Paris, January 10, 2024 – Studio Ochenta, the Webby-honored multilingual podcast company, announces its official partnership with Bookwire, the leading digital publishing company. This collaboration is built upon the strength of the Bookwire OS, the industry-leading platform featuring over one million titles from 2300 publishers worldwide.
The agreement signed in December 2023 establishes the foundations for a strategic partnership between the two companies. The partnership will allow Studio Ochenta to distribute its podcasts as audiobooks after a careful adaptation process. Through Bookwire, Studio Ochenta will be able to deliver high levels of quality, speed and automation to the widest range of global sales partners, and harness audio tools created by Bookwire including enhanced sales analytics, windowing, metadata optimization, and end-to-end audiobook production.
Throughout 2024, Ochenta will publish a total of 17 titles in multiple languages for distribution to audiobook listeners around the world with Bookwire. Some of the podcasts adapted to audiobooks that will be distributed with Bookwire include fiction podcast titles such as Mija Podcast (in English, French and Spanish). Since launching in 2019, Mija’s story reached #1 in 31 countries and is the recipient of the 2020 Webby Honoree and 2021 Lovie Award shortlist for Best Series. Manual para ser Juan Helsing (in Spanish), which is Ochenta’s flagship horror show, will also be adapted into an audiobook. Other titles include nonfiction productions such as true-crime Caper (in English, Spanish, and Italian), the chart-topping AI romantic comedy Love Items (In English, Spanish, French, and Italian), and the narrative-interview show Atlas Linguae (in English). Each audiobook will feature the original podcast contents plus bonus chapters that delve deep into the making-of of each show, real stories that inspired the investigations, and the creative dwellings behind each production.
This partnership is a pioneering move in the podcast industry in Europe, Latin American and MENA markets, since Bookwire allows its contents to be available on all major audiobook distribution platforms worldwide, such as Audible, Apple, Google, but also Thalia, BajaLibros, Barnes & Nobles, etc. – a step further into marketing and monetizing original podcast content directly with its audiences and listeners. The first audiobooks will be released in January.
“In the last year at Ochenta we noticed that podcasts and audiobooks are friends that we haven't met yet. The narrative storytelling audiobook listeners are used to match that of your favorite narrative scripted podcasts… Just with a little more sound design. With this partnership we want to open a whole new world of stories to audiobook listeners, and in so doing give the podcast world access to a brand new story-hungry audience.” – Lory Martínez, CEO of Studio Ochenta
“Bookwire is delighted to be able to participate in and support the deployment of the high-quality audio stories produced by Ochenta. By putting our expertise in audiobook distribution at Ochenta's service, the stories created by the studio will find a new, wider audience.” – Marion Létoublon, Audio Development Manager at Bookwire
About Studio Ochenta:
Studio Ochenta is a leading multilingual podcast production company based in Paris. Ochenta produces award-winning podcasts in over 20 languages for audiences across the European continent, the MENA region, Asia, and the Americas, making it the leader in multilingual podcasting around the world. Ochenta produces global stories for international audiences to make sure language isn’t a barrier to enjoying a great story, which have reached #1 in over 31 countries. Studio Ochenta also offers editorial consulting and production services for target audiences around the world. Our clients, which include international institutions and brands, trust us to develop their shows for global audiences in 27+ languages.
About Bookwire & “Bookwire OS – One Solution”:
Bookwire was founded in Frankfurt in 2010 as a service provider for publisher distribution of eBooks and digital content. It has since become one of the leading international businesses in digital publishing technology. Bookwire currently employs 150 people in Germany, the UK, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico and the USA, who take care of more than 2,500 publishers in the fields of eBooks, audiobooks, podcasts and Print-on-Demand. The pioneering software “Bookwire OS – One Solution”, launched in 2019, has delivered, analyzed and marketed around 800,000 eBooks and 200,000 audiobooks in all relevant distribution channels. In addition to the latest customer analytics and pricing technology, publishing clients of Bookwire GmbH also have access to individual support from account & marketing managers who look after the clients from end to end. In 2019, the audiobook production solution “We Audiobook You” (WAY) bagged the business the first “Digital Publishing Award” in the field of B2B solutions. Bookwire GmbH is led by the founders Jens Klingelhöfer (CEO) and John Ruhrmann (CO-CEO), as well as by Christian Lindemann (COO), and has branches in Barcelona, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, New York and Paris, in addition to the company headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and the "Digital Hub" in Dortmund.
