For East Hanover Audiobook Producer, Its Been and Still Is a Busy Career

Paul Fowlie, Owner and Executive Producer of Common Mode, an award-winning digital audio recording and post-production facility in East Hanover, and an industry-respected producer of audiobooks, couldn’t resist telling the story of a west coast vacation where he and his daughters visited a used bookstore.

“There were all these audiobooks there, and I’d recorded a bunch of them,” Fowlie says. “So I was telling my girls, ‘I recorded this one, and I recorded this one,’ and this person standing next to us was looking at me like,  ‘Why are you lying to your daughters?!” We just smiled and walked away. The person thought I was making stuff up that I'd worked on all these audio books, but I actually had.”

Common Mode has been in business since 1984, and they’ve recorded audiobooks for quite a few big names. George H. Bush, 41st President of the United States, and his wife and First Lady, Barbara Bush, have benefitted from the Common Mode expertise, as has Hillary Clinton, whose book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us was a Grammy Award winner. “We’ve done a bunch of Stephen King books. Those were highlights for Simon & Schuster,” Fowlie adds. And when asked who a dream author or authors might be, he says, “I don’t know whose book I’d like to do. They just keep on coming.”

“I was working for NPR, and also for WGBO,” Fowlie says of the early 1980s. “I was doing a live music program with them on location. Then, Simon and Schuster started their audio department and I became a consultant for them, and then just as they expanded, we grew with them. A lot of people who I started out with are in charge and making major decisions, and they know about me because we've worked together for so many years. So most of our work comes to us from our reputation, because they know well that if they assign it to us, they don't have to worry about it anymore.”

Fowlie also speaks about a newer area of the audiobook business. “Authors are now able to put out their own audio. The market makes it a lot easier to pull that off than it used to be. An author can publish their own book, and they can record their own audio, too.”

Up until 2007, Fowlie kept a scrapbook of all the folks he’d recorded audiobooks for. “I used to have to get on airplanes to do these audio books,” he explains. “And then technology evolved, so now we’re often not in the same room together. Instead of flying to an out-of-town studio, I can now Zoom in.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was not an issue for Common Mode. “Everyone who works for us has their own home studio setup,” Fowlie says. “Most of our employees are musicians.” In fact, at the close of 2019, Fowlie sent a note out to his staff, encouraging them to work from home less and come into the office. “We were kind of losing touch with each other. Then, two months later, I closed the office, and we really haven't officially opened yet. Our studio is open, but most of our people are still working from home.” And the stellar product is being produced. “They are all audiobook professionals,” Fowlie says of his team. “Some people have been with us for 15 or 20 years, and we've all kind of perfected the art of audiobook production.”

According to Fowlie, 85% of books now are still traditionally published, while 15% are self-published. However, Fowlie says that independent authors need not shy away from Common Mode due to their stellar reputation with big name authors or publishers. He welcomes them wholeheartedly. “We are producing audio books for all of the main publishers right now, so our work is of the highest quality. We do hundreds of audiobooks per year. If an independent author comes to us, their audiobook will be equal in quality to all of the best sellers.”

Summing up his career with Common Mode, Fowlie says it’s gone far better than he expected. “I would have never dared to hope that it would become as successful as it has. It’s been successful beyond my dreams. I just feel lucky every day for that.”

The Common Mode is located at 296 State Route 10 West in East Hanover. For more information, visit www.common-mode.com.