Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Shailen here with Readsie and today we're going to begin a two-part series on audiobooks, specifically on audiobooks for indie authors. So how to go about handling the production and distribution yourself. So in today's video we're going to focus on the production aspect and then in Friday's video we're going to talk about distribution and marketing. So audiobooks only make up around 3% of book sales, however, sales are increasing. Audiobooks are actually the fastest growing sector of publishing. So if you're an indie author, here are some things to consider if you're thinking of doing an audiobook. So first of all, what is your goal for this audiobook? Your audiobook will probably only sell around 10% of the copies that your print and ebook versions did, so it's actually unlikely that you'll even break even on the cost of production. However, it does increase your visibility as an author, so it can be great for marketing your platform and marketing your book, and it also just offers every possible version of the book to your reader. The second thing to consider is what your budget is. It is possible to create an audiobook for free or for a low cost, and we'll talk about ways that that's possible later on in the video, but in a lot of cases you are going to expect a relatively high production cost to create an audiobook, maybe a couple thousand dollars. So it's a fair tradeoff. For less cost or no cost, then you might have lower quality or fewer options, but if your goal is just to increase visibility, maybe this is worthwhile for you. Next up is how much time and or effort you're willing to put into this audiobook. If you're willing to do more work yourself, you can handle a lot of the production yourself, and that will probably significantly decrease your costs as well. Or if you're not really willing to put in as much time or work yourself, and you have more money to spend on the audiobook, you could hire a producer to do it for you. And finally you want to consider what your marketing strategy is going to be. You might use a lot of similar strategies and tools that you would use to market an audiobook that you would use to market an ebook. There is a smaller market for audiobooks, so that does make it easier for your title to stand out, and that can actually help readers discover your other books, even if you've only produced one audiobook. Now let's talk about casting your audiobook, so finding your narrator. If your book is in first person, you probably have a pretty clear idea of what kind of way your voice is going to be appropriate. If you have multiple perspectives, you can also consider working with multiple narrators. It will cost you a little bit more, but not as much as you might think, because you're still paying for the same number of recorded hours in the end. Now what if you want to narrate your own book? There are some reasons why you might want to do this. For example, if your book is a memoir, it would make a lot of sense for you to narrate your own story. It might also make sense if this is a non-fiction book in a field that you're a known professional in. Again, this is similar to writing the memoir. It makes a lot of sense for you to be the reader here, because you are the narrator of the book. If you have performance training, it might also make sense for you to want to narrate your own fiction. This way you don't have to hire a narrator if you feel capable of doing the narration yourself. However, ultimately, narrating is a type of performance, and it requires training and experience to do well. So if you don't have any training or experience with any kind of acting, it might not be the best decision for you to take on the narrating role, unless you really think it's something that's right for your book and that you can do a good job of. I actually know someone who was narrating his memoir, and it of course made a lot of sense for him to be narrating his own memoir, but he has absolutely no training as an actor. He's actually a pretty shy, introverted person, and so the fact that he had to narrate his own memoir, he really didn't enjoy the process. He didn't think that he did a good job. So now let's talk about the process, and step one is the prep. The narrator can take from a few days to a few weeks to prep for narration, depending on how much of a time crunch you're on. What they'll do is read through the book and decide how each character is going to sound, and they'll also double check things like pronunciation. If your book is sci-fi or fantasy and there are made up terms, they'll check pronunciation with you because they can't check anywhere else. Then that leads to step two, which is recording. Some narrators will have their own recording studio at home, others will go to a professional studio, but the process is basically the same either way. A recording session will usually last around four to six hours, since any more can strain the narrator's voice. And the ratio here is usually two to one, from recorded time to finished audio time. So in a six hour recording session, the narrator will probably get three hours of the recorded book done. And then step three is post-production. After the narration is done, the recording will need to be cleaned up. So an editor will listen to the book and clean up all the little mistakes as they come along. Sometimes there are mistakes that can't be fixed, or there are sentences or words missing, and the narrator will have to re-record elements so that the whole thing can be properly mixed in. Then the editor listens to it again, and what the editor does is they listen to it as they're reading through the book to make sure that everything is identical to the print version. Some narrators will do the editing themselves, others will outsource this. And then we get to step four, mastering and formatting. The audio is processed with special software to make sure it sounds as crisp as possible. Then it will be cut into individual chapters and compressed into mp3 files. Most audiobooks these days are digital downloads, some libraries will still use CDs. So that's an overview of the process. If you'd like to hire someone else to do your audiobook, there are a few different options depending on your budget and what kind of role you'd like to play in the production. So one of the main ones is ACX, which is Audible Content Exchange. So what you do here is you submit the title, and then you'll have producers and narrators either audition or bid for the chance to work on it. There are two options here, you can either do a royalty split where you'll each take 50% of the royalties, and you'll only be able to distribute the book through Audible where you get a 40% royalty. So you'll be getting 20% royalty here. Or you can pay for production upfront and keep all of your royalties. This is a good option if you want to work with someone since maybe you don't think you have the skills or the time to do it yourself, but you're not really able to pay for high upfront costs. The downside here is that the most experienced narrators probably won't take a bid on a project that they don't think is going to sell very well. So if you don't have much marketing reach for your project, then it's possible that you won't be getting the highest quality production. There is a risk of lower quality here, it is a bit of a gamble. It's not necessarily true that you'll end up with a lower quality audiobook, but it is possible. You also do need to have a US or a UK mailing address to go this route, and you are still going to be responsible for managing quite a lot of the process. Now compared to that, you can also go the DIY route. If you're going to go the DIY route, you have to handle and manage everything yourself, and the first thing that you'll have to do is cast it. There are three different ways that you can go about trying to find a voice actor to narrate your book. Option one is that you can contact a voiceover or acting agency. Option two is to post a casting call on a website like Voices.com or Voices123. Or finally, you can do the ads yourself, so you can place an ad on Craigslist, you can put ads in Facebook groups, on LinkedIn, and manage this whole process yourself. The first option here is going to be the most expensive, and the second one is quite similar to working through ACX. The final option requires the most work on your part, since you have to handle all of those ads, however there are no upfront fees to posting the ads, it's just going to be a bit more effort. Now the Actors Union recommends that actors be paid $225 per recorded hour, however there are going to be narrators with much less experience still building their resumes who are willing to work for less than that. Some actors will also work for less if they have a home recording studio, since there are less fees involved for them. When you hire an actor, you also want to be very clear on the scope of work, and whether or not they're going to just deliver the raw recordings to you completely unedited, or whether they're going to handle the post-production and file mastering as well. Now for kind of a final, most expensive option, where everything is going to be handled for you, you can, if you really want to outsource the entire process, you can just work with a professional audiobook studio. A casting director will send you auditions for different narrators that they think will suit the book, and they'll check in with you and update you throughout the process. If this is an option that you think is right for you, you can look up studios on the Audio Publisher Association's website. This is of course going to be a more expensive option, but if it's in your budget, and you want a really high quality recording, and you don't want to really play much role in the process, this might be the option for you. The only thing you'll be responsible for here is distribution and marketing, which is still going to be fully your responsibility. So that's part one in this video on audiobooks, so now that we've talked about the production, you can stick around for our next video, where we're going to be talking about distribution. Once that video is up, I will leave a link to it in the cards, so you can just hop over there. 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.