Audible: Don Katz

So you guys go public in the fall of nineteen ninety nine. And by the spring of two thousand The dot com

Bubble bursts it c it crashes. Yeah. There were fifteen hundred public internet companies. At the beginning of two thousand. And one hundred and forty at the

beginning of two thousand three. But it was that kind of you know, of decimation and um The ста Yeah, which was once twenty nine dollars or something.

Yeah. Went down. Two Four cents. At the end of two thousand.

Four cents. We are How I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.

They built. Guy Raz and on the show today. How in the era of clunky cassette tapes, Don Katz created a whole new kind of audio experience. Online and on demand. With Audible.

Oh. Back in the mid-1990s, back before you could plug in a pair of earbuds and choose from hundreds of thousands of different books, millions of different podcasts, or tens of millions of different songs, back before any of that, A former journalist turned writer named Don Katz. Had a problem. During his daily jog in New York City, he would listen to books on tape.

literally on tape as in cassette tapes. And Don wondered, why do I have to lug around a cassette player and then flip the cassette to side B in the middle of my run? Surely there must be an easier way, he thought. And in fact, at the time. There was. MP3 technology existed, except almost no one used it. In the mid nineteen nineties,

Compact disc sails were on a tear. It would take another seven years before CDs began to decline. But done? was optimistic. And at the age of 42, he decided to ditch his successful career as a writer.

And try to start something he knew nothing about. A tech company. a company that would create a digital audio catalogue of books and storytelling and spoken word, and deliver those stories to users through a device specially designed to play that audio. And as you will hear

In the early days. Not many people came to the party. The technology was way ahead of its time, probably too ahead of its time. In fact, Audible, the company Don founded, almost collapsed in the early two thousands when its stock price hovered at around four cents a share.

But today, of course, Audible holds the biggest audiobook catalog in the world. It dominates the space with a library of over 600,000 titles. And the company is now part of the Amazon family, which bought Audible for$300 million in 2008. But getting to that point. was painful.

and full of setbacks. And the story includes a cameo appearance from none other than Steve Jobs. Don Katz was a staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine during its heyday in the late seventies and eighties. He grew up in Chicago in the fifties and sixties and strongly identified with his dad. who owned a small business.

So my father was Just incredibly kind of smart. Kind and you know it's a cliche. But he was one of these guys you would want to be your your your kinda you know best friend. I looked Up to him. I

Probably wished he was Home more? Because He was Frankly, like I became uh someone who worked

A lot. And he was also Um He'd been a war hero. He he ran away from home.

basically with seventeen and uh was was behind Enemy lines highly decorated. Italy or or He was in the b he was in the Black Forest in Germany. Germany, wow. Yeah, and he didn't really

Talk about it. He wasn't one of those guys But I had a different purple heart. Every time I broke a leg in hockey or something, I would find I would wake up and find the purple heart on my pillow. And it was It was actually a guitar manufacturer. Yeah, my dad made uh make guitars, uh he made them for Sears, silver tones. But I remember that there were some pretty great

bands of the era. One called Spirit that had a fantastic guitarist named Randy California, who only would play play K's and the like. But But my dad's kind of claim to fame at that time was that he Put Cord books.

In guitars. And started this whole idea that you too can play the guitar. And it alienated a lot of the musicians, including Barney Kessel and Les Paul, and people that he was friends with. Because they were infuriated. to say that their instrument was any more easier to play.

Then a strut than a than a violin. And of course he said Yeah, but you know it is. And so it ended up that My family was all in Newsweek magazine taking our guitar lessons together. Because my dad had uh had decided to be part of this you two can play the guitar, which was part of the whole

Мід систі фок музик. Kind of kinda movement. So so I think back and he was definitely somebody who also liked to challenge The status quo, which I think I have come by honestly. So was he financially successful? He was financially successful in the way of

A rising entrepreneur Of his time. But Very tragically. Uh, he went out to play tennis at forty seven years old on a Saturday.

And I got a call when I was in college saying that he died playing tennis. Uh Very suddenly. Of a massive heart attack. Wow. And it really marked

my life in so many ways. It was definitely a You know a a formative experience. I I've heard and you probably have heard this too, that uh There's a lot of patterns of fatherlessness. in highly entrepreneurial people. Whether it's through abandonment or

Or early death. including taking ridiculous risks as a journalist in the early part of my career. um where I could have easily gotten gotten killed several times. I think I was working out his heroism and other kinds of things. So you know you you come to these things a little later in life, but I it is interesting to reflect on it. So for college, I I know that that you went to NYU and you majored in in English. And from what I understand, Ralph Ellison like the

Ralph Ellison, the invisible man Ralph Ellison, uh uh w was a professor there and um And you kinda had an opportunity to sort of work with him, to be tutored by him. Right. He taught me how to read in a way that I I fully didn't understand.

And uh I I knew that I Loved more than anything the the the sound. And I was just uh and how it it felt to me. But I Ralph actually Kind of flushed it out.

In a way that it became Something that I was uh fully able to understand. He also He also gave me the uh I think the the confidence To try to be a professional writer, which I proceeded to do for uh for twenty years. Was was was Ralph Ellison your like your thesis advisor?

Yeah, he basically was. And uh Ralph was a Deep and exacting. intellectual so I had to uh work really hard and uh and read really hard. Anyways it was a it was a an amazing experience. He uh

He would sit with a big stogie. Ні, з тріли с Ома. I s I've said that it his voice was like a Coal car coming out of mine. And I would just be

mesmerized and uh and he was a big supporter, and uh you know, later Even the audible transition right at the time he died. He was incredibly supportive of uh And what I did.

So you graduate. From from NYU. And you're sort of Thinking That you want to be a writer, but it's not

That easy. To do so and you did what um Lots of people do, which is you decide to go to graduate school to continue studying. I I'm assuming you went to to London, to London School of Economics. Um I assuming correctly that you didn't really know what you wanted to do. You wanted to kinda buy some time. Absolutely. In fact, I thought at the time almost everybody thought if you didn't know what you should do, you should go to law school. Yes. Um but I studied uh European economics and Politics and international history.

And I was living with Uh My Oh old friend. uh Barbara who was a rock writer. She had gone

to be a rock and roll writer in in London. And so we just Paired up and and shared a flat. And so I would come home and there would be, you know, Rod Stewart and Keith Richards and uh

And so th that's who she hung out with. Wow. And your roommate, um, Barbara, this is somebody you knew from College. From high school. From high school, well. And Just to make money, Barbara got me uh

Little gigs reviewing albums for the British uh Exactly. New Musical Express sounds, uh And I I'll never forget I wrote one about uh Frankie Valley. And the four seasons. I got to interview Frankie Valley and the like.

And I I was just kinda trying to trying to figure it out. I I matriculated for a PhD, but I just didn't know. You know, what I wanted to do. Alright, so you're You're doing a little writing and and kinda getting into the music scene in London and And I guess one night

you're out of dinner and and you meet a guy who winds up Kind of launching your career in In journalism, uh wha what's the story? Absolutely. Sitting next to a guy named Robert Greenfield.

who introduces himself as a rolling stone writer. And we just get chatting. And I basically told him about some of the things that were going on, notably what was going on in Spain. at the end of Franco. When I talk to him about

You know, a very different perspective on the world because I was based in London and and reading the European press And he said, You know You should package one of these things and write This guy Yan Wener who I work with at Rolling Stone

um a letter with some ideas because you could you could just, you know, write about these are great stories you've got. And I went ahead and I sat down and I wrote This letter and the two or three ideas. No no I type I type the letter to Yanwh. I'm my typewriter. Did you pitch an idea for an article which was what? What did you write in the letter? What was the pitch? The great dictator of Spain.

It would be very interesting. to illuminate the liberation movement of the Eta Basque Separatists. And the perspective of this last dictator. Going down Basically the last

of the World War Two era, you know, dictators and it would be an interesting story. And I get a telegram saying go to Spain And I'm not so sure. anyone I work with at Audible or my children know what a telegram even looks like. Yeah.'Cause that's that was the fast way to get to me was to say, get it get out of here, go go go write the story. And it basically said right you know, right Write five to seven thousand words and we'll pay you fifteen hundred dollars and reasonable expenses. This sounds like a uh this sounds like a dispatch from Hunter Thompson, right? He would say, Oh, and reasonable expenses from Yon Winter. But but I mean you get this you get this telegram from him.

Just curious. Did you have a mild panic attack?'Cause you were twenty three, and Rolling Stone was hugely influential by that point. way out with crazy ideas, whatever they are, which is that oh my God, I'm a fraud and they're about to find it out. Yeah. But it's not the only time of my life that you know I've I've kind of you know had that feeling. So uh I had no idea what to do, and I got myself to Madrid. I knew I'd have to get basically credential to cover what was supposed to be a funeral. And they so what happened was all of the Of the World War Two era journalists who were still around, the wire service guys, they all descended on Madrid for almost like a last hurrah. And they took me under

They're a collective wing. And showed me a whole lot of stuff about how to be a more traditional journalist. And I sat down and I wrote. This story. And It came out.

As I'd written it. And On the cover it said Dispatch from the Valley of the Fallen. With my name on it on Rolling Stone magazine. Now I'm twenty three years old. And I was like I can't believe this. And of course

Yeah. Because I really hadn't been a student journalist, I just wrote, you know, um I didn't know. That Uh, as it was explained to me later, that usually they like to edit these things a lot, but they should they did. They just put it in. And so I guess y you I mean you start writing more and more pieces for for Rolling Stone and and then eventually some some other publications. Um

And and he starts to travel more like to to Northern Ireland and I I think he went to Ethiopia and a bunch of different war zones. Yeah. But I mean you were You were incr also incredibly young when you were getting those those bylines. Um I read a story and I I I love the story, um, that You were so self-conscious about being like quote found out

that you know, that'cause you were so young that Whenever one of uh w one of your American editors would come to London. You would actually not be there deliberately, like you so you wouldn't have to meet them face to face? I thought if they saw

how young I I I think I looked like I was twelve when I was twenty three years old. I uh I was incredibly self conscious and I did Try to be out on assignment. When the editors Um I was working with, you know, telephonically. Or in town.

for a while and uh eventually when I revealed myself and I met them, they did exactly what I expect. Oh come on, you're you're not done, are you? Like they they were incredulous. Um I so I guess you stayed in Europe For

For several years, and I guess by the what, like the late seventies you moved to New York to work? At Rolling Stone. And and you I think and I think you also got married around then. Um how did you meet your wife? I met my wife Leslie. In uh nineteen eighty two on a river raft trip.

In Pennsylvania. out of Jim Thorpe. Pennsylvania. And uh We were both with

different people and uh We kinda hit it off and uh I went off to China. for National Geographic and spent Uh literally months traveling the silk road.

It was incredible trip, but it was long. And when I got back the uh relationship with Yeah. Former girlfriend was over and uh She said to me, I I know who you're gonna call.

What people said lastly Lars and that she was right.'Cause you had connected with her on that on that River Raptor trip? Definitely. I thought she was great. So uh So and and and and life went on from there and uh It's been an amazing Marriage and uh just about

Nothing I can think of that That's been good for me. She hasn't been an an amazing Part of the Including memorably

Referring to my sudden You turn from writer to entrepreneur. as a non toxic midlife crisis. Which we'll which we'll get to in in a in a moment. Um But I mean uh

At that time, Yim, you were still a journalist for Rolling Stone. You g got this great job. uh you're getting paid and a salary When did you I I know that you you wrote your first book, which was the story of Sears, the the department store. Um, I guess the history of Sears and then kinda like the rise and fall of it. Sh and the book came out in like eighty seven. Why did you want to write a book about Sears?

Well, I kinda thought how Weird would it be. To take this. You know, this hippie counterculture storytelling.

A big old American company. What happened to it. And I wrote another letter. I wrote a letter to The the CEO and chairman of Sears, a guy named Ed Telling. who was famous for never having given an interview. Completely introverted guy, the beat reporters couldn't get Anything out of

And telling. And basically I said that it if he If he can deal with the great American corporation of the twentieth century. Changing itself so as to continue.

to be the most beloved And trusted company. of the century it's a matter of historical record. And um He just

Decided. Then he'd let me in. And this was Really rare. 'Cause as you all know, corporations tend to

be you know, Pentagon like in their c control over over the truth. And so uh I proceeded to show up as a Bearded. Still looking quite young guy. And

People who worked at Sears decided I was okay. Because I had sold Ed Telling. On something they never thought anybody would sell it on. So I was a salesman. in their eyes. And I just tried you know, I spent

Wow and uh Did I get an NBA? In real time. I'm wondering if Ed Telling Because he was widely

reviled by the business press, right? He was considered to be a disastrous leader. In the end, one could argue he he he redeemed himself, but do you think that he wanted you to write this book so he would come out being redeemed? I think he wanted to be part of history. I think he like so many of these series guys who They came and transferred their battlefield loyalties from World War Two to this Heartland Corporation. They lived these lives where they would move fourteen, sixteen times. I mean that was part of a corporate life in those days. But boy oh boy, it was a it was a pretty epic task to then turn it into this uh You know, this tale of America, but it was a tale of of hubris. It was a tale of the final founder sowing the seeds of the destruction of the company. I have a whole chapter remember in there about the building of the Sears Tower. They made this genius conception of every

Customer thought Sears was the friendly guy down the street, the member of the Kawanas Club. Yeah, and it sears was this localized. Reality. And once they built that tower and said that they're one of the most powerful companies in the world.

all the bad stuff started happening because it it it it it was just thought to be such a Yeah, an unfortunate statement of their of their purpose. But that company's story is um is very much about the f the the end of the what what ended up happening in the seventies, eighties is Americans realized that other countries actually sometimes were even more productive than they were. And all those all that wake up call was part of that story. You are a runner. Right. Or War Runner or maybe Storm.

I'm I'm a hockey player who runs uh or did run A lot so as to keep in shape. I definitely liked to run in my in my regimen when I was living in New York. As a writer.

was to take off in Riverside Park. And run several miles at the end of the day. And while you ran, what would you listen to music? Well, I ran with a partner And we would just chat.

The whole time. Or I listen to The early Audiobooks. On cassette. On cassette. Painful it was, uh at a Sony Walkman in a belly pack.

knocking around and I just remember the utter irritation of trying to change the tapes when you're aerobically taxed. And uh and how because you rented them in these big brown boxes that they would uh often not work at all. Which was really irritating when you're a couple miles. From home and but I remember listening to, you know, John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World, I would take on these long

You know, kind of Mm. Books and uh and jog along and listen. At that point, I was the only person I knew who who did that. Okay, so I think this is the early nineteen nineties and

During this time, I guess, you're you're also researching in another book. Uh which I think it was a book about Like the burgeon tech industry. So Uh At what point were you like?

Wait, uh I'm I might have a business idea here. Like how did how did that happen? So So I I had this book contract, I I began to connect with people who We're teaching me. What I didn't know about

Technology. And one of the people who was my key contacts Was my college roommate from NYU Edward. one of my close friends to this day.

who was a computer friggin' genius and We were talking about Signal compression. Basically about analog to digital signal compression. And I was asking

All these questions about how Text fit through The internet which was Wait for it. The phone lines. There was no broadband at all.

And these discussions were happening in Ninety three, ninety four. And he had this Thought he said you know Yeah, you could

You could get voice. Through the phone line. It could be compressed. And we went back and forth and I said, Ed. You know If you could take

Audio books. And send them through the phone line. The cost of the of the packaging and all those tapes wouldn't be there. You could lower the cost. I remember saying we liberate the signal.

Meaning how do we get the audio into my belly pack? Yeah. So I can watch go around with it. Um Or how are we gonna get it into cars? Yeah.

Because that's where people have have a lot of time. I remember thinking. If you took these audio books You could actually liberate time for people.

And We got kind of more Excited about it. And I got more and more interested in What it would mean

to do this because nobody else was doing it. Okay, so you're thinking of making some new type of digital device or or like a system for playing audio. So w what did you start to do? So throughout nineteen ninety four I spent time trying to find

Anyone I could find. To talk. About A future That involved.

These little devices That were filled with the sound It's the soundscape of culture. Basically the the soundtrack of culture. I remember talking in various ways, or the sound of civilization. I remember all these things coming out saying, can't you see it? And like people thought I was out of my mind. I mean I couldn't find Anybody. Who knew what I was talking about, except for Ed

And uh we just decided to Write it up. Into a business plan. To do a business plan to create To create a company that we decided should be called

Audible words. And it would be a company that made what? Books on tape? That were Digital? Believe it or not, guy, it was actually a solid state cassette. It was a cassette that you hooked to the phone line. That was the first patent.

And the The idea was You'd have the signal come over, you'd capture it in the cassette flash memory, and You'd push it into the tape bed in your car, which incidentally Everybody had at that point.

And you'd be able to listen. And we just played with it, but I have to tell you, I wrote Uh А бізнес план. And uh it was a like a hundred and ten page narrative. What was a story? It was a narrative.

Saying what? The story was That We would occupy This time of people's life, which was and we said when you're

Eyes are busy, but your mind is free. we would create a higher level of purpose that the AM F M radio. Was for everybody, і вас for you. and you would be able to program your own listening time.

in the future through digital technology. And that we would have a company. That would sell А салед стай діджитал девайс. As well as content, it would be about books and literature.

It would allow you to listen to Fresh air and marketplace and all these Shows that played at two o'clock in the afternoon. And We got a patent together. On a downloadable

System. of for for media That would be captured by a solid state device. And I I remember it was fourteen thousand dollars that I put on my credit card. Wow and uh And'cause you know, what do we know? Now I know, of course, you know, without a portfolio patents are worthless, but you know, at that point I didn't. So that was the first thing we did.

But we actually started to get really excited about this. So so instead of terrestrial radio, you could get it delivered to the internet instead of uh A an audio book on tape or a book or a speech on tape or some kind of you know inspiring I don't know, inspirational thing. You just basically say this business is gonna deliver this stuff to you through your phone line. It didn't play up the book part of it because the business itself was so infinitesimal.

uh en and and small What I s what I did was I realized Through just basic journalistic research. That ninety three million Americans drove to work alone every morning. There were at that point only Department of Transportation number.

Which you could extrapolate to hundreds of millions of hours of time people sit in traffic. I then matched the sociological data that show that the most frustrating time of people's days and least valuable time was Is sitting in traffic. And I basically just We said.

If we only penetrate Nine percent of them at ten dollars a month. For a service that enriched their lives, here's how big the business would be. Right. And that's how we were able to get, you know, what's now very small amounts of money, but was then

to us a lot of money to uh To to make audible. Because you were writing a book. How did this idea just take over your mind and your life? Because All of us get ideas. We've all had a business idea.

Um and sometimes It it captures us for a week. Or two weeks. I think I

There were multiple things inspiring me at the time. One was I just But It was interesting. That I daydreamed about this. More than I was daydreaming about the next paragraph or the next day's writing.

The other thing was I kept going to people Who I otherwise respected. Who thought I was crazy? They thought you were crazy because you had a great gig and you were respected and they were so dismissive of it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it was like they just didn't get it. I mean even

People who took the time. Said Why don't you just package it and try to sell it to Sony for twenty five thousand dollars? It might be something they're interested in. It was such a dismissive Reaction to it. And that made me more inspired to go ahead and try try to do it.

Yeah. When we come back in just a moment. Turns out that building a new type of audio player and a new type of audio marketplace? And a whole new type of audio experience?

is hard. And that's before the dot com bust. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz.

So it's around nineteen ninety five and Doncatz is trying to build an audio player and platform for audiobooks, interviews, comedy, and more. What will become audible? But first, he has to raise money. And one of the first people he calls is a former source from the world of tech, a guy named Tim Mott. And Tim Mutt was a great entrepreneur. and is a great, great, great person. He was one of the founding people at Electronic Arts. The three people who develop Electronic Arts. And when Tim Mott read the

Primitive business plan, he called and said, I would fund this. This is Amazing. Don when you went to your wife and you said Hey, I want to do this. I want to start a business.

What it what was her reaction? Was she like go for it? I think at one point she said it was a Yeah, it's it sounds a little sexist now, but she said it's better than a blonde. She'd already been such an amazing partner for someone who was willing to live without a net. Um

Because you know, I was freelance and book writer and everything. Um but I was scared. I mean I have I had three kids, I don't mortgage. Um You were forty three? I was forty three years old. And I took an eighty five percent year over year pay cut to start Audible. And meanwhile, from what I know. you were looking for a business partner and and you wanted it to be

uh Ed Lau, who's your former your former roommate, the guy who was that computer genius. Uh but he wasn't able to join you, right? So you so you needed to find Presumably someone else, right? Yeah. I went out to find a new

You know, science partner. And found My you know, lifelong friend and wonderful person guy story. who was a senior person at At Bell Labs.

And guy. Decided to, you know. Hear the siren song and he joined me. Early. H how did you convince him? How did you convince him? Or how did you I basic I basically said I don't I don't know if we're gonna

overcome what a venture capitalist would call the tech risk, you know, and the execution risk. But Whatever we build, we're gonna put in front of consumers. And you'll begin to say that. I said, You don't have to take the eighty five percent your pay cut I took.

But you have to take sixty. And you're gonna get all these Options and uh guy jumped into the merry band. Your initial backer, uh, Tim Mott. put in I think like four hundred thousand dollars in in seed capital. Yep.

And what did you know at the time about how to you know, like how to how to deal with equity and and valuations. I mean Now of course every company. It doesn't matter what the company is. It seems like their perceived level of valuation is twenty million dollars. Oh, my company's valued at twenty million dollars. And you're like

Yeah. Nothing. We're giving ourselves a twenty million dollar valuation. How did you know? how to do that and and how to, you know, because I literally trusted Tim and you know, I was a fast study, as journalists are. So I was picking the stuff up and And taking it in.

Pretty quickly, and Tim's first round was you know, allowed us to evolve the team. And we took over a a doctor's office. In Montclair a single room. Uh not far from where I'm speaking in New Jersey. Yeah. And uh we paint we painted it on a Sunday and moved in on a

on a Monday, so now we moved out of my attic and uh had a place to You know, together. Yeah. And then m Tim and I hit the road for California. To raise more money and also begin the process of building. The first download system, the first way of actually securing the intellectual property. This was years before the terms about the

Digital rights management were there. Yeah. Because I'd had all so many um outside magazine articles ripped off. on the Unix internet and people put their own names on them and the like that I kinda had this idea This kind of professional grade creativity might need to be protected. Yeah. So um company very well known called IDO. Which uh does industrial design.

came in t and they were totally excited about all this stuff, including everything from, you know, the idea of securing the IP and the download system and building a device. with us so um That process started and yeah, we went out and spent a lot of time Going up and down Sandhill Road, getting to know people.

Alright, so you're able to secure the capital, I think I think if I guess a few million dollars to get an audio player built, but also y I mean you've got to uh you've got to get content for that audio player and you were gonna be the CEO of the company. Uh you were gonna manage people and manage a team, is that right? Yes. So I was president and CEO and Tim was chairman. And we meet we formed a board. And I believe this idea of seeing the future and seeing these opportunities and doing something that had been done.

And persuading people to be important thing. But it is also true that Yeah. Managing people is a different art.

And science which is But I did have all those years. of watching both entrepreneurs And others lead. It just to me it just sounds incredibly overwhelming. Like an o overwhelming

amount of things to do. I I understand that you had written books about leaders, but but you never had like a leadership position. at any of the publications where you work. You weren't an editor at Rolling Stone. Were you nervous about Becoming

A manager of people in any way? I was definitely nervous, but I was I was on point, you know, look uh um I definitely felt More concerned about having put

Three and a half million dollars. into play that was other people's money and feeling deeply responsible to them and to others, particularly people who left perfectly good jobs. Cause a lot of these people left really nice jobs. to join this uh This vision of the possible. So uh yeah, it was incredibly

Stressful. But but you did say that, you know, part of the thing was about getting the content. And I would argue that Probably our original funders Discounted how

hard it was gonna be. To convince the gatekeepers of of the content that existed. To see this particular, you know, future. What was the content that you envisioned? being on this player. Because you you had two paths, right? You're you you you got two things you gotta do at the same time. You've got one team building the actual device that's gonna play the stuff, and then presumably another team

Getting the content. So what what did you think the content was gonna be? I I thought the content would be frankly what it what it became. A mixture of literally the best possible Public expression in words.

You know, if the Churchill Club had profound speeches. I wanted to carry that. If uh We we turned the San Jose Mercury News into an audio program. You you w you have people reading the newspaper as as content? Yeah. Okay. So w what el um what else? What other kind of content?

Well, we got some of your buddies at at N PR so we can have car talk or Marketplace. Which cart which was owned by those guys, so you didn't have to deal with NPR. By by ninety nine, we'd s I'd signed up Robin Williams. To do Original programming.

For us. We wanted One of the audio books. Two, but It was many many years. We had much more content that was just different kinds of

Public content. Yeah. That we either narrated or other things, uh before we had A lot of books, but the first download when it finally happened was in I remember October thirty first of ninety seven. It was Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus, the uh the the self help book. And I remember too it was to a uh a customer in Cave Creek, Arizona, and that was and it was Done at

the a then pretty famous technology conference called the agenda conference. Uh was this where we unveiled The service and gave everybody From you know Bill Gates to Steve Jobs and Michael Jell, uh um this digital audio player we made. And uh I'm sure

The majority of them were sawed in half back in various labs when people got home to see what's inside them. The idea. Was way ahead of its time. And and often when that happens, businesses don't make it'cause they're too early. Which I think. So it's a very unusual story. To be alive that long. So you have this device that comes out in ninety-seven, and how did

The user experience. this device. It was you buy this thing, it's in a docking station, and then what, you go to the Audible website and there's a menu of things, you can get car talk, you can get the speeches from whatever the Commonwealth Club, whatever it was, and you would a la carte by those things and then they would Download to this. device that was connected to your computer through a serial port. Am I am I describing this right?

That's exactly right. That's that's how it worked. And uh yeah, it did. Take a long time to come down. The internet was incredibly choppy over the phone lines before broadband. So we had really sophisticated resume features. Which ended up being another things people celebrated for our tech chops uh later.

Because it would drop off and that way, you know, it was always kinda waiting for you in the morning. Um then you were supposed to drive to work and come home and put it back. in the dock and get to work smarter than the guy in the next cube, as we used to say. And uh that was it. Now it should be said, it sounded like crap. I mean the audio quality Was

Not good. It literally sounded like somebody Talking to you with a covet mask in the bottom of a bathtub or something. It was just not It was not good audio. But we kept

Pushing the science forward so Guy and I would go around and visit these Rocket scientists who Development Codex. Sure. And and we would work with them. The codex is is I should say I say sure because I'm in audio. Right, but it's a it's an it's basically a software algorithm that that deals with the compression factor.

of the audio and gives you You know, relative sound clarity versus not. And we did pushed the labs out there to make Much better sounding. Audio, you know, even month over month that allowed us to uh

The clarity to go up. But in the end, you know, the user experience was really clunky and primitive to the point that when I meet people who are original customers I always say, I we should have been paying you. Done.

When you pitched this idea to investors, you talked about ninety-three million Commuters people in their cars. not using that time valuably. Well this device was not designed for the car, so who was When this came out in November of nineteen ninety seven,

Did you sell any of them? D was it successful? We didn't sell many, but the people who got them Oh. They did use another car. They just they plugged them into a little speaker that sat on their side. We gave them a a cassette converter.

that we had that would um Oh yes. You could put that in your cassette. Yes, and then it would play out of your speakers. Exactly. And you could plug that into the output, yeah. Ба і кост two hundred and eight dollars to make That little device And we tried to sell it for two hundred and fifteen dollars.

Wow. That was a lot of money for people to Get something that You know.

quality and mostly that they didn't even understand what it was. So I mean it comes out in ninety seven. And this is your product that all these investment banker, you know, venture capitalists and stuff that put money in

And it sounds like it was a bomb. It was Kind of a Oh. Bomb, but uh it didn't we didn't

ever stopped to think that way. We just kinda went forward thinking like what are we gonna do now? And of course the tech deliverables were so difficult. I mean I have to tell you, being in the hardware business To this day. If it's is not an easy business as anyone who makes hardware will tell you. But I just remember missing a milestone that was a big milestone for.

Another funding. And I get to this company called Flextronics, which is a very sophisticated contract manufacturer manufacturing company that was making the player. And I just said What do you mean it's another three months?

We're out of crystals. I said What do you mean we're out of crystals? You know about crystals? I said. Think I know about crystals. He said, Well done, you can't shit a crystal. 'Cause they had to grow them.

And to grow the frigging crystals. Wait, these are crystals for the for the liquid crystals. Yeah, these were like traditional crystals that were in the in the you know in the device and uh It it you know, you couldn't believe how How you know how complicated it was to get this thing built. Don, at a certain point, I guess, in the first years, you ended up bringing on a guy named Andrew Huffman to become the CEO Um and

He he died. I mean nineteen ninety nine, he was just there for a couple of years. What Yeah. So Andy Hoffman was a pure Tech guy. And you know, really good guy, but he was absolutely a pure product and tech guy. Yeah. And in that period what I was doing, and now we're talking ninety nine, was Convincing my venture capitalists.

That They weren't The cowboys anymore because what was going on? was a bizarre situation in ninety eight, ninety nine, where companies like ours were going public. And they were grabbing

A hole. Lot of money. It was This was the boom. The dog. Yeah, and it was a very much a bubble, but it was a bubble that I did not want to miss.'Cause if nothing else my

London School of Economic Training is like when capital costs almost nothing, you probably should take it. So I just uh We pushed forward. You went to your you went to your investors and you said, I want to go public. Yeah. And they of course, you know, most of them said, What are you talking about? You you know, you only have thirty eight hundred customers, you know, so uh

Robin Williams had come in and bought Like five hundred thousand shares of common stock before it went public, he was part of the Road Show. You know? And he was'cause he's real techie guy and uh and so it was a blast actually and the whole thing of of selling of going to Europe and selling the s it was it was a real experience. And how did you do by the way? When you went public. We had fifty seven hundred customers. The investors made a great return. Yeah. But um

In that year, a few months later, Andy at thirty nine years old. Was a University of Maryland basketball star. was playing. basketball on a Saturday with people like Ralph Samson, who was a great NBA star from the past, and others in a New Jersey game and he died of a brain aneurysm.

And uh And this was You know, one of those moments where I I realized I was the only person of the

Thirty eight of us. Who'd ever experience sudden loss? And trauma. And I brought in Actually a great friend who was a grief counselor.

And we kinda work this through together, but it it it ended up, I think, stealing. Those of us who were left. To a survivor mentality that Yeah, probably served us. Well.

Alright, so you guys go Public and the fall of Uh nineteen ninety nine. And By the spring of two thousand

The dot com. bubble burst. It cr it crashes. So I think I think when a company goes public, the officers have to have to hold their stock, right? Like they can't sell the stock immediately. So Yeah. I mean d did anybody make money off of Audible going public?

Yeah, a bunch of venture capitalists certainly did because uh'cause they could yeah,'cause they could Yeah, a couple of them and here's the term in the day was like, you know, we yeah, I would never have sold. I mean I thought You know, I thought it was a you know, I was told it was immoral for a founder to sell a share of stock. Uh and I took that Fairly seriously, but some of our VCs right after we went public uh began to as the term was puke out their shares in very public filings. And uh they were right.

Yeah, I mean they they made a lot of money off Audible and because what happened next was not pretty. But you know, I should say for context, I've heard Heard. That there were fifteen hundred public internet companies.

At the beginning of two thousand. and one hundred and forty at the beginning of two thousand three. So uh there were combinations there, there were, you know, some takeovers there were other things that went on. But it was that kind of You know, of decimation and um The stock price.

Yeah, which was once twenty nine dollars or something. It went down to four cents. At the end of two thousand. Four cents. Mm-hmm.

When we come back in just a moment. how Don was able to chart a new path for Audible. With help from one of the smartest and scariest people. In Silicon Valley. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2001, the dot com bubble has burst, Audible's stock price has plummeted, and Don Katz is trying to stay calm. I was incredibly anxious.

But I just kinda had an Attitude about it because we weren't Out. Of capital yet. You know, and uh

We had investors who Had not given up. Oh. And it it felt like there was just always another reason to Keep fighting.

But still, Don, I mean Your stock was down. You guys weren't profitable yet. I mean that the market for what you were making hadn't really Taken off. How are you strategizing? I mean, how are you gonna guide the company through such a tough time? Well, what happened during this period of time is we did

Hunker down. And When you went public You had to basically be trained to say one thing to all the fund investors, which was we are technology agnostic. And what that was code for was that

We will not build or say the word platform. Because the word was in the nineties and Life has changed a lot is that if the if anyone said they were building a platform Microsoft would make it their business to destroy your company. Right.

Which, you know, if you look at some of the suits against myself that There was some pretty good evidence it was true. We decided to not be technology agnostic, and during this period when nobody was looking. We decided to take our pretty good science. And um

And call this the Audible Ready Platform, which would be the de facto way that spoken word was transmitted and played back. in the new generation of MP three players that were coming out. Okay. And we not only got all those deals done. We had Texas instrument chips that were already audible ready.

So When the dust started to clear a little bit and life started to get a little bit better, we come out. with all these MP three players, which people were buying at the time. With our bits inside the device. And our marketing collateral.

Inside the box. So it kinda got hard to compete with us at that particular time. Because we were of all these different companies that wanted to be doing the same kind of thing.

In a pretty good idea. position. So that was one of those, you know, I always think, you know Uh y you get to where we got by having about fifty one percent of the things you're doing being smart. Uh CNE named us the number one entertainment app. on the web and uh you know things that made us feel

Pretty good. You know, also point out the The financial stuff got Really dark. Being a public company was not fun. Yeah. I mean m m I mean it would still take a couple of years before M M P three players would take off, and of course that happened with the iPod, which we'll get to in a moment. But

How were you getting rights for audio books,'cause audio books were still Books on cassette and books on C D so How are you getting the rights to Get uh digital versions of that. Was it hard or was it pretty easy?

No, it was definitely hard and it was it was difficult to Bridge. A world that is very much not technology focused. Publishing. No. Book publishing is a is is people who love Books. Meaning that they're willing to

get paid less or they have the wherewithal to not get paid a lot and you know, and they go into a world And usually They stand for the status quo, and they usually resist. you know, technological change in particular and others, it's a it's a longer

І вас дифікол, бо евенчу. We did start to break through. And be able to carry These audio books at a different cost.

Um and then the other thing that we did figure it out was was the subscription. model. Yeah, how did that'cause from what I understand, it was up until this point, it was you buy a player. Which you're asking a lot of people. You're asking them to spend two hundred bucks on a p on an MP three player and then ten, five dollars on a book. That's a lot to ask people, right?

Yes. And that was the The challenge. What if you just got an audio book? A month.

And a player. And you get a a year's subscription. And that Really helped. That helped a lot, particularly since at that point

We had these audible ready devices. That other people. Іно, ба, бо ви стари гів аве. A little blue MP three player called the Otis. We got rid of the Audible Mobile player and let that become the artifact it needed to be. And the Otis was free if you got a subscription. Yep. And we just gave'em away. And and what was the com what was the commitment? You had to do a year subscription or it was a year's it was a year commitment. And what was the price?

It was actually nine ninety five for two audiobooks when we started. Okay. A month. Yeah, a month. And uh It gained traction. Yeah. And frankly the you know, the phone call I got around this Period from uh

Cupertino, California. From uh Steve Jobs was a was a ray. of hope that was really meaningful. Okay, so let's talk about this. Steve Jobs calls you

In two thousand one. And he said, Hey, I like this thing you're making. He did. He said more than that. He said Tell me about this round tripping, how you bookmark the content. I said I want to hear more about this. And then he asked. All sorts of questions about the tech.

and very enthusiastically, which was kind of ironic because, you know Steve was kinda known for a You know, not invented here, view on tech. Stealing stuff, yeah. Uh so so uh But he was very, very

Focused on this and um And he he went on actually to Talk in ways that we began to have fairly rich conversations because We shared this historic view of the interplay of technology and invention.

And culture. um this whole idea that, you know, from chisels in caves to parchment, you have this amazing creative unleashing. He understood I was surprised for what I thought would be a pure tech guy. the golden age of radio and how you know what that meant and how the music business exploded with creativity when it's shifted from sheet music to I mean so we talked about this kind of stuff and He told me

But He would weep copiously. When he listened to Edmund White. Read. Charlotte's Web.

And he's you know, he so He just basically decided to Tell me that he had this plan around this iPod. And that I went home and I remember telling my wife

Uh Steve said he's gonna spend Yeah. eighteen million dollars marketing. Their audio player.

And I said, can you imagine if we had 15 million dollars to market you know at Audible. And this one thing led to another and um The second generation iPod came out. It worked commercially with Audible.

So basically you would plug in because you used to have a plug in your iPod to your computer through that you know, interface and and you would go to the Audible website and that would download directly to the iPod. Yeah. And that that was it. And so you would it would it would load up and uh And they were these, you know, sweet little devices. They were very cool. The only thing we didn't get to do was put our marketing collateral in the uh

You know in the in the boxes. So it didn't say audible anywhere. It did say that it was audible ready, and that was that term that we'd kind of coined at the time and that it started to mean something, at least in the world of people buying MP three players. So We were able to garner our cost structure. to be for the stakeholders who were gonna get this. Yeah. You know, so we were able to target market these newfangled um you know players and we were basically you know compatible

with all of them and once we started giving away Minis? Instead of you know our own player It started to get better. Alright, so just to be clear.

Instead of giving away your own devices as a way to get people to subscribe. You started to give away the Apple iPod, and I think you did that for several years. I mean I mean Steve Jobs kind of gave you a lifeline there, and so I I'm assuming that pretty soon You know, after that you just kinda stopped being a hardware company like because eventually it it would have been sort of pointless, right? No, that's absolutely right. And you know, we were happy to to get out of it and basically declare that, you know, the hardware was a means to an end. There would be other transmission methodologies. Um we know we had partnerships with everybody, including the companies that were making CD burners at the time and the like, so I always wanted it to be a means to an end. You had a I think by 2005.

So you're now completely out of the hardware business. You're focused mainly on Licensing audio. And and really you pivot towards audiobooks. When did that happen? What was the what was the thinking around that? Uh I think it was just because it it took off. Two thousand seven we still had twenty thousand audiobooks. Now we have many, many hundreds of thousands, obviously. We had twenty thousand audiobooks in two thousand seven and um forty-five thousand other kinds of content, including Robin's programs, Ricky Gervais's programs, the

Amazing Susie Bright Erotica series which is it which was previously. Oh yeah, before the turn. Yeah. They were all short form programs. Yeah. They were just Part of the repertoire. I mean you became the global supplier of audiobooks to iTunes already in two thousand three. So by that point it was clear that audiobooks was where you were headed towards what what what do you remember what the pivot point was where where you were like, Okay, we've broken through the publishing industry is Is is cooperating.

Yeah. I think that the The utility Of the service the idea of positioning this. as a way to use your time.

Now It was also true that only about fifteen percent of the books coming out. Or an audio. So our Crusade.

Was always ourselves from the agent and the author to get them made because We literally would run out of mysteries. And I would go at one point I remember I would put my wallet on the desks of of CEOs in the publishing industry. I need more content. So at that point.

It wasn't coming and we broke in To getting the rights ourselves. And making A whole lot of audio books. We also figured out how to make an audio book for about a tenth of the cost.

That they just using technology. So we just started making a lot of audiobooks and uh And it got better and better. And there was something called Project Hollywood.

in in two thousand eleven and two tausend twelve Where we just said Let's just go find out what the greatest actors will do. And when I heard Kate Winslett do Teresa Raquel, one of the darkest Zola novels of all the Zola novels.

You know, and people heard what she could do. I remember thinking. We could take this whole thing to a new level and make this about acting. As much as it's about writing. Done I think by two thousand five. So this is like ten years.

Since you launched the business. You're you're ten years in. It's the first year you be actually turn a profit. Yeah. Just reflect on that. I just want to reflect on it for a moment, because a lot of

Well I I don't think enough people understand how long it can take, especially with a complex hardware slash content business like the one you created, how long it takes to actually Make a profit. Um And and even up until that point, I think two thousand five, you were still basically a small

business, right? I mean you you only ha you had fewer than a hundred employees, I think, right? Yeah, it's You took an eighty percent pay cut. to start this business in nineteen ninety five. Until two thousand five, did you ever get back to what you were paid?

In nineteen ninety five? In salary? Yeah, I definitely uh I definitely did if you if you look at the you know the the vesting and the equity pieces and all that. But did you have to like cut family expenses and things like that for a while? Yeah, there must have been some hairy moments. But the truth of the matter is I said. I never really

Measure. My ideas on money. I just Yeah. I always thought, you know, the number of customers, the retention rate, the kinds of of amazing content we could make including tons of original Thinking. Uh I don't know. That stuff turned me on more and uh you know, I I still probably approach things that way.

So It it's interesting'cause we did a story about Linda dot com which eventually sold to LinkedIn and and their rise and your rise really mirror each other because you began around the same time. And I think I think A lot of that has to do with broadband access. Yes.

I mean but obviously broadband access the the download. That system. The the trust of of You know, of of everything about from the e commerce system to people to using their credit cards. Yeah. And then we just started to have you know, which I guess now we have this massive kind of brand momentum, brand equity and the like I mean things people started discovering This this thing called Audible and We started to build up our teams, we started to expand

Internationally and uh Kind of where Yeah, I admit it, I thought we'd be year three. Which is why You know, those survival years, but I gotta tell you the the warrior spirit of those formative years that is one of the reasons I still

So successful because The people who work at the company do try to see themselves. as these kinds of people who want to invent and stay ahead, as opposed to manage. You had this business plan, right? Which was

Audio delivered to people uh through the internet onto devices. Um but when you when you think about that, right? Do you almost wish that you would have and and there's no way to know, right? That business is is Most businesses just evolve. Like there really is no master plan. Like Jeff Bezos. kind of at a plan, but it it unfolded in ways that he probably couldn't really have anticipated, although maybe he did.

But when you when you when you look back, do you often sort of kick yourself and say, God, I should have known from the beginning this was gonna be audio books and never have wasted my time on the devices, on on making the devices and just focused on the audiobooks. No, because then um You're you're not gonna be The leader. Unless you take the big risk at the point that

People don't believe. And and you know, and then the question is how How early is it? But I know look, I am stunned by how quickly You know, some of the companies formed after us did come together. But

You know what? Most companies are based on productivity improvements. You it's like Uber. gets you from here to here like A taxi, but it just

It's better. most businesses, you know, have some level of productivity improvement, like all software businesses and the like Um That wasn't this idea. This was creating a a media category. This was basically creating a spoken word category.

When it didn't exist in the country. Whose entire literary canon was based on how we talked And told stories. I wanted to basically say there would be a spoken word category in yeah called Audible if it had to be. It sat next to all permutations of video and movies and T V, it sat next to books and it sat next to music.

And We kind of pride this thing. Into the light. And uh that's just A little different.

Then um A better way to use your computer. You know, we we've told the story of Shopify, which was founded and continues to to exist in Ottawa. And Linda dot com was in Ohi, California, and then in Ventura, California. Um, these were not in Not near Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley or in Seattle. And you were based in in in Wayne, New Jersey, and then moved to Newark.

Which was um not a place where companies were going. I mean it was still Big parts of that city in two thousand seven were still boarded up. Parts of it are are still boarded up today. I mean you could just go all the way. Newark was thought to be a scary Said it. I mean New York was Everything you heard about Newark.

Was it this was A place that You know, time had forgotten and that it was. Just crime ridden and had nothing. Good going for it. That was the word.

And frankly. That's why I wanted to move us there. When it came we were out outgrowing this um Very ramshackle headquarters.

Which instantly was twelve dollars a square foot with furniture and wiring. Talk about, you know. you know, cost effective. We needed to go somewhere and I said, Let's move. to downtown Newark. And um Besides, we were becoming at that point the largest employer of actors in the New York area.

Which we've been for a while. Um and I said the actors can Jump on at Penn Station, they can get off at Broad Street station. The board guys and the and the the we had a consultant that said, You're out of your mind. You're gonna yeah you're gonna lose we think thirty percent of your workforce simply by moving that far. And and all the fear factor.

And you know, we moved in. With a hundred and twenty people and nobody left. And we started to just Try to create either models that other companies or other cities to just be part Of

A city's comeback. So so what kinds of things were you doing? So one of the first things we did was just said You can't be a nepotistic intern anymore. Yeah you gotta be a kid from Newark and you'll be a paid intern In our little world.

So then you get like This carpet culture which includes These incredible cutting edge technologists and all these English majors turned into business people like me. And then all the best some of the best actors in the world hanging out. And these kids and uh And you start to realise that

This is an unusually rich company culture. And you know, we We started paying. our employees uh five hundred dollars after taxes rent to frame and if they moved Downtown Newark and to be part to be urban pioneers.

I started Newark Venture Partners. Which has become a a ri an international level of you know success drawing companies from All over the world to Newark to an accelerator. It's anyways, it's just applying the kind of entrepreneurial thinking It gets

To create an audible to to you know to to social purpose. In two tausсеven Your annual revenue at Audible was like a hundred and ten million dollars. And in January of two thousand eight.

Amazon. announced it that they would acquire Audible for three hundred million dollars in cash. Which uh in in retrospect They got a great deal. for you look back on it, um, especially given that your revenue was

Hundred and ten million the year before. Obviously you didn't control the company, you were a shareholder, but At the time. Did you think it was the right move for Audible? At the time, I was the only one who thought it was a right move.

So uh this was me. Look it was a blast to be a Nasdaq CEO. Even all the the trials and tribulations, there were things about it. That I I love because it was just another adventure into a new world, but By the time two thousand seven and two thousand eight came along, um

I Was Really In a moral crossroads because You know, if you read

Everything from the law to Milton Friedman. The only purpose of a of a CEO and a chair and CEO as I was, um, is to enrich their shareholders. I mean that's Maximize shareholder profit. That's what it is. And so I was basically working for people that I stopped feeling like I was honestly waking up in the morning.

I was in caring about them and it was very hard to Because a lot of them were friggin' computer programs that were whipping our stock around after hours in various complex Um high velocity models. And others were one hundred percent speculators who could have cared less about being real. investors and um

I just Wasn't into it and on top of that I knew. Then if I Could hook back in with

Jeff and with Amazon. We could have access to several hundred million Who were likely to be our customers

We would Could grow even faster and we'd have that many more millions of people. The freedom to Even the do the things doing in Newark, that was meaningful to me and uh it's a it's a you know, it's somewhat rare. A lot of founders don't you know, they go away As soon as a transaction happens, but

But in this case it's an independent subsidiary that works. You know it's interesting. A lot of Amazon has a lot of haters, right?'Cause it's the eight hundred pound gorilla on the block and it's just gonna happen. It's gonna be that way. But if you look at Amazon Compared to other giants.

That. acquire their companies. Uh they they really do. Oh they have a great track record. Of allowing their their acquisition companies to remain independent. I mean look at Zappos. We had Tony the the late Tony Shay was a a guest on our show an amazing

Entrepreneur. I mean, that company w was and is totally independent. Audible. Is an Amazon company, but it it I mean it's you stayed on. I think I was thinking about this.

You stayed on as CEO. Of of Audible after Amazon acquired you, for as long as you were the head of the company when it was independent. When it was

So That alone suggests that It was a pretty good marriage. Yeah. It's a pretty unusual story, and uh I frankly can't believe that it's as

Now longer than my um Then my writing career. And also You know, come on, let's face it, most people know that You know, senior people at Amazon get paid

And Yeah. Amazon stock. Stock. Yeah. We did the transaction, the stock was like fifty dollars a share. You might want to. check out what it is now. So yeah. One way or another, whatever happens from here, I'm

It's been an amazing adventure and uh not many people I know had two careers where you get to turn ideas into reality. It's it's uh I've been pretty pretty lucky. A lot of things happen to a a lot of people that are lucky. I know you've mentioned meeting your wife. For example, is is a lucky.

moment and and I I would say the same about mine. Um Jan Winter said, Go to go to Spain and cover this thing and you met all these like these guys who covered the the you know, the Spanish Civil War and were like, Hey yeah, we'll show you the ropes here.

This guy, Mott, who thought your idea was was great when everyone else thought it was kooky. So there there were a lot of lucky moments, but you also grinded. and grind it and worked really hard. Um but when you think about

This story that you've told me. And you reflect on it. How much of it do you think has to do with luck and and how much d do you think has to do with the work you put in? I think it's Something on the order of fifty.

Fighty point five to fifty one percent Uh Purposeful. good calls and and brave moments and And times when you just didn't give up.

The rest of it is definitely luck because otherwise How could I have made so many stupid boneheaded decisions along the way that didn't didn't kill us? So uh I think there's a fine line. You're making calls all the time. And particularly if You're a leader, you kinda gotta do it.

But I don't know, I think about it. You don't about it all the time, but I feel I w I was out there playing ice hockey last night and you know, not many people my age get to play ice hockey. Is that luck? I think it's luck and I think it's also That I just made it my business to try to elongate my hockey and I do a lot of stuff to make that real. Ha ha

That's Don Katz, founder and executive chairman of Audible. By the way, a few years back, the company put together a list of some of its most popular audiobooks over the past 20 years. The best selling memoir? was Bossi Pants by Tina Faye, the best selling business book? The seven habits of highly effective people. The most repeated lesson was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which makes a lot of sense. And here's one that

All of you can probably guess in advance, the most searched for author on Audible Over the past twenty years. Was of course. Stephen King. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you don't follow our show, please do follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is H IVT at NPR.org.

If you want to follow the show on Twitter, it's at how I built this or my personal account at guy's. Our Instagram is at how I built this NPR and mine is at guy.Ros. This episode was produced by James Delahouse with music composed by Ramteen Arabui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Mirashima. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Liz Metzger, Farah Safari, JC Howard, Julia Carney, and Elaine Coates. Our intern is Katherine Cypher. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening To how I built this. This

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