My Audiobook Experience -A full account to help you get to Yes? No? Maybe?

 

I’m always exploring new ways to reach my audience, so why not in the middle of a pandemic tackle my audiobook life? I had the extra time, not that I would be reading it myself, but the extra time provided time to research, read and a few extra dollars not spent on gas to see if I could even afford to pursue this endeavor. 

One of the problems for me, and I think a lot of other indie authors is that until recently, you have no idea what things cost. It’s great that you get to chart to chart your own course but that’s just it, you get to chart a course that you can afford. Every dime you make has to go back into the publishing and editing costs and if you’re not making a lot of dimes, then you only have so much to work with. The second thing about Indie Author world is  some parts of the business can have an “I can’t do that” not because of the budget like above, but because some things just seem off limits to you and your own man/woman. This could stem from a number of things, that you don’t feel like a real production company, you are, and it could be self doubt, the available bandwidth to see some things thru and often it’s simply about the unknown costs. If you start down a road with a project, there’s always a health amount of fear that you may ver well run out of money to see it through. That can be devastating so why bother. I would venture however that even people making six figures off of their work have bouts of doubt that can make them feel prohibited or not entitled to taking advantage of things they can clearly afford. Even when the wallet can afford, that doesn’t mean anything, the mind must afford too. And there we are sometimes, stuck in our minds.  

 

I had every feel I describe above when I first thought about moving into audiobooks. It was something that I always lamented that I hadn’t done and it was almost this Pie in the Sky idea that when I get you know, a hundred thousand dollars or okay, even $10,000 in the bank that I would pursue this, and I don’t know why my mind said, hey just research it, see what happens and so I did. I had never done that, I had ideas that it was going to cost, at minimum 10 grand to get one audiobook done, I was so glad I started looking into it. 

Know what I first found out, it would cost as little as $1,000.00 to produce my audiobook. Are you kiddng me? I could afford that. We forget even as we do bits of book production every single day that this writer life is evolving and changing all the time. We have professional indie books with a team of designers, editors, freelance formatters, illustrators, photograph, stock photography and no we can do the exact same thing with the audio versions. The year of the pandemic be done, I was going to produce my audiobook have a very professional and really good product and still be successful with making it happen. 

 

Here’s some things I learned and overall, I used ACX / Audible. (By the way Audible/ACX just turned ten years old this month, that’s a long time waiting for a dream you haven’t researched at all.)

As you may have heard, there are two routes –

1. Pay for everything up front, (and this to me isn’t even up front, it’s after the book is read/produced (done) I chose to pay up front, but my narrator recorded the entire book before I actually had to pay so this can buy you some time

2. Do what’s called a Royalty Split, this will be cheaper than paying everything up front, but you’ll then have the narrator with you for the rest of your author life, meaning they will forever receive a cut of the royalties you make. I can’t tell you how much I hate math, and split sounded like a fraction to me. I just didn’t want to deal with it. Plus I did not research to find out what else I had to do to use this particular path if I were to choose it. Some questions you might ask include: Do I receive all the funds and then pay them half from what I received? Would they want this every month? How could they be assured they weren’t being jibbed, which I’d never, ever do, but we don’t know each other, how could I trust them and they trust me? If I am in charge of the funds, every month like clockwork, I gotta get them their money no matter what, no excuses? What if I’m going out of town or become ill? Then I gotta get a lawyer and let my family know what’s up and on and on and on…. Yeah no thanks. I’m sure it works for folks. The other issue is that though there is a royalty split, there is no guarantee that the narrator wants to help you promote the project beyond a month or two after release or at all. It’s certainly icing if they do but they’re in the narration side of things not the marketing and promotion side of things. 

 

Before you get to what route you’ll choose, you need to make a sample of the work. I did maybe three to five page sample of the work and you will load that on ACX/Audible (assuming you’ve signed up, created your profile, login, etc.) and then you’ll get some auditions of those that want to read for your project. 

I don’t have a lot of tips but being a new author, I got three bids (or three different voices) vying for the work.

One was a woman

One had an accent and

The other was an American male voice

The American male voice wasn’t deep but I still found I liked listening to it. I say this because you assume deep, sexy male voice for a romance but it’s really not what you really want all the time, so many voices you’ll find you’ll like and not the typical stereotype of what romances should sound like.

It was actually down to the two men. A tip I have is I played both male voices at the same time AND I closed my eyes and made sure I had a quiet place or headphones.

What are you listening for?:

Clarity

Diction

Variation in tone, 

Emotions for characters, some attachment to what they’re reading or the perception of some involvement and (by this I mean, that some folks really can sound like they are reading a list of ingredients rather than at least some superficial attachment for the time, that they understand what they are reading and that there’s a growing relationship here. This isn’t the nutritional facts of your favorite candy; and finally 

Sound quality

There may be more of things you’ll discover that you’re looking/listening for, one thing stood out, one guy sounded like he was more of a movie voice over actor, and that’s fine but at every chapter, I didn’t want to feel as if I should be racing to nearest Regal Cinema. There are highs and lows, ebbs and flows, and listening to both playing at the same time helped one stand out and broke the tie. 

Choosing the narrator really for me, was one of the hardest parts of everything I found. And after I chose, a few more folks did also bid, everyone uncovers the project at their pace and likely when they finish one job, they go looking for more. 

After choosing a narrator, they have already put their bids in and I think this is the part that scares many people. Yes, some charge $ 250.00 per finished hour (PFH). Per finished hour means that it’s not just the narration (reading and recording) but the editing -which is very tedious and takes the most time- and the producing of the entire thing, stringing everything together in a seamless sounding story with no mistakes or errors. My narrator charged me about 150.00 PFG

My book took about 10 hours

One thing you’ll also notice is that when you have to listen to the entire book and write down all the errors that you hear and any mispronounced words, this is also a long process and as such, it really makes you want to clean up your work, cut some of the over explication, backstory and expository writing. Listening helped me as a writer and I also now enjoy listening to writing instruction books as I write my own work. 

In your work, if you have characters with special spellings or unusual names, keep a running list and write out the phonetic version for your narrator, an example is of my own book’s main character and family that the entire book is based off: Jameson – some say this very slow like two words  James Son, I wanted it pronouced like Jame-esson – so I wrote that.

Same with current character Jina Jameson – who’s name should be like Regina King, and not like an-Jy-na, or Ghe-nah  

Go through your manuscript, even words you think should come out find, Alfreah, the matriach of the Jameson family, came out Al – Fray- Ah and it should be Al-FREE-Uh

Little details to help your narrator get it right the first time are worth documenting and as you listen to the project when it’s all done, you’ll then have to list ALL the mistakes

Here’s how I would write my narrator and list the mistakes, you need to put

(#, time in the file, what time does the error occur so they can find it, and WHAT is said that needs correcting)

• Chapter 18

1. 8:06  Sure he may have tuned out mentally, — tune-d out not turned out

• Chapter 43

1. 0:05 interspersed with peals of laughter  = PEELS of laughter  

Note in the second example, it recorded as Pells of laughter. 

 

Up until this point, you have:

1. Posted the short piece 3 or so pages of your work (don’t pick something that’s not the actual work to be read; that doesn’t make sense to me anyway IDK) for them to read and record you a SAMPLE

2. Received the recorded samples from those interested in the project with their fee

3. Listened to them all and done your own back and forth on who sounds best – playing, replaying, even playing at different volumes 

4. Selected the narrator you want and agreed upon their price – Now don’t be afraid to negotiate, I’d say during the pandemic work was likely pretty steady but as more books come out, as more people get into narration and discover this craft, there will be folks to choose but some big authors are also simply holding out for the Mindy Kaling’s of the world, but she likely won’t look some of our way twice, if at all. But I would never be afraid to counteroffer, 25 bucks or so down from the asking. I didn’t do it this time as I didn’t know what to expect but you never know. 

5. The narrator records 15 minutes and after listening, you agree to that and then they will record the entire project

6. YOU will then need to listen to the entire project. For me, with everything, honestly, this took almost two-three weeks. I needed quiet space, I needed to be rested, and alert, I was so excited but I really needed to listen to every single word and like editing,  -in the version that’s up for sale- still just a few little things that most listeners probably didn’t notice but that I as the author of the work, noticed, when I listen to it today. 

I would argue that reading along on your kindle might be good but I’m on the fence about this. Remember that editing your book it’s best to read it aloud when listening and you fumble, the reader will too. I think that reading along can make you not listen as closely and your brain may implement what is sees on the page, rather than what you actually hear. But it’s a personal choice, I did read along some, but mostly I didn’t. No multitasking, no email scrolling, just listening. 

Get a free ACX Producer Checklist here, and the 

ACX Rights-Holder Checklist here

*Don’t forget how truly helpful Amazon boards and forums can be. There’s lots of info there so be sure to read it. 

 

Once you’ve submitted a sample, expect all kinds of folks to originally vie for the opportunity to read, by that I mean, women, men, high pitched, low pitched. One exercise I did to see who I liked the most and I for the first book only had three people within a day or so, read my sample portion. After I had made my choice, more did also submit and they know after a week or two that you’re done selecting and the project is moving forward, plus you do note this in the ACX platform, thus “closing the project” to new auditions. But a trick I just did was to play TWO narrators I was down to choosing, at the same time. Just hitting play on them both (at the same time) closing my eyes, a quiet room is really important and listening to all them (kind of a garbled mess at first to the ear) until it’s quiet enough to really hear someone come through. For me, there will be a winner. I’ll be able to make someone out and I’ll just hear them over the other because I like how they sound and clearness. Someone should stand out.  

Finally just some loose ends. For one, I didn’t realize the narrator/production team had left off the retail sample. This will be a piece of the book that must be under five minutes. Rather than go back and forth and I’m certain the narrator would have done this for me, but beings I wanted to know how to do this and could do it for the future, I knew that I could take one of the chapters and trim them myself. 

After a search, I found this free tool, https://audiotrimmer.com/ that helps with the trimming. Upload the file, trim it and in less than 60 seconds, it’s ready for you to download and use. This would be great for almost any audio file that you need to trim and that can be a great teaser on your website, or other social media as you promote the book.

Another tool is Apple’s free Garage Band which you should be able to get an as an app if you do not have a Mac desktop or laptop, however the the audiobook files are mp3 files and while Garage Band can export to mp3, they can’t always work with them unless you know what you’re doing and know how to convert them from this format to what the sample has to be. 

Up until now, I’ve had the most wonderful and really error free experience. While a lot of time was involved, that time was mostly on my end, initially picking, choosing, listening, writing out mistakes and listening again and loading. Of course there would be one or two issues with everything that’s occurred and here they are AND they’re not even on my end which is great. Alas I have to blame the Amazon. 

The Worst 

Two issues really, the first, in this entire, again wonderful process? IS THE WAIT TIME FOR AMAZON TO APPROVE THE PRODUCTION. UGH!!! Here I was going through all of the motions, moving forward, doing what I thought was a beautiful and thorough job only to have all my efforts come to a screeching halt. In all that I read, all the production checklist, nothing could stop me except for a wait time that was supposed to be 30 days, lagged, dragged and gagged into three and a half long, soul sucking, draining and depressing months! It was a real killjoy and it’s neither the Narrator, nor the Production teams, nor my, fault. It’s over on the Amazon side. My first book took almost three months to be reviewed for quality assurance before it was released and available for sale. I was so mad.

My second pet peeve, when it’s released, IT’S JUST RELEASED. You get an email that day any time during the entire day and it says, congrats, it’s up. That mean’s there’s no build up time, no time to create a buzz and have a specific launch date, again, a killjoy. I personally felt a little down that it was taking so long and without a hard release date, you don’t want to start promoting and then it not be ready, and if I had went all in, it would have been for a month and I certainly would have fizzled  out. Pace yourself. If/When it comes out, the best prep is just to prepare your materials and as soon as it’s ready, start and send, and celebrate all those materials you’ve been holding out on. It’s out and that’s a major accomplishment!

Third is that there isn’t any real data on going wide versus going exclusive, but I went wide meaning that I didn’t keep the book solely available through Amazon/ACX. What is not clear is if you go non-exclusive, you can’t give out all those FREE Trails. There is a special code that you can promote where folks can get your book for free and get a trial version of Audible in the process. My narrator urged me to get those codes and each time I tried there was no explanation why I could not get them only, it seemed because I wasn’t exclusive. You can really make your own judgements about this. Is it worth it, I don’t know and I don’t mind now that I’m not exclusive, if you read a ton of audiobooks then you likely already are a monthly Audible subscriber and if not, I give you a code, you probably won’t become a subscriber for one book. 

Other than these issues, it’s an experience I’ve done twice now and it was great. 

The Dilemma

Finally, I absolutely love my narrator, Skylar Morgan, however if you have a series you have to make a choice to either keep using your narrator across subsequent books or move on and risk it if things don’t go well. So far, in book three now of the Jameson series, I do plan to keep him 🙂 for all four books but I am sure I’ll try another narrator for the next series just to spread my wings and diversify. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I think that narrators that actually help you learn the process and are willing helpers even when you have done the full costs up front, rather than the royalty split, are not obligated to help you at all and that fact that he does help promote and has a huge following on IG, is a huge help and likely hard to come by. So, consider all those factors as well and try to build a relationship. 

My narrator has also worked on the intro/outro of a podcast I’ll be working on putting together in the future, and he’s also an experienced production manager that, if I wanted and needed, could produce the podcasts to as well. For the short project, the intro/outtro, I was able to contract him personally for the small job rather than also go through the ACX/Audible company to do that too. 

Total Project Costs – $ 875.00 

Narrator $ 855.00 ( I did give my narrator a tip of 20-40 bucks because of the extra mile I feel he went to help me understand the process, and his patience)

Book Cover Design – $ 20.00  – Note the original cover artist for the book, charged just 20 bucks to alter the file she’d already done and had immediate access to, this was for each of the 4 audiobook covers. I’ve also heard so much about folks doing this themselves in Canva, Picmonkey or other cloud based design platform. I try not to chance things like this simply because of the resolution. Nothing wrong with doing it yourself, but you also need to have the fonts, right sizing, right color/hi-res and sometimes it’s just better to ensure it comes out right rather than waste time, but if it works these other ways of doing it, it just works. Totally up to you. 

My audiobook experience? Definitely, YES! Now go, you can do it, it’s now much more accessible than you could have imagined. Have fun!