Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Shailen here with Readsy and today we're going to be talking about audiobooks. Now, in the first video in this series we talked about the production for audiobooks, specifically for indie authors. Today we're going to be talking about distribution and marketing. There are quite a few different routes that you can take for distribution for your audiobooks, so we're going to start with that and then get into marketing at the end of the video. So let's start by talking about the role that Audible plays in this because Audible is by far the leading distributor in terms of audiobooks. It's owned by Amazon and also the catalog distributor for iTunes audiobooks, so it kind of has a bit of a monopoly on audiobook distribution at the moment. If you decide to distribute with Audible, then you'll get a 40% royalty. Now second to Audible, libraries are the second biggest source that people go to through their audiobook, and different libraries use different catalogs. The most common one here is Overdrive, but it's not necessarily the one that every single library uses. Another important company here is Findaway. Now what they do is they're actually a back-end provider, so if you've heard of Nook Audio, Scribd, or TuneIn, Findaway is the company that kind of works behind the scenes to build those audiobook catalogs. So those are some other places where people get their audiobooks, but Audible is the main one, so let's break down the process of distributing through Audible a little bit more. So like I mentioned, you get a 40% royalty from Audible, but there is one thing to keep in mind here. For that 40% royalty, you have to give them full distribution rights. You decide on a non-exclusive contract with Audible, then you'll retain 25% royalties, but you can distribute the book elsewhere. Another place you might choose to distribute your book is through Authors Republic, which is a distributor started by audiobooks.com. You can upload your book there and find more distribution options. Now let's take a look at the marketing side of things. Now let's start with reviews. As with selling print books or ebooks, reviews are always helpful. Now Audible is the main site where readers are going to go to get audiobooks, so if you're distributing through Audible, you want to make sure that that's where you're getting reviews. A reader might listen to your audiobook and leave a review, say on Goodreads, and that's great for your book, for selling more books, but it's not specific to marketing your audiobooks. So specifically for marketing your audiobook, you do want that review on Audible. Audible gives authors 25 free downloads for every book they publish, so you can give those promo codes away through social media or through a newsletter in exchange for reviews or suggest a review. It's kind of like the audiobook version of an ARC or an advanced reader's copy, so you're giving away the book for free in exchange to get more reviews. There's also a discount audiobook newsletter called Audiobook Boom. It has a reach of around 5,000 subscribers and it only costs $10 to be featured there. Another marketing tactic you might want to use is extra content. One benefit of recording an audiobook is that you can take the opportunity to record some extra content in order to promote the audiobook. This could be a personalized introduction, you could do an interview with the narrator, or you could record a chapter from your newest release or an upcoming book. Very similar to how a lot of print books have the first chapter of the author's newest book or upcoming release at the end. You can also see if there's a way you can work with your narrator to do promo. A lot of narrators will have social media presences and they want promo just as much as you do. You could record a conversation about the book with them where you ask them about the recording process, they ask you about the writing process and do kind of an interview style or just see if there's any kind of content that you can create with your narrator. And finally are clips. This is an Audible feature, so basically Audible lets you post little 45 second clips of your book to social media or in email. You can post up to 5 minutes of the book total. And this can be a great way to promote your audiobook. You can promote it in your newsletter, you can promote it on Twitter, and get people excited about your upcoming release. It's a really easy way to share pieces of your audiobook. It's really similar to how an author might post excerpts. A lot of the ways that you market an audiobook is similar to how you would market a print book or an ebook. You just have to take those marketing strategies and adapt them to the audio version. But a lot of the strategies, you know, are familiar ones that you would use with a print book. So that wraps up this video on audiobook distribution and marketing. If you do want to learn more about audiobooks, if you're really considering making one yourself, we've got an entire course on the topic. I covered the basics of the information here, but if you want to go really, really in-depth into this, you can check out our Real Zee Learning course. It is free. So thank you so much for watching, and remember to subscribe for new writing, editing, and publishing videos every Tuesday and Friday. Until next time. Bye.