Background
Having appeared in USO shows during World War II, acted on old time radio in Jack Webb’s (of Dragnet fame) show, “Pat Novak For Hire” (you can still listen at this site):
https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Pat_Novak_Singles ) and narrated
audiobooks for the Library of Congress, Books On Tape and Recorded
Books, Flo Gibson decided, at age 60, that it was time to set out on her own.
Audio Book Contractors
So she founded Audio Book Contractors in 1983 - one year after the first commercial CD appeared on record stores’ shelves. The company’s initial goal was to contract out to authors and record their books for them, regardless of the subject. Eventually however, Flo found herself leaning more towards books that she loved and eventually, the company stopped contracting out and formed a library of audiobooks of unabridged classic literature.
The Booth
All of the 700+ books in the company were recorded in an 8 X 6 booth installed in Flo’s basement. The gentleman, Bill West, who designed the booth was blind himself and gave detailed instructions as to the Booth’s construction. After it was completed, he felt around inside and outside of the Booth, declared it unacceptable and had it rebuilt.
The Narrators
The vast majority of titles in ABC’s library were recorded by Flo. But
having been in “the Biz” herself, she was happy to give local actors
hours narrating audiobooks to help supplement their incomes. Some
even came in at night and narrated while the rest of the house was asleep upstairs. This was an illustrious start for many who continued in the field and still record to this day.
The Books
Flo was very conscientious about adhering to the author’s original words when narrating an audiobook. She had a special arrangement with the Library of Congress in which she could borrow the oldest copyrighted edition of a particular book in order to achieve this goal.
Flo’s favorite author was Jane Austen. Her old station wagon even
carried the bumper sticker “I’d Rather Be Reading Jane Austen”. Her
recordings also include most of the major works by Anthony Trollope,
Willa Cather, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
Another of her favorite authors was Henry James. ABC carries many of his titles as audiobook downloads. In my humble opinion, she was one of the few narrators who could make sense of his writing. However, even she had her limits. I remember her slamming her fist down in the middle of one of Mr. James’ more challenging sentences and declaring, “Dammit Henry! Will you punctuate!” We edited that out of the final product.
Flo’s selections for ABC knew no bounds. She would mainly record
classic fiction audiobooks, but she also included everything from “The
Complete Mother Goose” to plays by Shakespeare to mystery
audiobooks to the more risque writings of D. H. Lawrence.
The Formats
ABC’s original library consisted of books on cassette only until we
started converting many titles to CD in 2004. The first to be converted was “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” and the last was “Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!)”.
Flo wasn’t familiar with the concept of downloading until Audible.com came to her asking if she would consider partnering with them. She accepted and as of now, we have over 400 titles available as audiobook downloads from Audible.
In a Washington Post interview with columnist Bob Levy (8/28/2003),
Flo, who was about to turn 80, said, “I’m lucky, you know? How many
people my age get to do something they love, with talented people? My friends play bridge and they’re not doing much else.”
Creating some of the best audiobooks out there was really something else!
