66. From Page to Ear: Unveiling Audiobook Opportunities for Authors

Have you ever wondered about audiobook opportunities for authors?

In this episode, we explore the booming audiobook market and its potential benefits for authors. You’ll learn about the pros and cons of creating audiobooks, including pricing considerations, narration options, and distribution channels. 

But wait, there's more! 

We'll also address some key questions to help you decide if audiobooks are a good fit for you at this stage in your writing journey. 

Tune in and discover if there's an audiobook waiting to be brought to life from your written work!

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Market trends
• When to consider audiobooks
• Pricing your audiobooks
• Narration options
• Tools for self-narration
• Distribution
• Audiobook cover art
• Is this right for you?
• Narration tips
• Example narration speed
• Cleaning up narration

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Resources discussed during the show: 

• Dynamic microphone: https://a.co/d/aYOnbZy 
• Descript: https://www.descript.com/ 
• BookFunnel: https://bookfunnel.com/ 

Books discussed during the show: 

• Promises and Possibilities: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/j5f6y5ub4u 

Connect with Parents Who Write: 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parentswhowrite 
• Book a free 30-minute consultation call to learn about my editing services:  https://calendly.com/parentswhowrite/30min-meeting 

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Transcript

Erin P.T. Canning: 0:00

Most of us write to make our voices heard, so audiobooks are the next stage of that, literally. But what benefits and drawbacks might audiobooks really offer us? Especially indie authors with a limited budget. I've been pondering audiobooks for some time, but I wasn't ready to look into the logistics, and the technical pieces seemed beyond my scope. I mean, I'm first and foremost a writer, not a producer or actor. But now that I'm on the cusp of releasing my third book, I'm approaching that sweet spot where it's time for me to really consider more avenues for reaching new readers. And everywhere I go, I keep hearing people in the industry talking about audiobooks, and how this medium is becoming more accessible and more viable for authors. So I wanted to learn more. After all, more opportunities to sell our books means more revenue for us. And, contrary to popular belief, authors don't have to be starving artists. Of course, as I dove into this subject matter, I had a lot of questions, like when's the right time to tackle this? What costs do I need to watch out for? What are my narration options? And which are more affordable? That's what you're going to learn today, and more, including what's the bare minimum you need to pull this off yourself and turn a profit. Stay tuned to find out. And if you have more questions about how to go about doing this, reach out to me. You can find my contact info in the show notes. All right, let's get to the show. You're listening to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps you pursue your writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm an author, editor, writing coach, and mom of two young boys. And my mission is to help you prioritize your writing, strengthen your voice, and gain confidence and direction so that you can own your identity as a writer and thrive as an author. Hey friend, thank you for joining me for another episode of Parents Who Write. From all of the research that I have been gathering on audiobooks, the truth is that audio book sales are on the rise. They have been on the rise for the last several years, and it just keeps increasing. Audio books and e books are outperforming paperback books, which, I'm not going to lie, breaks my heart, given the fact that I will always love holding a paperback book in my hands. But when I'm going on vacation or I'm in the car for a long time, I still love having my e and audio books. So audiobooks are definitely something to consider. There are our super fans who want every version of our book. I have my friends who have the e book version and the paperback version of my books, and they're going to want that audiobook version too. So don't underestimate your super fans who are going to want every version. But then there's also readers out there who only want audio books, and you're missing out on that opportunity if you aren't providing an audio book. Now, I'm not saying that you need to panic and jump right in on this. Absolutely not. I'm not one for saying jump on this trend and make it happen. All right. We want to think it through. So let's, let's talk about audiobooks and what's involved, okay? First, there's the pricing factor. Audiobooks, when you're selling them, you're going to sell them for more than your ebooks. Remember I said ebooks and audiobooks are outselling paperbacks? Your audiobooks, you're going to actually price them for around the same price as your paperback. That means that you are selling a product for a higher price that is worth that higher price. Let me put that out there as well, okay? You have two primary means for producing an audiobook. Yes, you can do an AI reader. That is also another option. But I would say that the two primary means for creating an audiobook is for you to hire a traditional narrator. Now, there are fans out there who are only going to want your audiobook if it has a traditional narrator behind it. You know, you can find somebody if you do want to hire them. You can try to find them via Fiverr or Upwork. This is going to be the higher price tag for you because of the fact that you need to pay that narrator and you're going to have to decide if it's going to be, uh, you're paying them via royalties, or honestly, usually you pay them upfront a couple of thousand dollars. I mean, it depends on what you find on Fiverr and Upwork, but you know, it can be several thousand dollars to hire a professional voice actor, and they're worth that 100%. I'm not discounting that in any way. But that is a pretty high price tag, and there's a lot of us indie authors like myself that I can't swing that right now. So another option for your audiobooks is to do self narrated audiobooks. Now before you panic at the thought about that, that's more accessible now because of today's technology. And the other thing to consider is that there are plenty of readers out there who love hearing the author's voice. And because you're the person who's narrating your book, that means that it's also a lot more affordable for us. In terms of tools and software, for the most part, what you need to make this happen is a good microphone. Google Podcast Microphones. You don't need the 200 to 300 to 500 dollar version of the microphones. The one that I'm using to record this podcast cost me 55 dollars. But you want a good microphone. And then the other software that I recommend for creating audio files, that I use for this podcast is Descript. And what I love about using Descript is that when you drop the audio file into their program, it automatically creates a transcript for you. So you're not having to sit there and listen to the audio and try to find where you stumbled and back up and try to fix it just based on sound. With the transcript in front of you, you can easily see. Maybe I said this sentence wrong and, you know, you could be like, Oh, I stumbled, give yourself a really long pause. Descript records that really long pause. You can visually see where you need to fix that and fill it in. So Descript honestly is great. There is a cost for it. Of course, an annual subscription, I think is like a hundred some odd dollars. Honestly, I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm sorry. But compared to thousands of dollars for a voice narrator, I would, I would say that I'm not complaining. When it comes to distribution, Book Funnel seems to be a really fantastic way to share your audio book, and you can sell it directly from your author website or for Facebook, and that is direct sales for you. And what that means is that BookFunnel does not take royalties from your audio book. All you're paying BookFunnel is your annual subscription for having their service, which I think is, again if you go with like the middle author plan, it's like around uh, maybe like a hundred and thirty ish dollars, don't quote me on that, for that plan, which includes audiobook distribution. So, highly recommend looking into BookFunnel. And then the other thing that you're gonna need for your audiobook is cover art. For audiobooks, you can't just use your book cover. It is Industry standard that audiobook covers are squares, and that all started from CDs, right? The size of a CD cover, which was music, audio, right? It's that square, and so cover art for audiobooks is also supposed to be a square piece of artwork. I'm sure you can figure that out. Talk to your graphic designer. See if they charge whatever to resize that for you. Or there's always dipping into Canva and trying to resize your cover art that way. All right, so that's the practical version of this. The next big question is, is creating an audiobook right for you? I think it's a really good opportunity that you might want to look into. But I would say don't fret about this. Don't worry about, Oh, I'm missing out, if you haven't yet published three books, at least three books. Because when you are starting out, the most important thing for your author career is to publish those books and get more out there. So, I would say don't worry about having an audiobook until you've got at least three books out, maybe if you're getting toward the end of your first series. One of the reasons why you don't have to worry about this is because whenever you do finally release an audiobook, if that's what you want to do, you're providing something new for your readers. So it's pretty cool if it's like a year or two later, that's when you're finally able to get to this. And, you know, your book has been sitting out there for one to two years, but then you can say, Hey, there's this new format coming out. And that creates new information, new buzz, new hype, new promos for that book that's been sitting on the shelf for a while. So it gives you a new opportunity to advertise your older books. Your backlist and that is perfectly acceptable. So again, don't panic. I'm just, I think this is a good opportunity for you to consider in the future. Okay. The other thing to question about whether or not this feels like a right fit for you is ask yourself about the time invested and do you have that time to invest right now? Because if you're trying to get your next book out, I don't want you to be stressing about recording your chapters. Now, according to ebookfriendly. com, the time invested for an 80, 000 word novel, which is your typical length of a novel, would be about 9 to 10 hours of narration time. That's not including going through the Descript files, making sure everything's cleaned up, adding studio sound. I'm getting ahead of myself, and putting those compositions together into a single file. So keep that in mind. You're looking at nine to ten hours plus. I mean the amount of hours that go into writing a book. That's really not that much in the grand scheme of things. But again, focus first on getting your first couple of books out and establishing yourself as an author before you start panicking about those. And then the last thing that I want you to consider about audiobooks is some narration tips for you. So one of those things is going to be the position of your microphone. You actually don't want your microphone directly in front of your face like this. Okay? You want to have your microphone at like a 45 degree angle to your face. And, about, uh, if you were to put your fist in front of your mouth, that, that amount of distance between you and your microphone. And by having it at a 45 degree angle, you're going to reduce that pa pa pa sound that can happen in your microphone. And I really apologize. If you just had to hear that and cringe on my podcast, but I'm trying to demonstrate for you why proper microphone placement is important. And that'll help with the audio quality of what it is that you are producing. The other tip that I want to give you is, when you are narrating your books, you need to slow down. And that is so hard, even me when I'm doing my podcast, I have a tendency to really want to speed up with my talking, or if I'm talking to my friends, or when we get nervous, or if you have to do presentations, it's that nervous energy that gets us to speed up. But the truth of the matter is that when you are recording an audiobook, or you are reading for an audience, you actually want to force yourself to slow down. So this way people can take in what you are saying, because they don't have visuals, right? So you need to give them that chance to actually hear you and for them to visualize what it is that you are reading for them. So another tip with when you are narrating for an audiobook, you want to make sure that your shoulders are back, that you're not slouched over, you're not like crushing your abdomen. You want to be able to breathe. Again, make sure you've got that proper microphone alignment. And then you're going to force yourself to slow down. I'm going to give you a demonstration for you. This is the first chapter in my novelette, Promises and Possibilities, which you can get for free by signing up for my newsletter. I'll have a link for that for you at the end of this. But here is an example for narrating. Here we go. Chapter One. An Order Placed. Emelie bursts open the door of her father's shop and runs down Front Street, parallel to the river flowing beside her. Long shadows and her dark burgundy skirt conceal her hurried steps as the sun sinks behind the ruins of the forgotten palace that loom in the distance. While other shopkeepers close up their markets for the day, she dodges artisans and shoppers and hopes she's not too late to pick up her order. The entire way there, she grits her teeth, clenches her fists, and prays the hum of the city will drown out the sounds she left behind of her sister, moaning and calling Lord Hamon's name from the back of her father's shop. Who the hell does Reena think she is? Even the neighbors will hear them this time. And everyone knows Lord Hamon's reputation. She weaves around an elderly couple and turning sideways, slips between a man balancing a stack of crates against his belly and a blacksmith shaking out his apron. Slow down, girl, hollers the smithy. I don't want to slow down, not if you heard what I did. What would make Reena take such a risk? No matter how charming or handsome Lord Hamon is, no one else will have her now. The feeling of being unwanted slams into Emelie's chest and slows her pace. Hugging her arms close to her chest, she glances at the bracelet dangling around her wrist, the promise of her future with Van, even though he proposed to her only because he can't inherit his own father's business. At least not as the fourth son. The reason doesn't matter. Through me, Papa gains an apprentice, and Van gains a reputable business, and I'll continue weaving rugs for the rest of my life until my fingers break with overuse, or I die like Ansley. Emelie pauses at the water's edge and glances across the river at the elves leisurely strolling by and meeting with friends for dinner. The lady's excessively long hair billows in the breeze, and they move with a fluidity that mirrors the river's undulating waves. Do elven ladies readily accept entering a loveless marriage? With her palm, Emelie fluffs her snood resting on her neck. Turning away from the elven side of the city, she lifts her chin and stares at the windows above the silversmith's shop, at what used to be her older sister's home. Emelie should pop inside to see her nephew, but he deserves a happy auntie who will dote on him. Not the old crone Emelie has channeled today. At least her nephew's future is secure, being an only child. I don't have time to meander. Emelie steams ahead, dodging, swerving, ducking, and slipping between shoppers and workers, heading home to their families after a long day. When she stops in front of the dye shop, the owner disappears inside and closes the door. Emelie exhales a puff of frustration through her nose and contemplates kicking the now empty display stall. Before she can wind up her foot, the shop door swings open, and Van steps out. As always, he secured his long blonde hair with a tie at the nap of his neck. Beneath his brocade golden brown vest, he's neatly tucked his shirt into his trousers. Miss Emelie, a pleasure. Van nods his head and keeps his voice and facial expressional cordial, but that's it. Everything about him lacks warmth, even to his fiancé. Hello, Mr. Van. I need to pick up my order for the dyes I placed last week. I am sorry, but as you can see, Father's already closed shop. You'll have to come back in the morning. Emelie presses her lips into a thin line and grits her teeth. Mr. Van, your father knew I was coming today. He probably left it behind the counter inside. She considers batting her lashes and puckering the corner of her mouth into a subtle pout, the way Reena does with Lord Hamon. But she just can't will her body to act that way with Van. Besides, she's not Reena. Emelie would probably look ridiculous if she tried to flirt. But if I did flirt, would he maybe warm up to me? Do I even want him to warm up to me? Van sweeps his arm over the empty display tables and shelves, as if she hadn't noticed them already. Miss Emelie, as you can see, I helped my father package all of our stock and carried it inside by myself. It would take forever to find one order. Despite his cordial tone, his blue eyes turn colder the longer she stands there. Please go check for me? He exhales loudly and drops the façade. Emelie, come back tomorrow. I'm exhausted. Just go look for her, says a man several feet away at the entrance of the flower shop next door. As he sets down a long, open shelving unit he'd been carrying, his shaggy brown hair falls in front of his square jaw. Tucking his hair behind his ears, he stands up tall and glares at Van. Or are your eyes too tired too? Emelie sucks her lips inward to suppress a smirk. Glaring at the stranger, Van opens his mouth to protest. But the flower shop door opens wide and Miss Fanny steps outside with a vase of flowers in her hand, effectively silencing Van. Oh, Henrik, Miss Franny says, smiling warmly at the stranger. I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow. Yes, ma'am, but I finished early and thought you'd like this sooner. You don't have to pay until tomorrow if you prefer. Henrik dips his head and curls his broad shoulders inward. I have your fee, thank you. Would you carry that inside for me and place it against the front window while I get you your sum? Yes, ma'am, and thank you. Henrik squats down and picks up the shelving unit with ease, but he doesn't step inside. Instead, he glares at Van until he huffs and disappears inside to search for Emelie's order. Henrik nods at Emelie, who angles herself away from him to hide her red cheeks. No need to be rude, Emelie. When she peeks out the corner of her eye, Henrik's already gone. A lump of regret settles at the base of her throat. Doesn't matter. It's not like I needed his help. I can handle Van. Here, Van pops back outside carrying a crate of dyes that must have been easily accessible, giving how quickly he returned. I'm sorry, he mumbles, unable to look her in the eye. Emelie sighs and takes the crate, balancing the lot on her knee until she has a firm hold on the notched handles. Maybe there's hope for him yet, for us. Thank you, Mr. Van. He nods once at her and then asks, Do you need help carrying that home? Initially, she smiles at the offer, but his sullen expression and single step backward reveal his hope that she'll say, No. I'm fine, thank you. When Emelie gets home, she sets down the crate and takes off her apron. The loom rests in the corner, and carpets draped over displays fill the shop. She meanders around them to make her way upstairs, which is finally quiet. Thank the fae. Emelie opens the pantry cabinet, pulls out a few jars and drops leaves of various herbs into a cup. She anticipates the aroma and the relief the tea will bring. Smelling even the dried bits makes her curl her lip into a smile. Selling even the dried bits. Smelling. Ugh. Pause. Smelling even the dried bits makes her That's a hard one to read out loud. Smelling even the dried bits makes her lips curl into a smile and she releases a bit of the tension she'd been holding onto all day. She then ladles a cup of water into the kettle and walks over to the hearth where she stro where she stokes the fire And hooks the kettle over the new flame. And hooks the kettle over the new flame. As Emelie pokes the fire, a moan escapes the room Reena shares with Emelie. Faster, Reena cries. Emelie opens the top of her kettle, dumps the water on the fire, and flees the building once again. Okay, so, as you can see, with me just reading one chapter, I stumbled a few times, which means when I go into Descript, I'm going to have to find all those moments that I stumbled and cleaned them out. And that was me reading thirteen hundred words. So, just an example on, again, that time factor that you can have, and if you say a sentence wrong or it just doesn't come across right, you need to pause for that moment and re read the entire sentence. I recommend that a lot. There's plenty of times where I try to only restate half of a sentence, and I just can't blend it together right. So if you repeat the entire sentence, you can try to find a natural pause in between them, and then merge them together. So you kinda, you take like a really good bit from one part of the sentence and then the rest of the bit from the sentence from the other half of the sentence or the other take, I should say. There you go. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions, if you want help with creating an audio book, I can help you with that. And if you have any questions about books in general and your publishing path, you can always book that free 30 minute strategy call with me where we can solidify your goals. And I can help make sure that you are headed in the direction that you want, make some recommendations, and just really make sure that you are going to get to that next stage in your author career, in your writing career. As always keep writing.