Michael Viner, 65, publisher of audio books
LOS ANGELES - Michael Viner, a publisher who specialized in audio books and earned a reputation for quick hits with sensational stories, including O.J. Simpson trial figure Faye Resnick’s book about Nicole Brown Simpson, died of cancer Saturday at his Beverly Hills home. He was 65.
His death was announced by a spokesman for Phoenix Books Inc., a company he founded in 2005.
Mr. Viner, a former music and television producer, launched himself into a fledgling audio publishing industry in 1985 when he and actress Deborah Raffin, then his wife, opened Dove Books-on-Tape in the garage of their home in the Los Angeles area.
The company found success with a mix of high- and lowbrow titles, from Sidney Sheldon’s bestseller “The Naked Face’’ to physicist Stephen W. Hawking’s opus on the cosmos, “A Brief History of Time,’’ which was Dove’s first big hit.
“He was a hard-driving, dedicated proponent of the audio book industry’’ who contributed to its early growth, said Janet Benson, president of the Audio Publishers Association.
But he was also the bull in the china shop of the genteel world of audio publishing, whose aggressive promotion, litigious nature, and penchant for turning notorious figures into instant authors made him “difficult to embrace fully,’’ Benson said.
After Mr. Viner (pronounced Veen-er) and Raffin expanded into hardcover publishing, their most sensational releases included “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again’’ (1996), which purported to present the true sexual adventures of four women seeking fame and fortune in Hollywood, and Resnick’s “Nicole Brown Simpson: The Diary of a Life Interrupted’’ (1994).
Mr. Viner’s publishing career began after a backgammon game with Sheldon, who lost $8,000 in a high-stakes game with his longtime friend. Rather than take Sheldon’s money, Mr. Viner asked whether Sheldon would let him produce two of the author’s bestsellers as audiotapes. Sheldon agreed and became a partner in Dove.
The company grew quickly, becoming a multimillion-dollar enterprise that rivaled the books-on-tape operations of major publishers such as Random House and Bantam Books.
Although it gained the most notice for releases that seemed to spring from the pages of the tabloid media (such as “The Private Diary of Lyle Menendez’’), most of Dove’s releases were more mundane: actor Paul Scofield reading Charles Dickens or actor Elliott Gould reading Raymond Chandler.
Mr. Viner said that reading classic literature helped him deal with a lonely childhood. Born Feb. 27, 1944, in Washington, D.C., he lost his businessman father to a heart attack when he was 11. After his father’s death, he was sent to a series of military and private schools.
“Books saved me,’’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “I discovered Dickens, Turgenev. . . . I read Twain, Thurber, Dorothy Parker.’’
When he was at Chadwick, he began working summers in the mail room at 20th Century Fox. He majored in English at Harvard before studying at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. But instead of seeking a career in the diplomatic corps, he wound up working as a personal aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy during the latter’s fateful 1968 presidential bid.
He became interested in audio books about a decade later, when he was searching for good books on tape to give an uncle. Noticing that there were not many titles, he asked Sheldon and his neighbor, Norman Cousins, whether any of their books were available on tape. “They said no,’’ Mr. Viner recalled. “I thought, ‘There’s a business here.’ ’’