a small segment of the market share currently, we think that will grow as technology becomes more mobile and interactive.

I can’t wait to see what the developers come up with next.

After all, our whole lives seem to be in our smartphones these days. Now your whole library can be too, visually and audibly.

And as much fun as that is for the reader, it’s equally fun for the publishers. Our audio director, Jane Kennedy, gets to spend much of her day listening to great writing performed by some amazing narrators.

And soon, she’ll be narrating some stories herself. It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it <grin>.

It’s my belief that there’s never been a better time to be working in the book/entertainment industry.

And you just can’t make that stuff up.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer