Publishers Weekly
August 1, 2005
When Atlanta-based Entrepreneur and producer Daren Wang thought he had a fresh idea for creating some audio programming, he ran with it. So, it’s only fitting that the result of his efforts is a new audio literary magazine called Verb, launching September 10.
“I have always loved literary magazines, but thought that they were often too limited by marketing, in too much of a niche,” said Wang. “The idea of pairing a literary magazine with the popular and growing audio format was something I really wanted to try.”
No stranger to audio, Wang has produced literature-inspired shows for public radio for the past 15 year, including The Spoken Word, a program currently airing on 40 stations. “Verb is a way to get original material that’s a little oddball for radio into a more controlled environment,” he noted.
Verb will be an “audioquarterly” distributed to the book trade by University of Georgia Press and distributed as a digital download at Audible.com. The two-CD first volume retails for $19.95 and contains a blend of original fiction, poetry, and music that Wang believes is “unlike anything else that’s available.” Contributors include poet Marjory Wentworth, who is the Poet Laureate of South Carolina in addition to also being the publicist handling Verb’s promotion. Among the other features in Volume 1 [Issue 1] are fiction pieces by Ha Jin and Robert Olen Butler and a song by Stuart Dybek, written in response to a poem by Thomas Lux (which also appears).
Subscriptions to Verb are available, and Wang hopes that the publication will be sustained by retail and online sales. He is, however, considering advertising options that would include audiobook publishers to buy space for excerpts of their titles on Verb. [Volume 1, Issue 2] is due out in December.
