新刊ネットワーク

ニューブックスネットワーク（NBN）は、学者、研究者、作家が新刊について語るインタビューを配信するポッドキャストネットワークです。NBNが取り上げる書籍のほとんどはノンフィクションで、大学出版局や独立系学術出版社から出版されています。NBNの使命は、一般の人々に書籍に関する知識を広めることです。NBNは、書籍に特化したポッドキャスト事業としては世界最大規模を誇ります。自社制作の著者インタビューポッドキャスト（「新刊情報」）を130本以上、大学出版局、学術機関、研究者が制作するポッドキャストを100本以上配信しています。

NBNは週70エピソードを配信しており、これまでに3万エピソード以上を配信してきました。これらのエピソードはすべてNBNのウェブサイトで永久に無料で視聴できます。NBNは毎月20万人のリスナーにリーチしており、リスナーは毎月約100万エピソードをダウンロードしています。NBNのリスナーは北朝鮮を除く世界中のあらゆる国にいます。70%は英語圏、30%はそれ以外の地域です。リスナー層は高学歴で、90%が大学卒業、53%が大学院卒です。NBNはマーシャル・ポーによって設立され、少人数の編集チームによって運営されています。

NBNのインタビューは、その分野の専門家によって行われ、そのほとんどはNBNに無償で協力する大学院生や教授です。このモデルにより、NBNの1エピソードあたりのコストは100ドルをはるかに下回っています。NBNは中立的な編集方針で運営されており、取り上げる書籍の内容を支持するのではなく、著者が作品を一般に公開するためのプラットフォームを提供しています。このネットワークは、40の大学出版局と20の学術機関と提携しています。^{[ 1 ] [ 2 ]}アメリカの社会学者ローラ・スタークは、このネットワークを「ゆっくりと蓄積された記念碑的な成功」と評しています。^{[ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]}

NBN originated in 2007 when Poe, then a history professor who had taught at Harvard University and the University of Iowa, launched a podcast called New Books in History. Poe was then researching a book on the history of communication. During this research he came to the conclusion that people strongly prefer listening (audio) and watching (video) to reading (text). Poe noted that most people do not read serious books precisesly because they have to be read. All the rich content in serious non-fiction books was, as he often said, "trapped in text." Poe wanted to liberate this content by using new media. He therefore decided to experiment with audio and video as a means of communicating scholarly content to the public, the initial result being the podcast New Books in History. It turned out there was significant demand for author interviews with scholars. Listenership exploded and the NBN project began to grow rapidly. In 2012, Poe resigned his tenured professorship to operate the NBN full-time.^[6]

NBN maintains a strict policy of editorial non-intervention in book selection: hosts—all area experts—choose which books to cover without input from NBN editors. The primary rule on the NBN, Poe has said, is "the hosts pick the books." The network explicitly avoids 'gotcha' journalism; if guests misspeak or request content removal, the network accommodates those requests. Poe has stated that the intent is for authors to 'say exactly what they want to say' and nothing else.^[6]

After selecting a book to cover and arranging the interview, NBN hosts record the raw interviews and send the audio files to the NBN for post-production, publication and promotion, The NBN provides extensive training materials to new hosts, most of whom—being graduate students and professors—will know little about conducting and recording an interview. Hosts are encouraged not to editorialize and to remain in the background; they are to allow the guests to speak expansively about their books.^[4][6]

The network generates revenue primarily through direct and programmatic advertising and partnerships with academic institutes and university presses institutes such as Princeton University Press, Oxford University Press, and the MIT Press.^[5] In April 2026 NBN published its 30,000th podcast, stating that this made it "one of the largest podcast networks in the world". ^[7]

The network's podcasts are widely used as a pedagogical tool in higher education. In 2014, sociologist Laura Stark assigned students in her undergraduate seminar 'Medicine on Trial' at Vanderbilt University to conduct group author interviews for the network's "New Books in Medicine" channel. Stark described the assignment as an example of what Poe calls 'consequential assignments': work that 'reaches and teaches people' rather than being read by a single instructor and discarded. Writing in the journal Contexts in 2015, Stark argued that the network demonstrated how books and new media need not be opposing forces. She observed that the network 'did not replace books but promoted them and encouraged reading. It did not thin the content of books, but focused it.' Stark suggested that the network pointed toward a future in which academic book culture 'may involve different kinds of reading and more conversations about any given book—an updated oral tradition, new-fangled for a digital age.'^[3]