Technology >> CEO Interviews >> November 20, 2000

Donald Katz – Audible Inc (adbl)

DONALD KATZ is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Audible, Inc., the leader in secure delivery and management of premium spoken audio content via the Internet. He is also a respected author, award-winning magazine journalist lecturer, and business consultant. Mr. Katz is the author of Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World, which was published in June, 1994, by Random House. A collection of Katz's award- winning magazine stories will be one of the first titles to be published by AtRandom, Random House's new digital publishing imprint. He is also the author of Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America, published in 1992 and a finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction. His first book, The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears, a 1987 national best-seller, won the 1988 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for nonfiction. He has served as a consultant on editorial, start-up, content development projects, and digital media issues for Fidelity Investments, Whittle Communications, Wenner Media and Time-Warner. He was named the Entrepreneur of the Year for 1999 by Silicon Alley trade magazine, Alley Cat News. In 1995 he founded Audible Inc., based in Wayne, NJ, with veteran software pioneer Tim Mott. He was a longtime Contributing Editor, Business and Technology Columnist for Esquire Magazine, and a Contributing Editor for Outside, Men's Journal, and Worth, as well as a Special Contributor to Sports Illustrated. Mr. Katz graduated from New York University's Honors Program in English in 1974. He worked closely with writer-in-residence Ralph Ellison while at NYU. He also attended The University of Chicago and The London School of Economics. He holds an MSc in Economics from LSE Profile
TWST: Would you mind providing our readers with an overview of Audible,

Inc.?

Mr. Katz: Audible is the leading provider of digitally delivered spoken

word audio programming for desktop or