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. On January 31, 2008 Amazon.com announced it would buy Audible for about US$300 million. The deal closed in March 2008 and Audible is now a subsidiary of Amazon. The company enjoys a near-monopoly in the commercial online digital download market for audiobooks.

Audible introduced one of the first digital audio players in 1997. The following year it published a Web site from which audio files in its proprietary .aa format could be downloaded. Audible holds a number of patents in this area.

In 2000 Audible licensed the ACELP codec for its level 3 quality downloads.

In 2003, Audible made an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their catalog of books on the iTunes Music Store. Books purchased on iTunes have a .m4b extension (a variation on MP4), and contain AAC audio covered by Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management.

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. After several stage roles, she appeared in the 1999 television series Get Real. She played Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 sequel. Hathaway is also an Emmy-winning actress for her voice-over performance on The Simpsons.

Hathaway had dramatic roles in Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, both in 2005. She starred in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and in Becoming Jane (2007) as Jane Austen. In 2008, she was acclaimed for her lead role in Rachel Getting Married, for which she won awards and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2010, she starred in the box office hits Valentine's Day and Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, as well as Love and Other Drugs. In 2011, she had a voice role in the animated film Rio and starred in Lone Scherfig's adaptation of One Day. She portrays Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Fantine in Tom Hooper's Les Misérables.

People magazine named her one of its breakthrough stars of 2001, and she first appeared on its list of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2006.

David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing the psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he won four Emmy Awards during the series' run.

Pierce, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Laura Marie (née Hughes) and George Hyde Pierce, an insurance agent and aspiring actor. He has three older siblings: Barbara, Nancy, and Thomas, and adapted his name as an adult.

As a child, Pierce became very interested in the piano and frequently played organ at the local Bethesda Episcopal Church in Saratoga Springs. He began acting while in high school, earning recognition as best Dramatic Arts student. In 1977, Pierce received the Yaddo Medal for character and scholarship and worked in theater while a counselor at Camp Kabeyun in New Hampshire. However, his love of music was still strong, so he decided to study classical piano at Yale University. However, Pierce soon grew bored with music history lessons and found that he wasn’t dedicated enough to practice the required number of hours to become a successful concert pianist. Instead, he graduated in 1981 with a double major in English and Theatre Arts.

Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986) both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both science fiction's top U.S. prizes in consecutive years. He is also known as an advocate for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he has been a lifelong practicing member, and as a political commentator on many issues, including opposition to homosexual behavior and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

A film adaptation of Ender's Game is currently in development, and is set for release on March 15, 2013. Card is co-producing the film.^{[citation needed]}

Card is the son of Willard and Peggy Card, third of six children and the older brother of composer and arranger Arlen Card. Card was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Santa Clara, California as well as Mesa, Arizona and Orem, Utah. He served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Brazil and graduated from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah; he also spent a year in a Ph.D. program at the University of Notre Dame. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, an environment that has played a significant role in Ender's Game and many of his other works.

Hilary Ann Swank (born July 30, 1974) is an American film actress. She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry (1999) and as struggling waitress-turned-boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby (2004). She also put in a notable performance in Insomnia, working alongside Al Pacino. Since 2003, Swank has also worked as an executive producer.

Swank was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her mother, Judy Kay (née Clough), was a secretary and dancer, and her father, Stephen Michael Swank, was an officer in the Air National Guard and later a traveling salesman. She has a brother, Daniel, who is eight years her senior. Her surname, originally Schwenk, is of German origin. Many of Swank's family members hail from Ringgold County, Iowa, and her maternal grandmother was of Spanish and Shoshone (Native American) ancestry. After having lived in Spokane, Washington, Swank's family moved to a trailer park near Lake Samish in Bellingham, Washington, when Swank was six.