Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm Dave Cheston of Kindlepreneur and in today's video, we're going to learn how to make an audiobook. With the audiobook marketing growing over 30% year over year, creating an audiobook can really increase your revenue as an author. However, creating a professional audiobook can be a bit difficult. That's why in this video, I hope to show you how to effectively and efficiently create audiobooks for your books. But before we begin, if you'd like to learn more about creating books, self-publishing, and book marketing, be sure to hit that subscribe button in the bottom, as well as the little bell icon to the right, so as to get notified when my next video comes out. And with that, let's begin. The first step is going to be preparing your book for your audiobook version. When it comes to audiobooks, you have to remember that your audience cannot see anything. So things like hyperlinks or imagery either need to be spelled out or described. Just think to yourself, like, would this make sense if I was just listening to it or not? Because this might actually force you to change a couple of sections in your book in preparation for turning it into an audiobook. The next step to creating your audiobook is deciding whether or not you want to pay for production or record your book yourself. Depending on your word count and the quality of work that you are willing to pay for, the pricing could vary for a few hundred to several thousand dollars. While each option can produce varying levels of quality, it's really up to you what you want to do. And here are a couple of things that you should think about. When it comes to recording your own audiobook, in order to record yourself, you must have quality equipment. I will have a link below in the description with our list of recommended equipment that will get the best bang for your buck. Have a noise-free, friendly environment. When recording, you will either want to find somewhere in your house that is soundproof friendly or won't have the daily thuds and bumps of any of the home guests running around. Or if you have the ability to go to a sound studio, that is always a preferred option. Being familiar with your audio editing software or sending your audio files to an audio engineer. No matter which one you choose, you will still want to make sure that you are recording your audio in the right format and have somewhere to store the files once finished, as well as augment so it's crystal clear and sounds good. Lastly, and probably the most important, is understanding that when recording any audiobook, it's going to take a significant amount of time. On average, most people are able to speak somewhere between 8,000 to 9,000 words per hour. But even for some of the most skilled voice actors, it can be hard to continuously speak for an hour straight. So if you're recording for the first time, understand that you are going to need breaks and that you may be there for a while. Now if recording your own audio is not something you want to do or something that you're really jazzed about, you can find some affordable narrators out there who could do a great job. And in this next section, we're going to look at some of those areas where you can find them, as well as some things to think about as you're searching for your narrator. To begin with, the most common one is ACX. We'll cover them a bit later since they are one of the most common distributors for uploading. However, a thing that makes ACX special is that you can post your book there and narrators can audition for the opportunity. There are generally two ways of paying for them. Either narrators get paid per finished hour or a royalty share, which is something you'd set up before they commence their work. Next is Voices.com. This is a site devoted to helping find voice talent. Here you can hover over voiceover and then audiobook and start exploring the different narrators in that section. You can click see more and then on the left side, you can use the filters to find someone more within your area. Another one is Voices123.com. Like Voices.com, you can select search voice actors and then use the filters on the left to select their profile. This one isn't as big as Voices, but it's growing and can be an opportunity. Voicecrafters.com is another site like the other two and does have a dedicated page for audiobooks as well. Now, there are other freelance gig sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and People Per Hour. However, I found that most of those who promote that they do narration on those sites were also probably listed on the couple of sites I just talked about. So it generally is a waste of time to check these as well. Okay, so now that we know where we can find some really cool narrators, let's go ahead and talk about some of the things that you should think about as you're searching for one. First step is finding the proper audiobook narrator. Depending on your style or writing or genre, you would want to make sure that you find someone that sounds the part. If you have several characters and want each one to have their own tone of voice, make sure to find an artist that is capable of doing that. If that is the case, then verify they have the range. Have the book recorded and the audio files edited by an audio engineer. You can again find good engineers on sites like Upwork and Fiverr, or sometimes when choosing an audiobook narrator, they may include this step in their package. So just be aware of that. Lastly, before you contract an audiobook narrator, make sure that you get all the rights to the audiobook. You don't want anyone holding you back from publishing your book when or where you want to. Also too, just make sure there aren't special caveats that they have rights to other things. Just make sure that's clear. Okay, so whether you recorded it yourself or you found a narrator for your book, let's go ahead and move into the next section, which is talking about the markets where you can upload your audio file and start selling on. The most common service is going to be through ACX, which is owned by Audible. What makes ACX so much bigger than most of the other services is that they not only host the audio files, they can also host your book cover and metadata, just like Kindle Direct Publishing does for Kindle eBooks. ACX is also capable of distributing to iTunes, which is huge when it comes to expanding your market. However, one thing to note is that if you choose to use ACX and also want to host on another platform, you will have to choose the non-exclusive publication deal. What non-exclusive publication deal means is that only 25% of your retail sales is paid to you through ACX versus 40% that would be paid if you chose an ACX exclusive publication deal. Yeah, they really do that. One reason you may choose to go the non-exclusive route is if you have a large email following and believe that you can make many more sales through the other platforms just by pushing it out directly to your list. You can also publish your own audio book on your website if you have a large following and basically just have more freedom as to where your audio book is being spread. The other platforms to consider publishing on are Overdrive, Audiobooks.com, Downpour, and Chirp. Each and every one of these services has their pros and cons, so you might just want to look into each and verify whether or not that's a good fit for what you want. Okay, so there you have it, guys. So far in this video, we've covered why audio books can be important for your sales, how to find narrators or do it yourself, where to upload your audio books for sales, and some of the pitfalls and things to think about. This should give you a great start into creating your audio book. And with that, I'm Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur signing off. Cheers.