BECKSVOICE.COM
Audiobook production
Frequently asked questions
Q: SHOULD I HAVE MY BOOK MADE INTO AN AUDIOBOOK?
A~ There are so many reasons to get on the audiobook train. Audiobooks are the fastest growing format in book publishing, and many audiobook listeners, if not most, listen exclusively to audiobooks while they’re driving, or shopping, or doing housework. They want to have their hands free so that they can do other things in their busy lives. Having your audiobook available on Audible, Chirp, Spotify, or other sales platforms will increase visibility, not only to your audiobook, but to your e-books and your print books as well. Audiobooks are accessible to the sight impaired, and can be a great learning tool for those with learning disorders. That being said, audiobooks do take quite a bit of work to produce, and if your books are not selling well in their other formats, you can expect the same result as an audiobook.
Another thing to consider is the genre. If your book is a cookbook or a picture book, or some kind of visual book, it probably won’t sell a lot of copies as an audiobook, but if you’re writing Romance or Sci-Fi/Fantasy, or Mystery, or even Non-Fiction genres like Self-Help, Business, or True Crime, those tend to do really well as audiobooks, and your fans may be expecting your book to be in audio. I hope this helps!
Q: WHAT IS INVOLVED IN PRODUCING AN AUDIOBOOK?
After a narrator receives a manuscript, they must first read it and then prepare it. They will also ask for input from the author about characters and name pronunciations. Next, they will record the audiobook. A typical recording session will produce 1 finished hour for every 2 hours in the booth. The next step is to send the raw audio to the post production person or team, who will edit, proof, and master the files. This usually takes between 2 and 4 hours per finished hour of audio. The proofer then sends a list of the “pickups”, or corrections, to the narrator, who re-records them and sends them back to the editor. The editor then masters the pickups and edits them back into the audio, and then sends them back to the producer in a format that is ready for audiobook distribution.
The whole process from start to finish takes about 6-8 hours for each finished hour of audio.
Q: IS IT EXPENSIVE TO PRODUCE AN AUDIOBOOK?
Before MP3s, indie publishing, and home recording software became available, audiobooks were produced exclusively by publishing houses, and they cost between two and three times what they do now. With the abundance of home studios and the transition to digital audiobooks, they are not only more affordable overall, but if your book has the potential to sell a lot of copies, you have a few different options as far as paying for audiobook production:
Option 1: ( Pay For Production)
Traditionally, audiobooks are paid for upfront, and the cost is dependent on 3 different factors:
1- The narrator’s rate 2- The length of the audiobook and 3- Post production costs
Many narrators base their “Per Finished Hour” rate, or narration fee, off of typical SAG-AFTRA, (union) rates. Post-production rates are also set at a Per Finished Hour rate. If you’re hiring a freelance narrator/ producer, be sure to inquire whether that narrator has included the post production fee in their quote.
Option 2: (Royalty Share, Royalty Split, or Royalty Share Plus aka Hybrid)
Rather than paying for your audiobook upfront, you might be able to negotiate paying with a percentage of your sales. If you’re interested in this option, be prepared to show your potential narrator your e-book sales information, and perhaps offer a stipend to pay for post production.
If your stipend is high enough to qualify for the SAG-AFTRA “Royalty Share Plus” rate on ACX, That will increase the pool of narrators available to do your book.
Audiobook Distributors have different rules when it comes to splitting royalties, or “Royalty Share” agreements, so be sure to do your homework, and watch my video on audiobook distribution (below).
Q: WHAT IS AN AUDIOBOOK DISTRIBUTOR, AND DO I NEED ONE?
Audiobook retailers allow publishers to sell their audiobooks, but most of them will not work with individuals.
Even Apple, who allows people to sell their songs on Itunes, won’t allow audiobooks to be sold there without a middleman. If you own your audiobook rights, you can get your audiobooks sold on Audible, Chirp, Kobo, Audiobooks.com, Spotify, and also get them in the libraries on the Libby app and the Hoopla app, by using an aggregate distributor.
Some distributors charge a flat rate, but most charge a percentage of sales. ACX is technically a distributor, but they are owned by Audible, and they also partner with Itunes for exclusive contracts.
ACX does not distribute to non-partners, so if you want your audiobook distributed wide around the world to 180 different countries through Spotify, and Chirp, and Libro FM, and the other 40 or so different audiobook sales platforms, you should probably go with a second distributor.
Be aware that if you are paying your narrator through ACX as a Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus, you are limited to using only ACX as your distributor, so you can only distribute to Audible or Itunes.
However, if you are doing a “Per Finished Hour” (PFH) model, you can use another distributor – even a second distributor to get your audiobook to more apps and also to the libraries.
I know that audiobook distribution can be really confusing. I went down a big rabbit hole a few years ago and learned as much as I could about it, and I even experimented with different distributors. If you want to learn more, head to my page on wide distribution at becksvoice.com/wideaudiobooks.
Q: HOW SHOULD I CHOOSE MY NARRATOR FOR MY AUDIOBOOK?
Start by listening to audiobooks in your genre. If you find someone you like, you can search and see if they have a website or social media account, or see if they have a profile on ACX.com.
You can also go to ACX and listen to samples from various narrators. You can either contact the narrators directly through the website they provide or through the ACX messaging system.
Another route is to use an audiobook production house who has a roster set up for casting, and they can also handle all of the production and the distribution.
If you plan to use ACX as a distributor, you can hold an audition there and provide a 1-2 page sample for narrators to read. Make sure the narrator you select not only has a good voice, but is also great at both narration and dialogue, and that they can provide a clean finished audiobook.
It may be tempting to hire the person whose voice or voices most closely resemble those in your head while writing the characters of the book, but your listeners just want to hear the best narrator and clean audio!
So to reiterate, when you hire a narrator on ACX, they are taking on the job of both the narrator, and the producer. They are responsible for a finished product. So listen for both great storytelling ability, and clean audio, because the mic that they used for the audition, and the space that they record in are likely going to be the same for your audiobook.
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- Rebecca H. Lee
- beckcentric@gmail.com