NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Audible Inc., the world’s largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment, today announced a new collaboration with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, a media company focused on telling women’s stories. Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine on Audible will identify and showcase outstanding audio performances featuring strong female characters in a new monthly component of Reese’s influential book club. The first month for Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine on Audible will be June, and additional information can be found at www.audible.com/reesesbookclub.
Additionally, Audible and Hello Sunshine will work together on the development of original audio productions, with the first Audible Original by Hello Sunshine to be announced later this year.
“When I started Reese’s book club, I wanted to highlight stories with women at the center and I’m so excited to deliver on that mission,” says Witherspoon. “With our busy lives, it can be hard to find the time to read. That’s why I am excited to work with Audible to provide a fun way to listen to beautiful stories in your free time, whether it’s enjoying a book in the car or on a morning walk.”
“Since its earliest days, Audible has been committed to creating unforgettable listening experiences through a powerfully intimate aesthetic meant to be heard,” said Audible founder and CEO Don Katz. “We are thrilled to be working with Reese, who has shown time and again her eye for identifying unforgettable stories, and with Hello Sunshine, a brand known for its creative storytelling, to create what is sure to be a rich palette of captivating spoken-word performances our millions of listeners will love.”
“We are proud to enter the expanding audio storytelling landscape with Audible through our Audible Originals by Hello Sunshine collaboration,” says Sarah Harden, CEO of Hello Sunshine. “This signifies a major push for Hello Sunshine into long-form narrative audio originals, expanding opportunities for us to continue to partner with leading creators to bring to life female-centered narratives that are best told in, and created specifically for, audio.”
With a 30-day membership trial at Audible, new listeners can enjoy any one audiobook, including Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine on Audible selections, free.
Audible invented and commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, and has since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. In 2017, listeners around the world downloaded over two billion hours of Audible content.
ABOUT AUDIBLE, INC.
Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio content, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible was created to unleash the emotive music in language and the habituating power and utility of verbal expression. Audible content includes more than 425,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is also the provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes Store.
ABOUT HELLO SUNSHINE
Hello Sunshine is a media brand and content company dedicated to female authorship and storytelling across all platforms. Hello Sunshine is producing feature films, television shows as well as unscripted series, audio storytelling and social series under the Hello Sunshine brand, all anchored by a singular mission: to change the narrative for women. Hello Sunshine is also the home for Reese’s Book Club, fast-growing in reach and influence. Some of the film and TV projects that have already been announced by Hello Sunshine include the highly-anticipated limited series from Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller Little Fires Everywhere, as a Hulu Original Series, a 10-episode comedy series for Apple executive produced by and starring Kristen Wiig that was created by Colleen McGuinness (30 Rock) and inspired by Curtis Sittenfeld's short-story collection You Think It, I'll Say It; Are You Sleeping, executive produced by and starring Octavia Spencer, which is based on the true-crime novel by Kathleen Barber that is created and written by Nichelle Tramble Spellman (The Good Wife, Justified) for Apple; an Untitled Morning Show Project produced by and starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, which was given a two-season, straight-to-series order by Apple with Kerry Ehrin (Bates Motel) serving as showrunner; a film for Fox 2000 based on Catherine Steadman's novel Something in the Water, being adapted by Julia Cox; and A White Lie, a psychological thriller for TriStar Pictures produced by and starring Zendaya based on Karin Tanabe’s critically-acclaimed novel The Gilded Years, which will be adapted by Monica Beletsky (Fargo, The Leftovers). Hello Sunshine recently launched its first original podcast series, How It Is, featuring powerful, personal stories told by a diverse group of high-profile women and hosted by actor and author Diane Guerrero (Orange Is The New Black, Jane the Virgin) as well as a series on Facebook Watch, Meet My Mom which is an honest and entertaining chat between your favorite celebrities and their moms.