Publishing houses | Gummerus starts producing audio dramas with writers

Domestic book publishing house Gummerus starts producing audio dramas with successful authors.

New types of audio works will be heard From Juha Itko, Taina from Latvala, From Emmi Peso and Sister from Savonlahti.

The first to be heard is the one that will be released in May and is based on Itkonen's play text A siding. Actors are in the voice roles Heidi Herala, Jarkko Lahti and Eva Soivio.

Audiodrama is “something between an audiobook and listening”, the publisher Aleksi Pöyry describes to HS.

In the audio book is typically just one reader without any soundscape. In listening, on the other hand, different sound effects and music play a bigger role and carry the story.

Gummerus' audio dramas are aimed at the audiobook audience, and are sold on the same services.

“Listeners are also interested in other types of audio content than traditional audio books. We saw that there could be a demand for something like this, and when Juha Itkone had a drama text ready, the pieces fell into place,” says Pöyry.

The stories focus on encounters and dialogues between people. Like audio books, they are published as a whole, not in episodes, like Yle's audio dramas, for example.

Gummerus the new territorial conquest is a continuation of the reign of audio content. Literature and the audio business are getting mixed up more and more. A writer has been seen as a successful example of this Emmi-Liia Sjöholm sound work Power horses (Cosmos, 2022).

Yle has produced popular audio drama series that have narrated, among other things Vesa-Matti Loirin and Armi Aavikon the stories. The episodes have been published online in Areena, and they have also been broadcast on the radio.

Today, Gummerus is owned by the Swedish audiobook service Storytel. The acquisitions were made in 2019.