Donald Katz is founder and CEO of Audible, Inc. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Newark, NJ, Audible developed audible.com

Audible.com

Audible.com is an Internet provider of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming.Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers....

, the ecommerce web destination and the first system for distributing audio via the Internet for playback at or away from the PC. Audible also commercialized the first portable digital audio player in 1997. In 2004, Mr. Katz was awarded the Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....

 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New Jersey. Audible was a publicly traded Nasdaq

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 company until it was acquired and became a subsidiary of Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 in early 2008.

Biography

Katz was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 1952. Katz graduated from New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 in 1974, and also attended The University of Chicago as well as The London School of Economics, from which he holds an MSc Economics. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey

Montclair, New Jersey

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 38,977 people, 15,020 households, and 9,687 families residing in the township. The population density was 6,183.6 people per square mile . There were 15,531 housing units at an average density of 2,464.0 per square mile...

.

Career as author

Before founding Audible, Katz was an author and journalist for twenty years. He is the author of Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America (1992), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle

National Book Critics Circle

The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....

 Award; The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears (1987), winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction

Heartland Prize

The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize is a literary prize created in 1988 by the newspaper The Chicago Tribune. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Fiction and Non-Fiction. These prizes are awarded to books that "reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America."- Chicago Tribune...

; and Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World (1994). Katz served as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

, Outside

Outside (magazine)

Outside is an American magazine focused on the outdoors. The first issue debuted in September 1977 with its mission statement declaring that the publication was "dedicated to covering the people, sports and activities, politics, art, literature, and hardware of the outdoors..."Its founders were...

, Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, Men's Journal

Men's Journal

Men's Journal is an American men's lifestyle magazine focused on outdoor recreation and comprising editorials on the outdoors, environmental issues, health and fitness, style and fashion, and "gear". It is owned by Jann Wenner of Wenner Media....

and Worth

Worth (magazine)

Worth is an American wealth management magazine for high net worth individuals. It is published on a bi-monthly basis and circulated to over 110,000 recipients.-History:Worth was founded in 1992 as a wealth management magazine for high net worth individuals...

. He received an Overseas Press Club

Overseas Press Club

The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...

award for his coverage of foreign affairs, and his writing won or was nominated for several National Magazine Awards. A two-volume collection of Katz's award-winning magazine stories, King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories and Valley of the Fallen and Other Places was published in 2001.

Works

• The King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories. 2001. ISBN 978-0679647027
• Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World. 1994. ISBN 978-1558504790
• Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America. 1992. ISBN 978-0060995027
• The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears. 1987. ISBN 978-0140115253