OUR STORY

In 1987, in a small garage in southern Oregon, Blackstone was born. Founded by Craig and Michelle Black, the early days consisted of a small number of family members and employees working out of the Blacks’ home, building the business one cassette tape at a time. With a fresh perspective on the reading experience, Craig and Michelle, along with their trusted team, found new and innovative methods to not only produce and distribute audiobooks but also pioneer creative ways to collaborate with publishers, booksellers, and the audiobook listening community. Today we have over 14,750 audiobooks in our catalog and publish over 4,500 audiobooks a year.

On the foundation of this thirty-plus-year enterprise, we launched a print and e-book venture in 2015. In that first year, we published just a handful of titles. In 2020, we will publish over eighty titles, and our list of projects continues to grow.

We’re thrilled to be working with bestselling and award-winning authors like Meg Gardiner, Steve Hamilton, Reed Farrel Coleman, Catherine Ryan Howard, P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, Don Winslow, Adrian McKinty, Cory Doctorow, Shelley Shepard Gray, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, Orson Scott Card, Matthew Mather, and Charlie Lovett, as well as debuting new talented voices like Cadwell Turnbull, Coco Ma, Jill Criswell, and Jennifer Givhan.

As we continue to build the audiobook business and grow the print venture, Blackstone has strengthened its sales, marketing, production, library, and editorial teams, as well as increased its presence at BookExpo, BookCon, ALA, regional library conferences, and independent bookseller trade shows.

Our overall goal is to publish groundbreaking books, both fiction and nonfiction, by the most talented writers, and to forge long-term connections with readers, booksellers, librarians, and the overall publishing community. We are committed to bringing entertaining and thoughtprovoking stories to as many people as possible in the most creative and innovative ways imaginable.