A new audiobook studio for the North East
The North East now has its own audiobook recording studio, thanks to New Writing North (NWN) and partners Hachette UK and Northumbria University.
Sounds Good Audiobooks is situated on the university’s Newcastle city centre campus.
The studio idea was pitched to partners by Lucie McNeil, NWN’s audio development producer.
“The North East has an incredible array of talent and graduates primed to work in audiobooks, and now we have a central hub where they can be created locally,” she said.
“We want to build our audio work into Northumbria University’s MA in Publishing and other courses and provide industry experience for students and creatives.”
The studio’s first commercial production is Barrowbeck, the fourth novel by Lancashire author Andrew Michael Hurley.
His first, The Loney, won the Costa Best First Novel Award in 2015 and his third, Starve Acre, published in 2019, was released as a feature film in September.
Barrowbeck, published in hardback on October 24, is described as a suspenseful folk-horror story set in a remote valley on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border.
The audiobook is produced by Lucie and read by actors Gabriella Pond and Matt Jamie.
Dominic Gribben, co-audio content director at publishers Hachette, said: “Barrowbeck was at the top of my list when Lucie and I originally discussed books that could be recorded as part of the partnership.
“I’m delighted that we’re kicking things off with this production and I’m looking forward to many more audiobooks coming out of Newcastle later this year and through 2025.”
Andrew Michael Hurley said Sounds Good Audiobooks was “a wonderful collaborative venture that will give writers, publishers, actors and sound technicians across the North so many opportunities”.
Claire Malcolm, NWN chief executive, described it as “a practical and tangible way of expanding the creative industries in the North East”.
The studio, intended to be used by publishers across the UK, was part funded by Creative UK’s Cultural and Creative Investment programme with funding from the North East Combined Authority.
NWN aims to swell the North East talent pool by offering workshops run by experienced audiobook narrators, commissioners and editors.
It is currently running an audio-making development programme for six writers with Mark Nixon, writer-producer of Shadows At The Door, and has also created a corporate and academic podcasting course, helping universities to broadcast their research work.
It’s investment in what appears to be a booming industry.
Audiobook downloads increased by 17% between 2022 and 2023, according to the Publishers Association, with revenue from audiobook sales rising 24% to £206m during the same period.
Publishing as a whole contributes £11bn to the UK economy.