Monster.com: You're the director of content acquisitions and strategic partnerships. What does that mean?

Warren Cook: What we do is license content that's already in audio form, like audio books or radio programming or text content that we record, and create an audio product, such as daily editions of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company or the Industry Standard.

My job is to identify the content, sell the partner on what a great service Audible is, contract with the partner to license the content, and work with the editorial team here to create an editorial product. The other part of my job is marketing the Audible service and acquiring customers through affiliate relationships. There is an aspect of the job that is sales -- I'm selling these people on how great the service is and how much their users will enjoy the experience of audio through this medium.

Mc: Do you get to meet the authors or comedians with audio on the site?

WC: I do that, and I guess it's ok. I think the most exciting part is coming up with the marketing campaigns to sell the product to people. That takes more creativity from me than being nice to Robin Williams.

Mc: Take me through your typical day.

WC: I look at the sales numbers, how many people have registered and how many new customers we've acquired. I look at what's being promoted on the site, and I start making calls to our content and affiliate partners to make sure everything is going smoothly. I also call new potential content partners or marketing affiliate partners to try to interest them in giving us their content or promoting our services. A lot of my days are involved with negotiating contracts of all sorts. I essentially do the business terms of the contracts and leave it to the attorneys to do the legal terms.

Mc: What strengths should people have if they want to work for a site like Audible.com

WC: Some Internet experience is important at this point in the industry's evolution. We have a great need for customer service, so that kind of background is a great help, and a background in sales helps in all aspects of business. Knowledge of Internet technology and content programming would be a great asset to someone coming in to this, and audio recording or a background in radio is directly applicable to what we do in production.

Mc: What was your first job out of college?

WC: I was a book editor and publisher, then a literary agent and a movie story editor at Universal Pictures. After that, I went to school for my MBA and was the VP of finance and business films for a startup called The Cartoon Bank, which is a database of single-panel cartoons by New Yorker artists.

I worked as the business manager for the Internet division of Conde Nast magazines, and I was director of new business at iVillage. I'm a veteran of the Internet world, and I was attracted to Audible's content base and commerce business model.

Mc: How has the dotcom industry changed since you got there?

WC: I have a background in both old and new media, and the new media is coming to resemble the old media in that its necessity to be on a path to profit has driven people to concentrate on the fundamentals of business: acquiring and satisfying customers by providing a service they value.