In this week’s issue of Publishers Weekly, we take a no-holds-barred, in-depth look at the audio industry, with features on latest innovations in audio marketing, an intimate chat with an acclaimed narrator, and a look behind the scenes at the making of the audio version of David Foster Wallace’s posthumously published masterpiece The Pale King.

I sit down with all the major players — the directors, the producers, and the actors — at Hachette Audio and talks about what it took to bring DFW to audio.

Here’s a little sample from the feature:

Converting any book to audio is an exacting endeavor. When the book is written by a celebrated author known for his expansive, experimental style (think: footnotes, endnotes, digressions, jargon, acronyms) the process is that much more challenging. And when the book is an unfinished, fragmentary, posthumously published novel, the task looks almost impossible.

The decision to publish the unfinished work at all was not taken lightly. “There were months between when [Wallace's wife] Karen Green and I found the manuscript on David’s desk in his office to when [Wallace's editor] Michael Pietsch came out to Claremont, where Wallace lived, to when we made the decision to publish,” says Bonnie Nadell, Wallace’s longtime agent. “We felt that David wanted to see the book published.”

Check out the rest of the story here: Case Study: The Pale King.