Audio production company Audio Up Media and book publishing house Harlequin Enterprises are teaming up to adapt 52 of the publisher’s romance titles into scripted podcast series, with an eye to also turn these into—more highly monetizable—TV series.
Audio Up, also home to mental health and wellness podcast Maejor Frequency, has experience in turning series, like Harlequin’s long-running Montana Mavericks, into narrated audio content. As well as releasing James Ellroy’s political fiction novel American Tabloid next spring on Amazon Audible, the audio company has adapted content like Stephen King’s Strawberry Spring, hiring actors like Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney and Troy actor Garrett Hedlund to voice the series. Strawberry Spring has had nearly 2 million downloads since its launch in September 2021, according to Audio Up.
“Some brands are so big they don’t need to leave their own domains of how they make money because they’re already doing well,” Audio Up CEO Jared Gutstadt told Adweek, pointing to Harlequin’s already large audience through successful book-selling. “This is a risky experiment by them, going beyond what they normally do,” he added.
Podcasts are seeing success in translating content from audio—a lower-cost vehicle for creating a dedicated audience—to the big screen. NBC’s video streaming platform Peacock picked up Wondery’s True Crime podcast series Dr. Death, which renewed for a second season this year. Elsewhere, Hulu’s limited series The Dropout based on a corporate true crime tale of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried, stemmed from an ABC News podcast of the same title, according to TIME.
Harlequin has been working with TV production company Centinel Media for the past year to launch titles for TV adaptation and is planning to announce the content in the new year, according to Centinel CEO Craig Cegielski.
“[Harlequin is] so connected to their audience,” Cegielski said. “Transferring that from publishing to their mediums is exactly what we’re doing today,” he added.
Cegielski, who helped with the intellectual property deal, points to Harlequin having over 50 million global readers and selling two to four books per second. According to Harlequin, it’s sold 6.8 billion copies to date, releasing nearly 100 new titles a month.
Gutsadt was drawn to Harlequin for its inclusivity within romance, like categorizing certain work as Black or LGBTQ+ Romance.
Audio Up has had over 20 million downloads across its nearly 40 podcasts since its launch in January 2020.
The audio company will begin production of the Harlequin titles in January 2023 and is hoping to have them officially released by the second quarter of 2023, according to Gutstadt.
In terms of monetization, Audio Up is deciding on whether to put the titles behind a paywall, to generate ad revenue via partners such as SiriusXM or iHeart, or to opt for the audiobook model and charge per title, Gutsadt said.
“Creating it and figuring out what we have first before we define which door we take it down,” is of priority to the company, said Gutsadt. “It’s the slightest nuance between a book, an audiobook, a podcast and a bookcast. It’s consistently a moving target.”
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